Santa Claus is a bank robber

The title is freely inspired from the title of this French movie, which ironically enough I haven't seen. Anyway, it is Christmas in less than a month, so I decided to blog on a little anecdote about Montreal's crime history I read recently in Montreal's Irish Mafia. I mentioned the book here, but only started reading it this month. And it reads like a crime fiction. A fascinating, epic, sinister crime novel. But it is history. There are a few chapters on bank robberies, as Montreal was considered once the bank robbery capital of North America, no less. You probably have seen this scene in many movies and TV series, where a man disguised as Santa Claus, or a bunch of them, armed with machine guns and other heavy firearms and rob a bank. Well, between 1961 and 1962, there was a real bank robber using this very modus operandi. His name was Georges Marcotte and he used to walk in banks wearing his Santa Claus disguise, being all cheerful like a real Santa impersonator would be, using this apparently harmless persona to surprise both clients and personnel and do his evil deed. His bank robberies sadly ended up in blood, as he murdered two police officers. I found very little baout him on Google, except this article. I thought about him as Christmas is coming and because the evil Santa is now almost a cliché in action, horror or comedy movies set during Christmastime. Well, my city had a real one once.