Hunting LeRoux

by Elaine Shannon

  Still, now that Hunter was confessing, he might drop some facts that could be checked against LeRoux’s confession and vice versa. Hunter had a better memory for certain details about the murders than LeRoux. LeRoux insisted he didn’t know the names of the men who killed the realtor Catherine Lee.

  Hunter knew. On February 26, 2015, after months of queen-for-a-day debriefings and negotiations, Hunter made a plea deal, and he told the whole story of Catherine Lee’s death. He identified Adam Samia, cover name “Sal,” as the triggerman and Samia’s friend Carl David Stillwell, cover name “JT,” as the wheelman. That, he said, was the meaning of his email to LeRoux, dated January 24, 2012, assuring him that “Sal” and “JT” would each be paid $35,000 “upon Mission Success,” meaning the assassination of Catherine Lee. Hunter said that LeRoux pushed hard for Samia and Stillwell to eliminate not only Lee but several others on LeRoux’s kill list. LeRoux, he said, was involved in every intimate detail. Confronted, LeRoux admitted he had lied when he claimed not to know much about the Catherine Lee hit. He said he feared that if he told the truth, he might be extradited to the Philippines, where he would be convicted and locked up for the rest of his life, or just shot for knowing too much about official corruption, in which he had played a starring role.

  Unlike LeRoux’s ideal mercenaries, Adam Samia had no military or police experience. As he would eventually testify in his own defense, he grew up on a farm outside Leicester, Massachusetts. After graduating from high school, Samia worked as a mechanic on a used car lot and as a plasterer for his brothers’ construction business. In search of adrenaline fixes, he took up Okinawan martial arts and got so good at sparring and kickboxing that when one of his brothers joined the local police force and made the central Massachusetts SWAT team, Samia, twenty-three or twenty-four at the time, was invited to play the bad guy at SWAT training sessions. While punching and ducking his way through scenarios, he got to know a visiting trainer—Dave Smith.

  Over drinks and dinner, Smith regaled the cops and Samia with tales of his days as a British commando, CIA operative, bodyguard, and security contractor. He claimed to have protected Elton John, Gianni Versace, Steve Jobs, and various superstar athletes and entertainers. How much of this, if any, was true is unknown. But it was clear that Smith knew his way around the netherworld of guns for hire.

  When Smith offered Samia a private security job coming up near Washington, D.C., the younger man jumped at the chance. The job wasn’t glamorous— as Smith put it, “halls and walls,” meaning checking identifications of people attending a conference and making sure nobody went where he wasn’t supposed to go. But, said Samia, “It was easy. It was exciting, a little different, something I was never used to.” Best of all, it was lucrative. Samia was paid $1,000 a day, a fortune for a young guy just starting out in the building trades.

  Smith encouraged him to become a security contractor, a growth field because of the rising threat level. “Mr. Smith . . . gave me some tactical training, taught me how to dress, how to act around executives, stuff like that, some motorcade stuff,” Samia later recalled. At Smith’s urging, he took a hundred-dollar “crash course” in bodyguard skills at the Executive Protection Institute in Berryville, Virginia, about fifty miles west of Washington, D.C. He followed up with other weekend training sessions and shooting courses. From time to time, he got jobs on temporary security gigs at special events.

  In 2004, when Samia was thirty, his father, who was retired, decided to go into farming full-time. To stretch his savings, he looked to the rural South. In Roxboro, North Carolina, population 8,362, he found a five-bedroom house and fifty-six-acre horse farm on sale for just over half a million dollars. He bought and renamed the place Samia Son Stables.

  Adam Samia joined his father, the father’s second wife, and the father’s mother, Adam’s grandmother, on the farm, but life in a one-saloon, one-Confederate-statue town was not very rewarding. He kept up an email correspondence with Smith. In 2008, Smith offered him a job with Echelon Security, the front company he had set up to handle LeRoux’s strong-arm work. Smith explained, as Samia later recalled, that “he has a very rich client. They had a lot of money in the pharmaceutical [business]. . . . He wants to diversify his money and get into gold and diamonds and timber and stuff like that.” Smith offered $7,000 a month to start and $10,000 once the job got going, many times Samia’s earnings as a plasterer. Samia didn’t hesitate. He flew to Hong Kong, where he was met by one of Smith’s men, a Canadian security contractor named Lachlan McConnell, and was introduced to Hunter and other mercenaries. Smith called the operation Midas. He named it for the Greek king who allowed his desire for gold to destroy his life. The job involved traveling to the Republic of the Congo, the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Papua New Guinea, transporting gold and bribing local officials for timber concessions. LeRoux used these business activities, which were, for all practical purposes, impossible for outside investigators to trace, to disguise proceeds from his illegal pharmaceutical sales.

