I Heard You Paint Houses Read online

  After all the firings in Philadelphia the tensions kept heating up. Joey McGreal and his muscle crew decided they wanted to take over 107 once and for all and get all the union jobs for themselves so they could shake down the trucking companies and line their pockets. So one September night in 1967 they held a big rally in front of the 107 hall on Spring Garden Street. There must have been 3,000 people from all the different factions all stirred up. There were people walking up and down outside the building hollering and there were a few fistfights. Joey McGreal had muscle from downtown, not the Italians with Angelo, but muscle. Robert “Lonnie” DeGeorge and Charles Amoroso were part of McGreal’s muscle. They wanted to take over the building. They were trying to scare all the organizers and business agents and local officers into stepping down. The mounted police had their hands full that night.

  I wasn’t there for any of that. I got a call late that night at home from Fitz to be there the next morning because after a rally like that you always figure it will get worse the next day. They’ll come back looking for bear. Fitz said to me, “Get things under control.” I know what that would have meant to Jimmy if Jimmy said that to me. I called Angelo Bruno and borrowed some Italian muscle. I had Joseph “Chickie” Ciancaglini and Rocco Turra and a few others. We had the good muscle. I had men inside the hall looking out the windows and men on the street. I had my back to the union hall. Two groups were walking toward each other from opposite ends of Spring Garden Street, the McGreal people coming from one direction and the people loyal to the local coming from the other direction.

  All of a sudden shooting broke out. The first shot came from behind me and went whizzing past my head. They said I gave the signal for the shooting to begin. They said I pointed a finger at DeGeorge and somebody from our side shot him. There was so much shooting going on nobody could tell who was shooting at who or who started it. The cops on horseback had been there the night before, but they hadn’t shown up yet that morning. That was some battle that morning. Chickie took two slugs in the belly. I grabbed Chickie and pulled him into a car and got him to my mother’s brother who was a doctor. Dr. John Hansen told me to get Chickie to a hospital right away, because he was sure to die with the wounds he had. I went over to St. Agnes Hospital, which was right across the street from my uncle’s office. I laid Chickie down and rattled the garbage cans until somebody came out to get him.

  I drove down to Newport, Delaware, to hide out in an apartment over a bar until things died down. I called Fitz and I said to him, “One down. Two limping,” and Fitz panicked and hung up the phone on me. That’s the first time I knew things were going to be very different under Fitz. Still, at that point I had no idea the man was going to be capable of turning down my request for expenses when I got arrested for this on the thing that he had asked me to handle. I had no idea I was going to have to end up going to Russell to get taken care of on the matter. “One down. Two limping,” and he hung up the phone on me.

  The D.A.’s office put out an arrest warrant on me. They arrested Chickie, a black guy named Johnny West, and Black Pat, a white guy. I stayed in Delaware for a while, but I didn’t want a flight charge on me, too. So I got Bill Elliot, who had been a big shot on the Wilmington Police Department, to drive me to Philly. I wore a granny dress and a bonnet and turned myself in to a Philadelphia Bulletin reporter named Phil Galioso, who took me to the police commissioner, Frank Rizzo. (It’s funny when you think about it, but when Rizzo was mayor in 1974 he came to Frank Sheeran Appreciation Night.)

  Chickie survived. He had an iron constitution. They tried to get the black guy Johnny West to turn on the three of us. They told him I had turned on him. He said, “Anybody but him, I’d believe you. But him, I’m keeping my mouth shut.” They tried the three of them within six weeks and the jury found all of them not guilty. Meanwhile, I stayed in jail. My lawyer Charlie Peruto was on vacation in Italy while I rotted in a cell for four months and Fitz didn’t lift a finger. He was probably too busy golfing or drinking. It cost me my union election at Local 326 in Wilmington. I couldn’t campaign because I was sitting in jail. I still only lost by a few votes. Finally, the judge let me sign my own bail and I got out.

  Around that time the 107 union hall burned to the ground. We figured it was the Voice or McGreal’s faction, but we never found out. Right after that, Mike Hession stepped down as president. Hession was the kind of a guy who would fight you in a minute in a street fight, but I guess the other part got too heavy for him.

  Meanwhile, Arlen Specter tried to get his top prosecutor, Dick Sprague, to bring me to trial on first-degree murder on DeGeorge. Sprague told him he didn’t even have a case of manslaughter and to go try his own losers. Specter was trying to build himself up in the political world on the Teamsters’ back.

  There were 3,000 people there and a lot of shooting. How can you say anybody shot what? Nobody found any guns. Those charges against me lingered in the system from 1967 to 1972. Finally, they took me to court to pick a jury and begin the trial. I had my character witnesses there. They were all different labor guys, a guy from the steelworkers, my buddy John McCullough from the roofer’s union who got whacked just before my trial in 1980, and some others. Before we picked a jury, the judge put me on the stand and asked me how many times the Commonwealth asked for a postponement of the trial, and I told him “sixty-eight.” Then the judge asked me how many times I asked for a continuance and I said “none,” and he called it a disgrace and said a motion was in order.

  My new lawyer, Jim Moran, got the judge to throw it out on the first speedy trial motion in Pennsylvania. While that motion was going on, the Commonwealth tried to give me a nolle prosse and I told them to stick it because with a nolle prosse, sure it drops the charges, but they can always reindict you. My advice is to take a dismissal from a judge if you can get it, not a nolle prosse from the D.A. That’s what I got on the thing.

  When I lost that election in 1968 on account of being in jail for four months I went to work to fill an unexpired term as a business agent. It’s good work. You service the people. You make sure the company lives up to the contract. You have certain barns to cover. You process grievances. You defend people that the company is trying to fire. If a union is run right you don’t have too many discharge cases. Stealing or accidents where you were negligent, then you’re done. The company has some rights, too.

  I remember one Polish guy I defended who had a gambling problem. The company caught him stealing Holland hams. At the hearing I told him to keep his mouth shut and let me do the talking. The company manager took the stand and testified that he saw the Polish guy take ten cases of hams off the dock and load them into his personal truck. The Polish guy looked at me and said out loud, “Frank, he’s a fucking liar. There were only seven.” I promptly made a motion to withdraw the grievance and took the management representative aside and we worked out a letter of resignation stating that the Polish guy was resigning from the company for personal reasons.

  When you think about it, even before Jimmy did, I had the first taste of how it was going to be under Fitz. I was the first one who got to feel how Jimmy got to feel when Fitz betrayed him later on. It was a minor thing compared to what he did to Jimmy, but I’m still not happy with it. I lost my own election and I lost my local on account of being in jail. And I was sitting in jail for four months on account of Fitz. After I got out of jail I was out there with no union position. I got no respect at all from the man and he was the one who put me in the thing in the first place. I was trying to take care of a job for him, risking my life in a fire fight, getting indicted, and all he did for me was to hang up on me.”

  chapter twenty-two

  Pacing in His Cage

  From the brochure “Questions and Answers about Federal Correctional Institutions”:

  “QUESTION 41: How can I take care of my business while in confinement?”

  “ANSWER: You must appoint someone else to run your business while you are confined.”

  Jimmy
Hoffa lived by his own rules, and he would soon develop his own answer for Question 41.

  The Federal Correctional Institution at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, that Jimmy Hoffa entered on March 7, 1967, was amusingly depicted in the movie Goodfellas as a place where Italian mobsters were able to live comfortable lives with their own cooking facilities, an endless supply of good food, good wine, and fine cigars. Their battle cry was “Let’s eat.” Surely, in a place like that, Jimmy Hoffa would have little trouble learning the ropes and figuring out the most efficient way to pull the strings that extended from the rolling farmland of central Pennsylvania to his puppet regime and the new general vice president, Frank Fitzsimmons, as well as strings that extended beyond Fitzsimmons to Hoffa’s former hand-picked staff at “the marble palace,” Teamsters headquarters in Washington, D.C.

  The prison rules allowed for a total of three hours of visitation a month from a list of nonlawyers. The visitation list was restricted to family members. Inmates were permitted no phone privileges in those days. Letters were permitted to be written to only seven people from a list of relatives and lawyers. All letters in and out were screened. No union officer was permitted to visit or write to Jimmy Hoffa. There was no limitation on visitation from lawyers working on active cases. Hoffa’s son was a lawyer for the union and so was not restricted to the family member list; he could see his father as often as once a week.

