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You are now listening to True Murder The most Shocking Killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about him. Gasey Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Good Evening. Cold Country Killing, a culture, a union, and the murders that changed at all revolves around the cold blooded nineteen sixty nine assassination of United mind Workers of America reform candidate Jock Lablonski and the murder of his wife and daughter and their Pennsylvania farmhouse. But driving the story are the extraordinary efforts of a tenacious special prosecutor and his army and investigators to bring the gunmen, the union boss who ordered the murders, and his henchmen who
saw them carried out to justice. Initially, three bumbling small time criminals dubbed the Hillbilly Hitman, were arrested and charged, but what they were the tip of the iceberg, as the murders were directed by then United Mine Workers' Association president tough Tony Boyle as revenge for Yablonski running against him in the bitterly contested nineteen sixty eight Union election
and to prevent his corruption from being exposed. Up against the tight lip culture of Appalachia coal Country, Legendary Philadelphia homicide prosecutor Richard A. Sprague and his investigators spent nearly nine years doggedly working their way up the ladder of
those responsible to the final showdown with Boyle. Written by New York Times bestselling author's former New York County Assistant District Attorney, Robert K. Tannenbaum, a lifelong friend of Spragg's, and Steve Jackson, Cole Country Killing is a tour de force for those who love justice. The book that we're featuring this evening is Cole Country Killing, a culture, a union, and the murders that changed it. It all with my
special guest journalist, author, and publisher Steve Jackson. Welcome back to the program. Thank you very much for this interview. Steve Jackson.
Well, thank you, Dan. It's always a good, a great pleasure to be on your show.
It's always a pleasure to have you, Steve. Let's get right to what Robert Tannenbaum, your co author, had to say about really what this book is about. Can you tell us a little bit about what this book is really all about.
Well, this book in many ways is tribute to Bob Tannenbaum. New dis Bray worked with him, considered him a mentor. Dick Sprague was, as you noted, gendary prosecuting in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia in particular, went on to work federal cases and that sort of thing. But so in a way, it's a tribute to that, and it's a tribute to tenacity and the fight for justice no matter what, no matter
how long it took. This case basically took good eight years, I believe, maybe longer to resolve itself in the end, as mister Sprague worked his way up from the actual killers all the way up to the top of the United Mindworkers Association President tough Tony Boyle, which at the time was the most powerful union in the nation and the world. And so that was no mean feat with kind of a forgotten story these days and the United Mine Workers does not have the power they used to have.
But at that time, I was taken on the presidency in some ways, and certainly an autocrat who had absolutely absolute power over mind Workers and is the people who work for him and millions and millions of dollars at his call to to fight this.
Now, let's talk about December eighteenth, nineteen sixty nine. In a chapter you called the Visitors, and you introduced Joseph Yoblonski, fifty nine year old. Would you write about two men pull up the Yoblonski's two hundred year old farmhouse in a maroon sixty five Chevy Caprice tell us about this altercation?
Well, this was the intro to the book, and this is one of the tough Tony boyle. Eventually, as we find out in the book, we ordered the hit on his rival, JOCKI Leblonski, and that went from his immediate underlings to some other immediate underlings, to some others, and eventually got down to these sort of small time criminals who were related to one of these union officials who agreed to commit these murders on behalf of some guy
named Tony. They didn't really know who. If it wasn't such a tragedy, if what had not occurred occurred, the murder of three innocent people, it's almost a comedy. It's very Fargo like. As far as these these men who
were later dubbed the Hillbilly hitman. And this is two of them showed up at the front door and were landing on shooting Yablonsky at his home farm home in Pennsylvania, and they sort of got around to, well, you do it, you do it, you do it, and sort of made up an excuse that they are mine workers looking for some work and this sort of thing, and eventually just lost their nerve and walked away, which in some ways
is sort of okay. So what happens from this, and what happens is that Yablonski and one of his friends and one of his sons, I'm actually going to town to look for this part of these guys, because you Blonsky had a feeling that these men were there to kill him. And they got a license plate number and wrote it down with a pad and left it on a desk, which becomes very important to this investigation later.
So the idea that Ybonski recognized that these people were there for nefarious reasons. In fact, he said to his son, he thought, and he said to a friend, and he thought that these two people were there to kill him. So what happens afterwards in terms of the Sun warning him and other people warning him that his life would be in danger.
