Crimes of Paris_ A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection - Dorothy Hoobler [105]
Prosperous for the first time, Bonnot showed a taste for fine clothing and fastidious grooming. His friends laughingly called him Le Bourgeois. He found a new girlfriend, a married woman named Judith Thollon. Her husband was a cemetery keeper, and at night Bonnot and Judith would lie among the graves and make love.
Taking a risk, Bonnot and Platano went for a big payday and burgled the house of a wealthy lawyer. Bonnot was able to open the man’s safe, and the two came away with thirty-six thousand francs. After splitting the haul, they left Lyons for a time to avoid capture. Bonnot left most of his share with Judith, promising to come back and take her with him.
In late 1910, he went to England, which is where he is said to have worked as a chauffeur for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Evidence for this is slight; Conan Doyle’s friend Harry Ashton-Wolfe, who often worked with Alphonse Bertillon at the Sûreté, supposedly recognized Bonnot when he became a famous criminal. In one of Ashton-Wolfe’s books, he claimed that Bonnot was his chauffeur, not Conan Doyle’s.
At any rate, when Bonnot thought the heat was off from the earlier burglary, he returned to Lyons and again opened a garage where he could hide the cars he stole. Selling hot cars, especially the luxury models that Bonnot favored, was difficult because there were comparatively few of them and they could be identified easily. On one occasion, Bonnot drove his latest prize to a garage kept by an anarchist named Jean Dubois in Choisy-le-Roi, just outside Paris. Bonnot and Dubois liked each other on sight, and Bonnot stayed with him for a while, stealing cars for Dubois to sell. Later, when Bonnot was the most wanted man in France, he would return to Choisy-le-Roi seeking refuge.
Not long after Bonnot returned to Lyons, the police raided his garage. Fortunately for Bonnot, he wasn’t there, and hearing the news, he took a car from another location and fled to Paris. There he met his old accomplice Platano, who was flush with cash, which he said came from an inheritance. They spent their evenings in the bars of Montmartre, where Platano introduced Bonnot to Octave Garnier.
Bonnot kept in touch with Judith by letter and decided to go back to Lyons to visit her. Platano accompanied him for some reason; he may possibly have stood guard while Judith and Bonnot made love in the cemetery for the last time. 8 It was late November and they may not have tarried long.
On the way back to Paris, an incident happened that remains murky. The outcome, however, was clear: Platano’s body was found on the road with two bullet holes in the skull. Not far from there, near a train station, the car Bonnot had stolen was found abandoned and out of gas. Hearing the story, one of Platano’s Italian friends in Lyons went to the police and reported that Platano had been riding with Bonnot. The police began a search for Bonnot, which took them to the house of his mistress, Judith Thollon. There they uncovered Bonnot’s cash hoard and stolen property, along with some books, among them Revolutionary Manual for the Manufacture of Bombs. Judith and her hapless husband were taken into custody and a warrant was issued for Bonnot on a charge of murder.
Bonnot was in Paris, safe from the Lyons police. However, Platano’s anarchist friends in the capital learned about his mysterious death and demanded an explanation. Bonnot appeared before a meeting of anarchists, who had gathered to judge him. His story was that when they stopped to repair a flat tire, Platano started to show off his new Browning automatic. It went off accidentally and Platano fell, mortally wounded. Fearing that someone would come along, Bonnot administered a coup de grâce to put him out of his misery. He forcefully denied taking what remained of Platano’s inheritance, pointing out that the police had now seized his own funds from