  Although the appeals on the jury-tampering case had been exhausted, the appeals on the Chicago case were still pending when Jimmy Hoffa first walked into Lewisburg for delousing, photographing, fingerprinting, and outfitting in blue denim. In addition, Hoffa would be eligible for a parole hearing in two and a half years—in November 1969. All of this legal activity meant that Hoffa could receive visitations from a number of lawyers. Frank Ragano was among those lawyers who visited Hoffa, consulted on the issues, and carried messages back to both the union and mob figures. Attorney Morris Shenker represented Hoffa on the machinations of his parole strategy and on another matter: the delicate maneuvers involved in securing a presidential pardon, from what would later be revealed as the corrupt administration of President Richard M. Nixon. Bill Bufalino regularly visited Hoffa in his role of lawyer and adviser.

  The tight restrictions on visitation hamstrung those inmates without the financial resources, battery of lawyers, or power of a Jimmy Hoffa. Many young men did not have relatives who could afford to make the trip to Pennsylvania. They could not use up their three hours of allotted visitation. Jimmy Hoffa would arrange for “job interviews” for such men with Frank Sheeran. The young inmate would meet with Frank Sheeran in the dining hall that served as the visitation room. They would sit at a table next to Jimmy Hoffa, who would be consulting with one of his many lawyers.

  “I’d pull on my shirt and the kid would know that was a signal to go to the buck house so Jimmy and I could get a little business done. The guard would look the other way. They made out all right at Christmas, those guards. I think every day was Christmas for some of them in the old days. I saw it tighten up quite a bit over the years when I went to school in the eighties and nineties. I think it was on account of the publicity and the new type of inmate, especially the drug dealers like the Jamaicans and those Cubans that Castro had kicked out.

  There was one kid named Gary that Jimmy asked me to help get a job in construction. If they had a job waiting for them they had a good chance at making parole. Gary should have stayed in. When he got out somebody put a whack on him. He was a friend of Tommy Barker, the one that claimed later on when I had my trial in 1980 that I told him to whack a guy named Fred Gawronski for spilling a bottle of wine on me at a bar in Delaware. Joey McGreal was in there with Jimmy for a while toward the end. Joey had settled down a lot and was good company. Tony Pro was already in waiting for Jimmy. They were still very close when Jimmy came into Lewisburg. Charlie Allen, the rat, was in there for bank robbery. His real name was Charlie Palermo, but he changed it to Charlie Allen. He was “Blinky” Palermo’s nephew. Blinky used to control boxing in America.

  Charlie Allen is the one the FBI wired and used to set me up in the late seventies when they were trying to get everybody on their little list for something so they could squeeze us for information on Jimmy’s disappearance. They made a deal with Allen to get me even though they knew he was a baby-rapist and a sodomizer of his own stepdaughter from the time she was five, and they hid that information from my attorney and me. Charlie Allen’s in jail in Louisiana for that one. Can you imagine how much they wanted me when you think of who they used to get me?

  At my 1980 trial, my 1981 trial, and my 1982 trial Charlie Allen claimed he was Jimmy’s bodyguard in jail and that he got cut on the cheek defending Jimmy from a rape. That would have made Jimmy laugh if he was listening to the trial in heaven. Allen got cut when he got caught trying to steal some candy bars from a black guy’s candy stash. As far as who took care of who, it was the other way around. Jimmy looked out for Charlie Allen. He’s one of those that Jimmy felt sorry for and asked me to help get a job so he could make parole. I even got him a job. I let him hang around with me. I let him drive me places. Then later on I put him on the payroll at Local 326 as an organizer. I used him as a barking dog, but I’m the one he turned on when they caught him again for making methamphetamine. They let him slide on that, but he couldn’t get out from under the baby rape because it wasn’t federal.

