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The Buzz On LeRoux…

“Elaine Shannon has produced an amazing story, a triumph of investigative reporting and storytelling. “Hunting Paul Leroux” inhabits a global world of crime and policing that very few people have even heard of, much less understand. It reveals not just the newest of methods, but a cast of characters who could only exist in modern times, equally proficient with weapons and computers. There’s nothing else quite like it.”

— Mark Bowden (Huế 1968, Blackhawk Down, Killing Pablo)

“The New Now of transnational crime. Elaine Shannon’s incisive, you-are-there account of cyber-crime syndicate godfather, Paul Calder LeRoux, is a scorching, hair-raising glimpse into a new kind of criminal who’s altogether terrifying because he’s altogether real.”

— Dennis LeHane (Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, Shutter Island)

“This book just blew my mind! Elaine Shannon is a great writer and “Hunting Leroux” is an incredibly well written & researched page turner — and her subject, Paul Leroux, makes Don Corleone look like a peanut salesman by comparison.”

— Stephen Adly Guigis (Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and author of Between Riverside and Crazy)

“Elaine Shannon’s Hunting LeRoux is an investigative masterpiece. It’s the most-comprehensive look at the inner workings of a complex high-level D.E.A. operation ever put on paper. It’s a fascinating look at an international crime syndicate and the charismatic and lethal next-generation crime lord who weaponized the internet to build a new kind of empire. Paul LeRoux is a calculating, cold-blooded killer and one of the most-intrguing and frightening criminals I’ve ever read about. It’s a testament to Shannon’s skill as a writer that she fuels the novel with such a detailed preoccupation with process that Hunting LeRoux reads like a propulsive page-turning thriller. Exhaustively researched, meticulously documented and with exclusive access to almost all of the key players on both sides of the law, this is the definitive work on the rise and fall of malign actor Paul Leroux and also a jaw-dropping crime saga. Shannon takes the reader inside the story so that you’re in the room, on the hunt and dead-center in the middle of the action with elite D.E.A. agents operating without borders in a tense and dangerous global manhunt to take down a 21st century criminal kingpin. It’s stunning work by a master investigative journalist.”

— Don Winslow (The Cartel, The Border)

More On Elaine Shannon

Tales of a hit man

Synopsis
Before Martin Scorsese made “The Irishman,” there was a real life mafia. I chronicled it as an investigative reporter for Newsweek. In 1979, I got a scoop that Charlie Allen, a.k.a Bucky Palermo, a mob hit man, was ratting out his boss, a Teamsters hood called Frank “Big Irish” Sheeran. Here’s the story that ran in the March 19, 1979, edition of Newsweek.

BYLINE: DENNIS WILLIAMS with ELAINE SHANNON in Washington
SECTION: NATIONAL AFFAIRS; pg. 43

He began as Bucky Palermo, a tough kid on the streets of South Philadelphia, who was first busted at 16 for stealing from a parked truck. Later, he was Charlie Buck, a convicted bank robber who impressed neighborhood kids by setting cats afire, throwing money into the air and claiming he'd been in on the $2.8 million Brink's robbery. But his greatest success, law-enforcement officials say, came as Charlie Allen - a free-lance executioner who terrorized businessmen and gunned down mafiosi for some of the biggest names in the East Coast underworld. "He was a very well-trusted mechanic for organized crime," says Philadelphia FBI agent Edgar Best. "If you wanted to get an individual killed, blown up or intimidated, he'd be the first one you'd call."

Today, Charlie Allen works for the government. Graying and soft-spoken at 47, he was picked up by Federal narcotics and firearms agents last year and subsequently turned informant. Working with a concealed tape recorder, prosecutors say, Allen has provided evidence against more than a score of suspected mobsters and labor racketeers, including some who may have been connected with the disappearance of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. Allen has thus become a key element in the top-priority FBI assault on organized crime's infiltration of labor unions and legitimate business. Just last week, that effort resulted in the indictment of two reputed mafiosi and three New York area dock-union officials on charges of corruption, and authorities say that Allen's cooperation may well lead to more such indictments.

'Godfather' Style: Allen's roles as an informant was revealed last month when the Justice Department's strike force in Philadelphia filed documents on his prospective testimony in Federal court. The records offered a rare glimpse into the shadow world of a professional killer who made his first hit at 18. As Allen told it, Los Angeles mobster Mickey Cohen's henchmen took him to a restaurant and fingered the target. In a scene long predating "The Godfather," Allen walked over, shot the man in the head, dropped the gun and calmly walked off as the patrons sat frozen with shock. Allen said a running man would attract too much attention, so he strolled a few blocks, hailed a cab and went back to a California Marine base where he was stationed.

