Born in Alsace in 1848, Jean-Baptiste Troppmann’s lethality led him to the guillotine at the tender age of 22. In 1869 he hooked up with Jean Kinck with who he planned to set up a counterfeiting operation. However, Jean-Baptiste had a different get rich quick scheme in mind. As the two travelled to Herrenfluch to survey a site for their money printing plant, Troppman fed his partner a lethal dose of prussic acid mixed in wine.
Once Mr. Kinck was out of the way, Jean-Baptiste wired to his wife asking her for money. Mrs. Kinck, believing Jean-baptiste was acting in behalf of her husband, sent him a check allong with her. Unable to cash the money, he arranged a meeting with the wife in Paris and, having no more use for the boy, hacked him into to pieces.
On September 1869, Hortense Kinck met Troppman in Paris and gave him 55,000 francs thinking that they were for her husband. Once he had the money in his pocket he butchered Mrs. Kinck and her remaining five children in a remote spot near the Pantin Common.
The next day the bloodbath was uncovered by a workman who uncovered the mutilated remains of Hortense and her children. More charges were added against Troppman once the bodies of Gustave and Jean Kinck were unearthed. Jean-Baptiste was sentenced to death for the eight killings and, on January 19, 1870 — at the tender age of 22 — he was guillotined.
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