  For $3 you could join the inmates for lunch. Wednesday lunch was spaghetti and meatballs. Jimmy loved spaghetti and meatballs. I would give Jimmy my meatballs for a treat. Jimmy loved ice cream, too. Sometimes it would be just a social visit between us. We wouldn’t even have business. One time he got on me about all the watermelon Bill Isabel and I used to eat at the suite in the Edgewater in Chicago. Jimmy didn’t know we had spiked the watermelon with two quarts of rum and plugged it back up. He learned about that trick in Lewisburg from some of the people from Brooklyn with Tony Pro who were doing it.

  There was a lot happening on the outside on his appeals and all for Jimmy to talk to me about. I made some drops to Attorney General John Mitchell after Jimmy got out, too, but while he was in Lewisburg there was money going down to Mitchell for Jimmy to get parole or a pardon. The people would take care of the money part from the Vegas skim or from Jimmy’s own money. Russell was very big in Vegas, places like Caesar’s and the Desert Inn. When Jimmy went in everybody was trying to help him get out—Russ, Fitz, Carlos, Santo, all of them. Jimmy complained that maybe Fitz was dragging his heels, but in the beginning he didn’t suspect Fitz of betrayal, just maybe not being aggressive enough, sitting on his rear end, enjoying the job too much.

  Right after Jimmy went in somebody sent a message to Allen Dorfman. He was pulling out of his driveway and some people jumped off and fired shotguns into the body of his Cadillac. That’s not the way you kiss somebody; that’s a straight message job.

  Dorfman had balls. He was in charge of the pension fund. Nobody was going to scare him into anything. More likely, Jimmy and I thought it was mostly a message for Fitz from some people.

  Everybody knew Fitz had no balls. If they fired the shotguns at Fitz’s car he might overreact and run into the arms of the feds. This way, Fitz got the message through what they did to Dorfman. A lot of times when a guy is kissed, it’s a message for somebody else.

  After that Fitz didn’t keep an eye on the pension fund and he let people get away with a lot. The loans didn’t have the proper security behind them. They just didn’t even bother to make the payments on a lot of them under Fitz. And why should Dorfman care anymore if Fitz wasn’t going to back him up.

  Later on, when I was in jail in the early eighties, I got some bad news about Allen Dorfman. Jackie Presser was head of the Teamsters and he set Dorfman up. Presser was a dry snitch for the FBI, a snitch they keep undercover. He doesn’t wear a wire or testify, but he let’s the feds have everything he hears and he puts out everything the feds tell him to. He put the word out that Dorfman was
a rat, and that to save himself from jail Dorfman was going to cooperate with the feds. They used silencers on Dorfman in an outdoor hotel parking lot in broad daylight in Chicago. What I don’t get is how Chicago fell for the idea that Dorfman was a rat. When I was in Chicago twenty years before that, everybody in Chicago knew Presser was a rat. I guess it was a case of when in doubt have no doubt. But it was a bad hit. I’m not saying Chicago did the hit, but it could not have been done in Chicago without Chicago’s approval. Allen Dorfman lived his life a certain way and he was no rat. He was very loyal to Jimmy.”

  Allen Dorfman’s attorney was quoted as saying about the ex-Marine combat veteran: “The idea that he would capitulate or throw in the towel is anathema, impossible.” The U.S. attorney in charge of the pending cases against Dorfman confirmed that “Dorfman was not cooperating with us at all.”

  “In school Jimmy talked a lot about Partin. Frank Ragano was supposed to be getting an affidavit from Partin that the government set Jimmy up. There was a D.A. in New Orleans who arrested Partin, and they were supposed to get that D.A. off Partin’s back in exchange for the affidavit. The same D.A. arrested Walter Sheridan for bribery, and that was supposed to help Jimmy by making Sheridan look bad in the papers. All that help came from Russell’s and Jimmy’s good friend, Carlos Marcello, the boss in New Orleans who had the D.A.

  That was the same D.A. that was arresting everybody for the JFK assassination. Sometimes a friendly D.A. acts like a bird dog to flush rats out of the weeds. When the rat surfaces to cooperate with the D.A., then the people know what to do. I don’t know about that D.A. I was never a party to any discussions about him. But he did arrest Partin and Sheridan during this time.