Crazy Pete

The weather had been wet and cold, the political news was chilling, and the price of wine had risen. Parisians last week warmed up to crime news. The sensational Paris-Presse reported that its circulation had risen from 400,000 to 500,000.

What of the Night? Biggest crime was the theft from an Orly airfield customs shed of over $168,000 worth of gold, awaiting shipment to the Bank of Indo-China. With a departing Paris-Algiers plane drowning out their noise, three men had broken into the shed after midnight, heaved three kegs of the gold into a small sedan and driven away. Most memorable figure in the drama, though scarcely its hero, was Watchman Jean Quiniou, who arrived on the scene just as the men were driving off. "Had I been two minutes earlier," Watchman Quiniou pointed out philosophically, "they might have killed me."

Less ambitious, but even more to the Parisian taste, were the exploits of 23-year-old "Pierrot le Fou" (Crazy Pete), who made his seventh jailbreak in three years. Wavy-haired Pierrot (real name: Pierre Carrot) began his career as an escape artist at the age of 20, when he pretended to hang himself in his cell and knocked out the jailer who rushed to cut him down. Recaptured some months later, Pierrot sawed his way into the cell of a condemned murderer. Then Pierrot used an iron bar to dispose of the guards who came to escort the murderer to the guillotine.

Pierrot's latest escape, made in the company of his faithful lieutenant Rene Male (known as Rene l'Americain) and a third man, was accomplished by the rather humdrum device of enticing a guard near enough to steal his gun, and marching with it out to the street.

Who's Loony Now? By midweek Pierrot and Rene had knocked over a suburban bar (for about $30) and staged at least two other holdups. Amid confident press speculation that they had probably fled to the country until the heat was off, the two, posing as detectives, then called at the fashionable Neuilly apartment of Joseph de Bisschop, a transport company executive, and walked out with 100,000 francs (about $300) in cash and some $1,400 worth of jewelry.

Last weekend a plainclothesman sighted Crazy Pete and Rene drinking with a girl in a Montmartre bistro. Rene saw the detective edging toward a phone, and suspected the lady friend of betraying him. He shot at her across the table and missed. While bystanders helped the cop subdue Rene, Pierrot made another escape, out the front door.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.