The Crimes of Paris

by Dorothy Hoobler; Thomas Hoobler

  Lorulot decided to move the entire operation away from Paris, to a northeastern suburb called Romainville. Here he rented a house with a large garden where fruit trees and lilacs grew. A train station put Paris within easy reach, and the bucolic atmosphere soon attracted others to what became a commune. It was also the seedbed for the Bonnot Gang.

  One of the first to move into the house at Romainville was Raymond Callemin, an old friend of Victor Serge’s. The two had known each other since boyhood (as teens, they had lived in a commune south of Brussels) and followed the path to anarchism together. Raymond’s father was a disillusioned socialist who repaired shoes to eke out a meager living. Both Raymond and Victor avoided school, teaching themselves by reading radical books such as Émile Zola’s Paris and Louis Blanc’s History of the French Revolution. They began as socialists, but as Victor later recalled, “Anarchism swept us away completely because it both demanded everything of us and offered everything to us.” 3

  Raymond would not have fit Lombroso’s physical description of a criminal type. He was nearsighted, handsome, and a strict vegetarian, and he liked to sprinkle his conversation with the phrase “La science dit…” (“Science tells us…”), which earned him the nickname “Raymond-la-Science.” After leaving Belgium, he had drifted through France and Switzerland. Like Victor, he contributed articles to socialist and anarchist newspapers and was often in trouble with the police, both for his writings (publishing antimilitarist articles was a crime in France) and for taking part in demonstrations, where he tended to get into fights with policemen.

  Raymond-la-Science seems to have set the tone for the commune at Romainville, at least in its early days. Those who stayed there were served a “scientific” diet — brown rice, raw vegetables, porridge, and pasta with cheese. Salt, pepper, and vinegar were banned as being “unscientific,” although herbs were acceptable. Tobacco, alcohol, and coffee were banned. The members were encouraged to keep fit by taking part in Swedish exercises. Many would bicycle to the nearby Marne River and rent a boat for an afternoon of rowing.

  The outwardly idyllic lifestyle, however, concealed darker activities, for there were characters in the group more sinister than Raymond-la-Science. Octave Garnier, also in his early twenties, admitted that he had been a rebel against authority from his earliest years, without even knowing why. At thirteen, he began to make his own way in the world, and his ideas crystallized: “I began to understand what life and social injustice was all about; I saw bad individuals and said to myself: ‘I must search for a way of getting out of this filthy mess of bosses, workers, bourgeois, judges, police and others.’ I loathed all these people, some because they put up with and took part in all this crap.” 4

  He began to shoplift, was caught, and spent three months in jail. Subsequently it was difficult for him to find a job because he needed certificates of good behavior. Garnier learned to forge those, but the work he did in a bakery for sixteen to eighteen hours a day paid barely enough to live on. Garnier knew he needed an education, “to know more about things, and develop my mind and body.” 5 He attended labor meetings and added his body to demonstrations and strikes, but felt that the union leaders were too prone to give in to employers.

  Then, at the age of eighteen, he discovered anarchism. “Within this milieu,” he later wrote, “I met individuals of integrity who were trying as much as possible to rid themselves of the prejudices that have made this world ignorant and barbaric. They were men with whom I found discussion a pleasure, for they showed me not utopias but things which one could see and touch.” 6 One of those things was reprise individuelle, and Garnier set out to put it into practice. Caught during one of his attempts at theft, he went back to jail. That was the pattern he followed for nearly two years. As he approached his twentieth birthday, when (despite his criminal record) he would face required military service, Garnier kept a job long enough to save travel money and left France for Belgium. There he took up with Marie Vuillemin, a young woman who had been married for only a month and already wanted to escape her husband.

  Belgium was a haven for French political refugees and draft dodgers; by one estimate, some seventy thousand young Frenchmen had left the country to avoid military service, and most of them headed for Belgium. Naturally enough, Garnier gravitated toward anarchist meetings, where he met Raymond Callemin. The man of thought and the man of action thus united.

  In addition, Garnier added to his criminal education by falling in with Édouard Carouy, a professional housebreaker who sympathized with the anarchist cause. A year later, probably at the invitation of Callemin, both Garnier and Carouy, along with Garnier’s lover, Marie, returned to Paris and moved into the house at Romainville. They were welcomed because they contributed funds to the commune by foraying out to commit burglaries from time to time. Garnier and Carouy, now carrying 9-millimeter Browning automatics, which were readily available in Belgium, disturbed the pastoral atmosphere by conducting target practice in the commune’s garden.

  With the newcomers’ presence, the nightly discussions of illegalism became more than theoretical. Serge, recalling those days much later, wrote that “they were already, or were becoming, outlaws, primarily through the influence of Octave Garnier, a handsome, swarthy, silent lad whose dark eyes were astoundingly hard and feverish. Small, working-class by origin, Octave had undergone a vicious beating on a building site in the course of a strike. He scorned all discussion with ‘intellectuals.’ ‘Talk, talk!’ he would remark softly, and off he would go on the arm of a blonde Rubensesque Flemish girl, to prepare some dangerous nocturnal task or other.” 7 Lorulot, who was never enthusiastic about illegalism, disliked being the nominal head of a group that actually practiced it. He decided to leave Romainville and start a new publication in Paris. That promoted Victor to the editorship of l’anarchie, although his lover, Rirette, was listed on the masthead as the actual editor. Perhaps this was a concession to feminism, or possibly a way to divert police attention away from Victor.

  Communes can be delicate things, held together by relationships that can break apart for seemingly trivial reasons. In this case, it seems that Victor and Rirette craved coffee and were tired of bland food. Now that they were the group’s leaders, they began to eat by themselves, choosing a “nonscientific” diet, and then violated the free-spirited editorial policy of the newspaper by refusing to print an article Garnier had written, titled “Salt Is Poison.” Toward the end of August 1911, everyone except Victor, Rirette, and her children left the commune. This departure may have partly been due to the fact that the police were now closing in on Carouy for one of the burglaries he had recently committed. Carouy rented a new place farther down the Marne, giving his name as “Leblanc,” the name of the author of the Arsène Lupin series. Anarchists thought Lupin had been modeled after one of their own, Marius Jacob.

  The others drifted back to Paris. Garnier and his mistress moved into his mother’s house in Vincennes, one of the capital’s eastern suburbs. During the next three months, he continued his career as a burglar, more successfully now (if for no other reason than he was never caught). But since he gave much of the proceeds of his crimes to comrades in need, he was hardly prosperous. He kept in touch with the others from the commune, including Raymond, who took him to Chopin concerts to broaden his horizons. In their discussions, they agreed that they should be more focused in their efforts, but they struggled to formulate a coherent plan. Raymond, as usual, insisted that the way forward would be found in science. He was dazzled by the fast cars he saw on the streets of Paris, but unfortunately neither Raymond nor Garnier could drive. And then Bonnot entered their lives.

  ii

  Jules Bonnot was at least ten years older than most of those who would join him. He was not an idealistic young man in his early twenties, seeking to find himself; he had a more mature outlook on the world but was at the same time angrier and more reckless than the others. Born in 1876 in a small village in the Jura Mountains, he had grown up in the same regi
on as Proudhon, the founder of French anarchism, and absorbed the rebellious spirit that still thrived there. His family life was anarchic as well. Bonnot’s mother died when he was five, and his father was an alcoholic. When Bonnot’s older brother was fifteen, he threw himself off a bridge because a girl had stood him up. Police records show that young Jules was often arrested for fighting and twice served jail terms of three months.

  In 1897 he was called up for his required military service and fortuitously assigned to a company of engineers that had just received motorized trucks. Bonnot showed a knack for repairing them and soon learned to drive as well. He thrived in the army, never getting into trouble. Shooting a rifle came naturally to him, and he was the champion marksman of his company for his entire three-year career. And the army even brought him a wife, for when he was billeted in a farmhouse, he and the eighteen-year-old daughter of the family, Sophie-Louise Burdet, fell in love. When he was discharged, he returned to ask for her hand, and they were married in August 1901. He found a factory job in Bellegarde, and soon Sophie discovered she was pregnant. Bonnot’s future seemed rosy, or at least conventionally bourgeois.