Well, we don't recognize it at this time, but United Mineworkers Association and the mine Workers, these guys come out of the nineteen twenties and thirties and a very bloody time as far as the union. They were fighting the Feds and fighting mine workers and the gun thugs, and they were used to violence. And including Jock Leblonsky, he'd been on the front lines and busts and heads as much as Tony Boyle was, so the idea of violence
was not known. And in fact, Jock, during his failed attempt at resting the presidency from Tony Boyle, had been assaulted and nearly killed. But he, you know, he's a tough guy, and he sort of blew a lot of it off for longest time, and then finally with this sort of visit, he started to take it seriously. We put some lights outside of his home, slept with a shot done next to him in his room, and he was starting to take it seriously that this could really happen.
But who expects to be assassinated in their home?
Going back just a bit, you say the election was held December ninth, nineteen sixty nine, and Boyle emerged as as a victor by a two to one margin. But with the victory came a deluge of allegations of fraud, tampering, intimidation, and ballock box stuffing, and Blonsky demanded that the US Department of Labor Secretary George Saltz look into the allegations.
But you write that the Labor Department, which politically didn't want to get involved in union business, said that they Yvlansky first had to exhaust his administrative remedies by taking his grievances to the union hierarchy. You say, a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse. So you say that Yoblonski doesn't give up though, even though no one seems to be wanting to help him investigate Boyle and the union.
Right, and Yublonsky has some allies at this time, a very tough Washington, DC based lawyer Joe Rausch, also Ralph Nader, who we all probably remember at least people in courage as an advocate for the underdog of these sorts of things.
And yeah he was. There's no denying that the election was fraudulent and corrupt, and all these things happened and Boyle did everything he could to make sure he won, and actually, you know, going to all that stuff, he did win, but Yablonski wasn't giving it up, and he was suing and they brought a number of different lawsuits and we're trying to force the Department of Labor, which
up until this point had looked away politically. The United Mineworkers Association at this time they're a real power broker. The presidents would go to them for advice, and they had all sorts of politicians and judges on their payroll, and so it was tough to get anything going. But he wouldn't give up. He's a tough guy and he
had some tough allies with him. And at this time mineworkers were finally getting tired of the autocratic nature United Mineworkers' Association, which had started back with legendary John Lewis and had gotten even more corrupt with Tony Boyle. And the danger for Boyle was he'd won the election, and you know, there could have been something with having to redo the election, and who knows from there. But what he was really afraid of was that there was a
very large slush fund. A lot of money was being siphoned from the retirement funds and pension funds and medical funds for the mine workers. And he is afraid that if the FEDS really did start looking into this, this would all come out.
You're right, it's quite a bit of the book, but we can talk about it just a bit. Is the background of these people, where these workers came from, and their history, to try to explain the nature and the culture of this coal mining industry.
Right, and it went back several hundred years from here. It's the Appalachians early on anyway, were mostly settled by other than the Native Americans who were there first. Obviously, was settled by Scott's Irish who came over from the Ulster plantation. And the Scott's Irish we're used to fighting, you know, they've been fighting the English. They've been fighting
the Irish. They had been They had a very low opinion of governments, in a very low opinion of law enforcement because the government and the law enforcement had never been on their side. So they came to America or the colonies at that time, for freedom and freedom from government and freedom from a law enforcement that did not
enforce the law when it came to them. And they made their way west where there weren't so many restrictions and they could get away from society that looked down on them, and made their way up into the hills and the vales and mountains of Appalachia from New York down to the Carolinas and west to Ohio. And a very independent, very insular, very church like religious group of people who believed in the loyalty to each other and
first of all and to the people. They gave a loyalty to their leaders, very honest, believed in right and wrong and what happens to you between heaven and hell, and to tell the truth, the Americans probably the Americans would have probably lost the Revolutionary War without them, because the English made the mistake of challenging them and learned a hard lesson in New Yorktown. All that sort of stuff doesn't happen without the Scots Irish in Atalacia coming
out of the mountains. And then later on Cole gets discovered in Appellation. Suddenly these lands that had been mostly farms and some timber and livestock and that sort of thing become valuable to other people, and they use the Scots Irish who are living there as their labor force and bring in other people. But the Scots Irish are so insular and so together as a people that even these people that were brought in soon adapted and adopted
their way of looking at life. And so we get to the cold Wars of the nineteen thirties and the forties when the Union was trying to establish rights for workers and some health things and pensions and that sort of effort. And as I said before, these were bloody. These were not sitting down and talking about what we should and shouldn't do. These were full fledged shooting wars between the FEDS and the law enforcement and mind owners and their hired thugs on one side and the Union
on the other. So the Union members developed a very very strong loyalty towards the Union. It was the only thing that spoke up for him, is the only entity that they could rely on to reliably stand between them and these other forces. So that makes its way into this case, both at the beginning with not talking and not in parts painting in the cover up to in the end basically what breaks the case for Sprague.
