Luciano Lutring

Luciano Lutring (30 December 1937 - 13 May 2013) was an Italian criminal, author and painter, known as "the machine-gun soloist" ("il solista del mitra), as he kept his weapon in a violin case.

Born in Milan, Lutring during the sixties did hundreds of robberies between France and Italy, amassing a estimated fortune at around 35 billion lire.

On September 1, 1965, during a robbery in Paris, Lutring was seriously wounded and for two months he remained between life and death. Sentenced to 22 years in prison, Lutring served 12 years in prison in France, during which he began to write and paint, even holding a correspondence with the then Italian President of the Chamber, Sandro Pertini. Later, the only bandit in history, he was pardoned by two presidents of the Republic, the French Georges Pompidou and the Italian Giovanni Leone.

In 1966, Carlo Lizzani directed a film based on his story, Wake Up and Die, starred by Robert Hoffmann and Gian Maria Volonté. In 1975 José Giovanni directed a film loosely based on his autobiography, Le Gitan, in which Lutring is played by Alain Delon