Franklin Dimitrios Shoofey (1941 – 15 October 1985) was a prominent criminal lawyer in Canada who was active in the Quebec Liberal Party.
[1] Shoofey's clients included gangster Richard Blass, who was killed in a police raid in 1975, and four men apprehended for the 1978 murder of Montreal "Godfather" Paolo Violi.
[6] Shoofey later wrote a book about Blass,[7] and told The Gazette newspaper (Montreal) that many of his clients: "were a special group of people living by their own rules … in their own closed society".
[10][11] The action was sought by client Reggie Chartrand, an ex-boxer, staunch Quebec separatist, and an activist opposed to abortion.
Chartrand continued the effort after Shoofey's death, but failed when justice of the peace Michel Breton decided against laying charges.
[13] The religious relic was missing for more than a year when Shoofey received an anonymous telephone call telling him its location.
At the time, Brother André was being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church, his canonization eventually occurring on October 17, 2010.
[17] Shoofey told the journalist James Christie of The Globe & Mail newspaper in February 1985 that he was opposed to the contract the Hiltons signed with King, saying: "I would have much tougher with the promoter.
[14] Shoofey believed that Cotroni had tricked the Hiltons into signing an unfavorable contract with King, and wrote a letter to the Quebec Sports Minister Guy Chevrette asking him to set up an agency to regulate boxing together with kick-boxing and wrestling to end Cotroni's influence on sports in Quebec.
[18] Late on Tuesday, October 15, 1985, an unknown assailant murdered Shoofey in the hallway outside his fifth-floor law office, shooting him multiple times.
[3] Shortly afterwards The Gazette received a telephone call from a man claiming to be with the "Red Army Liberation Front", saying: "I and my colleagues have just assassinated Frank Shoofey.
However, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had not heard of a group by this name, and a spokesman suggested that the call may have been an attempt to throw off the investigation.
[6] Crime writers Peter Edwards and Michel Auger later wrote: "it was likely that mobsters, not some unknown political group, were the killers of Shoofey".
[22] According to Simard, Cotroni-who was faced with an extradition request from the United States to face charges in Connecticut for trafficking in heroin-and he wanted to sell the Hilton contract to King to raise some money for his legal defense as his lawyer Leithman fought the extradition request in the courts ferociously.
[21] In an obituary in the Globe & Mail, Kirk Makin wrote: "Mr. Shoofey was a shameless publicity hound, but also a social benefactor of the highest order.
He played Santa Claus at Christmas parties for urchins and bought sports equipment for inner-city children".