William Anthony Boyle | Murderpedia, the encyclopedia of murderers

William Anthony BOYLE

A.K.A.: "Tony Boyle"

Classification: Murderer

Characteristics: Murder for hire

- President of the United Mine Workers of America union

Number of victims: 3

Date of murder:

December 31,

1969

Date of birth: December 1,

1904

Victims profile: The union dissident, Joseph A. Yablonski, 59; his wife, Margaret, 57, and their daughter, Charlotte, 25

Method of murder: Shooting

Location: Clarksville, Pennsylvania, USA

Status: Sentenced to three consecutive terms of life in prison in April 1974. Overturned January 28, 1997. Resentenced to three consecutive terms of life in prison in February 1978.

Died in prison on May 31, 1985

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William Anthony "Tony" Boyle (December 1, 1904 - May 31, 1985) was president of the United Mine Workers of America union from 1963 to 1972.

Early life and union career

Boyle was born in a coal mining camp in Bald Butte, Montana, in 1904 to James and Catherine (Mallin). His father was a miner. The Boyle family was of Irish descent and several generations of Boyles had worked as miners in England and Scotland.

Boyle attended public schools in Montana and Idaho before graduating from high school. He went to work in the mines alongside his father. Shortly thereafter, Boyle's father died of tuberculosis in his arms.

He married Ethel Williams in 1928 and they had a daughter, Antoinette.

Boyle joined the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) soon after going to work in the mines. He was appointed president of District 27 (which covers Montana) and served in that capacity until 1948.

During World War II, Boyle served on several government wartime production boards, and on the Montana State Unemployment Compensation Commission.

In 1948, UMWA president John L. Lewis named him as an assistant to the president of the Mine Workers. He served until 1960, acting as Lewis' chief trouble-shooter and the union's chief administrator. Lewis simultaneously appointed him director of UMWA District 50 and regional director of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) for four Western states.

Presidency of UMWA

Boyle was elected vice president of UMWA in 1960. That same year, Lewis retired and 73-year-old Thomas Kennedy assumed leadership of the union. Kennedy had been vice president since 1947. Although Lewis favored Boyle as his successor, Kennedy was well-liked and well-known. Kennedy was in failing health, however, and Boyle took over many of the president's duties.

In November 1962, Kennedy became too frail and ill to continue his duties, and Boyle was named acting-president. Kennedy died on January 19, 1963, and Boyle was elected president.

Boyle was as autocratic and bullying as Lewis, but was not well-liked. From the beginning of his administration, Boyle faced significant opposition from rank-and-file miners and UMWA leaders.

Miners' attitudes about their union had also changed. Miners wanted greater democracy and more local autonomy for their local unions. There was a widespread belief that Boyle was more concerned with protecting mine owners' interests than those of his members.

Grievances filed by the union often took months -- sometimes years -- to resolve, lending credence to the critics' claim. Wildcat strikes occurred as local unions, despairing of UMWA assistance, sought to resolve local disputes with walkouts.

Yablonski challenge and murder

In 1969, Joseph "Jock" Yablonski challenged Boyle for the presidency of UMWA. Yablonski had been president of UMWA District 5 (an appointed position) until Boyle had removed him in 1965.

In an election widely seen as corrupt, Boyle beat Yablonski in the election held on December 9 by a margin of nearly two-to-one (80,577 to 46,073). Yablonski conceded the election, but on December 18, 1969, asked the United States Department of Labor (DOL) to investigate the election for fraud. He also initiated five lawsuits against UMWA in federal court.

On December 31, 1969, three hitmen shot Yablonski, his wife, Margaret, and his 25-year-old daughter, Charlotte, as they slept in the Yablonski home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. The bodies were discovered on January 5, 1970, by Yablonski's son, Kenneth.

The killings had been ordered by Boyle. Boyle had demanded Yablonski's death on June 23, 1969, after a meeting with Yablonski at UMWA headquarters had degenerated into a screaming match.

In September 1969, UMWA executive council member Albert Pass received $20,000 from Boyle (who had embezzled the money from union funds) to hire assassins to kill Yablonski.

Paul Gilly, an out-of-work house painter and son-in-law of a minor UMWA official, and two drifters, Aubran Martin and Claude Vealey, agreed to do the job. The murder was postponed until after the election, however, to avoid suspicion falling on Boyle.

Overturned election and defeat

Yablonski's murder sparked federal action. On January 8, 1970, Yablonski's attorney requested an immediate investigation of the 1969 election by DOL. The Department of Labor had taken no action on Yablonski's complaints while he lived. But after his murder, Labor Secretary George P. Shultz assigned 230 investigators to the UMWA investigation.

DOL is authorized under the act to sue in federal court to have the election overturned. By 1970, however, only three international union elections had been overturned by the courts.

Meanwhile, a reform group, Miners for Democracy (MFD), had formed in April 1970 while the DOL investigation continued. Its members included most of the miners who belonged to the West Virginia Black Lung Association and many of Yablonski's supporters and campaign staff. The chief organizers of Miners for Democracy included Yablonski's sons, Joseph (known as "Chip") and Ken, Trbovich and others.

DOL filed suit in federal court in 1971 to overturn the 1969 UMWA election. On May 1, 1972, Judge William Bryant threw out the results of the 1969 UMWA international union elections. Bryant scheduled a new election to be held over the first eight days of December 1972. Additionally, Bryant agreed that DOL should oversee the election, to ensure fairness.

Over the weekend of May 26 to May 28, 1972, MFD delegates gathered in Wheeling, West Virginia, nominated Arnold Miller, a former miner and leader of a black-lung organization, as their candidate for the presidency of UMWA.

On December 22, 1972, the Labor Department certified Miller as UMWA's next president. The vote was 70,373 for Miller and 56,334 for Boyle. Miller was the first candidate to defeat an incumbent president in UMWA history, and the first native West Virginian to lead the union.

Convictions and death

In early March 1971, Boyle was indicted for embezzling $49,250 in union funds to make illegal campaign contributions in the 1968 presidential race. He was convicted in December 1973 to a three-year sentence and imprisoned at the federal penitentiary in Springfield, Missouri.

In September 1973, Boyle was tried on first degree murder charges in the deaths of Jock Yablonski and his family. That month, Boyle attempted suicide but failed. He was convicted in April 1974 and sentenced to three consecutive terms of life in prison.

On January 28, 1977, then Supreme Court of Pennsylvania overturned Boyle's conviction and ordered that he be given a new trial. The court found that the trial judge had improperly refused to allow a government auditor to testify. Boyle's attorneys said that the auditor's testimony could have exonerated Boyle.

Boyle was tried a second time for the Yablonski slayings and found guilty in February 1978.

Boyle filed a third appeal to overturn his conviction in July 1979, but the motion was denied.

Boyle served his murder sentence at the state correctional institution in Dallas, Pennsylvania. He suffered from a number of stomach and heart ailments in his final years and was repeatedly hospitalized. He had a stroke in 1983. He died at a hospital in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on May 31, 1985, at the age of 83.

The Yablonski murders were portrayed in a 1986 HBO television movie, Act of Vengeance. Charles Bronson portrayed Yablonski and Wilford Brimley played Boyle.

Wikipedia.org

William J. Prater Is Dead at 70; In Prison for Yablonski Killings

The New York Times

August 12, 1989

DALLAS, Pa. — William J. Prater, a former official of the United Mine Workers serving life sentences for his role in the slayings of a union dissident and his family, died in his cell today, apparently of natural causes, officials said. He was 70 years old.

An inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas, Mr. Prater was found dead at 6:10 A.M., a prison spokesman said. ''He had been in poor health for some time,'' said the spokesman, Roy VanWhy. Mr. Prater used a wheelchair since suffering a stroke in 1983.

He was serving three consecutive life sentences for the murders. He had served 16 years in a Federal prison before being paroled on a civil rights conviction in the same case, but he was transferred to a Pennsylvania state prison in September 1988 to serve the life sentences imposed under state law. He was moved to Dallas later that year.

