NICO CLAUX

Nico Claux, AKA the Vampire of Paris, was our first artist. His work can be seen in almost all of our products and was the featured artist on our original 2007 Serial Killer Calendar. Below you will find a detailed bio of Nico Claux.

On Nov. 15, 1994, officers of the Parisian "Brigade Criminelle" arrested 22-year-old Nicolas Claux outside the world famous cabaret Moulin Rouge on suspicion of the murder of Thierry Bissonnier, 34. Bissonnier's October 4 killing was one of a string of homosexual murders, seven of which occurred in October alone. The murder squad's preliminary investigator, Gilbert Thiel, believed that a single killer was responsible and was eager to get Claux back to headquarters for questioning. Claux says that Thiel, veteran of several high-profile cases, was not prepared for the web of murder, cannibalism, and sadistic acts that he had woven in his short lifetime.

The following account includes several narrations by Mr. Claux to provide a better window on a killer's life and crimes. Some of Claux's commentaries, delivered in writing, have been edited, polished, and arranged for a more narrative flow.

Claux: "Following my arrest I was taken back to the Parisian Crime Department for questioning. Unbeknownst to me, crime scene investigators were already in the process of exercising a search warrant on my apartment at 9 Rue Coustou. Inside they found a .22-caliber handgun under my bed, which they immediately sent off for ballistics tests. 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."

It did not take long for the ballistic test results to come back, and when confronted with the evidence that the tests were positive, Nico confessed to Bissonnier's murder. Claux claimed that while investigators were happy to have solved a brutal crime, they were understandably concerned with all of the human bones scattered throughout his apartment, and the blood bags, which filled his refrigerator.

Claux: "With little hesitation on my part, I informed them that I had been robbing the graves of several Parisian gothic graveyards and mutilating the mummified remains. When asked the reason why I was storing stolen blood bags inside my refrigerator, I simply answered that I drank the blood on a regular basis. Working as a mortuary assistant for 10 months, I had been using my position as a means to fulfill a lifelong fantasy of mine revolving around cannibalism. When left alone to stitch the bodies after the autopsies, I would cut strips of meat from the ribs and eat them. On some occasions, I would bring pieces of flesh back to my place, where I would cook and eat those pieces as well."

Upon hearing his confessions, Claux claimed investigators asked, "WHY? Why did you kill? Why did you eat flesh and drink blood? And why did you dig up corpses?" As simple as those questions may seem, the answers were not readily found. Perhaps some clues exist in Nico's past.

Nicolas Claux was born on March 22, 1972 in the African nation of Cameroon. Nico's father was a French citizen who worked in a bank and was often sent with his family to foreign countries for long periods of time. While Nico was too young to remember his early years in Cameroon, he does recall the family moving to London around the age of five, and then off to the southern most part of Paris when he was seven, where they remained until he was 12.

Claux: "My childhood was basically normal, except that I was very withdrawn and only had a few friends. I was a lonely child, lacking brothers and sisters to play with, so I spent most of my time alone in my room.

"While my parents were very kind and gave me everything that I needed, I never really felt a strong bond between us. They never hugged me or kissed me, they just let me be on my own most of the time. Eventually I grew emotionally cold. I had difficulties feeling empathy for other people, just indifference most of the time.

"This is the time when I also developed a fascination for death and the occult. I would spend hours reading books on vampires and werewolves. A photo of the statue of the Sumerian demon Pazuzu especially fascinated me. I found it in a book my parents had bought in England. For me, it symbolized something extremely ancient and powerful -- something that I respected. A few years later, I saw the same statue used in the movie Exorcist, and my interest in the occult grew stronger."

When Nico was 10, his grandfather died as a result of a cerebral embolism. The two had been arguing at the time and Nico always felt that his family blamed him for the untimely death. This was a very critical moment in his life; one that he claims made him become literally obsessed with physical death. From then on he says that he was fascinated with burial rites, wakes, and the atmosphere of morgues.

At the age of 12, Nico and his parents moved to Lisbon, Portugal, where they remained for four years. While the setting may have changed, Nico's obsessions remained the same. None of his fellow classmates shared his interests and he was once again without friends. His feelings of loneliness became more intense, and he began to feel an utter hatred for everyone around him.

Claux: "When I was 16, we moved back to Paris, where I lived alone with my father. As far back as I can remember I have been obsessed by graveyards. Before long I knew every single cemetery in Paris like the back of my hand. Between 1990 and 1993, I spent the majority of my free time in graveyards. As a botanist studies plants and flowers, I would examine rusty locks and evaluate the weight of cement lids. My favorite things were mausoleums. The most impressive ones can be found at Pere-Lachaise, Montmartre, or Passy cemeteries. I would peek through their windows to see the inside. Some were decorated with furniture, paintings, or statues. It was not long before I began working on a plan to get a much closer view."

Eventually Nico crafted his own lock-picking tools, his favorite being an L-shaped key. If a lock on one of the mausoleums was too rusty to pick, he would use a crowbar, or enter through a window. Once inside, he says he "felt like an emperor reigning in Hell." The place would become his kingdom. Often times he said he would enter a mausoleum during the day, only to resurface at night, when the gates were closed, and he could continue his activities without fear of being discovered.`

Nico Claux said that over time, simply lurking in graveyards and breaking into mausoleums was not enough to satisfy his desires. His fantasies became sadistic blueprints — tools for fulfilling his new cravings. Whether this change began at this point or years earlier is a matter of speculation, but it is clear that he believed that he had stepped up to an entirely new level.

Within this chapter, the subsequent narrations have been translated from one of many statements that Nico said that he eventually gave to Parisian authorities while in custody.

