Nico Claux the vampire of Paris - Cannibal killers

Hello friends, I was going to write a list-post of true crime cases dubbed as vampiric by the media when I started reading about the case of Nico Claux and thought I’d share it with you. Nico had a social media presence after his release in the early 2000’s and those who corresponded with him while he was incarcerated have shared some of his letters online so there’s a lot out there to read. Claux is very matter of fact about what he did and talks openly about it (although he’s moved on from it mentally and has no remorse) so it’s quite interesting to get a small insight into what he did and why, what lead him there and the experience etc.

As always, reader discretion is advised- mentions of death, cannibalism etc. to follow.

“I think it’s better to reign in Hell than be to be a slave in paradise.” - Milton as quoted by Claux.

In the mid-nineties, then 22 year old Nicolas “Nico” Claux was sentenced to 12 years behind bars for the murder of a 34 year old man named Thierry Bissonnier in Paris. The two were not acquainted in the real world, but had chatted about bondage on Minitel (a sort of early precursor to the internet where users could connect on message boards) and decided to meet up. It seems that Bissonnier was expecting a sexual encounter, but Nico Claux had a fantasy of his own in mind- murder. Claux had premeditated the murder for a long time, in an interview with Living TV he confessed that although he had always wanted to kill, he had no reason for choosing the 4^th of October 1994 as the date, or Bissonnier as the victim.

(Image source: Nico Claux)

He shot Bissonnier in the face seconds after the man had invited him into the apartment and closed the door. Claux then gave himself a tour of the dying man’s abode as he bled out onto the door, face down and spluttering into the ever growing pool of blood beneath him. The first shot had clearly not ended Bissonnier’s life. Later analysis would show that the all but one of the bullets had neglected to penetrate the skull. This surprised and intrigued Claux, who fired a few more shots into him and then observed his victims twitching, groaning body while he ate some cookies that he had found while looking around. When he’d grown tired of the spectacle and had finished his snack, he ended the man’s suffering by firing another shot into him and smashing in his skull with a large and weighty plant pot. He then partook in some opportunistic thievery, commandeering the man’s answer machine and clock as well as swiping his wallet and ID for some acts of future fraud. The whole ordeal lasted around half an hour.

It was the use of Bissonnier’s (modified) identification and credit card that eventually lead to the arrest. Nico Claux, who came to be known in the media as “The vampire of Paris” divulged details freely. He told of his grave robbing, cannibalism, blood drinking and the murder, and revealed that there was no specific motive for killing Bissonnier other than the pursuit of delivering death and knowing murder.

(Image source: Vacily Konstantin- go to his website for the whole series)

Nico had felt a strong attraction to death for as long as he could remember. One of his favorite pastimes was wandering alone amongst the tombstones and mausoleums of Parisian cemeteries-but Claux was no ordinary taphophile, he took his obsession to the next level. He dug down into graves to unearth bodies from their caskets, he broke into tombs and prised open coffin lids to get to the skeletal remains within, he even took a job at the local hospital (stretcher-bearer at Saint Joseph Hospital) and worked at the mortuary where he would cut flesh from the bodies and consume it. Later, in an interview, he would reveal that it tasted “like horse meat” and in another “It depends on what part you eat. The big muscles of the thighs and back are good. There's no meat in the breasts, only fats"

(I found these morbid “how to eat human meat” instructions on a Documenting reality thread. (User x313x shared them back in 2008)

He was often left alone with the decedent as it was his job to stitch them up following an autopsy. It was during these solitary hours of work that he would select the pieces he wanted to prepare later at home. He would study their files like a macabre menu before choosing which parts he would eat that day. The hospital also gave him access to blood bags, which he would also sneak home to pair with the meat. The blood would be stirred into human ashes that he kept in his apartment to thicken it to a preferred consistency. He shared his abode with souvenirs of his cemetery visits- skulls, bones and ashes filled the rooms of his apartment, and his fridge was well stocked with human meat and blood from the hospital.

(Image is Nico's again)

In an interview, Claux described his apartment in his own words:

“While they were probably not surprised to have found the pistol, they were almost certainly not prepared for the grisly scene that welcomed them.

Throughout my apartment, bone fragments and human teeth were scattered about like loose change; vertebras and leg bones hung from the ceiling like morbid mobiles, and hundreds of videocassettes, mostly slasher and hardcore S&M flicks, filled my shelves.

One can only imagine what went through the minds of the investigators as they looked around my living quarters. On one wall hung a bullet-riddled target, while across the room sat a TV set with jars of human ashes resting on top of it. Several bondage magazines were piled in a far corner, and nearby my backpack was found, which contained handcuffs, surgical instruments and duct tape. In addition to my tastes and choice of décor, investigators also discovered several stolen blood bags inside of my refrigerator."

(Image from the "Cannibalism" series by Vacily Konstantin- go to his website) 

He was convicted of the murder of Thierry Bissonnier, and I believed suspected of others but not charged. (Apparently there were several murders of homosexual men in Paris around the same time as Bissonnier and the same type of weapon had been used)

(Image source)

During his 8 year stint in prison he dabbled in painting and became quite skilled in it.

His pieces would sell for between $300 and $500 and you may recognize his art work from “the serialkiller calendar” website. 

Following his release, Nico Claux continued to be open about his crime. In an interview with bloodclub.com (which can be read in its entirety HERE via the way back machine) he reveals that the murder was a huge ego boost, and something that obsessed him. He stated that since he’d completed the goal that the idea of taking a life is no longer so exciting, but that he had the capacity to kill again.

Post-incarceration life for the vampire of Paris became a creative world of painting and tattooing. His old MySpace account (HERE) listed his favorite shows, movies and interests, unsurprisingly horror films, death, cemeteries and his continuation of a journey down the left hand path.

“To the cattle: Worship your god, and let yourself bleed to death. Humans are parasites. To the predators: never surrender.”

I’ll finish up this post with an excerpt from an interview I found on murderpedia:

Did you ever have sex with a corpse? Yeah. So what?

Did you talk to any of the corpses you dug up? I'm no psycho!

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