  At first, the other mercenaries were wary of Samia because he was inexperienced. “I didn’t want to partner up with him,” Vamvakias said while testifying for the prosecution at Samia’s murder trial. “I had a big issue, too, with the fact that he didn’t have a military background. I felt he didn’t have the firearms training, the hand-to-hand combat. I knew we were involved in stressful situations and I felt like he could potentially put our lives at risk and in danger or the mission in danger. And because he didn’t have the military background, I also felt like there might be some sort of issue with him having the ability to follow orders.”

  “Don’t worry, he’s a good guy and he’s a gamer,” Smith replied, according to Vamvakias. A “gamer,” Vamvakias explained, was “somebody who was willing to commit the same crimes that we were committing. . . . Any type of violence and anything else.”

  By way of vouching for Samia’s eagerness to do dirty deeds, Smith added, according to Vamvakias, “Can you believe he actually mentioned wet work to me?” By “wet work,” Vamvakias said, Smith meant “assassinations but up close and personal.”

  After the gig, Samia returned to North Carolina and worked at a gun store called the Arsenal with David Stillwell, who made and sold handcrafted holsters and gun concealment devices such as a bra holster called the Bosom Buddy. Samia and Stillwell launched a venture they called Grandfather Oak Training Group. Samia described himself in the marketing materials as “Assistant Instructor & Security Officer” and instructor in the “Advanced Combat Shooting Class,” a “tactical shooting, engaging multiple targets at once, use of cover, tactical loads and combat loads.” These were pretty bold claims for two guys who got all their information about warfighting from videogames and surplus stores. Samia applied for a job with the first-tier security firm Triple Canopy but without true military experience, he couldn’t qualify. He continued to look for employment as a gunman, advertising himself on LinkedIn as a “security contractor” and networking at shooting events.

  Samia got crossways with Smith in late 2008 or early 2009. While on R&R in the Philippines, Samia got into a fistfight with a bar girl and got arrested. Smith had to bail him out. He was furious. He fired Samia and sent him packing back to North Carolina.

  Hunter kept up his correspondence with Samia. They had bonded over their mutual contempt for their bosses. On March 9, 2009, Hunter emailed Samia to grouse, “Still working for Dave and Paul and everything is still the same with those two. No planning and the planning they do is shit.” Two months later, Hunter wrote Samia, “Adam, still with the same idiots. I’m in PI [the Philippines] right now and I’m supposed to head out to Africa again next week. Nothing has really changed. Still doing the same thing. Trying to hold out as long as I can.”

  Which, as it turned out, was indefinitely. LeRoux paid well, and Hunter didn’t have any better prospects for employment.

  As Cindric and Stouch pieced the next chapters together, from the confessions of LeRou
x and Hunter, subpoenaed emails, and emails and texts from various seized electronic devices, around December 2009, both Smith and Hunter began to talk to Samia about handling some of the contract murders LeRoux wanted carried out. Their communications were always couched in an informal code that was open to interpretation, but the agents didn’t have any doubt about what they were saying. They just had to prove it to a judge and jury.

  The emails depicted Samia as eager for dirty work. On December 17, 2009, Hunter wrote Samia, “I just got here in the U.S. for the holidays and I will give you a call. This is something other than what I told you about. It is for doing the serious thing in Africa.” To which Samia responded: “Roger that, bro. Give me a call.”

  A couple of weeks later, Smith wrote Samia: “The job is simply 9k a month plus 25k bonus on each job done as u know what joe does for us clean up with our problem people. You will work with joe. Need answer.” Samia expressed interest and asked for more details and the price.