"I woke up one day feeling this sinister urge to dig up a corpse and mutilate it. I gathered a small crowbar, a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, black candles and a pair of surgical gloves in a backpack. Then I took the subway until the Trocadero station. It was nearly noon. The gates of the Passy Cemetery were wide open, but nobody was inside. The undertakers were out for lunch.

"Passy is a small Gothic graveyard with plenty of huge mausoleums, which were built during the 19th century. It is located right between two large avenues, so it is impossible to climb inside at night. But anyway, nobody could ever imagine that there was someone robbing graves at noon.

"I had this special grave in mind. It was a small mausoleum, the burial site of a family of Russian immigrants from the 1917 revolution. I had already pried open the iron door a few days before, and I had closed it afterwards so it would seem that nobody had ever touched it. All I had to do was kick it open ... At this point, my mind was in total chaos. I had flashes of death in my head. I took a deep breath, and I climbed down the steps leading to the crypt.

"It was a rather small one, with damp walls, buried deep inside the cemetery ground. There was no other source of light than the candles I had brought. To begin, for more than an hour, I removed one of the heavy coffins from its stone casing. It was especially hard not to let the coffin fall all of sudden to the ground, but somehow I managed to slowly lay it down without making too much noise. However, one edge of the coffin scratched my lower leg when it touched the ground. But that didn't stop me at all.

"I examined the casket for a while. It was solid oak and sealed with big screws. It looked like brand new, so I expected to find a recently deceased corpse. First, I unscrewed the coffin, which took me less than 10 minutes. Then I pried it open with the crowbar. Once opened, a horrible stench of putrefaction came out of the box. It smelled like Thanatyl, the product embalmers use on a corpse in order to delay the process of decay.

"Then I saw the body inside. It was a half rotten old woman, shrouded in a white sheet, covered with brown stains. Her face seemed to be smeared with oil, but it was simply the death fluids oozing from her skin. The stench was so intense that I nearly fainted. I tried to lift one side of the sheet, but it was glued to her petrified skin. The teeth were protruding from the mouth, but her eyes were gone. I stared into the empty eye sockets, and all of a sudden something broke into my mind. I felt like I was falling into a whirlwind.

"That's when I picked up a screwdriver. The corpse inside the coffin started to move slightly, like if it had guessed what would happen next. So I began to stab the belly, the rib area and the shoulders. I stabbed her at least 50 times. I really can't remember. All I can remember is that when I woke up my forearms were covered with corpse slime."

After violating his first grave, Nico said that he spent the much of his free time searching the cemetery for new graves to desecrate. This is a pattern he said would continue up until the time of his arrest.

At 20, Nico joined the military, where he was trained as a gunsmith, cleaning and repaired weapons. But he soon found this lifestyle boring. His only satisfaction came from fantasizing about murder. After serving just a year, Nico moved on and said that he began to consider a career as a mortician.

Claux: "In 1993, the one and only local school for embalming declined my application, so I began working at Saint Vincent-de-Paul Hospital in Paris, a hospital for children. This was the only way I could really do what I wanted for a living and I also found out that it was the best way to be in contact with corpses. I was given the job of a morgue attendant and my first contact with a corpse there was when I assisted the autopsy of a 10-year-old girl. The other attendant showed me how to stitch up her belly, and that was the first time I ever got to touch a fresh corpse. I was amazed by how red and clean her organs were."

Nico did not stay at Saint Vincent-de-Paul for long, and in December 1993, he took a position as a morgue attendant and stretcher-bearer at Saint Joseph Hospital, which is also in Paris. His duties involved helping with autopsies, cleaning up the morgue slabs, and prepping the bodies for wakes. A small chapel was located up the stairs where bereaved relatives could later view the bodies of their loved ones.

Claux: "Most of the autopsies were done by us, the morgue attendants. We would do the Y-shaped incision, cut the ribs at the joints, and open the skull with an electric saw. The pathologist only dissected the organs and put them in a box.

"I would be left alone with the body after the autopsy to do the stitches, which were my specialty. This is when I began eating strips of muscles from the bodies. I always checked out their medical files first. I talked with a butcher once who told me that meat is better three or four days after death. This was something I had always dreamed of doing, and it was the opportunity to do it on a regular basis.

"Sometimes I brought select meats home with me to be cooked, but my preference was to eat them raw. It tasted like tartar steak, or carpaccio. The big muscles of the thighs and back were good, but there was no good meat in the breasts, only fats. People often ask me what went through my mind the first time I indulged my cannibalistic fantasy. Well, to be honest, I said to myself: 'Wow! Now I'm a cannibal. Cool!'"

Nico's other job at Saint Joseph Hospital involved working in the digestive surgery unit. One of his duties involved delivering the blood bags from the hospital's blood bank to the surgery room. He claimed that it did not take long for him to notice that it was not unusual for bags to be left over and eventually he devised a scheme in which he would rip the sticker off of the unused bag, making it appear to have been opened, and then hide it in his locker.

At the end of his shift, he said that he would transfer the bag to his backpack, take it home, and begin cooling it in his fridge. Once the desired temperature was reached, he would mix the blood with powder proteins, or human ashes, and then drink it. Since there was no plasma within the bags, the blood was extremely thin, which was why he chose to thicken it up.

On the morning of Oct. 4, 1994, Nicolas Claux said that he decided it was time to turn another one of his fantasies into reality. This fantasy was a special one to Nico, one that would, in his mind, put him on a far greater level than petty grave robbing and corpse mutilations. He had been waiting for just the right time, and he was finally ready to cross the line, an irreversible step that can change a man forever.

Nico spent his morning searching for a victim, any victim -- nothing mattered, not age, race, or sex, he said. He was looking for death, nothing more, and nothing less. By the early afternoon, Nico decided to try his luck on Minitel (an early version of the Internet) and soon began chatting with a man named Thierry about bondage and