1953: Abel Danos, le mammouth
Add comment March 14th, 2019 Headsman
On this date in 1953, the French gangster and Nazi collaborator Abel Danos was shot as a traitor.
Once a small-time crook for the milieu criminal syndicate, Danos upon his arrest went way beyond turning state’s evidence and offered his goon talents to the German police. From 1941 to 1944 he murdered people — he’s believed to have personally executed over 100 French Resistance members during the war — for salary as a member of the French Gestapo. Though arrested at the end of the war, he made a sensational escape and got into the robbery outfit Gang des Tractions Avant; he fatally shot both Italian and French police in that vocation. Career-wise you have to credit the man for focusing on his core value-adds while remaining flexible to embrace new opportunities.
“Le mammouth” — so nicknamed for his heavy build — went extinct courtesy of a firing squad at Fort Monte-Valerien, refusing a blindfold after a last swig of rum.
There’s a 2006 French-language biography of Abel Danos, by Eric Guillon.
On this day..
- 1964: Jack Ruby condemned - 2018
- 1824: John Smith - 2017
- 1808: Thomas Simmons - 2016
- 1610: Henry Paine, shipwrecked mutineer - 2015
- 1908: Massillon Coicou and the Firminists - 2014
- 1726: William "Vulcan" Gates, Black Act casualty - 2013
- 1719: Mary Hamilton, lady in waiting - 2012
- 2009: Four Iranians - 2011
- 1757: Admiral John Byng - 2010
- 1551: Alice Arden, husband killer - 2009
- 1957: Evagoras Pallikarides, teenage guerrilla poet - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,Execution,France,History,Occupation and Colonialism,Organized Crime,Shot,Treason
Tags: 1950s, 1953, abel danos, carlingue, gestapo, march 14, world war ii
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