The Most Wanted Man

The long arm of the law finally caught up with Leo Joseph Koury, the Richmond, Virginia fugitive who spent a dozen years on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list. 

But it was only his death that brought the search to an end.

Mr Koury (from a Lebanese family) had been a softball coach, church volunteer, loving husband (although he openly had mistresses), and father, and also a member of the American Legion, as well as being restaurant and bar owner, who was often described as being fiercely competitive. He allegedly tried to drive business out of other restaurants by sending "thugs" to terrorize the patrons .... it was this tactic that led to a death and others being injured.

In 1975, a bodyguard named Chuck Kernaghan was murdered in his home in Richmond, Virginia. His body was placed in a trunk, driven to the Rappahannock River, weighed down with the bumper from a '57 Chevrolet, and thrown off the side of a boat. Authorities believed Koury was responsible for this contract killing. 

Leo Koury In One Of His Bars And Mug Shot

Mr Koury although straight, had also owned a number of gay bars and restaurants that had made his fortune, and was known as the 'Godfather of Gay', in The Block (a Gay area of the city). But was also suspected of murdering the bouncer of a rival gay bar, and injuring two others in The Male Box bar, and then ordering the killing of another man, by hiring Eddie Loehr to make a hit on rival restaurant owner Jim Hilliard. 

However Koury's scheme backfired when police found Mr Loehr hiding outside of Hilliard's home. Loehr confessed to the police and named Koury as the man who hired him, saying that Koury wanted Hilliard dead to remove him from competition in the restaurant business ... he then agreed to wear a wire, and the FBI secretly recorded a conversation with Koury for their investigation. During the conversation, Koury told Loehr to not tell anyone about their "business" .... being a busy boy, he was also charged with plotting to kidnap Richmond pharmaceutical heir E. Claiborne Robins Jr. but was not convicted on that particular charge.

Mr Koury, by then a 56 year old, had actually fled Richmond in 1978 with a girlfriend, who left him a short time later, the day before he was indicted on charges including murder, extortion, mail fraud and attempted kidnapping by the grand jury. He hadn't been heard from since. 

The authorities put up billboards in the city of Richmond. On April 20, 1979, he was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, with a $25,000 reward, but he was long gone. Then he featured 3 times on the television show "America's Most Wanted," but nothing came of the public's 'tips'. So that was that .... the FBI kept him on the list as the years and then a decade rolled by, with lots of false sightings from around the USA and the world, but no leads that proved to be successful. 

Meanwhile, Koury’s abandoned wife, Jeanette Koury, was left to rear the children. Today, one is a lawyer, one is a nurse, and one works in public relations. She still helps care for the fourth, a 28-year-old born with brain damage.

After 12 years he eventually became the senior member of the FBI's "Most Wanted," although he hadn't approached the record of 18 years on the list, which was held by Charles Lee Herron, then wanted for killing two policemen, who evaded the law for 18 years, until his capture in 1986.

Meanwhile, Mr Loehr (Koury's hit man) was found innocent of one of the suspected Koury murders, the 1975 slaying of Charles Kernaghan, the bouncer from the Cha-Cha Palace. Loehr said Koury pulled the trigger and that he merely helped dispose of the body, out of fear of Koury, so was only found guilty of disposal of a corpse. 

Jack Colwell, one of the revolving FBI agents assigned to lead the manhunt (fresh eyes every couple of years) said that “If he’s dead, fine. We want the body.” But he suspected he was still alive (but possibly in South America), at that time.

Then William Franklin Biddle died at Villa View Community Hospital in San Diego, California, USA. He died of a cerebral haemorrhage (massive stroke) on the 17th of June 1991 as a result of diabetes. He was just an overweight retiree, who had worked part time at Sam's Convenience Store (owned by Souhel "Sam" Houshan, another Lebanese descent man), and who had died at a local hospital, but as no one had shown up to claim the body or pay for the funeral, it became a paupers death. So Susan Graves, the San Diego deputy public administrator who investigates paupers' deaths for the city was handed the file.

Souhel "Sam" Houshan told Ms Graves that his friend had told him he was an orphan. He had said that his previous employment had been as a Vietnam veteran, and a former employee of the International Red Cross, which had left him with a small pension, which is why he worked part-time, to pay rent for a small apartment. 

He had been very reticent to discuss his life and was intensely private ... even his friend Houshan had only been to the apartment once or twice in the five years that they had known each other. His main social activity was to drink coffee and chat with customers in Sam's Convenience store, but he also shopped for several elderly shut-ins in the neighbourhood. 

Ms Graves uncovered that by living this way, Biddle was almost off the radar ... He didn't own a car (so no risk of police stopping him for a traffic offence), and lived almost entirely within a couple of blocks. He only went out to shop, work, and attend Catholic services every Saturday evening. He spoke both Spanish and Arabic fluently, so many friends were confused as to whether he was of Hispanic or Arab ethnicity. In other words, he lived a very low profile existence living very close to the earth.

Ms Graves was primarily interested in tracking Mr Biddle's relatives down, to reimburse the city its costs in relation to his death and disposal, but as she started digging, the clues to Biddle's former identity were emerging ... firstly both the Army and the International Red Cross didn't know who he was, with no records, so it appeared that he had lied. Then there was his funds, he would lend up to $1,000 to friends who needed funds. Sam Houshan said "He's the nicest man I ever met. Very honest, very straight, never cussed."

Then rather unusually in a paupers case, she received a phone call threatening her if she ever entered Biddle's apartment .... they misjudged her, and she went to the apartment but took a police officer. What struck her about the apartment was that as well as being sparsely furnished, there was absolutely no memorabilia, no correspondence, nothing in fact from any previous life prior to San Diego. 

She found that he had a key for a safety deposit box at the nearby Union Bank, and she opened it to discover five envelopes filled with $25,000 in $100 bills. At this point she nearly stopped, as she had found the funds to pay the cities costs, but then a man named Barrett Rossi phoned her. He asked about his 'uncle' named Koury, who might have been using another name, and said that he might have used a different name because he might be wanted by authorities in Virginia.

He added that his 'uncle' spoke Arabic, and Ms Graves suddenly made the connection with Biddles, and when Rossi mentioned that he too had received an anonymous phone call  ... alarm bells started ringing, although she admitted that the name Khoury "didn’t mean a thing to me.” This was obviously getting to be a lot more than a normal pauper case, so she called the FBI. 

The mention of the name Khoury brought them over immediately, and fingerprinting the corpse confirmed that it was indeed Leo Joseph Koury ... confirming that Koury, who was also confirmed as of Lebanese heritage, had been living in San Diego for at least five years as William Franklin Biddle until he died. Special Agent Handy said "We've had tips that he was here, there and everywhere. Over the years we have interviewed literally thousands of people. Some of them were such look-alikes that the only way we could eliminate them was through fingerprints." 

The FBI spent about $1 million on the investigation during the 13 years, and San Diego was thinking of claiming the $25,000 FBI reward .... the FBI were not impressed when this was mooted, describing it as "kind of ludicrous."