The union dissident, Joseph A. Yablonski, 59 years old, was shot to death along with his wife, Margaret, 57, and their daughter, Charlotte, 25, at their home in Clarksville, in southwestern Pennsylvania, on New Year's Eve 1969. Earlier that month, Mr. Yablonski lost an election for union president.

His opponent, the incumbent miners' union president, William A. (Tony) Boyle, was later convicted of ordering the killings. Mr. Boyle died in May 1985 while serving three life terms for the murders.

Mr. Prater, formerly of LaFollette, Tenn., was accused of helping to plan the killings, and he later cooperated with prosecutors in Mr. Boyle's trial. Mr. Prater, a mid-level union official, was also charged with helping to gather $20,000 in union money to pay for the killings.

Three men accused of carrying out the killings, Aubran Martin, Claude Vealey and Paul Gilly, were all convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Guilty on Three Counts

Time.com

Monday, Apr. 22, 1974

For more than four tormented years, Kenneth and Joseph ("Chip") Yablonski have waited for justice in the murder of their father, United Mine Workers Insurgent Joseph A. ("Jock") Yablonski, their mother and sister. Prosecuting Attorney Richard Sprague has labored relentlessly those same years, winning the convictions of three triggermen and four co-conspirators and working his way up to the suspected mastermind of the plot. Last week it was all over after 4½ hours of jury deliberation in Media, Pa.: "Guilty, in the first degree," droned the jury foreman. "Guilty, in the first degree," he said again and once again, leveling three counts of murder against former U.M.W. President W.A. ("Tony") Boyle. The conviction—which Boyle will appeal—carries an automatic life sentence.

Boyle, thin and haggard at 72, some times relying on a wheelchair, betrayed little emotion as he was led out of the courtroom, head bowed. Said Sprague: "I felt right back from the beginning that it was Boyle. I knew that I would never get to the top in one snap. It was going to be a slow process. Had we lost any one of the previous cases leading up to Boyle, the chain would have been broken."

For the case against Boyle, Sprague questioned more than 50 witnesses, including tobacco-chewing Kentucky pensioners who were entrusted with $500 checks for union services never performed, which they then returned to the union; they knew only that the money was part of an elaborate kickback scheme, not that it would be used for the murders. Sprague also placed on the stand FBI agents who had investigated the Dec. 31, 1969 killings. Each witness helped buttress Sprague's contention:

Boyle had authorized Yablonski's murder three weeks after the insurgent announced that he would challenge him for the union presidency. Said the prosecutor to the jury: "Why was Yablonski killed? To get rid of Yablonski's fighting spirit." As proof, Sprague questioned former U.M.W. Official William Turn-blazer, who recounted a June 23, 1969 meeting with Boyle at U.M.W. headquarters in Washington. According to Turnblazer's testimony, Boyle said: "We're in a fight. We've got to kill Yablonski. Take care of him."

In counterattack, Boyle's attorney, Charles F. Moses of Billings, Mont., attempted to prove that the murder conspiracy was a local plot in U.M.W. District 19 in eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. He offered little testimony to that specific effect, but tried instead to undermine the credibility of Sprague's witnesses.

Finally, Moses called Boyle to the stand. As Boyle rose to defend himself, his air of dejection suddenly disappeared. Once again he showed the argumentative, cantankerous spirit that had marked his nine years as U.M.W. president. "Did I have anything to do with the murder?" he asked rhetorically. "Absolutely not. It was a shock to me. I usually work a 14-hour day, but I went home early that day and was sick."

Boyle's testimony cracked under Sprague's 88-minute crossexamination. Despite Boyle's frequent pleas of poor memory, the prosecutor repeatedly trapped him. He denied sending Turn-blazer a transcript of a U.M.W. meeting outlining a phony alibi for union officials linked with the murder. Sprague asked why FBI agents had found Boyle's fingerprints on the document. The courtroom stirred at the news, which Sprague had dramatically withheld until Boyle's testimony.