  Samia’s contacts with the LeRoux team became more intense after LeRoux had Smith killed in December 2010. In early 2011, LeRoux promoted Hunter to Smith’s old job, chief of security. Sucking up to LeRoux, Hunter congratulated him on killing Smith because, as LeRoux later testified, “Dave Smith spent more time drinking and womanizing and wasn’t really actively planning anything.” By “planning,” Hunter appeared to mean setting up contract hits.

  Hunter reorganized the mercenary band into what he thought would be a more efficient killing machine. “Things are going to be different this time,” he told Vamvakias and DeMeyere in the spring of 2011, as Vamvakias later recalled. “The business is going to be split in two. There’s going to be the ninja side of things this time and the business side of things.”

  Vamvakias would take the “business side,” which meant organizing a group of men to smuggle Tramadol, an opioid pain medicine, from northern Mexico to El Paso.

  DeMeyere was working on the “ninja side.” He strong-armed, threatened, and, on occasion, did worse, Vamavakias told authorities.

  “Paul LeRoux had a list of people to be murdered,” Vamvakias said. “And Chris was going to be the first one on board to be taking part in that list and murdering people and he was also going to help [Hunter] find other people to fit that position so he’d have more ninjas.”

  When LeRoux ordered Hunter to set up assassination teams, Hunter nominated DeMeyere and the New Zealander known as Mack Daddy. “I met Chris DeMeyere, Daddy Mack with Joseph Hunter at a meeting in the Philippines,” LeRoux testified at the trial of Hunter, Samia and Stillwell. “And they were introduced to me as the new kill team put together by Joseph Hunter.” LeRoux approved. According to the transcript of Hunter’s bugged conversations in the Phuket safe house, the plea agreements of both LeRoux and Hunter and LeRoux’s sworn testimony in court, they murdered Noemi Edillor in June 2011 but then refused to return and kill more people on LeRoux’s hit list. Their departure left Hunter in a panic. He knew plenty of guys who would work on the business side of LeRoux’s empire, carrying out routine bodyguard duty and smuggling, but fewer who would commit cold-blooded murder.

  On July 29, 2011, Hunter emailed Vamvakias, “Hey, bro, looks like Chris and the other guy that was working here for me took off. They got some money in their pocket. I know one has quit. Chris is bullshitting me. I know he’s trying to set it up where it looks like he has to quit. I don’t know what will happen here without a crew. I might be out of a job. I’ll be keep you updated when I know more.”

  By the fall of 2011, frantic to get LeRoux off his back, Hunter contacted Samia via Skype and offered him “ninja work.” Samia was definitely available, even eager. He was in Roxboro, still living with his father, bored out of his skull, occupying his time by having affairs with two or three local women, all of whom were seeing other guys, according to local lawmen, and playing war games with his buddy Stillwell. He was getting fat and spiraling downward into bleak middle age. He responded to Hunter immediately, accepting the job and proposing Stillwell as his driver and wingman. Stillwell had lied to Samia, falsely claiming that he had been a U.S. Army ranger and a sniper, and that he had gone to South America on U.S. special operations counterdrug missions. Actually, he had never been outside the United States. He didn’t even have a passport.

  Ever the micromanager, LeRoux said he wanted to discuss the Lee hit with Samia in person. LeRoux summoned Samia to a meeting in Rio. Samia didn’t show. He failed to apply for a Brazilian visa in time to make his flight. Hunter began to regret his decision to reactivate Samia. He suspected that Samia was really trying to pocket the money LeRoux had sent him for the airfare to Rio, and they both knew what LeRoux did to people who skimmed. On October 14, 2011, Hunter wrote Samia a pointed email:

  . . . you fucked this up. You didn’t got your visa. Now you read every word I say carefully. You get a refund on ticket. If there is no refund available, then you are expected to pay for the cost of the ticket. We are not paying for a ticket because you did not get a visa. The second thing is you and your guys work for me here in PI or the states. You do not work for the boss directly unless he puts you on an independent job that does not involve me. Your job and one of your other guys is here in PI following my order. No negotiations. No complaining. No bullshit. You’ll be paid to do a job with a result. The key word is "result." We do not pay for thinking about it. We do not pay for trying. We do not pay for your time. We pay for the end result. Do you understand? [Y]ou and one other guy prepared to ninja stuff. Get your shit ready and stand by. I will tell you when to get on the plane. No fucking delaying. No availability issues. If you want to work do what I say.