You talk about the Union's main emphasis was on combating the exploitation of mind workers and changing working conditions for the better. And the main tactic was to call a strike, shut down production and until demands were met, and this cost operators money and control. How did the mine operators respond and tell us a little bit about exploitation in terms of company towns.
The mine owners are responded by hiring what were known as gun thugs at the time, which included the Pinkerton Agency, detective Agency, and some others who were basically hired, you know, in some cases actually murder and intimidate and the mineworkers. And these company towns they are basically set up by the owners where the owners owned the property, they owned the homes, they owned the growthrough stores, they owned the schools.
And in fact, sometimes mineworkers didn't actually receive pay. They received shits which they could use to buy groceries at the grocery store, but were worthless anywhere else. But she kept them in that type of indentured servitude. And so, you know, the mine owners, it took a lot for mineworkers and the union to get in here and say
there could be a better way now. At some point there the union sort of lost its way as far as the black lung remained a problem right into Tony Boyle's era, and they weren't dealing with it, which is one of the reforms that joh Leblonski was trying to correct.
Mine workers pay was remained down in part because of the threat of oil and gas starting to become a new thing as far as energy in the United States, which the mine workers hierarchy used to keep people online is that if you don't pay attention to US oil and gas and people like that are going to come
in and you'll be out of jobs. And because mine workers basically had very little education and had very little choice or opportunity to do anything except for mine, Cole had to pay attention or what were they going to have nothing?
Basically, he talked about legendary Lewis and he is retiring after forty years and names a successor. Why was Leblonski not picked and why was Boyle picked?
Rather hard to tell, you know, in some cases you hear that John Lewis liked Yablonski and kind of talked to him about he would be this successor. He actually picked another man as Sullivan. I believe Kennedy Boyle was his vice president and some of that, I think is the loyalty. I think Lewis wanted that absolute loyalty. I think Yablonsky at this point and time, is starting to have question that whether the leadership of the Union was
doing the right thing. And you know, Tony Boyle was able to talk himself into that position of power so that when the appointed successor grew ill and then eventually died, Boyle had the reigns of power, could now fix the balloting for the presidency and essentially got himself elected.
You talk about Joseph Leblonski working with Boyle despite having major differences with him, but also his background was that he had joined his father in the Minds and his father had died in a mining accident, so changing Leblonski's attitude somewhat in his career.
Yeah, Yablonsky is an interesting character in that he is not in a sense of all this the corruption and this power being used for the sake of power within the Union. He became an official and he went along with a lot of Lewis first and then Boyle later. He believed very much in the Union and some of that does go back to he started as a child
in the Union in their minds. And then his dad was killed in a mining accident, so and then he of course was on the front lines in these battles in the nineteen thirties and into the forties, and so he had a lot of loyalty to the Union and went along with things. And he later admitted that he went along with some of the things that were wrong and the idea that they may be wrong, but the Union was better than what they had before, and it
was better than anything else around now. I think once Boyle was in there and still nothing was being done about black lung and better pensions and this sort of thing, he had a change of heart. Maybe his conscience started taking over for him, and he was starting to listen to people like Ralph Nader and Joe Rausch and about,
you know, do the right thing here. And eventually he decided that that's what he would do, is that he would try to get the presidency, which had never been an open, truly democratic vote, and it made changes and start to make changes.
You say that part of the what he was influenced by. Leblonsky was November twenty, nineteen sixty eight November twentieth in Farmington, West Virginia. You writed a dragon awoke beneath the mountain, an immense explosion in Mountaineer Coole Company number nine, mind, very powerful explosion. And then in May twenty ninth, nineteen sixty nine, Jock Levlonsky announced he was challenging William tough Tony Boyle for the American Miners Workers Association presidency.
