8. The case of Marc-Antoine Calas
Marc-Antoine Calas may have been murdered, or he may have committed suicide, but his father, Jean Calas, a Toulouse shopkeeper in his sixties, was convicted of the crime of killing his son. He was suspected of being one of several conspirators in the crime, and his sentence reflected the fact that the authorities had little evidence of murder. He was sentenced to be questioned while under torture before being executed, the logical French assuming that he would confess to the conspiracy and his role in it under the pain inflicted by his interrogators. The torture, which was of different methods, one of which being what later became known as waterboarding, failed to extract the desired confession.
Voltaire became involved in the case following Calas’s death by strangulation, urging his widow to appeal the verdict, and using his influence to create public outrage. Three years after the execution, in 1763, the French government reopened the case. The following year a new trial was ordered, despite Calas being long dead, and in 1765 the original verdict was overturned, Calas was retried, and the verdict was not guilty. The lead prosecutor in the Calas case, who had obtained the conviction and supervised the torture, attempted to commit suicide by defenestration. Failing in his first attempt, he succeeded in his second. How Marc-Antoine Calas died remains a subject of speculation and debate among mystery buffs.