  Hunter followed up with an email to LeRoux, arguing that Samia’s misdeeds weren’t his, Hunter’s, fault:

  The guy is crazy with attitude, so I had to set him straight!!! He said he wanted a sit down with you before the other guys came on board, and I explained to him that he is hired to do a job with an end result!!! I told him he does what he is told and he gets paid. I told him we are not paying for him to think about doing the stuff, we are not paying him to try, we are not paying him for his time, I told him we are paying for the result, period. I then told him to quit fucking around and if he wanted a job, to pack his shit and standby with his partner. I also told him he has to pay for that ticket, because he failed to get the VISA. He says he can exchange the ticket for a ticket to PI [the Philippines], but that’s bullshit. What he is going to do is buy a cheap ticket to PI instead of paying the 1,600 back. That is what I think his plan is. Anyway, he said he understands and he is ready to come here but the other guy cannot come for a month.

  But Hunter needed Samia for the moment, so all was forgiven. On October 19, 2011, Hunter sent an email to Samia giving him a green light to proceed with the murder:

  Boss says you are on standby until the other guy is ready and you guys will come here together for Ninja stuff. . . . We want you guys, but are just waiting until you and your partner can get on the same time table.

  Samia landed in Manila on January 9, 2012. At thirty-seven years old and six feet, one inch tall and paunchy, with coal-black hair and a stubbly beard, he was unmistakably an American, a head higher than the crowd of Filipinos on the Manila streets. Stillwell, forty-four, who landed a day later, was even more of a standout—blond, pale, and built like a fireplug.

  Hunter told the pair to meet him at the Howzat Sports Bar in downtown Manila, near the boxing gym where Hunter worked out. It was a deafening, twenty-four-hour expat hangout with fifty-inch TV screens, live satellite feeds of American football, soccer, cricket, hockey, basketball, and golf, plus burgers, wings, and steak and only a few prostitutes. Hunter had often stopped by there with Dave Smith, and fellow mercernaries John O’Donoghue and Tim Vamvakias, when they were around. There were bedrooms to rent upstairs. Nobody would notice three more American guys having a beer at a table in the corner.

  “Okay guys, this is how you do it.” Hunter said, as he later recounted, according to
court records. “Have her meet you at McDonald’s. They call it Jolly, like a Jo, Jolly B. It’s like McDonald’s, right? Have her meet you in the parking lot at Jolly B. Get her into your car and take off so nobody saw you guys together. Maybe a couple of people in the restaurant that they won’t remember. Right?”

  Samia and Stillwell must have struggled to stay focused. They were still jet-lagged and trying to get acclimated to driving around greater Manila, a bewildering warren of neighborhoods, gated communities for the wealthy and barangays, slums.

  “As soon as she gets in the car, drive down the road,” Hunter instructed. “Drive down the road maybe a quarter mile, a half kilometer. Turn around and shoot her. It’s done. Nobody saw anything. Just kill her in the car. Take a blanket with you and wrap her up. And then, just keep driving and find a place to dump her.”

  Hunter gave them a thumb drive that contained a “target package” for Dazl Silverio, an RX Limited employee whose name topped LeRoux’s kill list. It consisted of digital photographs, addresses, and other intelligence compiled by a surveillance team of Filipinos hired by LeRoux. As well, he handed them a “weapons kit” that contained a .556-caliber rifle and a Smith & Wesson pistol and silencer from the Red, White and Blue Arms warehouse. Hunter loaned them a Toyota Innova van and a car that belonged to the RX Limited/RWB fleet. He told them to buy some stolen license plates for the van.

  Samia and Stillwell couldn’t find Silverio, because she had multiple addresses, including a place some distance from the city. They asked for more target packages. A few days later, Hunter supplied them with data for Catherine Lee and two other people, Fitch Penalosa, a low-level employee at RX Limited, and Manuel Jalos, whom LeRoux blamed for tipping the Philippines Coast Guard that the Captain Ufuk was running guns. “He cost me a lot of money,” LeRoux griped.