Right, and you know, there's there's indications in the record that it was that explosion that final whole Mining has been the most dangerous occupation in the Americas practically since it started. The number of explosions and asphyxiations and fires,
and it's a very dangerous business. And for a long time with the federal inspectors who would come in and look at the mind and say you need to do this, or that he pulled us down, and do better with your fire suppression, things like that, but they had very little or did very little to enforce these things. Then the owners would basically say yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do it,
and we'll do better and that sort of thing. And then unfortunately, starting at the end of John Lewis and then into Boyle's era, is that they didn't press the owners. They didn't demand that these things be done because they're worried that the owners would say, okay, well we'll do this, but that means we got to cut a hundred jobs or that sort of thing. So and they sacrificed lives for jobs. And finally, this one last tragedy that killed bet one hundred and seventy five men. Numbers escaped him
me as well right now. But it was a horrible tragedy on a small town. And basically Tony Boyle came in there and said, well, we believe the owners did everything they could to make sure this didn't happen, and
I'm so sorry, and then he left him. And I think that was what really finally pushed Yablonski over the edge, is that whatever he had gone with up to this point, and he says this when he announces his candidacy, is that he had looked the other way and that it had been wrong and it was time to write this wrong and he was going to run for presidency.
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Now you talk about that to Boyle tried to punish Yablonski, accusing him of treason and also opposing union policies, and he proposed the resolution to fire him from his position as director of the non Partisan League. But you right, even with that victory, he wasn't done. And so we get to this historic date June twenty third, where Boyle meets up with William Turnblazer, president of District nineteen, and
Albert Pass in the hallway outside a meeting room. These guys are ardent Boyle loyalists, discussing events when Boyle walks up to them, and what does he say to turn Blazer and Albert pass in that hallway?
Now basically is that Yo Blonsky's got to go. You know, he's Tony Boyle. John Lewis had the loyalty of mine workers. He was a very charismatic man, great speaker, stood in the trenches himself, and so he attracted loyalty and didn't have to demand it. Now Oyle was different. He sort of was not John Lewis, but he expected the same sort of absolute loyalty. So anybody who questioned either his leadership or made him look bad or anything else like
that was going to be on his dark list. And Yoblonski was doing this, and Boyle didn't like him, so he was. He was concerned about Giablonski starting a grassroots movement that might actually make some inroads and replace him as presidency, which of course not only threatened his own power and his income, but revealed things like the slush fund that had been set up and some other things like that, and some corruption, maybe even lead to criminal charges.
So he finally, and just the idea that somebody dare speak poorly of him and be disloyal was enough to set a man like that off so he walked up to them and said, Yablonci's got to go.
Now he hatches this murder plot with these two people, how does he try or attempt how does he plan to hide the money trail itself for the assassinations that he is planning.
Well, he comes up with a pretty elaborate plan, which is to that they're going to form a fictation just committee called the Research and Development Committee, which is basically was to go into non union areas and try to recruit people to be union members. And so what they're going to do is they're going to hire or supposedly hire these twenty pensioners United Mindworker pensioners and give them money to go in and do this recruiting and that
sort of thing. But what really was happening is that it took this money twenty thousand dollars and wrote checks to these pensioners with the orders to go cash the checks and bring the cash back to Albert Pass and turn Blazer. And this money is what they use to hand down a little bit farther down the line and then from there to the killers. And this was to hide the money trail. These pensioners weren't told what it
was going to be used for. But you know, they knew that this wasn't on the up and up, and eventually as this started coming out, they knew what it was being used for. It's just then now they're faced with loyalties to the union. They're being told, or we're told that John Leblonski was working for the oil and
gas companies, which was tantamount to absolute treason. This was a threat to their lives, their livelihoods, their kids, their grandkids, their health benefits such as it were, which weren't good. So now they're being told that the choice is between this guy who's talking this game about the reform and all these sorts of things, but it's actually working for the oil and gas companies and the demise of coal miners and you know, the loss of jobs and the
loss of their pensions and the loss of everything. So that's how they tried to hire to hide them.
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plus to your subscription today now. An instrumental person in all of this is Silas Huddleston, and he went to see his daughter Annette Gilly who lived in Cleveland with her husband Paul, and you write that she was considered a tough cookie. She had been abandoned by her father ironically when after her mother died and he walked out of the home and left her to live with her aunt. But regardless, he comes to and trusts his daughter Inette.
What is the conversation and what does he asking net to do for him on behalf of him?
Well, basically, the find someone, you know, her husband who's willing to kill somebody, some guy named Tony. You know, they're to kill this guy, Yablonsky in Pennsylvania, who was you know, just basically described as a union official on behalf of some guy named Tony who was upset with him. And you know, here's here's the blood money, or here's
what's being offered for the blood money. And you think Paul will do this, And so she went and asked Paul, and he got a couple of his buddies and they all agreed that they could pull this off.
