Pierre François Lacenaire

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Pierre François Lacenaire (born 1800 in Lyon; died 1836) was a famous French poet and murderer.

Upon finishing his education with excellent results, Lacenaire joined the army, eventually leaving at the time of the expedition of Morée in 1829. He became a crook and was in and out of prison. This is where his "criminal university" was, as he called it. Whilst in prison, Lacenaire recruited two henchmen, Victor April and François Martin.

He is portrayed in the epic Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise), a film by Marcel Carné. There is also a Hollywood film called Lacenaire, all about him.

Dostoevsky read somewhere about Lacenaire's case and it inspired him to write Crime and Punishment, in which Raskolnikov's crime was a copy of Lacenaire's almost down to the last detail.

For more information, see the French Wikipedia entry for Lacenaire: http://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Pierre_Fran%C3%A7ois_Lacenaire