Eurelian Chronicles # 15: Spirito, a kingpin from Marseille near Dreux in 1943?
Through Laurent REBOURS
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Find on Actu Chartres, every Sunday, a Eurelian chronicle of History and history proposed by Alain Denizet. Professor, historian, writer of Eure-et-Loir, for years he has brought together all of his chronicles on his site.
You can also find his news and books there. Alain Denizet also chairs the Beauce and Dunois manuscript prize.
King of opium trafficking
Embodied on screen by Delon and Belmondo in Borsalino, Spirito and Carbone had been the kings of opium trafficking during the interwar period.
Sentenced to death for collaboration, Spirito had been forgotten in the United States from which he had been expelled in February 1954 after two years in prison. Incorrigible, he had plunged into the heroin deal …
Received by pandora at Havre (Seine-Maritime), he must answer for his three sentences in absentia[1].
the July 10, 1954, the first brings him to the Assize Court of Chartres (Eure-et-Loir) pour a armed robbery in Chérisy dating back eleven years and which had cost him during a first trial from which he was absent – America obliges – twenty years in prison.
In 1943, meeting with the cheese maker from Chérisy
On August 2, 1943, around 11:45 am, two cars stopped in front of the cheese maker Rivet’s house located in Petit-Chérisy.
Two Germans and four police officers disembark, armed to the teeth and, showing their cards, let it be known that they have been ordered to search his home which has been denounced to them as sheltering dubious operations.
They inspect the house from top to bottom, question Rivet and his entourage. Then, while the two Germans slip away, the police, with empty stomachs, are offered the meal by their host. And take advantage of this break to expose the problem to him: serious offenses have been identified against him – black market, aid to the STO refractory – prosecutions were going to be initiated, the Gestapo would be informed. In short, the prison was not far away.
Blackmail at 600,000 francs
However, they were able to file the file received 600,000 francs.
The cheese maker, after negotiation, managed to skim the bill: 400,000 francs would do the trick. Flanked by two policemen, Rivet withdrew his savings from the bank.
At 6.30 p.m., the two Germans were back on board, not in a car, but in a truck more suited to seizing their stock of gasoline and lubricant.
Eight days after this strange visit, Rivet complained, realizing that he had been mystified by pseudo-police officers who had splashed him with a few louis d’or and some jewelry first. As a neighbor had taken the registration of the vehicles, the police inspector went up to them. They were two Parisians, responding to the name of Manuelli and Ricord. Their maid whispered to the investigators the name of a third accomplice, big fish of the Marseillaise underworld: Spirito.
Spirito before the Assize Court of Chartres
The cheesemaker identifies him in a photograph presented to him by the PJ.
The police on the verge of apprehending all that was nice people, but the Gestapo, which wanted to protect its French agents, intervened and put a lid on the investigation.
It resumed after the war and ended in October 1951 with a trial at the Assizes of Chartres at the agreed term, Manuelli, Ricord and Spirito were sentenced respectively to seventeen and twenty years of forced labor.[2].
While they tasted illico in incarceration, Spirito, was free as the air in the United States. As we have seen, he was expelled in February 1954.
Finally, this July 10, 1954 in Chartres, this third thief in the affair of the cheese maker from Chérisy could be tried in the flesh.
Impeccably dressed in a complete navy blue, all smiles, allure “a little episcopal” – this is the word of the president -, Spirito declines his identity: fifty-four years old, merchant, married, father of two children.
As an honest man, he refutes any participation in the team of Chérisy, aligning two unstoppable arguments.
I was not at Chérisy, Mr. Chairman. And why would I have gone there? I had bookmaker income. I had 10 to 12 million at the time. Do you think that I would have gone to do this for 400,000 francs which should have been shared?
To the president who asks the former owner of bars: “You frequent the middle of Marseille”, Spirito boots with irony: “In a bar, we necessarily meet people from all walks of life …”
The accusation collapsed because, especially faced with the boss head to head, the cheese maker and the other witnesses – intimidated? – no longer recognized in Spirito one of the men of August 3, 1943. Eleven years had passed …
The accusation collapses
The merchant of Chérisy then withdrew his constitution of civil party, the prosecution abandoned the party, the defense gave up pleading and the jury cleared him.
Spirito went through the other two trials with equal happiness, the first for blackmail, the second for collaboration.
He “put away the cars” and died in Toulon in 1967.
[1] For blackmail in Paris, for armed robbery in Chérisy and for collaboration in Marseilles (aid in recruiting the LVF, French Volunteer Legion).
[2] The fourth bogus policeman has never been identified.
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