As his arguments fell apart under questioning, Boyle tried a final tactic. "Jock Yablonski and I were very close friends," he said. "The day after I heard of the murder I put up $50,000 in reward money for the apprehension of the killers." Sprague then turned to Suzanne Richards, Boyle's executive assistant for 20 years. Richards said that it was she who proposed a reward—for $100,000 —and prepared a press release to that effect. "I gave it to Boyle, who said he'd think about it. Later, he said he was against any reward at all, but finally agreed to put up $50,000."

State Judge Francis Catania told the jury that under Pennsylvania law, if a defendant is found guilty of ordering a murder, he is as culpable as the actual triggermen. The jury's decision turned out to be easy. Said the foreman: "There were never any firm votes for not guilty."

The Fall of Tony Boyle

Time.com

Monday, Sep. 17, 1973

The killers slipped into the house at night, cut the telephone wires and set to work. The daughter was shot first, then the wife, who was trying to hide under the bedclothes. Snapped awake by the shots, the husband was reaching desperately for his own gun when he was cut down by a deadly volley of five bullets.

The man killed in Clarksville, Pa., that December night in 1969 was Joseph ("Jock") Yablonski, 59, a tough, gravel-voiced man who had been bold enough to challenge the rule of United Mine Workers President W.A. ("Tony") Boyle. He had charged that Boyle was ignoring miners' health and safety problems, that he had committed fraud and embezzlement, and that he ran "the most notoriously dictatorial labor union in America." The miners had listened favorably to Yablonski's call for reform —and then, three weeks before the murders, they had re-elected Boyle by a margin of nearly 2 to 1. The immediate widespread suspicion, almost impossible to prove, was that the killings were related to the bitter election fight and that Tony Boyle himself might have been involved.

Grumbling Locals. Boyle is a little man, pale and bald, quirky and tempestuous, often riven with anger. He has a habit of jerking his head around to look over his right shoulder. Born in a coal camp near Bald Butte, Mont., he came from a mining family, and recalls how his miner father, an Irish immigrant, "died in my arms" of consumption. Boyle inevitably went into the mines himself and, with his fiery temper, became a strong union man, eventually a top official of the Mine Workers in the West. But when U.M.W. President John L. Lewis summoned him to the union's Washington headquarters in 1948, he became the great man's caddy—a "glorified clerk," as he put it.

After Lewis' retirement, Boyle became president in 1963, and soon had to confront the fact that the U.M.W.'s fortunes had declined with the lessening demand for coal. The membership was down from 600,000 in Lewis' heyday to around 200,000, the locals were grumbling, and out in western Pennsylvania Jock Yablonski was calling for Boyle's scalp.

After the killing of the Yablonskis, the FBI, checking fingerprints left at the scene, quickly arrested three men: a house painter named Paul Gilly and a pair of young drifters, Aubran Martin and Claude Vealey, all from Cleveland.

Richard A. Sprague, the first assistant district attorney in Philadelphia, got Vealey to confess and then won convictions of Martin and Gilly. But Sprague was determined to find out who had organized the murders. He got Gilly's wife to implicate her father, a minor U.M.W. official named Silous Huddleston. Huddleston in turn said that the plot had been conceived in Washington, and that his boss in the scheme had been Albert Pass, a member of the U.M.W.'s international executive board.

Last spring Pass was convicted of first-degree murder, but he refused to accuse Boyle (who had lost the union presidency to Reformer Arnold Miller in a federal court-ordered re-election last December).

Minutes after the Pass trial ended, Sprague called a meeting in his motel room of the team that was pursuing the case: five FBI men, two Pennsylvania investigators and two of his own assistants. Sprague came up with some 20 leads to check out, including Pass's boss, William Jenkins Turnblazer, 52, president of the union's District 19 in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. Turnblazer was a good friend of Boyle, who had given him his job, but Sprague had a hunch that the mild-mannered unionist was a troubled man who knew something. Sprague asked FBI Special Agent Henry Quinn to go after Turnblazer very carefully: "Take all the time in the world."

