Editing Gilles de Rais (section)

==Child killer==
In his confession, de Rais maintained the first assaults on children occurred between spring 1432 and spring 1433.<ref name="BenedettiP109">{{Harvnb|Benedetti|1971|p=109}}</ref> The first murders allegedly occurred at Champtocé-sur-Loire; however, no accounts of the crimes survive.<ref name="BenedettiP112">{{Harvnb|Benedetti|1971|p=112}}</ref> Shortly after, de Rais moved to Machecoul where, as the record of his confession states, he killed, or ordered to be killed, a great but uncertain number of children after he [[sodomy|sodomized]] them.<ref name="BenedettiP112" /> Forty naked bodies of children were discovered in Machecoul in 1437.<ref name="BenedettiP112" />

The first documented case of child-snatching and murder concerns a boy of twelve called Jeudon (first name unknown), an apprentice to the [[furrier]] Guillaume Hilairet.<ref name="BenedettiP113">{{Harvnb|Benedetti|1971|p=113}}</ref> Gilles de Rais' cousins, Gilles de Sillé and Roger de Briqueville, asked the furrier to lend them the boy to take a message to Machecoul, and, when Jeudon did not return, the two noblemen told the inquiring furrier that they were ignorant of the boy's whereabouts and suggested he had been carried off by thieves at [[Tiffauges]] to be made into a [[Page (occupation)|page]].<ref name="BenedettiP113" /> In Gilles de Rais' trial, the events were testified to by Hillairet and his wife, the boy's father Jean Jeudon, and five others from Machecoul.

In his 1971 biography of Gilles de Rais, Jean Benedetti tells how the children who fell into de Rais' hands were put to death:

Gilles' bodyservant Étienne Corrillaut, known as Poitou, was an accomplice in many of the crimes and testified that his master stripped the child naked and hung him with ropes from a hook to prevent him from crying out, then [[masturbation|masturbated]] upon the child's belly or thighs. If the victim was a boy he would touch his genitals (particularly testicles) and buttocks. Taking the victim down, de Rais comforted the child and assured him he only wanted to play with him. De Rais then either killed the child himself or had the child killed by his cousin Gilles de Sillé, Poitou or another bodyservant called Henriet.<ref name="BenedettiP114">{{Harvnb|Benedetti|1971|p=114}}</ref> The victims were killed by decapitation, cutting of their throats, dismemberment, or breaking of their necks with a stick. A short, thick, double-edged [[sword]] called a ''braquemard'' was kept at hand for the murders.<ref name="BenedettiP114" /> Poitou further testified that de Rais sometimes abused the victims (whether boys or girls) before wounding them and at other times after the victim had been slashed in the throat or decapitated. According to Poitou, de Rais disdained the victim's sexual organs, and took "infinitely more pleasure in debauching himself in this manner... than in using their natural orifice, in the normal manner."<ref name="BenedettiP114">{{Harvnb|Benedetti|1971|pp=114–115}}</ref>

In his own confession, de Rais testified that “when the said children were dead, he kissed them and those who had the most handsome limbs and heads he held up to admire them, and had their bodies cruelly cut open and took delight at the sight of their inner organs; and very often when the children were dying he sat on their stomachs and took pleasure in seeing them die and laughed”.<ref name="BenedettiP115">{{Harvnb|Benedetti|1971|p=115}}</ref>

Poitou testified that he and Henriet burned the bodies in the fireplace in de Rais' room. The clothes of the victim were placed into the fire piece-by-piece so they burned slowly and the smell was minimized. The ashes were then thrown into the cesspit, the moat, or other hiding places.<ref name="BenedettiP115" /> The last recorded murder was of the son of Éonnet de Villeblanche and his wife Macée. Poitou paid 20 ''sous'' to have a page's doublet made for the victim, who was then assaulted, murdered, and incinerated in August 1440.<ref name="BenedettiP171">{{Harvnb|Benedetti|1971|p=171}}</ref>