Well, anyone outside there, know this guy, "Jacques Mesrine"?
He is French "James Bond" .....i mean, the bad "James Bond".. wanna to know why?
Here is the story of the "Bad French's James Bond"....
He is cute, isn't he ?but ....
He is not my type ..i mean friend ...
Jacques Mesrine ..
was one of the most
infamous criminals in modern French history. He was responsible for numerous
murders, bank robberies, burglaries, and
kidnappings in France and Canada.
Mesrine repeatedly escaped from prison and made international headlines
during a final period as a fugitive when his exploits included trying
to kidnap a judge who had sentenced him. An aptitude for disguise earned
him the moniker "
The Man of a thousand Faces" and enabled him to remain
at large while receiving massive publicity as a wanted man. Mesrine was
widely seen as an anti-establishment 'Robin Hood' figure. In keeping
with his charismatic image, he was rarely without a glamorous female
companion.
1936 - 1965 :
Jacques René Mesrine was born in Clichy-la-Garenne
near Paris on 28 December 1936 to a couple of blue collar origin who
had moved up in social class. As a child he witnessed a massacre of
villagers by German soldiers. His parents had great aspirations for
their son and sent him to the prestigious Catholic Collège de Juilly
where his friends included the likes of musician and composer
Jean-Jacques Debout. Mesrine was an extremely unruly pupil, and he was
expelled from Collège de Juilly for attacking the principal. He went on to be expelled from other schools and fell into the lifestyle of a juvenile delinquent,
much to the dismay of his family. In 1955 at age 19 he married Lydia De
Souza in Clichy; the couple divorced a year later. Drafted into the French Army, he volunteered for special duty in the Algerian War
as a parachutist/commando. While participating in ruthless
counter-insurgency operations, Mesrine's duties are said to have
included the killing of prisoners. Although he disliked military
discipline, Mesrine enjoyed action and was decorated with the Cross of
Military Valour by General Charles de Gaulle
before leaving the army in 1959. His father was later to claim that the
time in Algeria had brought about a noticeable deterioration in
Mesrine's behavior.
In 1961 Mesrine became involved with the Organisation de l'armée secrète.
He married Maria De La Soledad; they had three children but later
separated in 1965. In 1962 Mesrine was sentenced to 18 months in prison
for robbery (his first prison sentence although he had been a
professional criminal for a number of years). After being released
Mesrine made an effort to reform: he worked at an architectural design
company where he constructed models, showing considerable ability.
However a downsizing in 1964 resulted in him being made redundant. His
family bought him the tenancy of a country restaurant, a role in which
he was quite successful, but this arrangement ended after the owner paid
a visit one evening to find Mesrine carousing with acquaintances from
his past. The lure of easy money and women proved impossible for him to
resist and he returned to crime. Overcoming some suspicion about his
relatively middle-class background, Mesrine began to establish a
reputation in the underworld as a man who was crossed at one's peril.
In December 1965, Mesrine was arrested in the villa of the military governor in Palma de Mallorca. He was sentenced to six months in jail and later claimed that Spanish authorities believed he was working for French intelligence
1966–1972
In 1966, Mesrine opened a restaurant in the Canary Islands.
In December of the same year he robbed a jewellery store in Geneva and a
hotel in Chamonix. The following year, Mesrine robbed a fashion store
in Paris. In February 1968, he fled to Québec with his then mistress
Jeanne Schneider and worked as a cook and chauffeur for grocery and
textile millionaire Georges Deslauriers for a few months before an
argument Schneider had with Deslauriers' long-time respected gardener
led to them being dismissed. They then attempted to kidnap Deslauriers,
but it went wrong due to the fact that the 'knock out drops' they used
were inert, and on June 26, 1969, Mesrine and Schneider fled to the US.
On June 30 Evelyne Le Bouthillier, an elderly lady who may have given
them refuge, was found strangled. A couple of weeks later, on July 16,
Mesrine and Schneider were arrested in Arkansas on information supplied
by an accomplice and extradited back to Québec
.
Mesrine was sentenced to ten years in prison for the bungled
kidnapping but escaped a few weeks later, only to be reapprehended the
next day. Mesrine and Schneider were acquitted of the murder of Le
Bouthillier in 1971. With Jean-Paul Mercier, Mesrine cut through the
wire to escape again on August 21, 1972 with five others from the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul prison. Mercier, a wanted murderer, and Mesrine then robbed a series of banks in Montreal,
sometimes two in the same day. It was at this time that it became
apparent that Mesrine did not have a normal criminal orientation towards
minimizing the danger of being caught. Deeply resenting the way he had
been treated in the prison, Mesrine and Mercier made an extremely risky
attempt to precipitate a mass break out from the maximum security block
of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul on September 3, 1972. However, their own
break-out had caused perimeter security to be greatly increased and they
found the area swarming with armed guards. There was a shoot-out in
which two guards were seriously injured and Mercier was wounded before
they managed to get away. The effrontery of escaped convicts returning
to attack a prison infuriated Canadian law enforcement; the escapade
predictably led to a hugely increased effort to apprehend the duo.
