"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (30 page)

As if there weren’t enough going on in 1963, word spread through the grapevine that the FBI got a certain soldier named Joseph Valachi to turn. Valachi was the first guy to roll over. He was just a soldier out of the Genovese family in New York. That was the family that Lucky Luciano started when Luciano and Meyer Lansky and the rest of them put the thing together years ago. Valachi wasn’t too close to anybody big. I had never even heard of the man, much less met the man through Russell. If I’m not mistaken, Russell had never heard of the man either until the thing came out. But this Valachi knew all the old stories. He knew who whacked who and why. He told how Vito Genovese had a citizen thrown off a roof so he could marry the guy’s wife, which he then went and did. He knew all the families and how everything was set up in the organization among the Italians.

Valachi was a born rat and a drug pusher, and his own boss Vito Genovese was going to have him kissed when they were in federal prison together on suspicion of being a jailhouse snitch and an informant. When in doubt have no doubt.

Joe Valachi ended up killing some innocent inmate that he thought was going to kiss him, and after that he told everybody everything he knew about everything. He told about how they get initiated into becoming made men. He told Italian secrets I didn’t even know about. He even told little things like how Carlos Marcello didn’t allow anybody from any of the other families to so much as visit New Orleans, not even for Mardi Gras, without first getting his approval. Carlos Marcello was one boss that took no chances. The man ran a tight ship.

A couple of weeks before Jimmy’s jury-tampering trial was scheduled Bobby Kennedy paraded this Joe Valachi on television in some more of those McClellan hearings. It was like propaganda in a war, like a publicity drive to sell war bonds. Only Joe Valachi was Bob Hope. You could see after the publicity over the Valachi hearing that the drive against so-called organized crime was really going to open up even bigger than it already was. There were a lot of interested parties glued to their TV sets in bathhouses and private Italian clubs all over the country.
”

In September 1963, about a month prior to Jimmy Hoffa’s scheduled trial for jury tampering, Joseph Valachi appeared on television before the McClellan Committee and unveiled to the public all the details of what Bobby Kennedy had called “the greatest intelligence breakthrough in the history of organized crime in America.”

Joe Valachi’s odyssey from low-level “button man” and jailbird to media sensation and poster boy for Bobby Kennedy began a year earlier in the summer of 1962 in the Atlanta federal penitentiary. Valachi was serving time on a drug-pushing charge at the same time his boss, Vito Genovese, was serving time. To embarrass Valachi and make it look as if he were cooperating, Federal Bureau of Narcotics agents visited Valachi regularly. The idea was to make Genovese paranoid around Valachi. That would put the fear of death into Valachi and that pressure on Valachi would cause Valachi to flip. This was a ruse that would later be used at Sandstone Prison by the FBI unsuccessfully against Frank Sheeran to get him to talk about the Hoffa disappearance. In Valachi’s and Genovese’s cases it worked.

Vito Genovese walked up to his soldier, Joe Valachi, and, according to Valachi’s testimony, Genovese slowly and thoughtfully said, “You know sometimes if I had a barrel of apples, and one of these apples is touched…not all rotten but just a little touched…it has to be removed or it will touch all the rest of the apples.”

Genovese grabbed his soldier’s head with both hands and gave Joe Valachi the “kiss of death” on the mouth.

When Valachi used a lead pipe on the first inmate to approach him and killed the man, the ruse had worked. To avoid the death penalty and in exchange for a life sentence, Joseph Valachi gave Jimmy Hoffa and his friends one more reason to hate Bobby Kennedy.

Bobby Kennedy was the first witness called by Senator McClellan before Joseph Valachi spoke at the September 1963 hearings. Bobby Kennedy told the committee and a nationwide television audience that “because of intelligence gathered from Joseph Valachi…we know that Cosa Nostra is run by a commission and that the leaders of Cosa Nostra in most major cities are responsible to the commission…and we know who the active members of the commission are today.”

“
Just after the Valachi hearings Jimmy’s lawyers got the jury-tampering trial postponed until January 1964. And then for some reason or other the judge made a change of venue to Chattanooga because something was going on in Nashville. We were all going to be dancing to the “Chattanooga Choo Choo” for the New Year.
”

On November 8, 1963, the same Nashville police officer who had reported on Tommy Osborn during the Nashville Test Fleet case reported on Osborn again to the Get Hoffa Squad regarding an attempt to tamper with a member of the Nashville jury pool in the upcoming jury-tampering trial, then scheduled for early 1964. This time the Get Hoffa Squad got the goods on tape and reported it to Judge Miller, as chief judge of the court.

Judge Miller called Tommy Osborn into his chambers and confronted Osborn with an allegation from the Nashville Police that Osborn had solicited a Nashville police officer to seek out and bribe a prospective juror with an offer of $10,000 for a vote of acquittal. The prospective juror would get $5,000 should the juror be selected for trial and an additional $5,000 when the jury subsequently reports itself hopelessly deadlocked. Initially, Osborn denied the allegation. Judge Miller then told Osborn that the police officer who had reported the clumsy solicitation to the Get Hoffa Squad had secretly tape-recorded a confirming conversation with Osborn. Tommy Osborn was given a Rule to Show Cause why he should not be disbarred. Osborn reported the matter to Bill Bufalino and Frank Ragano. Osborn returned to the judge and admitted that it was his voice, but that it was the police officer’s idea and Osborn did not intend to follow through on the idea. In other words, Osborn merely had been puffing, talking tough. Ultimately, Osborn would be convicted in a separate trial and serve a short prison sentence. Upon his release from jail, filled with despair, he would shoot himself in the head in 1970. But in late 1963, Jimmy Hoffa’s lead counsel for his upcoming jury-tampering trial awaited word on whether he would be disbarred for yet more jury tampering.