It took Quinn a month and a half of gentle persuasion. Sometimes the two men would drive off together on the lonely Tennessee and Kentucky roads, talking for hours about every phase of the case. In mid-August, Turnblazer declared that he had something to say and agreed to talk while a lie detector monitored his replies. Told that "the box" showed that his account was incomplete, Turnblazer said. "O.K., here's the whole story."

Shouting Match. Turnblazer said that he had been present at a meeting on June 23, 1969, in the U.M.W.'s national headquarters, when Yablonski and Boyle had staged a shouting match that ended with each calling the other a crook. After Yablonski had left, Boyle took Pass and Turnblazer aside and told them: "This guy is going to murder us." Boyle then said that Yablonski "ought to be killed or done away with."

Three months later, said Turnblazer, Pass returned from a trip to Washington to say that Boyle had confirmed the slaying contract and that the two had figured out a way of embezzling $20,000 of union funds to finance the killing. Last week William Turnblazer made a formal confession of his own guilt and charged his old friend with masterminding and setting in motion the murder plot.

When they came to get Tony Boyle, now 71, he was giving a deposition in Washington on another union case. As it happened, he was being cross-examined caustically by Joseph ("Chip") Yablonski, the younger of the family's two sons, who was living away from home at the time of the killings. Since then, Yablonski has been helping to lead the pursuit of Boyle. "It's been a long wait," said Yablonski after watching the arrest. With an FBI agent lightly holding each of the little man's arms, Tony Boyle was led away.

Joseph Albert "Jock" Yablonski (March 3, 1910 – December 31, 1969) was an American labor leader in the United Mine Workers in the 1950s and 1960s. He was murdered in 1969 by killers hired by a union political opponent, Mine Workers president W. A. Boyle. His death led to significant reforms in the union.

Early life and union career

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1910, Yablonski began working in the mines as a boy. He became active in the United Mine Workers after his father was killed in a mine explosion. He was first elected to union office in 1934. In 1940, he was elected as a representative to the international executive board, and in 1958 was appointed president of UMW District 5.

He clashed with W. A. "Tony" Boyle, who became president of the UMW in 1963, over how the union should be run and his view that Boyle did not adequately represent the miners. In 1965, Boyle removed Yablonski as president of District 5 (under reforms enacted by Boyle, district presidents were appointed, not elected). In May 1969, Yablonski announced his candidacy for president of the union. As early as June, Boyle was discussing the need to kill him.

UMWA presidential candidacy

The United Mine Workers was in turmoil by 1969. Legendary UMWA president John L. Lewis had retired in 1960. His successor, Thomas Kennedy, died in 1963. From retirement, Lewis hand-picked Boyle for the UMWA presidency. A Montana miner, Boyle was as autocratic and bullying as Lewis, but not as well liked.

From the beginning of his administration, Boyle faced significant opposition from rank-and-file miners and UMWA leaders. Miners' attitudes about their union had also changed. Miners wanted greater democracy and more autonomy for their local unions. There was also a widespread belief that Boyle was more concerned with protecting mine owners' interests than those of his members. Grievances filed by the union often took months—sometimes years—to resolve, lending credence to the critics' claim. Wildcat strikes occurred as local unions, despairing of UMWA assistance, sought to resolve local disputes with walkouts.

In 1969, Yablonski challenged Boyle for the presidency of UMWA. In an election widely seen as corrupt, Boyle beat Yablonski in the election held on December 9 by a margin of nearly two-to-one (80,577 to 46,073). Yablonski conceded the election, but on December 18, 1969, asked the United States Department of Labor (DOL) to investigate the election for fraud. He also initiated five lawsuits against UMWA in federal court.

Murder

On December 31, 1969, three hitmen shot Yablonski, his wife Margaret, and his 25-year-old daughter Charlotte, as they slept in the Yablonski home in Clarksville, Pennsylvania. The bodies were discovered on January 5, 1970, by Yablonski's son, Kenneth.