Allen also claims to have killed former Teamster organizer Francis (Big Bobby) Marino three years ago in Philadelphia - on orders from Wilmington, Del., Teamster official Frank (Big Irish) Sheeran, according to government documents. By that time, Allen was a cool pro who bragged about being one of the few hit men who would kill face to face. Marino was a big man, about 300 pounds, and Allen carried two pistols in his overcoat for the job. "On the heavy ones, you take two guns," he explained to investigators. Marino was found bludgeoned and shot five times. "I thought maybe he was still alive so I put one right into his head," Allen recalled. "He sort of gave a final gurgle, like people do when they die."

High explosives were another tool of Allen's trade. In the transcript of one taped conversation, he describes a bomb triggered by the heat of a car engine. "You can make it beautiful," he says. "It takes two seconds...better than shootin' a guy. Don't keep it in your house, though, once you put the wires in." According to his lawyer, Clayton Undercoefler, Allen was such a valued enforcer that mob chieftains argued about where he would stand at gangland meetings. "Apparently, if he was with you, you were OK," the lawyer says.

'Looney Tune': The hit man's underworld connections go back a long way. He was born Charles Palermo, nephew of big-time fight promoter Frank (Blinky) Palermo, who was convicted of extortion in 1961. Despite two early arrests, he was accepted into the Marines during the Korean War. He returned to South Philly to marry, join the Teamsters and ply his peculiar trade. He is remembered in the neighborhood as "a regular looney tune" who once was recaptured after breaking out of jail because his idea of keeping a low profile was to shave his head. After a stretch in Lewisburg prison for bank robbery, government documents assert, Allen took on a number of violent errands for Sheeran, among them a conspiracy to kill a Delaware tavern owner and the torching of a Philadelphia Teamsters hall.

More recently, according to government summaries of recorded conversations, Sheeran asked Allen to blow up three buildings and assault four people. (The FBI said he did not commit the crimes.) Allen also went to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., with Sheeran to obtain dynamite and blasting caps from an employee at Medico Industries. Authorities said the man was a confederate of alleged Pennsylvania crime boss Russell Bufalino, and that Allen turned the dynamite over to the FBI. Later, Sheeran asked Allen to damage the trucking fleet of a company he was trying to organize. "Cut the tires or blow them up or what?" Allen asks in the transcript. "Just so they get the message," Sheeran replies.

Allen's testimony may be valuable to investigators working on the Jimmy Hoffa case. The hit man met the burly former Teamster boss in Lewisburg and soon became his jailhouse bodyguard - he once was slashed by a knife meant for Hoffa. Government records even mention a plot allegedly formulated by Allen and Hoffa to murder Hoffa's rival - and eventual successor - in the Teamsters, Frank Fitzsimmons.

It was Hoffa who lost his life in 1975, and some of the men Allen is slated to testify against - Sheeran, Bufalino and former New Jersey Teamster boss Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano - have been mentioned in various accounts as suspects in the Hoffa case. Prosecutors don't think Allen will be much help in proving exactly who is guilty, but they are betting that he will be able to help the investigation - or at least implicate some of the suspects in other crimes. There may be similar value in recordings of conversations with associates of reputed Philadelphia underworld leader Angelo Bruno, the FBI says.

Going Straight: No one is sure why Allen agreed to go so far for the government. Some think his second marriage to a woman with three children may have prompted him to go straight. The Allens lived like any other middleclass suburban family in Turnersville, N. J., near Philadelphia. "He was just another householder here," says local police chief Fred Reeve, although Reeve knew that Allen had some involvement with narcotics.

Even with a promise of government protection in exchange for his testimony, Allen still faces some risks. The Federal witness-protection program has been rocked by charges of corruption and inefficiency - with U. S. marshals allegedly leaking the names of informers to their enemies and some witnesses resuming criminal careers under legally minted aliases. Officials at Justice say these problems are being corrected, and Allen's lawyer says he is confident his client will be well protected. The hit man's wife and children have already been relocated under a new family name, and Allen himself will enjoy the same alias while he serves out a sentence of up to seven years for the one count of racketeering to which he agreed to plead guilty.

Although Allen seems much more than the small fry he was first thought to be, he is probably not another Joe Valachi - the hood who first drew an insider's map of the Mafia at Senate hearings in 1963. Investigators readily admit there are limits to what Allen can tell them. "He's no brain surgeon," allows one source. "He's a street guy who has spent most of his life in jail." But his old cronies can't be sure just what the hit man might know - and that in itself may generate new conflicts and suspicions for law-enforcement agencies to exploit.

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