Death
In an effort to escape capture, the gang split up in April 1912.
On April 24, three policemen surprised Bonnot in the apartment of a suspected fence. He shot at the officers, killing Louis Jouin, the vice-chief of the French police (Sûreté Nationale), and wounding another officer before fleeing over the rooftops. Part of the 100,000 franc reward was later given to the widow of Jouin.
On April 28, police tracked Bonnot (now France's "most wanted" criminal) to a house in the Paris suburb of Choisy-le-Roi. They besieged the residence with 500 armed police officers, soldiers, firemen, military engineers and a lynch mob of local citizens. Armed with three Brownings and a Bayard pistol, Bonnot succeeded in wounding three police officers.
By noon, after sporadic firing failed to extract Bonnot from the house, Paris Police Chief Louis Lépine ordered the building bombed, using a dynamite charge. The explosion demolished the front of the building. Barely conscious, lying underneath a mattress, Bonnot was shot ten times in the upper-body before Lépine shot him non-fatally in the head. Afterwards police had to prevent the spectators from lynching Bonnot. They simply told the crowd that Bonnot was already dead.
Bonnot was moved to the Hotel-Dieu and pronounced dead at 1:15 PM. He was buried in an unmarked grave and police refused to release his last will and testament.
Although demonized by large sections of French society (including most of the Left), Bonnot's death was mourned by those sympathetic to individualist anarchism.
Last days of Bonnot are a part of storyline in the French movie The Tiger Brigades (Les Brigades du Tigre, 2006). Bonnot is played by Jacques Gamblin.
Read more about this topic: Jules Bonnot
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