"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran & Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa (49 page)

On October 27, 1979, a month after his indictment and several months before his RICO trial, the
New York Times
also ran a profile and included a photo of Sheeran sitting at a bar with a whiskey in front of him. The article quoted Sheeran, “Anything I got I owe him. If it wasn’t for Hoffa, I wouldn’t be where I am today.”

An FBI 302 report quotes Charlie Allen on those years immediately following Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance: “Sheeran is a very heavy drinker and is drunk almost every day of the week.”

The report also contains Charlie Allen’s opinion of the kind of person who could have been in a position to kill Jimmy Hoffa: “It had to be somebody that knew him to set him up, you know, it had to be somebody he knew really good to get him in the car. Jimmy was a powerful man and you just didn’t walk up to him and take him like that, you know, it had to be somebody that really knew him to get him in the car and do whatever they did.”

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In 1977 they took me in front of another grand jury. This one was in Syracuse. The FBI gave me advice that it was time for me to be a rat. The federal judge gave me limited immunity, so I had to answer questions at the grand jury. They had the Andretta brothers there, too, and they asked me if I knew them. I said I keep meeting them at grand juries. The prosecutor asked me if Russ ever had me shoot anybody. Later on that week they asked Russ if Frank Sheeran had anything to do with whacking anybody, and Russell said, “Not to my knowledge. To my knowledge the Irishman is a big pussycat.”

They asked me questions about the pad Jimmy had at Lake Orion with “Russ & Frank” written on it. They asked me questions about the Pad, a private club in Endicott, New York, for Russ’s family. I told them I went to the Pad to play the Italian fingers game “Amore” to see who gets to be boss and underboss to decide who gets to drink the wine. They asked me about matters I had done with a guy named Lou Cordi. They had particulars. After the grand jury, Russ told me that to die in peace Lou Cordi had done a deathbed confession. Like with John Francis, nobody blamed Lou Cordi for talking while he was dying and under medication, making his peace.

They had me in Syracuse for nine hours. They heard a lot of the lessons on testifying that I had learned from Jimmy: “If you could refresh my recollection on that matter I might be able to recall what you want me to recall, but at this particular time I do not recall the particulars of that particular matter.”

About a year later I was standing in the Cherry Hill Inn in Jersey getting ready to leave after having a few drinks, when my driver, Charlie Allen, leaned over and asked me, “Did you kill Jimmy Hoffa?” I said, “You rat, motherfucker,” and the FBI came out of the walls to surround Allen to protect him. The restaurant was crawling with agents who had been listening in on Allen’s wire. They thought I was going to whack him on the spot.

Whenever anybody says, “Did you…?” it’s time to pick up your check and leave. The only way Charlie Allen asks that particular question at that particular time is that the feds decided it was time he got around to asking it.

I had a .38, so while they were surrounding Allen I ran to my Lincoln and drove up the off-ramp of Route 72, bucking traffic. I got to the Branding Iron and gave my piece to a woman friend I knew. She put it in her purse. They walked in and she walked right past them and out the door.

They asked me to go out to their car with them. I did and one of the agents said they had me for two life sentences and 120 years. I said, “How much time do I get off for good behavior?”

The agent said that if I wore a wire against Russ and Angelo I would be guaranteed to be back out on the street in ten years. I told him, “This must be another case of mistaken identity.”

The agent said they had me nailed solid for two murders, four attempted murders, and a long list of other felonies, and if I didn’t cooperate and let them protect me I’d end up dead from the mob or I’d die in jail. I said, “What will be will be.”

The way they got me in the first place is that they caught Charlie Allen operating a methamphetamine lab in New Jersey. Naturally, Allen didn’t want Angelo or Russell to know he was moving meth. Naturally, Allen didn’t want to go to jail forever on the meth lab, and naturally, Allen knew the feds would do anything to get me because of the Hoffa case. The feds ended up giving Allen two years in jail. But then the State of Louisiana got him for life for baby-rape of his stepdaughter.

