Alain Charnier (1917-) was a French crime boss who ran the world's largest heroin-smuggling syndicate during the 1970s.
Biography[]
Alain Charnier was born in Marseille, France in 1917, and he worked as a longshoreman for many years before becoming involved in France's criminal underworld. Because Charnier had fought in the French Resistance during World War II, the city authorities refused to arrest him, and Charnier came to be the head of the world's largest heroin-smuggling syndicate by the 1960s, when his partnership with the Italian-American Lucchese crime family caporegime Salvatore Boca, nicknamed the "French Connection", made both the Mafia and Charnier's organization millions.
Charnier and Pierre Nicoli
In 1971, Charnier decided to personally oversee the delivery of a massive heroin shipment to New York City, hiding $32 million of heroin in the car of his unsuspecting friend and television personality Henri Devereaux and planning to take advantage of Devereaux's free movement. NYPD detective Jimmy Doyle found out about the shipment from his informant Elvan Moses two weeks before it was due, and the police wiretapped Boca and discovered his plans to meet with a Frenchman at the Roosevelt Hotel. Charnier discovered that Doyle was tailing him, and he managed to evade him at Grand Central Station before taking a train to Washington DC to meet Boca and finalize the deal. There, Charnier was angered to find out that Boca and Joel Weinstock were planning on postponing the deal to let the heat die down, and Charnier insisted that they make the deal soon, or else he would leave the mafiosi empty-handed.
Charnier then returned to New York, and the mafiosi agreed to make the deal. Devereaux withdrew from his partnership with Charnier after the police seized his car, as he believed that Charnier had taken advantage of their friendship to turn him into an accomplice. Charnier proceeded to take the "recovered" car (it was, in reality, a lookalike, as the police had taken apart the first car and discovered the drugs hidden inside of it) and meet with the mafiosi at Wards Island, where they concluded their deal. Charnier then drove off with Boca, only to find that the police had blockaded the ramp onto the Triborough Bridge. Charnier grew frightened when he saw Doyle waving at him, causing him and Boca to retreat to the garbage dump on the island, where the police proceeded to besiege Charnier and the mobsters. Charnier mysteriously escaped, while Boca was killed and the drugs confiscated.
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