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Jules Bonnot was born in Pont-de-Roide , France on October 14, 1876, and was orphaned by the age of five. He apparently tried to become a automobile mechanic with little success in Lyon. By the time he organized the gang, he already had a criminal record listing a variety of crimes ranging from aggravated assaults to automobile theft and money forgery. He was also a suspect in various burglaries and one murder.
Bonnot’s Gang originally consisted of a group of French anarchists centered around the magazine l'Anarchie. The founder of the group of was Raymond Callemin (nicknamed Raymond la Science) who regarded Mikhail Bakunin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as his role models. Jules Bonnot joined them in December 1911. His ideas were more part with late anarchist Ravachol .
The first robbery by Bonnot’s Gang was at the money transfer of Societe Generale Bank in Paris on December 21, 1911. They escaped with an automobile (a Delaunay-Belleville) they had stolen a week before. Robbers – Bonnot, Octave Garnier, Eugene Dieudonne and Raymond Callemin – got booty equal to 5,126 Francs, but rest of it was composed of securities. The gang had the dubious honor of being the first to use an automobile to flee the scene of a crime, presaging by over twenty years the later methods of John Dillinger and Bonnie and Clyde.
On December 28, 1911 the gang broke into a gun shop in the Paris center. A few days later, on the night of January 2, 1912, they entered the home of the wealthy M. Moreau and brutally murdered both him and his maid. The booty take was equal to 30,000 Francs, and the horrid crime aroused a public outcry.
French Central Police Sûreté Nationale did its best to catch the gang. They were able to arrest one man based on their registry of anarchist organizations. The Gang fled temporarily to Belgium, where they sold the stolen automobile and tried to carjack another. In the process they shot a Belgian policeman.
The gang continued their automobile thefts and robberies, shooting two more policemen in the process. Most of the automobiles they stole were expensive and uncommon, many of them being taken not from the street, but from garages.
By March 1912, police had arrested many of the gang’s supporters and knew many of the members' faces and names. In March 1912, gang member and would-be leader Octave Garnier sent a mocking letter to the Sûreté – with his fingerprints. In those days, the French police still did not yet use fingerprinting.
On March 25, 1912, the gang stole a de Dion-Bouton automobile in the Senart Forest south of Paris by shooting the driver in the head. They drove into ChantillyChantilly may refer to: Chantilly, a French city located in the Oise departement in the Picardie region Chantilly, Virginia, an unincorporated area located in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States chantilly cream, a whipped cream. north of Paris where they robbed the local branch of Societe Generale Bank – shooting the Banks's three cashiers. They escaped in their stolen automobile as two policemen tried to catch them, one on horseback and the other on a bicycle.
Another public outcry ensued. Sûreté Chief Xavier Guichard took the matter personally. Even politicians became concerned, increasing police funding by 800,000 francs. Banks began to prepare for forthcoming robberies and many cashiers armed themselves. The Société Générale promised a reward of 100,000 Francs for information that would lead to arrests.