Freedom for France's 'gentleman thief'

A French robber who the nation took to its heart because of his gallantry towards his victims is to be released this week, after his wife pleaded with the Interior Minister and convinced him her husband was a reformed man.

Sometimes I have the terrible feeling they'll find some other way of keeping him. But at other moments I have these sudden bursts of joy.

Laurence Brice, wife

Patrick Brice, a 44-year-old former engineer from Belfort in eastern France, became known as the 'gentleman thief' because in 40 hold-ups and three prison escapes he never fired a weapon and scrupulously avoided violence.

His legend began to grow when he sent flowers to a cashier in a supermarket he once held up.

On another occasion, he offered a chair to a woman he had terrified during a bank raid.

He left a wad of banknotes for an elderly lady who was depositing her meagre sum at another bank, and sent humorous postcards to the gendarmes who were pursuing him.

Love story

However, the surest way to the hearts of the romantic public is a love story, and in his 20-year saga with the ever-faithful Laurence, Brice was able to provide a cracker.

When life's shaken you around, all you want is one thing: to start again, nice and calm

Patrick Brice

Since 1987, Laurence has smuggled explosives and arms into high-security prisons, organised get-away cars and safe houses and served five years herself for complicity in her husband's crimes.

Yet never has she given up hope of a quiet life a deux.

"I can hardly believe it," she told the Journal du Dimanche newspaper.

"Sometimes I have the terrible feeling they'll find some other way of keeping him. But at other moments I have these sudden bursts of joy."

The pair met in 1983, but it was not until four years later when Brice was arrested for armed robbery that Laurence realised that his story that he worked as a rigger on high-tension power cables was a lie.

He told her that he had resorted to major crime after being convicted of a hold-up he never committed.

Determined

Several times Laurence tried to lift him out of prison, succeeding once in 1990.

He was recaptured, and a year later she walked into his latest high-security jail armed with plastic explosives and a fake gun.

However, the police had laid a trap and although the pair spent a blissful 24 hours together holed up in a sealed room, they eventually surrendered.

In 1993, with both serving terms in jail, they managed to marry after a petition from the people of their village.

Laurence has spent the last years lobbying for her husband's release. She even briefly met Justice Minister Elisabeth Guigou "in order to put a human face to our dossier."

She has been lucky. The last court to sentence her husband ruled that all of his terms should be served concurrently, with the result that this week he becomes eligible for parole, and the justice minister has given her signature of approval.

The two are to work on a television documentary on their story to be broadcast this winter.

Recently, Brice wrote a letter to the programme's director.

"When life's shaken you around, all you want is one thing: to start again, nice and calm," he explained.

"We've been through enough feelings and adventures to last us the rest of our days."