[4]
Murder of Médéric Cote and Ernest Saint-Pierre
A week after their foiled attempt to free the prisoners, Mesrine and
Mercier went for a target practice session, taking Mercier's girlfriend
along. But the location, though three miles down a dirt track through
the forest, was far from being truly remote and the noise of them
blasting away at targets all afternoon could be heard in Plessisville
where there was a Ministry of Natural Resources and Wildlife station.
When Mesrine and company drove back along the track, two forest rangers,
Médéric Cote, aged 62, and Ernest Saint-Pierre, aged 50, were waiting.
The rangers were armed but their jobs had mainly involved enforcing
hunting and firearms regulations, and in any case there was no reason
for them to expect that the men who had been making themselves
conspicuous by such a disturbance would actually be wanted escapees.
Realizing they were not policemen, Mesrine submitted to a search of the
car, but on finding loaded guns in the rear, the rangers informed them
that they would have to follow their car back to Plessisville. While
Mesrine was trying to talk them out of this, Cote, possibly alerted by
the sight of the arsenal of weapons, suddenly recognised the pair,
whereupon Mesrine and Mercier shot both officers dead.
Mesrine continued robbing banks in Montreal, and even covertly gained access into the US again for a brief stay at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, before moving to Caracas, Venezuela
.
1972-1977
By the end of 1972 Mesrine had returned to France where he resumed
robbing banks. On March 5, 1973, during an argument with a cashier in a
coffee bar, Mesrine brandished a revolver and seriously injured a police
officer who tried to intervene. He was arrested 3 days later. In May,
he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment – which, considering his
record, was lenient for the time and place – to be served at
La Santé maximum security prison
where escape was thought to be impossible. In a plan likely formulated
even before his arrest, Mesrine took a judge sentencing him on another
matter hostage with a revolver (recovered from the courthouse lavatory
where it had been hidden by an accomplice) and escaped. After being at
large for four months, he was arrested in his new Paris apartment on
September 28, 1973, on information supplied by an associate who wanted a
reduced sentence. Mesrine was returned to
La Santé where he covertly wrote and smuggled out an autobiography, titled
L'Instinct de Mort ("Killer Instinct"),
in which he claimed to have committed upwards of forty murders, (thought by some to be a considerable exaggeration). The publication of Mesrine's book resulted in France passing a "Son of Sam law", a law designed to keep criminals from profiting off the publicity of their crimes.
Escape from La Santé
La Santé was seen as escape proof. In his escapes from his
Canadian prisons, Mesrine had required little more than wire cutters and
a very high degree of audacity, now he faced security far better than
any he had defeated before. A report noted that Mesrine had been seen
doing exercises in his cell and was behaving like a man who had received
good news. On May 8, 1978, he produced a gun, stole keys, and, with
François Besse (a highly accomplished escaper in his own right), and
another man, Mesrine got out of a cellblock and into a fenced-off yard
walkway. They had a grappling iron with them and Mesrine forced some
workmen with an extending ladder to bring the ladder along. The trio
unlocked a yard gate in an inner wall; an armed guard was taken by
surprise at his post. The men then reached an isolated part of the 14
metre (46 ft) high exterior wall (which would have presented a
considerable challenge without the ladder). They hooked the grappling
iron onto the top of the ladder and slid down the rope. The third man
over the wall was shot dead by police in the street outside. Mesrine and
Besse hijacked a car and evaded the police cordon; they had become the
first men to escape from La Santé.
Mesrine as fugitive
Mesrine and Besse robbed a Paris gunsmith four days after their escape from La Santé. On May 26, 1978, the duo robbed the Deauville
Casino of 130,000 francs, but the police arrived as they exited. Around
50 shots were exchanged and Mesrine was wounded, but the duo made a
getaway. Mesrine and Besse eluded the subsequent massive sweep of the
area by taking a farmer and his family hostage and forcing him to drive
them to safety. Subsequently, the kidnapping of a banker netted them
450,000 francs in ransom. Despite his position as "French Public Enemy
Number One" (
L'Ennemi Public Numéro Un), Mesrine was featured on the cover of the 4th August 1978 Paris Match.
In an interview inside he threatened the Minister of Justice. By
remaining at large in the Paris area, despite his notoriety, Mesrine
appeared to be making a fool of the law and the state; the
Paris Match
interview was the last straw. The police agencies hunting Mesrine were
pressured for results from the highest echelons of government.
