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Pierre François
LACENAIRE
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Robbery
Number of victims: 2
Date of murders: December 14,
1834
Date
of arrest:February 2,
1835
Date of birth:
December 20,
1800
Victims profile: A man named Chardon (a slum-dwelling
transvestite)
and his mother
Method of murder: Stabbing
with a shoemaker's awl
- Beating with a hatchet
Pierre François Lacenaire
(1800 in Lyon – 1836) was a famous French poet and murderer.
Upon finishing his education with excellent results,
Lacenaire joined the army, eventually deserting in 1829 at the time of
the expedition to the Morea. He became a crook and was in and out of
prison, which was, as he called it, his "criminal university". Whilst in
prison, Lacenaire recruited two henchmen, Victor Avril and François
Martin, and wrote a song, "Petition of a Thief to a King his Neighbor",
as well as "The Prisons and the Penal Regime" for a journal.
At the time of his execution for a double murder he
wrote Memoirs, Revelations and Poems. He turned his trial into a
theatrical event and his cell into a salon.
Dostoevsky read 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.
Foucault believed Lacenaire's notoriety among
Parisians marked the birth of a new kind of lionized outlaw (as opposed
to the older folk hero), the bourgeois romantic criminal, and eventually
to the detective and true crime genres of literature.
Lacenaire is portrayed in the epic movie Les
Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise), directed by Marcel
Carné. There is also a French film called Lacenaire starring
Daniel Auteuil.
Jean François Lacenaire
Mtholyoke.edu
In 1835, Pierre-François
Lacenaire was convicted of a double murder and an attempted third. While
in prison awaiting his trial, Lacenaire held press conferences,
entertained writers, allowed a phrenologist to measure the bumps on his
head and make a life mask, and received countless letters from the
public. Lacenaire spent his time writing poetry and reading the classics.
According to Victor Hugo, he discussed serious literature with his
jailer and Lacenaire went so far as to will the jailer his personal
library. (Wright, 1981, p. 31)
At the trial itself, Lacenaire
took command of the proceedings by confessing all of his crimes in
detail and stunned the courtroom with an improvised closing soliloquoy.
Rumors circulated that he was to be pardoned after conviction and be
made chief of a special branch of police. This sounded much like the
familiar case of the bandit, Vidocq. In fact, Lacenaire claimed to have
been inspired by Vidocq's memoirs. Reading Vidocq showed Lacenaire that
the real "school of crime" was the nineteenth century prison. In order
to learn from the best, Lacenaire got himself arrested for a minor crime
and spent a year learning from the experts.
Lacenaire's main goal was to
become "the scourge of society." (Wright, 1981, p. 35) It is
questionable how much he actually learned from his fellow convicts. His
crimes were hardly those of one schooled in the art of murder. He and an
accomplice were convicted of a brutal, amateurish butchery of a slum-dwelling
transvestite and the latter's aging mother.
The criminals committed the
crime under the belief that there would be a huge monetary reward for
their efforts, but Lacenaire was mistaken in his theory that the victims
possessed a hoard of money. His second venture was even less
professional than his first attempt. He lured a bank messenger to a
false rendezvous, seeking to rob him and slit his throat. This job was
completely botched, and again, Lacenaire was forced to flee empty-handed.
After his conviction, Lacenaire
wrote his memoirs and, with some of his poems, they were published after
his execution and became a best-seller. Dostoevsky read of the 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. (Wright, 1981, p. 32) A French encyclopedia called him an "odieux
assassin", and devoted almost as much space to Lacenaire's career as
to that of the famous general Lafayette. (Grand Dictionnaire
Universel, 1860)
Lacenaire's name was lost for a
while, and then resurrected in Marcel Carné's 1945 film, Les Enfants
du Paradis. Lacenaire was sentenced to a rendezvous with the
guillotine, and while the newpapers claimed that he died a coward, his
admirers claimed that he played out his heroic role to the end.
Pierre François Lacenaire
AsylumEclectica.com
Pierre-François Lacenaire, the "Manfred of the gutter," was one of
France's most notorious 19th century criminals. He and an accomplice
named Avril called on an acquaintance of Lacenaire's named Chardon on
December 14, 1834. As soon as they got into Chardon's apartment, Avril
seized him by the throat and Lacenaire stabbed him in the back. Then
Avril finished him off with a hatchet, while Lacenaire went into the
bedroom and quickly killed the old woman with a shoemaker's awl.
Eventually, Avril, who was imprisoned for another offence, came forward
with information that led to Lacenaire's arrest for the murders.
Lacenaire in turn gave a full confession which implicated Avril.
Their executions were carried out quietly and unannounced, on a cold and
foggy morning in January 1836, just over a year after the murder of the
Chardons. Lacenaire remained calm and polite and watched Avril's
execution without flinching. The men had made up at the end.
The night before the execution, Lacenaire called to his old accomplice:
"The earth will be pretty cold tomorrow." "Ask to be buried in a fur
coat," shouted Avril. When Lacenaire's head was on the block, there was
an accident that would have broken another man's nerve. The blade of the
guillotine dropped, then stuck halfway. As it was hauled up again,
Lacenaire twisted his head to look up at the triangular blade. A moment
later, it fell again. Lacenaire was thirty-six years old when he died.
