FRANCE: Billy the Ca

Billy the Caïd

The trouble with 25-year-old Georges Rapin was that from childhood he could do no wrong, and knew it. His father was a wealthy Paris engineer who occasionally chided him for flunking courses, but at 13 Georges gave up on school entirely. At 18, he had his own convertible and stayed out until nearly dawn every morning.

In 1954 he got caught in a thrill burglary, and his parents quietly reimbursed his victims. He dodged jail by joining the army, but the French army, which takes all kinds, shortly dismissed him as "asocial...

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