  But his old attitude toward authority figures flared up again, and Bonnot lost his job for being a troublemaker. Branded as such, he had difficulty finding work, so the young couple had to move in with Sophie’s mother, certainly a humiliation for Bonnot. It turned into tragedy when Sophie gave birth to a baby daughter who lived only four days.

  For the next few years, Bonnot moved through Switzerland and France with Sophie, finding work and then losing it. Sophie again became pregnant and gave birth to a son in February 1904. At her suggestion, Bonnot went to see Besson, the secretary of a mechanics’ union. He found Bonnot a job, and the little family settled down in the city of Lyons. Luck was not with Bonnot, however, for he had to enter a sanitarium because he had contracted tuberculosis. While there, he received the news that Sophie had run off with the friendly union leader, Besson. Discharged from the hospital, Bonnot tried to gain custody of his son, but failed.

  Bonnot found work as a mechanic in the Berliet automobile factory in Lyons. There he met anarchists who introduced him to the idea of reprise individuelle. One of them was an Italian named Platano, who also educated Bonnot in the techniques of burglary. Since Bonnot knew how to repair and drive automobiles, the two of them began to specialize in car theft. They did so well that they opened a garage where they could secretly strip or hide their plunder.

  Prosperous for the first time, Bonnot showed a taste for fine clothing and fastidious grooming. His friends laughingly called him Le Bourgeois. He found a new girlfriend, a married woman named Judith Thollon. Her husband was a cemetery keeper, and at night Bonnot and Judith would lie among the graves and make love.

  Taking a risk, Bonnot and Platano went for a big payday and burgled the house of a wealthy lawyer. Bonnot was able to open the man’s safe, and the two came away with thirty-six thousand francs. After splitting the haul, they left Lyons for a time to avoid capture. Bonnot left most of his share with Judith, promising to come back and take her with him.

  In late 1910, he went to England, which is where he is said to have worked as a chauffeur for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Evidence for this is slight; Conan Doyle’s friend Harry Ashton-Wolfe, who often worked with Alphonse Bertillon at the Sûreté, supposedly recognized Bonnot when he became a famous criminal. In one of Ashton-Wolfe’s books, he claimed that Bonnot was his chauffeur, not Conan Doyle’s.

  At any rate, when Bonnot thought the heat was off from the earlier burglary, he returned to Lyons and again opened a garage where he could hide the cars he stole. Selling hot cars, especially the luxury models that Bonnot favored, was difficult because there were comparatively few of them and they could be identified easily. On one occasion, Bonnot drove his latest prize to a garage kept by an anarchist named Jean Dubois in Choisy-le-Roi, just outside Paris. Bonnot and Dubois liked each other on sight, and Bonnot stayed with him for a while, stealing cars for Dubois to sell. Later, when Bonnot was the most wanted man in France, he would return to Choisy-le-Roi seeking refuge.

  Not long after Bonnot returned to Lyons, the police raided his garage. Fortunately for Bonnot, he wasn’t there, and hearing the news, he took a car from another location and fled to Paris. There he met his old accomplice Platano, who was flush with cash, which he said came from an inheritance. They spent their evenings in the bars of Montmartre, where Platano introduced Bonnot to Octave Garnier.

  Bonnot kept in touch with Judith by letter and decided to go back to Lyons to visit her. Platano accompanied him for some reason; he may possibly have stood guard while Judith and Bonnot made love in the cemetery for the last time. 8 It was late November and they may not have tarried long.

  On the way back to Paris, an incident happened that remains murky. The outcome, however, was clear: Platano’s body was found on the road with two bullet holes in the skull. Not far from there, near a train station, the car Bonnot had stolen was found abandoned and out of gas. Hearing the story, one of Platano’s Italian friends in Lyons went to the police and reported that Platano had been riding with Bonnot. The police began a search for Bonnot, which took them to the house of his mistress, Judith Thollon. There they uncovered Bonnot’s cash hoard and stolen property, along with some books, among them Revolutionary Manual for the Manufacture of Bombs. Judith and her hapless husband were taken into custody and a warrant was issued for Bonnot on a charge of murder.

  Bonnot was in Paris, safe from the Lyons police. However, Platano’s anarchist friends in the capital learned about his mysterious death and demanded an explanation. Bonnot appeared before a meeting of anarchists, who had gathered to judge him. His story was that when they stopped to repair a flat tire, Platano started to show off his new Browning automatic. It went off accidentally and Platano fell, mortally wounded. Fearing that someone would come along, Bonnot administered a coup de grâce to put him out of his misery. He forcefully denied taking what remained of Platano’s inheritance, pointing out that the police had now seized his own funds from the house of his mistress.

  Not a very convincing explanation, it would seem, but Garnier was present and was impressed enough to approach Bonnot with an attractive proposal. Along with Raymond-la-Science Callemin, they began to plan their big job.

  Their first step was to steal the Delaunay-Belleville, which they drove through the dark streets of Paris and out to Bobigny, a suburb to the northeast, where their friend Édouard Carouy was currently staying with a family named Dettweiler. Georges Dettweiler was an anarchist sympathizer, but a small businessman as well; he had opened a garage, and that night, much to his later regret, he allowed the car thieves to hide their prize inside. The first step in Bonnot’s plan had been carried out.

  A week went by, during which the conspirators scouted for a target. They found one at the branch of the Société Générale bank on the rue Ordener in Montmartre, virtually the home territory of Paris’s anarchists. Every weekday morning, punctually at nine o’clock, a messenger arrived on foot from the main office of the bank, carrying cash and securities to be deposited in the local branch. Since it was the midst of the Christmas season, his leather carrying case was likely to be as full as Père Noël’s. Easy to identify because he wore a uniform, the messenger seemed not even to be armed. A bodyguard came from the bank to meet him at the streetcar stop, and of course anyone desperate enough to rob him would immediately be seized by pedestrians on what was one of the most crowded streets of the eighteenth arrondissement.

  It seems almost impossible now, since everyone has seen car chases on film countless times, but no one had yet conceived the idea of escaping a robbery via automobile.

  So it was that on the morning of December 21, Bonnot, Garnier, and Callemin sat on the rue Ordener in their stolen Delaunay-Belleville, engine idling, waiting for the messenger. Passersby may have paused to admire the car, but a cold rain was falling, and no one tarried long. Nor had anyone, it seems, read or rememb
ered an advertisement that appeared in that morning’s L’Auto, a newspaper dedicated to car enthusiasts. It offered a reward of five hundred francs to anyone finding the green and black Delaunay-Belleville limousine, model 1910, motor no. 2679V, that had been stolen from M. Normand a week before. (The experienced Bonnot had already switched the license plates.)

  The thieves were prepared for any kind of interference. “We were fearfully armed,” Garnier wrote later. 9 He carried six revolvers, each of his companions had three more, and among them they had four hundred rounds of ammunition.

  As nine o’clock drew near, a butcher across the street noticed that the magnificent automobile had been parked in the same spot since 8:00 A.M. He stepped outside to stare at it, and the chauffeur, dressed in a gray cap and coat, wearing driving goggles, put the car in gear and moved slowly forward, only to stop again a few doors down. The butcher recalled later that the curtains in the rear compartment had been drawn, making it impossible to see if there were any passengers.

  The messenger that day was a man named Caby. As he emerged from the streetcar, his escort-bodyguard stepped up and shook his hand. They headed down the street toward the bank — walking right into the hands of the thieves. Garnier and Callemin stepped out of the car, hands in their pockets. As they reached their quarry, they pulled out their 9-millimeter automatics and ordered Caby to hand over his case. Apparently unprepared for any show of force, the bodyguard put his hands over his face, turned, and ran. Caby was less cooperative, either from fear or from misplaced bravery. He refused to release his hold on the case, even after Callemin dragged him down the sidewalk with it. Garnier, ever impatient, shot Caby twice in the chest, leaving him bleeding on the pavement.