And what they found there was too much to stomach even for the veteran officers. The once young beautiful heiress that the town remembered was now in her fifties and seemed to be reduced to a corpse.

This is what one officer on the scene had to say about what he saw:

“The unfortunate woman was lying completely naked in a rotten straw mattress. All around her was formed a sort of crust made of excrement, fragments of leftovers, vegetables, fish, meat, and rotten bread. We also saw oyster shell sand bugs running across a blanches bed. The air was so unbreathable. The odor given off by the room was so ranked that it was impossible for us to stay any longer to proceed with our investigation.”

Following this discovery, both Mrs. Monnier and Marcel were arrested while Blanche was sent to the hospital. The infamous photo you see here was taken soon after.

And to add to the already shocking details of this tail, Blanche only weighed about 55 pounds at the time of her discovery and she’d lost the majority of her speaking skills.

According to both police and caretakers, Blanche at that point seemed almost childlike. Her chances of survival seemed extremely low but ultimately Blanche did physically recover.

But as one might expect, being confined for 25 years took too much of a toll on her mind. And she would die in an asylum over a decade later. But what about her captors?

Trial

By the time of her arrest, Mrs. Monnier was already in her mid-seventies and suffering from heart disease. In the end, she never did have to face punishment for the horrifying injustice done to her own daughter.

She passed away from her illness while in custody, just 15 days in. As for Marcel, he tried to pin the blame entirely on his mother. And despite the moral issues, legally, his defenses worked.

He pointed out to the courts that he didn’t physically detain his sister and later added that technically Blanche could have left at any time, but elected not to.

This, is despite the fact that police stated that both the door and window were sealed and that they’d even found writing on the wall spraying for freedom.

After a late trial in 1901, Marcel was acquitted and free to return to his wife and kids. And of course his inheritance which most likely was never shared with Blanche.

Justice Unserved

Now, we have discussed how all of this happened, but we haven’t exactly covered why. And the thing is that’s actually still up for debate if you ask most people.

It is true that Blanche had planned to marry a man her mother didn’t approve of. And while this may have been the reason for the initial confinement, it’s unclear why blanche was still locked up even after her fiance passed away.

Some chalk it up to religious panic. Keep in mind, Blanche’s mother was described as a devout Christian and some see this as partially why her reaction to her daughter’s relationship was so harsh.

Add that to the fact that her lover was essentially broke and many saw this as something Mrs. Monnier simply could not bear.

As for Marcel, it’s believed that his motivation here was to cut out his sister in order to leave him the sole beneficiary of the family’s estate.

But of course, regardless of their reasoning, what they both did to Blanca is completely unjustifiable.

And I think it’s safe to say that Marcel’s excuses were bogus. Even if no law existed for it at the time, Marcel should not have been able to get away with not reporting what was happening.

In the end, he and his mother completely got away with it and 120 years later people are still shocked at what these people did to their very own family members.