Louis Lyon
Louis Théodore François Lyon was a prominent restauranteur and member of the Parisian social elite, who owned a popular restaurant on. During World War I, Lyon was employed by the Deuxième Bureau and was involved heavily in running guns for the French military. Lyon then entered into the French criminal underworld, becoming a prominent gangster and drug dealer in the years of Interwar France. He was a close associate of the Drug Barons of Europe, a group of brothers led by Elias Eliopoulos. In that network, he would come to be known as the Roi de la Droga, or the Drug Kingpin of Paris. The network of the Drug Barons of Europe is considered by historians to be the predecessor of the French Connection. Despite his repeated implication in trafficking operations and his reputation in contemporary accounts as a leading figure in the narcotics trade, Lyon frequently avoided prosecution, unlike many of his associates who received extensive prison sentences. He was eventually prosecuted in Paris in the trial that was known in the Parisian press as L'Affair Lyon, or the Lyon Affair.This was a trial that was covered in most of the French newspapers of the era, but he was released from prison before the Battle of France. During World War II, Lyon served in the French Resistance, arranging a resistance mission against the Abwehr II which killed Lyon's main rival, the gangster and Nazi collaborator Paul Carbone. For Lyon's actions in the French Resistance, he was awarded the Legion of Honour.
The newspaper Paris-soir writes:
"Louis Lyon is, moreover, a very strange figure in this milieu. Rich in millions, he led a peaceful existence in a bourgeois apartment on Rue de la Pompe. Never in name only in a "delicate affair," while for many he presides only over the destiny of a very Parisian restaurant, for those in the know, in the shadows, he presides over the drug trade throughout the 'Butte.' "
Career as a restauranteur (1909 onward)
In 1909, Lyon married into the Paris restaurant world through his marriage to his wife, Françoise Casenave. Her brother, Jean Casenave, was a successful restaurateur and wine merchant originally from Lasseube, Béarn, who had built his reputation by opening a restaurant at 11 Rue Saint-Anne, before relocating on April 10, 1925 to 39, near the Madeleine and Place Vendôme.The establishment, which was also called Jean Casenave, attracted a political and literary clientele from the upper echelons of the Parisian elite, including visitors such as Jean Giraudoux and Abel Hermant, and was recalled fondly by in his memoirs. In 1923, journalist Maurice Privat conceived the idea for his first radio news program there on a cocktail napkin. The establishment was also the setting for a 1934 meeting between, director of Les Nouvelles littéraires, and the writer Jean Giraudoux following negative critical reception of one of Giraudoux’s works.
When Jean Casenave died suddenly in January 1932, ownership of Jean Casenave passed to Lyon, who placed its day-to-day management in the hands of Victor Casenave, Jean’s brother. Victor Casenave and Lyon were not just stepbrothers, but were close friends.
The restaurant continued to operate under the Jean Casenave name long after World War II ended. Even into the 1940's, the restaurant Jean Casenave catered to locals and tourists alike, with some meals reaching 500 francs per plate. After the Second World War, the restaurant continued to attract an affluent clientele, and it was even used by Pierre Wertheimer and Félix Amiot to relaunch their business activities after the Liberation.
Château de Gressy
Lyon also became the proprietor of the Château de Gressy, a former 17th-century fortified farm with several buildings, including an axial tower, and manor castle in the town of Gressy, Seine-et-Marne that served as a secondary residence for the family. Château de Gressy was located about thirty minutes from Paris by car. By the 1930's, his net worth was in the millions.Scandals also surrounded Lyon's activities in Montmartre. He was said to have affairs, and he frequented the cabarets found throughout the French capital. It was later reported by journalists that he had a mistress away from home named Miss Thomas, who was also his personal business secretary.
World War I and initial service in the French intelligence services (1910's)
Lyon's activities shortly before the breakout of World War I place him as a professional gambler in the gambling densLyon, however much his reputation as a member of the criminal underworld proceeded him, was under official cover at this time as a member of the Deuxième Bureau, the French military intelligence agency. It is as-yet unknown when Lyon officially joined the Bureau, but it is known that the French government was collecting intelligence from Lyon on the ethnic German community living in Vienna at this time.
One of those high rollers in Vienna was a Peruvian named Carlos Fernández Bácula, who was living off of his father's money, having had escaped to Vienna at the outbreak of the shooting war. Lyon then brought Bácula with him to the town of Thessaloniki, Greece, where the pair of men met another arms dealer named Elias Eliopoulos, who was purchasing arms on behalf of the Greek military at the time.
When hostilities intensified, Lyon continued to work secret missions for the Bureau, traveling between the frontlines and other European states. His primary assignment after some time was to negotiate arms deals on behalf of the French military. On the frontlines, Lyon also served with his stepbrother, Victor Casenave.
After the war ended, Carlos Bácula joined the Peruvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1923, Lyon and the Bureau involved Bácula in an arms deal to purchase guns, illegally, for the government of Peru.
Career in illegal narcotics trafficking (1920's – 1938)
The first transatlantic narcotics networks began to appear shortly after the war, and Lyon was involved in several of the smaller nascent networks. Lyon formed a relationship around this time with an Italian-French-American criminal network involving Arnold Rothstein, Paul Carbone, Lucky Luciano, and August Del Gracio. The United States was a central destination for this trade. Since 1915, drugs produced in the Near East and processed in Switzerland and AustriaHowever, there were no true kings of the narcotics trade until the 1926 arrival of three Greek brothers; George, Elias, and Nassos Eliopoulos, collectively known as the Drug Barons of Europe. These brothers organized operations that transported opium from the Shanghai French Concession and French Indochina to French alkaloid factories, where it was refined into heroin. The product was then distributed internationally, first back to China, and later to the United States.
Lyon was first mentioned in telegrams of the Opium Advisory Committee in 1928, shortly after an incident in New York City involving Carlos Fernández Bácula and a deceased Vienna-based gangster. The investigation had been launched following the death of Wilhelm Koffler in a hotel room, who had been a member of a small Jewish and Russian émigré criminal network in Vienna. The New York City Police Department ruled that Koffler had committed suicide, but most of the world's narcotics enforcement community concluded that the gangster was most likely killed by Legs Diamond. The investigation in Vienna eventually connected Lyon to their case.
In his annual report for the year 1932, Russell Pasha provided information on Lyon. Thomas Wentworth Russell, that famous Pasha of the Cairo police department and the Egyptian Narcotics Bureau, had uncovered a heroin processing factory in Iran that he was convinced was undoubtedly owned by Louis Lyon. Russell Pasha had also been in communication with Harry J. Anslinger concerning the activities of another gangster in the network named August Del Gracio.
Lyon’s associations extended into legal and political circles. Throughout the 1930's, Lyon is recorded in shipping manifests as arriving in Quebec and New York City. In 1935, he traveled to the United States accompanied by his attorney, a former deputy in the French Chamber of Deputies.
Lyon's opium was processed into heroin for both domestic distribution and export. Part of the supply was handled within France through accomplices, while a significant share was directed to the United States, which represented the principal market. Accounts indicated that Lyon relied on associates, including Carlos Fernández Bacula, who was said to have used diplomatic channels to facilitate transport. Other foreign diplomats were also reported to have been implicated in the trade, including two diplomats also from Peru.
In the United States, distribution was attributed to the Newman brothers whose original family name was Neidicht. They were reported to have controlled a chain of hotels that served as a front for laundering proceeds. Their network supplied organized crime groups in Chicago and Texas and also received shipments from Chinese sources via merchant vessels. The Newman's operation had reportedly been active since the years following the First World War and expanded in profitability after the repeal of Prohibition in 1934.