Abel Pollet


Abel Pollet was a French gangster and murderer. The leader, with his brother Auguste, of the Pollet gang, four of whose members, including Abel and Auguste, were beheaded in January 1909, as convicted murderers, thus reinstituting the death penalty in France.

Biography

Abel Pollet was born in Vieux-Berquin on October 9, 1873.
He became a smuggler who put his native gift for leadership to good use organizing his fellow traffickers into a more lucratively violent line of work. Thanks, presumably, to the syndicate’s pre-existing professional aptitude for evasion, it persisted for years and authored a quantity of robberies and murders that authorities could only guess at. It was a spree so atrocious that it helped force the end of the whole death penalty moratorium since sentiment was so strong against the Hazebrouck gang.
The murders committed in northern France by the Pollet brothers' gang, also known as the Hazebrouck's bandits, hit the headlines.
Four members of the bandits were sentenced to death on 26 June 1908 in Saint-Omer.
The Capricornian in Rockhampton reported:
Abel Pollet confessed of his own accord to participation in no fewer than 260 crimes.

Execution

The Advertiser in Adelaide ran about the quadruple execution on February 20, 1909: