I'm doing a school project for an elective forensics class about serial killers. I didn't want to do any of the usual killers (Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, BTK, etc.) so I decided to do someone from the past and selected the late 16th century serial killer known only as the Werewolf of Chalons. In retrospect, trying to do a project about someone sentenced to damnatio memoriae in 1598 may not have been the best idea.
I've found a few secondary sources online, enough to meet the minimum requirements, but what I do have gives conflicting information about how he committed his crimes (slitting his victim's throats vs. killing them with his teeth). I know this is a long shot, since all the court documents about him were burnt, but are there any primary sources or very good secondary sources regarding the Werewolf? Also, where can I read more about lycanthropy superstitions in late 1500s France?
There seems to be reason to doubt that this is actually a genuine case. The details of the story bear considerable similarity to the later legend of Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street, one early version of which is set in Paris in the 15th century. I have made a very quick check and cannot see a version of the case earlier than the (unreferenced) one told by Sabine Baring-Gould in his Book of Were-Wolves (1865).
Robert L. Mack, in his The Wonderful and Surprising History of Sweeney Todd, casts doubt on the veracity of the Chalons story. He traces proto-Todd stories up to the period of these alleged murders and observes: "Other, vaguely similar stories that were in some cases only beginning to be written down suggested that narratives of this sort had long formed part of the oral story-telling traditions on the continent; they were connected to a larger body of tales and folklore that dwelt on the threat posed to children posed by 'monsters,' ogres and night visitors of all kinds."
I wrote a little about this type of case with regard to another, rather earlier historical folk-demon, the Breton ruler Conomor the Cursed.
You'll be aware that there are other early serial killer stories of this sort, perhaps most notably those involving Gilles de Rais and Elizabeth Bathory. Trial records exist in both these cases but the narratives they set out have been seriously challenged by historians; there were political reasons why others wanted both prosecuted. If you want a better attested but still relatively obscure serial killer case from France I would suggest looking into Joseph Vacher, who was the subject of a good recent book by Douglas Starr that is partially readable on Google Books.