René Belbenoit

René Belbenoît (French pronunciation: ​[ʁəne bɛlbənwa]; April 4, 1899 – February 26, 1959) was a French prisoner on Devil's Island who successfully escaped to the United States. He later published the memoirs, Dry Guillotine (1938) and Hell on Trial (1940), about his exploits.

Jules René Lucien Belbenoît was born in Paris and abandoned by his mother, Louise Daumiere, as an infant, while she went on to work as a teacher for the children of the Czar of Russia. Belbenoît's father, Louis Belbenoît, who was Chief Conductor of the Paris-Orleans Express and seldom home, was unable to raise young René himself, so the boy was sent to live with his grandparents while a toddler. When Belbenoît was 12, his grandparents died suddenly and he, again in need of a parental figure, went to Paris where he lived with, and worked for, his uncle at a popular nightclub, the Café du Rat Mort (the Dead Rat) in the Place Pigalle.

During World War I, Belbenoît served with distinction in the French Army from 1916 – 1917 and survived the Battle of Verdun. After the war, he began working in a restaurant in Besançon as a dishwasher, for eight francs a day with room and board. After working there just 11 days, he seized a moment to steal a wallet containing 4000 francs and a motorcycle, and left Besançon for Nantes.

In Nantes, Belbenoit quickly found work as a valet in the Chateau Ben Ali, owned by the Countess d'Entremeuse. Despite the graciousness of his employer, Belbenoît again, seizing an opportunity, stole the Countess' pearls and some money from her dressing table, after only working at the Chateau for a month. He then escaped on a train for Paris.

After being in Paris but two days, he was promptly arrested by two policemen for the theft of the pearls. This theft would be the crime that would send him to the French Penal Colony in French Guiana, also incorrectly known as Devil's Island. (While he served time in French Guiana, Belbenoît never served any time on Devil's Island.)

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