You had mentioned an almost far Go esque comedy that these guys were involved with, not so funny in the end, but the idea that they recruited a couple of people. This is Veally and Martin and another guy named Phillips tell us a little bit about this foolishness that these guys undertake. Certainly not professional assassins by any means.
No, and Martin kind of comes along a little bit later after Phillips finally says this is this and nuts because they try to go find Blonski in Washington, DC and get lost or have a flat tire, or you know, go to the wrong house or it turned away, or
you know, it's just one thing after another. One time, the three of them, Phillips and Gilly go to the Yablonsky house, actually go out there and they're going to kill him, but nobody's home, so they stop and there are two of them, go into the house and they stop and they look around. They make some ham and cheese sandwiches in the kitchen, have lunch, and then go outside and Gilly, who was supposed to be waiting in
the getaway car, has actually taken off. He's freaked out, so he leaves them, and so they go hauling off down the road and he finally comes driving up and picks them up, and it really is just the three stooges trying to pull a murder off, and it just it really was just it's a tragic comedy in that they were just so inept at this until the end where they managed to do what they came to do with the help of Martin.
It's interesting that in their recon they had the Caprice and they were near Leblonski's home at some vantage point that they used, but there were more than one person that took down the license plate.
Well, they had used the car once when the two you described the beginning of the book, when the two went up there to kill Yablonski and got cold feet and left and went decided to have a couple of beers at the local beer hall, beat and left, and when decided to have a couple of beers at the local beer hall, and Yublonski and his son and friend went in there and took down the license plate numbers
of this car that Yablonsky hadn't seen them driving. So that was that's on a pad in the desk, And it just happened to be that at the same time that they were cased in this area that they drove us the home of two young and two girls, girl and her cousin who were playing a game of you know, taking down license plate numbers of cars that drove by the house sort of you know one of those, you know, there's an Arizona, we can check that off. There's a
why that sort of thing. And happened to see this Ohio license plate and took it down and wrote the number down on a pad. And this becomes very important later. It corroborates that this car was in the area. It matches the license plate number of the that Yablonski and his son and took down and left on the pad of his in his office. But just and this is I mean, it's it's serendipitous, but it's also shows the great detective ork investigative work that went into this story.
That FBI agents, you know, canvas this whole area and looking for anybody who might have seen something along these lines. And by this time, I think this girl is about fourteen years old, and she said, well, yeah, we happen to be playing a game that day, and I wrote, I write everything down in a journal, and happened to write this license plate number down, which is corroboration, which
is necessary. And this all, you know, the first time they find the license plate, they Yablonski's friend calls and finds out it belongs to Gilly's wife, Annette in Cleveland. So they have these numbers and these names, but you know,
that doesn't prove anything, doesn't prove that stuff. But then all of a sudden they have this girl and she says, yeah, they were driving around the neighborhood a few days before that, a couple of weeks before that actually, And so this is how this case was built was you've seen those picture puzzles that have ten thousand parts to them, ten
thousand pieces. And Brague and his FBI agents and the local agent, state police and the local police, they methodically put together this ten thousand piece puzzle with little things like this. Otherwise it doesn't happen.
Now you talked about that, and that Gilly is identified with this license plate, but also that the FBI learns fairly easy from canvassing. I guess that Villly and Phillips had been arrested for burglary in the fall of sixty nine, and Billy had hosted the bond for Vilely, and the witness had also heard Villy and Phillips molting off that he was spending blood money. He claimed that Billy and another had killed the little Bonski family. So he was talking.
So from that, they bring in this vally for questioning, don't they.
Yes, you know, it's one of those things where these typer crimes are just not committed by geniuses. So they get drunk shooting poolside. He wants to be a big man, so kind of talks about this, you know, this hit that got pulled off in Pennsylvania, and somebody hears about it, does the police, and so they eventually pull in Deally, who's not a rocket scientist by any means. I'm probably not a firecracker scientist, and they put screws to him
and they connect him. They pulled Gilly in, they pulled Martin in Phillips, and they're putting the screws on these guys and it's the old they're talking, you better talk, you know, so or who's going to crack first, and and that sort of thing. So Beally is the one who cracks first and gives it all up, or as much as he knows about it, all he really knows is that I was you know, they're killing this guy because some guy named Tony didn't like him.
It's interesting that when he asks for a deal, he thinks he has some leverage and he asks, well, I won't testify unless I get a deal, and Dick Sprague says no deal, and so as you say, really makes up his mind at the onset of the trial the day before to say I'll testify without a deal, and took his chances. Right.