The killings had been ordered by Boyle, who had demanded Yablonski's death on June 23, 1969, after a meeting with Yablonski at UMWA headquarters degenerated into a screaming match. In September 1969, UMWA executive council member Albert Pass received $20,000 from Boyle (who had embezzled the money from union funds) to hire gunmen to kill Yablonski. Paul Gilly, an out-of-work house painter and son-in-law of a minor UMWA official, and two drifters, Aubran Martin and Claude Vealey, agreed to do the job. The murder was postponed until after the election, however, to avoid suspicion falling on Boyle. After three aborted attempts to murder Yablonski, the killers did their job. But they left so many fingerprints behind, it took police only three days to catch them.

A few hours after Yablonski's funeral, several of the miners who had supported Yablonski met in the basement of the church where the memorial service was held. They met with attorney Joseph Rauh and drew up plans to establish a reform caucus within the United Mine Workers.

The day after the killing, 20,000 miners in West Virginia walked off the job in a one-day strike, convinced Boyle was responsible for the murders.

Aftermath of Yablonski's murder

Yablonski's murder sparked action. On January 8, 1970, Yablonski's attorney waived the right to further internal review and requested an immediate investigation of the 1969 union presidential election by DOL. On January 17, 1972, the United States Supreme Court granted Mike Trbovich, a 51-year-old coal mine shuttle car operator and union member from District 5 (Yablonski's district), permission to intervene in the DOL suit as a complainant—keeping the election fraud suit alive. After his murder, Labor Secretary George P. Shultz assigned 230 investigators to the UMWA investigation.

The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA) of 1959 regulates the internal affairs of labor unions, requiring regular secret-ballot elections for local union offices and providing for federal investigation of election fraud or impropriety. DOL is authorized under the act to sue in federal court to have the election overturned. By 1970, however, only three international union elections had been overturned by the courts.

Gilly, Martin and Vealey were arrested days after the assassinations and indicted for Yablonski's death. Eventually, investigators arrested Pass and Pass' wife. All were convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Two of the three assassins were sentenced to death; Martin avoided execution by pleading guilty and turning state's evidence.

Miners for Democracy (MFD) formed in April 1970 while the DOL investigation continued. Its members included most of the miners who belonged to the West Virginia Black Lung Association and many of Yablonski's supporters and former campaign staff. MFD's support was strongest in southwestern Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and the panhandle and northern portions of West Virginia, but MFD supporters existed in nearly all affiliates. The chief organizers of Miners for Democracy included Yablonski's sons, Joseph (known as "Chip") and Ken, Trbovich and others.

DOL filed suit in federal court in 1971 to overturn the 1969 UMWA election. After several lengthy delays, the suit moved went to trial on September 12, 1971. On May 1, 1972, Judge William Bryant threw out the results of the 1969 UMWA international union elections. Bryant scheduled a new election to be held during the first eight days of December 1972. In addition, Bryant agreed that DOL should oversee the election to ensure fairness.

On May 28, 1972, MFD nominated Arnold Miller, a miner from West Virginia who had challenged Boyle on the need for black lung legislation, as its presidential candidate.

Balloting for the next UMWA president began on December 1, 1972. Balloting ended on December 9, and Miller was declared the victor on December 15. The Labor Department certified Miller as UMWA's next president on December 22, 1972. The vote was 70,373 for Miller and 56,334 for Boyle.

Two of the convicted murderers accused Boyle of masterminding and funding the assassination plot. Boyle was indicted on three counts of murder in April 1973 and convicted in April 1974. He was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison. He died in prison in 1985.

Portrayal in popular culture

Barbara Kopple's 1976 documentary, Harlan County USA, included a segment on Yablonski's murder and its aftermath. It also includes the song "Cold Blooded Murder" (also known as "The Yablonski Murder"), sung by Hazel Dickens, about the murder.

The murders were also portrayed in a 1986 HBO television movie, Act of Vengeance. Charles Bronson (himself a native of Pittsburgh) portrayed Yablonski and Wilford Brimley played Boyle.

Wikipedia.org