I had a RICO indictment against me that named about twenty unindicted coconspirators, including Russell and Angelo. Angelo was already whacked by the time the case went to trial, but there were a lot of other important people who did not want to see the government convict me of crimes I allegedly did with them, or they could be next. On the first day of my federal RICO trial in February 1980, the FBI went to my attorney, F. Emmett Fitzpatrick, to warn him that they had gotten word from one of their sources that my unindicted coconspirators were concerned that when I got convicted I was going to flip and so they had a contract out on me. I told Emmett to ask them who had the contract so when I saw the guy coming I could get off first.

One of the murders they put on me was the Fred Gawronski shooting that Tommy Barker had already beaten on self-defense. Charlie Allen claimed I ordered the hit because Gawronski spilled wine on me. Emmett beat Charlie Allen to death on cross-examination.

During a break in the trial I saw an agent named Quinn John Tamm talking to my teenage daughter, Connie. I asked the prosecutor, “Hey, Courtney, how many murders do you have on me?” He said, “Two. Why?” I said, “If Tamm ever talks to one of my daughters again you’re going to have three.” Later on, somebody jumped from behind a bush and threw a blanket over Tamm. Blanketing a guy is a message to let him know how vulnerable he is. It startles a guy and by the time he gets the blanket off him the guy who threw it is long gone. Tamm came to court and called me a “motherfucker.” I just smiled.

After Emmett called his last witness for the defense, I said, “You’ve got another witness.”

“Who?” Emmett said.

“Francis,” I said.

“Francis who?” Emmett said.

“Francis me,” I said.

I always believe in testifying and making eye contact with the jury, especially if the government is painting a picture of you that you would have a guy whacked for spilling wine on you. Can you imagine what they have to be thinking when you look into their eyes?

“Jury Acquits Sheeran on All Charges,” they said in the headline in the
Philadelphia Bulletin.

My big problem was a couple of smaller offenses. They had my voice on the wire that Charlie Allen was wearing when he was on the payroll of Local 326.

I had a problem with a crane company. The manager had fired two of my shop stewards and he wouldn’t negotiate with me. The grievance hearing was coming up and I didn’t want this company manager showing up at the hearing. They claim I told Charlie Allen to give the guy a tune-up. Allen had me on tape saying: “Break both of his legs. I want him laid up. I want him to go to the hospital.” After that secret taping the FBI put a fake cast on the guy’s leg, and they had him show up at the hearing on crutches. The feds got me for that one in a state trial in Delaware.

The FBI also got me in that state for picking up dynamite from Medico Industries, a Pennsylvania manufacturer of ammunition that had big contracts with the government. Russell was a silent partner in Medico. The dynamite was for blowing up the office of the company that the guy with the fake broken leg worked for. I got a total of fourteen years.

The other big problem I had was that the FBI took down the license plate number from my black Lincoln that I had in Detroit when Jimmy disappeared. The feds found out that I bought the car from Eugene Boffa, who ran the company that leased truck drivers to freight companies and paid them substandard wages. I paid under the market value for the car, and I didn’t have all my receipts for the monthly payments I made in cash. They claimed I got the black Lincoln as a bribe to let Boffa pay substandard wages and fire some people. They claimed I got a white Lincoln a year later and that I got $200 a week from Boffa. They had a tape from Charlie Allen that had me saying that I split the $200 with Russell and “to hell with my union.” By then with Jimmy gone, everything was different.

After that conviction I told the
Philadelphia Inquirer
on November 15, 1981, that “the only man who was perfect got nailed to the cross.”

Agent Quinn John Tamm got the last laugh and he told the reporter I had “more lives than a cat until now.”

I was sixty-two years old and I got eighteen on top of the fourteen for thirty-two. I had bad arthritis and it looked like I would die in jail.

