Edmond Vidal, known as “Momon”, former thief and leader of the “Lyon gang”, died during the night from Sunday to Monday, Agence France-Presse learned on Monday, September 9, from his entourage.
The 79-year-old former gangster, played by Gérard Lanvin in the film The Lyonnais (2011), died in hospital, although he had been suffering from cancer for several months, according to his entourage, confirming the information from Lyon Magazine.
Born in 1946 to a gypsy family, he grew up in Décines, a suburb of Lyon, where he forged strong friendships. Within the “Lyonian gang”, he was joined by childhood friends, Greeks, Armenians and gypsies.
The group became famous in the early 1970s for a series of carefully planned robberies. The one at the Hôtel des Postes in Strasbourg in 1971 was one of the biggest of the post-war period: the equivalent of 7 million euros stolen without a shot being fired, after more than a year of exploration. During the trial of the gang in 1975, a life sentence was requested for Edmond Vidal, who was finally sentenced to ten years in prison. Released in 1986, he set up a wholesale textile company in the Lyon region.
In 2011, under the guise of Gérard Lanvin, he was the central figure in Olivier Marchal’s film, which recounts the saga of the gang. Edmond Vidal, then a cheerful grandfather who had been retired from criminal affairs for a quarter of a century, sent his memoirs to the director.
