ABSINTHE OF MALICE
Suicidal killer sez the Green Fairy did it
Jean Lanfray, 32, a laborer from the little village of Commugny, Switzerland, rose before dawn on Aug. 28, 1905, and started his morning with two glasses of absinthe.
He did not stop drinking for the rest of the day.
On their way to work at a vineyard, Lanfray, his brother, and father stopped at a café. His breakfast consisted of crème de menthe and cognac. Between lunch and quitting time, he downed seven glasses of wine and a cup of coffee, laced with brandy.
The drinking continued at home, where he and his father polished off a liter of wine. Lanfray topped it off with marc, a potent brandy, wrote Barnaby Conrad III in his book, “Absinthe: History in a Bottle.”
When Lanfray’s wife reminded him it was time to milk the cows, he refused. She called him lazy. He told her to shut up, then dashed to a closet, grabbed his rifle, and shot her through the forehead. She died instantly.
Rose, his 4-year-old daughter, walked into the room and saw her mother dead. Her father silenced the child with a bullet. Then he ran into a bedroom where his other daughter, Blanche, 2, was sleeping in a crib and shot her too.
He tried to commit suicide with his rifle, but only managed to put a bullet in his jaw. Still, he had strength enough to pick up Blanche and stagger to the barn. Police found him there later, passed out with the child’s bloody corpse in his arms.
It didn’t matter that Lanfray had guzzled an ocean of alcohol that day and that most of it was wine. His murderous rage was blamed on the absinthe.
The case quickly became known throughout the world as the “absinthe murders.”
Called the “Green Fairy,” absinthe is a concoction of herbs, and spices that was originally used for medicinal purposes. At the heart of the brew is wormwood, a plant reputed to have a slew of health benefits, as well as hallucinogenic effects.
As with cannabis, records of wormwood potions go back to antiquity. Over the centuries, it was held up as a remedy for everything — stomach woes, parasites, anemia, depression, bad breath, menstrual cramps, and malaria, to name a few. Some say wormwood extracts also act as aphrodisiacs.
In the mid-1700s, two sisters in Switzerland started selling a mixture they created. Toward the end of the century, a Swiss physician was marketing a 136-proof version of the green anise-flavored liquor. Largescale production began a few years later.
By the middle of the 19th century, the Green Fairy was a favorite of bohemians and avant-garde writers, poets, and artists, including Oscar Wilde, Henri de ToulouseLautrec, and Vincent van Gogh.
Grim absinthe drinkers, usually appearing in a stupor, became a common theme among painters. “L’Absinthe,” an 1876 painting by Edgar Degas, is perhaps the most famous of these, depicting a somber woman seated alone in a café with a glass of green liquor before her.
The emerald green spirit was so popular that a French phenomenon arose — “l’heure verte,” or the green hour. It was a time, one writer observed, when the “sickly odor of absinthe lies heavily in the air.”
Its appeal spread throughout Europe and to America, along with fears that the “absinthe demon” was going to destroy the world. One of the chemical components of wormwood, as well as other plants, is thujone, a powerful neurologic stimulant. Studies on guinea pigs showed that simply inhaling absinthe provoked seizures. Scientists began to warn about its effects on body and soul.
“Absinthe. A Deadly Poison That Many People Gulp Down,” screamed a headline in the Alexander County, N.C. Journal on Aug. 23, 1888. The article, which was syndicated around the country, estimated that 10 out of every 25 New York City bar patrons ordered absinthe, even though the “medical fraternity” had pronounced it more dangerous than whiskey or opium, capable of sending a person to the madhouse or the grave in four years.
Over the decades, there was talk of banning it, but nothing happened until the Lanfray tragedy.
At Lanfray’s one-day trial in February 1906, his defense argued that his actions were the result of absinthe madness, even though he’d only had a couple of ounces. He was convicted of four murders — his wife was pregnant with a son — and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Three days later, he hanged himself in his cell.
The murders became the catalyst for a ban, which went nto effect in Switzerland in 1908, soon followed by other countries, including France and the United States.
The bans survived for about a century. Then in the 1990s, governments relaxed the rules, and by 2007, absinthe was legal. Studies of vintage bottles found that the troublesome ingredient — thujone — was never at levels high enough to make anyone crazy. Restrictions vary county by country now, with limits in some places on the amount of thujone that can be in the brew.
Today, it’s easy to get absinthe in the U.S. On Amazon, among 5,000 results for a search of the liquor, there are absinthe fountains, fancy glasses, and filigree silver spoons for elaborate rituals involving sugar cubes and ice water drips. A 2015 BuzzFeed video — “Americans Try Absinthe for the First Time” — attracted more than 13 million views.
Perhaps the strongest sign that 21st century Americans are ready to embrace the Green Fairy is the existence of several recipes for absinthe ice cream. A “dessert so good,” notes the culinary website Perfectly Provence, “it should be outlawed.”