I did my federal time first. I spent the Reagan years as the president’s guest. They sent me to the United States penitentiary at Sandstone, Minnesota. It’s up near the Canadian border, and they get wicked wind up there. In the winter the wind-chill factor can go to seventy below zero.

Every so often the FBI would show up and call me out in the middle of the night. That’s the time snitches get called out when they think everybody else is asleep. The FBI waits for you in a separate building far away from the inmate population. To get from your block to where the FBI waits you have to walk outside a quarter of a mile. They have a yellow rope for you to hold on to to keep the wind from blowing you down. The wind chill goes right through a normal person. If you have arthritis and you’re walking real slow it’s an experience.

My old army buddy Diggsy Meiers swears that he got his arthritis because when he fell asleep in a foxhole in Monte Casino I stole his blanket. Those foxholes were filled with rainwater that was frozen over and you had to kick through the top layer of ice to get into the hole to avoid the shrapnel. I think that’s how we both got the arthritis to start with. In jail I kept getting more and more hunched over as the arthritis ate at my lower back and pressed on my spinal cord. I went into jail 6'4" and I came out 6'0". You didn’t have to talk to the FBI when they came, but you did have to go to them. They told me that they would move me closer to my daughters if I cooperated so it wouldn’t be so hard for them to visit me. I wear a ring on my right hand that has the birthstone for each one of my four daughters. They would tell me I had the keys to the prison in my pocket if I cooperated, and I would turn around and head back down that yellow line to my block. The next day I would call my lawyer to go on record that I had had a visit from the feds so nobody would have no doubt.

I met some good people in school at Sandstone. There was an old guy from Boston who was in for doing the Brinks job around 1950. In its day it was the biggest heist ever pulled. They put millions on the table. It took about seven years to solve, but they got them. They had a list of suspects right away, like they did with us. For seven years they just kept hauling them down for questioning, banging away until finally one of them broke and brought them all down.

Sally Bugs’s brother, Gabe, was in Sandstone. He went about 5'2". Gabe had nothing to do with what happened to Jimmy. He wasn’t even there, but the FBI kept him on the list because with Sally Bugs talking the feds would have figured he’d leave his brother’s name out. So they kept his brother’s name in.

When things got really bad with my arthritis, the warden at Sandstone sent me to Springfield in Missouri. That’s a prison hospital. Fat Tony Salerno was there dying of cancer. He couldn’t control his urine. Russell was there in a wheelchair on account of his stroke. With Russell there, I was back with my teacher, and I had the best teacher around. The old man played bocce from his wheelchair. He was older than I am now and he could still hit for his age. Every once in a while he’d give me a little shot when I beat him at gin. McGee loved his ice cream and I would make sure he got some every day, because you only got commissary privileges once a week. I would pay whoever had commissary that day to get me some ice cream for Russ. When I was in Springfield my daughter Connie had her first baby and Russell came out to the bocce court and gave me the good news. Russ had heard it from his wife, Carrie.

A couple of times when we were alone together we talked about Jimmy. I learned more about the thing, too, a few details. Neither one of us wanted to see things go as far as they did. We both felt that Jimmy did not deserve that. Jimmy was a nice man with a nice family.

One Sunday I was heading to the bocce court and I saw Russell being wheeled to the chapel by one of the attendants. I said, “Where are you going, McGee?”

“To church,” Russell said.

“To church?” I laughed.

“Don’t laugh, my friend. When you get to be my age you’ll realize there’s something more than this.”

Those words stayed with me all these years.

By 1991 I needed surgery or I would become paralyzed, so they let me out on early parole on a medical hardship. I was seventy-one. I was still on paper and the FBI kept trying to get my parole violated. They wired a guy who used to deal in sports tickets. His wife left him and she had all the money. She was going to divorce him, but he wanted her whacked before the divorce was final so he would end up with everything. He offered me $25,000 down, $25,000 after she was whacked, and then he would really take care of me after the settlement of her estate. I said, “I suggest you get a good marriage counselor.”