This proved to be difficult, not least because of rivalry between the
various agencies. The usual informants were of little use as Mesrine
generally avoided contact with the criminal underworld. Moreover, he was
adept at disguising his appearance and allaying suspicion from members
of the public: he reportedly went for a drink with his neighbours and
laughed when one said he "looked like Mesrine".
Mesrine travelled to Sicily, Algeria, London, and Brussels, and back to
Paris in November 1978, where he again robbed a bank. Objecting to
Mesrine's proposed kidnapping of a senior judge, and not sharing his
desire for revenge against the system, François Besse disassociated
himself from Mesrine and later disappeared. Besse was finally captured
in 1994; he was paroled in 2006.
Public Enemy No. 1
Mesrine's next exploit occurred in November 1978. It was a daring
attempt to kidnap a judge (who had sentenced him) as part of a campaign
to get maximum security prisons closed. His accomplice was captured but
Mesrine escaped by running downstairs past several policemen telling
them "Quick! Mesrine's up there!" A young policeman posted outside was
found handcuffed to a drainpipe weeping. On June 21, 1979, Mesrine
kidnapped millionaire real estate mogul Henri Lelièvre and received a
ransom of six million francs
.
Mesrine made good copy for the press, clowning for the camera and
asserting that his criminal activity was politically motivated.
Jacques Tillier (a former Directorate of Territorial Security policeman) had written disparagingly about Mesrine in the French newspaper
Minute
but on September 10, 1979 he went, rather incautiously, to a
clandestine meeting with Mesrine on the promise of an interview. The
incensed Mesrine had other plans: he shot Tillier in the face, leg and
arm. However, during his contact with Mesrine, Tillier had discovered
the identity of Mesrine's accomplice.
Death
The special gendarme
unit tasked with finding and capturing Mesrine found it impossible to
track him down directly. Eventually, by utilizing information supplied
by Tillier, they ascertained the licence number of the car that a female
named Sylvia Jeanjacquot, believed to be Mesrine's mistress, had used
and checked parking tickets which it had received months previously.
These tickets indicated that she had been frequenting a certain district
without any obvious cause. Undercover patrols combed the area and a man
fitting Mesrine's description was spotted walking with a woman believed
to be Jeanjacquot on October 31, 1979. One officer who had seen Mesrine
at court confirmed the identification by noting Mesrine's distinctive
build. The couple were followed home and their building watched around
the clock.
Three days later, on November 2, 1979, the couple left the apartment
for a weekend in the country, taking Jeanjacquot's pet poodle with them.
Mesrine and Jeanjacquot had reached Porte de Clignancourt on the outskirts of Paris when the gold BMW
they were driving was boxed in at the entrance to an intersection and
police marksmen in the rear of a lorry immediately in front of their car
threw open a tarpaulin. Reportedly, in the instant before the
gendarmerie opened fire Mesrine's eyes were described as being so
shocked they seemed to be bursting from his head as he realized he was
trapped. Twenty rounds were fired at point blank range; Mesrine was hit
15 times. A coup de grâce
was then administered with a pistol. Sylvia Jeanjacquot lost one eye
and suffered lasting damage to her arm. Her pet dog was killed.
Aftermath
French police announced that their operation was a success and received congratulations from then President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. There were suggestions in some media publications that Mesrine may have been shot without warning in a way which amounted to extrajudicial killing,
but the police pointed out that he had sworn that he would never
surrender and that, as well as having a gun on him, Mesrine had been
armed with two grenades which were taped together and adapted so they
could be brought into action instantly.
Sylvia Jeanjacquot was not charged with any crime. Mesrine's former
defense attorney, Maître Malinbaum, continued for 30 years to fight for a
judicial investigation into the events surrounding Mesrine's death at
Porte de Clignancourt and to have the French state held accountable for
what she saw as the assassination of her client.
Murder of Gérard Lebovici
By law Mesrine could not profit from
L'instinct de Mort but the publishers had received a threatening letter from him in 1979 demanding payment nonetheless.
L'instinct de Mort was republished in 1984 by Champ Libre Editions,
The founder of Champ Libre, Gérard Lebovici,
was a gifted entrepreneur, influential in the French film industry, and
known for his fascination with criminals. Lebovici adopted Mesrine's
daughter after her father's death.
On March 5, 1984, the body of Gérard Lebovici was found in the Avenue
Foch underground car park. He had been shot dead, with the bullet
wounds forming a square: a traditional underworld sign for a contract
that has not been fulfilled. One theory is that Lebovici may have been
killed by a close associate of Mesrine's who Lebovici may have had an
appointment with on the day of his death.
That's all the story of the French's James Bond..
Thank you :)
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