Jacques Mesrine
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Jacques Mesrine (French pronunciation: [meʀin], or more commonly but mistakenly [mɛsʀin]; December 28, 1936 – November 2, 1979) was a French criminal who was also briefly active in the United States and Canada.
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[edit] Early events
Born in Clichy-la-Garenne outside Paris, he studied at the prestigious Catholic school Collège de Juilly, but was expelled for aggressive behavior. He was briefly married in 1955-1956 and served in the French Army during the Algerian War. In 1959 he returned to France.
Mesrine was arrested for the first time in 1962 with three accomplices before an attempt to rob a bank. By that time he had been a professional criminal for years. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison and was released in 1963. He got a job in an architectural design company but was fired during a downsizing in 1964, and went back to a criminal life.
In December 1965, Mesrine was arrested in a villa in Palma de Majorca. He was sentenced to 6 months in jail and claimed later that Spanish authorities believed he was working for French intelligence services.
[edit] Canary Islands, Canada, Venezuela
In 1966, Mesrine opened a restaurant in Canary Islands but by November 1967 he was robbing a hotel in Chamonix. In February 1968, he fled to Canada with his mistress and worked briefly as a chauffeur. After an unsuccessful kidnapping attempt they fled to the USA but were arrested in Arkansas and extradited to Canada.
Mesrine was sentenced to ten years in prison for the kidnapping but escaped in 1972 with five others. He began to rob banks in Montreal, two in the same day, as was his style - with accomplice Jean-Paul Mercier. On September 3, they failed in an attempt to help three others escape from the same prison they had been in. A week later they murdered two forest rangers. By the end of the year they moved to Venezuela with two mistresses in tow.
[edit] France again: "Public Enemy n°1"
At the end of 1972, Mesrine was back in France and robbing banks. In March 1973, he was briefly arrested, but fled during the sentencing in court, taking a judge hostage. Four months later, he was arrested again in his new Paris apartment. When he was locked in La Santé jail, he wrote L'Instinct de Mort ("The Death Instinct"), an autobiography of sorts and had it smuggled out. On May 8, 1978, he escaped with three other convicts, though the police shot one of them. The escape became a scandal in France.
Mesrine committed burglaries, jewelery shop and bank robberies, kidnappings, and arms smuggling. He also killed many people, including uncooperative pimps – he boasted about 39 murders in total. He was good at disguising himself, earning him a nickname of "The Man of a Hundred Faces". Some claim that the French right-wing terrorist group OAS supplied him with false ID papers.[citation needed]
On June 21, 1979, Mesrine kidnapped millionaire Henri Lelièvre and received a ransom of 6 million francs. Mesrine had become "French Public Enemy Number One" (L'Ennemi Public Numéro Un).
Some of the press seem to have regarded him as a romantic rogue at the time. He even gave press interviews where he tried to convince people that his kidnapping and robberies were politically motivated. He was very concerned about his own publicity - he almost killed French journalist Jacques Tillier because he did not like his articles about him. Tillier was a former Directorate of Territorial Security policeman who wrote articles for the far-right newspaper 'Minute'.
The French Minister of the Interior had had enough and forced police departments to unify their efforts to track Mesrine down. On November 2, 1979, they had found out where he lived and made their move. At Porte de Clignancourt, on the outskirts of Paris, a truck loaded with armed policemen veered before his BMW and police sharpshooters shot 19 rounds through the windshield.[clarification needed] French police announced the operation as a success and received congratulations from president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Afterwards there were complaints that Mesrine was not given any warning, that the police did not act in self-defense, and thus that Mesrine was assassinated by the police. This thesis was asserted in a book, La chasse à l'homme, written by the police chief of OCRB, Lucien Aimé-Blanc and the French journalist Jean-Michel Caradec'h.[1]
[edit] Pop culture references
Hard Rock-Punk ensemble Trust dedicated two tracks (Le Mitard and Instinct de Mort) to Mesrine on their 1980 album Repression. Punk Rock band The Blood also dedicated a track "Mesrine" off their 1983 Megalomania EP. A Quebec grindcore band is named Mesrine. [2]
[edit] Film depictions
A film about Mesrine, 'Mesrine', was released in 1984. It featured Nicolas Silberg in the title role and was written and directed by André Génovès.
A pair of movies, L'instinct de mort (English title: Killer Instinct) and L'ennemi public No. 1 (English title: Public Enemy No. 1), recounting Mesrine's career and starring Vincent Cassel as the lead character, was released in France in 2008 and in the U.K. in August 2009; the director was Jean-François Richet.
[edit] References
- ^ La chasse à l'homme. Lucien Aimé-Blanc, Jean-Michel Caradec'h. Plon Editor. 2006
- ^ http://www.myspace.com/mesrine
