Jacques Mesrine
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Jacques Mesrine (December 28, 1936 - November 2, 1979) was a French criminal who also briefly active in the United States and Canada.
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[edit] Early events
Jacques René Mesrine was born in Clichy, France in a middle-class family. He studied at the Catholic college of Juilly, and was expelled from two schools due to aggressive behavior. He was briefly married in 1955-1956 and served in the French Army during Algerian War of Independence. 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. He had been a professional criminal for years at that time. 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 the 3rd of September, 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. Mercier later returned to Canada.
[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, jewelry 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 sponsored by the US supplied him with false ID papers.
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" (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. 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.
[edit] Popular culture
Several songs from the French hard rock band Trust, such as Mesrine, Instinct De Mort and Le Mitard ("the disciplinary cell"), appearing on the Répression album, are based on Mesrine's life.
Also, the grindcore band Mesrine out of Quebec City, Canada is named after him. The London based Oi/Punk band the "Blood" also perform a song titled "Mesrine" on their "False Gestures For A Devious Public" album
The sentence "La violence dans le rouge du sang de Mesrine" (Violence in the red of Mesrine's blood) can be heard in the the French punk (oi!) band Bolchoï's song Silence Armé.
The 1980 comedy film Inspecteur la Bavure with Coluche and Gérard Depardieu has Depardieu's character, Morzini, directly inspired by Mesrine.
Two films are currently in production about Mesrine's life, L'Ennemi public n° 1 (2008) and L'Instinct de mort (2009). Vincent Cassel is to play Mesrine in both films, which are being directed by Jean-François Richet. Mesrine has a credit as a writer as both films are based on his book L'Instinct de mort.
The Song "Mesrine" from punk band The Blood, off their debut album "False Gestures For A Devious Public", is also a song about Jacques Mesrine.
