Franklin Dimitrios Shoofey, a 44-year-old man born in Montreal to Lebanese Christian immigrant parents, had become one of the city’s most prominent criminal-defense lawyers by the time he was killed on October 15, 1985. Known professionally as Frank Shoofey, he represented clients from some of Quebec’s most notorious criminal circles, including gangster Richard Blass and men accused in the killing of Montreal organized-crime figure Paolo Violi.
His work placed him in regular contact with people connected to the underworld, but he was also a highly visible public figure whose legal career extended into hostage negotiations and other high-profile matters.
Late that Tuesday night, Shoofey was working at his law office at 1030 Cherrier Street in Montreal. As he was in the hallway outside his fifth-floor office, an assailant approached and shot him repeatedly at close range. Accounts describe wounds to his head and torso, and the killing was widely characterized as a carefully executed, professional-style attack. The gunman escaped, leaving investigators with few immediate clues as to either his identity or the precise motive behind the assassination.
The mystery deepened almost immediately. Shortly after the shooting, the Montreal Gazette received a telephone call from a man claiming responsibility on behalf of an organization he called the “Red Army Liberation Front.” The caller said that he and his associates had assassinated Shoofey. Canadian intelligence officials, however, reportedly had never heard of any organization by that name. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service suggested that the call could have been an attempt to misdirect investigators rather than a genuine claim of responsibility. The supposed political-terrorism angle consequently never developed into a proven explanation for the killing.
Attention instead turned toward Shoofey’s extensive dealings with organized-crime figures and, in particular, his involvement with Montreal’s Hilton boxing family. Shoofey represented members of the Hilton family and opposed a proposed arrangement involving American boxing promoter Don King. Frank Cotroni, an influential Montreal Mafia figure with close ties to the Hiltons, had been involved in negotiations surrounding the fighters and King. A Quebec inquiry into professional boxing later documented extensive organized-crime influence in the sport and concluded that Cotroni had substantial influence over decisions affecting the Hilton fighters. Although Shoofey’s murder occurred against this backdrop, a direct connection between the boxing dispute and his assassination was never established in court.
Journalist Claude Poirier, who spoke with Shoofey shortly before the murder, later recalled that Shoofey had seemed tense in the days before his death and had indicated that he was receiving troubling communications. According to Poirier’s account, Shoofey had mentioned contact from Cotroni concerning the Hilton matter and had been urged to distance himself from it. Poirier nevertheless emphasized that Cotroni was never proven to have participated in Shoofey’s murder. Other accounts also describe information circulating in Montreal’s underworld that a contract had been placed on Shoofey well before the shooting. Lawyer Claude Grant, who had worked under Shoofey, later wrote that Shoofey had been warned about reports of a contract on his life but apparently regarded the information as rumor rather than an immediate threat.
One of the most serious allegations concerning the murder came from Réal Simard, a convicted killer who had worked for the Cotroni organization and later became a government witness. Simard publicly accused Frank Cotroni of responsibility for ordering Shoofey’s death. He claimed Shoofey had become an obstacle to an arrangement involving Cotroni, Don King and the Hilton fighters because Shoofey believed the proposed deal was disadvantageous to his clients. Simard portrayed the killing as the result of powerful interests wanting Shoofey removed from the situation. Those assertions generated significant attention, but they never resulted in Cotroni being charged with Shoofey’s murder and were never proven at a criminal trial.
Years later, a senior Montreal police officer publicly challenged the organized-crime and boxing explanation. Montreal police commander André Bouchard said in 2010 that investigators did not believe Cotroni and his organization were responsible. Bouchard went further, saying police believed they knew who had killed Shoofey and that the suspected killer was already serving a lengthy prison sentence for another crime. He suggested that the true motive was unrelated to the widely discussed boxing theory. Despite that remarkable statement, authorities did not publicly identify the person Bouchard referred to, and no prosecution for Shoofey’s murder followed.
The killing therefore produced numerous suspects and theories but no arrest specifically for Shoofey’s assassination, no murder charge, no trial and no conviction. The false-or-unverified terrorist claim, rumors of a murder contract, allegations involving Montreal organized crime, the dispute surrounding the Hilton boxers and the later assertion that police privately knew the killer have all become part of the case’s history. More than four decades after Shoofey was gunned down outside his Montreal office, contemporary accounts continued to describe his murder as unsolved.
