Pierre François Lacenaire

Pierre François Lacenaire , born the December 20th 1803 with Lyon (the Rhone), dead the January 9th 1836 with Paris, was a dandy, poet, man of letters and celebrates criminal French.

It leaves the small seminar of Alix after having obtained brilliances results there. It engages in the army, but deserted at the time of the Expédition of Morée in 1829. Flights and swindles on several occasions carry out it in prison, where it follows, he says, his “criminal university” and where it recruits his comparses Victor April and François Martin. He composes in prison a song Pétition of a robber to a king his neighbor who reveals his poetic talents. Then it writes for a newspaper the prisons and the penitentiary mode which gains success.

After a double poor assassination he is denounced by his accomplices whereas he remained with Châlon-sur-saône. He transforms his lawsuit into theatrical platform and his prison in living room. He writes Mémoires, revelations and poetry .

During his Lacenaire execution “I declare arrive at dead by a bad road, I go up there by a staircase… ”. The guillotine which however has just cut the head of April stops. Lacenaire turns the head and fact face to the blade that the assistance of the torturer Henri-Clement Sanson makes fall. As the monarchy of July worries about the wave of sympathy which goes up in the opinion around this atypical assassin, the Gazette of the courts , official journal, written, against any truth, which the culprit “did not know to face the scaffold without trembling”.

A reading of its memories is essential to include/understand childhood, the advance and the evolution of the many psychological disorders of Lacenaire which led it to be destroyed by the crime. (See réfs bibliographical low).

According to the memories of Mr Claude, chief of Safety under the Second Empire, and clerk during the arrest of Lacenaire, this last was stopped under the false name of " Lévi" Jacob; in 1834 in Beaune, for swindles, by the chiefs of the safety of the time, Allard and Canler. Also hiding under the names of " Stick, Strapping man and Mahossier" , the police officers do not know immediately that they hold Lacenaire. He was uncovered because of his writing, as being the murderer of Thistle and his mother, with the passage of the Horse-Red, Paris. It would have killed out of many people before knowing the scaffold for this double crime. He assassinated his victims with the pricker (tool of shoe-maker), and always struck in the back, having noticed that a person is much less combative when she is wounded with the back that on the front of the body.

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