Free The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection by Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler Page B

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.
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    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 region 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