Considering the city of Nashville to be contaminated beyond repair, the judge granted the defense request to move the trial to Chattanooga for January 1964.

“
One morning, a few days to a week before November 22, 1963, I got a call from Jimmy to go to the pay phone. When I got there the only thing Jimmy said to me was, “Go see your friend.”

I drove up to Russell’s and when he answered the door all he told me to do was, “Go see our friends in Brooklyn. They’ve got something for you to take to Baltimore.” That was not like Russell. He was setting the tone for whatever this was.

I turned around and drove to Monte’s Restaurant in Brooklyn. It was a hangout for the Genovese people. It’s the oldest Italian restaurant in New York City. It’s in South Brooklyn, not far from the Gowanus Canal. Excellent food. To the left of the restaurant they have their own parking lot. I parked and went in and stood at the bar. Tony Pro got up from his table and went to the back and returned with a duffel bag. He handed it to me and told me, “Go down to Campbell’s Cement in Baltimore where you went that time with the truck. Our friend’s pilot will be there. He’s waiting for this.”

You didn’t have to spend all that time in combat to know you had a duffel bag with three rifles in it. I knew it was rifles, but I had no idea what it was.

When I got there, Carlos’s pilot, Dave Ferrie, was there with another guy I knew from Monte’s who was with Genovese. He’s gone now, but he has a nice family. There’s no reason to bring his name into it. He said, “How’s your friend?” I said, “He’s doing good.” He said, “You got something for us?” With the tone Russell had set, I didn’t even get out of my car. I gave him the keys. He opened the trunk, took the bag, we said good-bye, and away I went home.
”

At the time of this exchange at Monte’s, Provenzano was out on appeal from a June 13, 1963, labor-racketeering conviction. His bagman and fellow defendant, Michael Communale, a former Hudson County prosecutor, was also convicted. The June 1963 conviction would ultimately send Provenzano to Lewisburg prison for four and a half years, and because it was a labor-law violation he would be barred from union activity for five years after his release. During the trial
New York Post
writer Murray Kempton identified Provenzano as the “highest-paid labor boss in America.” At that time he was earning more salary from his three Teamsters posts than Jimmy Hoffa and more than the president of the United States.

Bobby Kennedy was the very visible driving force behind Provenzano’s labor-racketeering conviction and hailed it roundly in the press. Provenzano in turn condemned the attorney general’s tactic of sending investigators out to question his friends, neighbors, and, most unforgiveably, his children. The
New York Times
reported that Provenzano had denounced Kennedy “in terms so obscene that the television film was unusable and reporters were unable to find a direct quote they could print.”

In Nashville on November 20, 1963, Judge Miller disbarred Tommy Osborn.

Two days later, November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

Among the telephone calls a bereaved Bobby Kennedy made about those he suspected of involvement in his brother’s murder was one to Walter Sheridan. Bobby Kennedy asked Walter Sheridan to check out the possible involvement of Jimmy Hoffa.

“
The union hall in Wilmington, Delaware, was down near the train station at that time. It was still a part of Local 107 in Philly. I had some union business down there and I had to stop at a couple of trucking terminals on my way down. When I walked into the union hall it was on the radio that Kennedy had been shot. When I first heard the news about Dallas it bothered me like it bothered everybody else in the world. He wasn’t one of my favorite people, but I had nothing personal against the man, and he had a nice family. Even before Ruby whacked Oswald it crossed my mind whether it had anything to do with that matter at Monte’s. I don’t have to tell you there was nobody you could ask about something like that.
”

All the flags in Washington were put at half-staff as the news of the assassination spread and everyone who worked in or out of the government was sent home. When Jimmy Hoffa learned that International Vice President Harold Gibbons of St. Louis had put the Teamsters headquarters flag at half-staff and closed the building, Hoffa flew into a rage.

“
Jimmy never forgave Harold Gibbons for putting the flag at half-staff. I told Jimmy, “What was he going to do? All the buildings were at half-staff.” Jimmy wouldn’t listen to me. Later on when Jimmy was going off to school I told him to put Harold Gibbons in charge of the day-to-day instead of Fitz. There was no more dedicated or finer union man than Harold Gibbons. All Jimmy said to me was, “Fuck him.”
”

On the day of President Kennedy’s funeral procession, while the whole world mourned the young fallen commander in chief of the United States of America, Jimmy Hoffa went on television in Nashville to blast the government for framing Tommy Osborn and disbarring him. Hoffa said, “I feel that it’s just a travesty of justice. That the government, the local officials, and the judges should have any part of trying to set up and entrap him and be able to take away from me a competent lawyer to represent me in my case.”

Then, darkly relevant to the day’s heartrending and solemn funeral, Jimmy Hoffa gloated to the Nashville television audience and said, “Bobby Kennedy is just another lawyer now.”

 
chapter nineteen