Rage is a tough guy. And this back in the day where you know, prosecutors didn't just make deals just to clear their plates. You know, he believed in justice. He wasn't going to let this guy get to walk off with being part of the murder of three innocent people, or even get a light sentence for that matter, just because he testified against the other guys. You know, it's like testify and then we'll tell the judge you testified and take your chances. And Vally, I mean, this is
potential death in theality case. So Vially is sweating it out, sweating it out, and finally decides, yeah, he's rolling over. You know, because the difficulty for prosecutors and that's why, you know, the modern prosecutor messes up so much with all the plea deals. Going on is that you get a witness who was part of the crime, and all of a sudden he comes in there he tests spies
for the prosecution. Well, the defense attorneys turned that around and immediately starts saying, well, he's just trying to save his own hide. How this guy has admitted that he killed three different people and now he's trying to pin the rap on my clients to get out of it. And the prosecution, law enforcement is allowing him to do this.
And suddenly you have jurors saying, well, you know, maybe he is just doing this, maybe he did it all by himself, or maybe he's the main leader of this whole thing, And it throws casts doubt and now we start creeping toward that beyond a reasonable doubt and who actually ordered this, who actually committed it, who did what?
So Craig wasn't putting up with that. He knew he had a long ladder to climb to get to boil and if he started at the bottom with making deals and you know, having questionable witnesses and this sort of thing is going to be really tough to get there.
What's interesting about Claude really is that he gives this detailed confession, in particular where the murder weapons were dumped, and so you have this Mono Gahila River. Probably mispronouncing it, but they took some master divers and actually found both weapons, the revolver and the carbine. Also there was some film canisters that were stolen. Really told them about those, They
even found those, so remarkable police investigative work. It seemed miraculous that they could recover from the dirty river both weapons.
That's one of the most incredible parts of the whole thing. I mean, this is the Monongahela. It took me a while to learn how to pronounce that which this is. They had to jop through the ice to get there. They're diving in the dark. They're in there's muddy piece of wood floating down and terrible stuff.
You know.
They have a US Navy diver, they have an FBI diver, and these guys go down there and somehow find something the size of a revolver for one thing, and then they also find their carbine. And you know, it's not like you and it's not like really could say, well, they threw it from here exactly fifty feet over there and it sank. You know, directly from there. Rivers have you know, currents, things move, even something as heavy as a revolver or a carbine, and so it goes down
and it's different from where it was thrown. And you know, in these inexacts, this is that night. They're driving back at night. So just that alone was just wow, how did they accomplish that? And what sort of divine intervention did that take? And then they also had these film canisters that they had stolen. Basically Gilly had taken them thinking that, you know, this approved that we did what we said we were doing, and we were in the house in case we need some proof for who are
going to pay us? And it's like what you took that, you know, throw them? So they they pulled over the side of the road and they heaved them up in a field. And this is a snowy. We're talking January February. All this stuff is going on, and somehow they found that, I mean, it's the police work in this is nothing sort of incredible.
To add to that, forensic accountants were utilized and at United Mining Workers Association they found two those ten thousand dollars checks issued a week apart in September sixty nine each have been requested and letters sent from Albert Pass to Tony Boyle. So there was a money trail from Pass to Boil and back to Pass from him to pensioners. And Pass was known to be a close confident of
the union president, and so if he was involved. William Turnblazer, he was an attorney and president of District nineteen, was also involved.
Right, It was sort of there were some whip ups by Boyle, things that were left tough to explain. You know, there was no evidence of this R and I committee ever really existing, that they ever did any real work. They're basically counting on these pisioners to uphold the story. They were told, yeah, we went and did some work recruiting and you know that paid me for some sandwiches, I bought in a motel room and that sort of thing. And they were just counting on this absolute loyalty of
these guys to you know, stick with the story. You know, that's basically what Boyle kept putting out there through his henchman, was stick to the story. If everybody sticks to the story, you won't have any problems there. And if everybody had stuck to the story, it had been really tough.
Now, Dick Sprague, we're jumping ahead a little bit. He is ready to prosecute these guys. He decides to separate the two Mvilli's going to testify and Martin and Phillips and Gilly are going to trial. And the first to go to trial is you, right, is Martin? What happens
in this trial? You say that each trial of the three defendants was basically the same, bringing out the same witnesses, starting with Kenneth Yoblonski describing the horror that he found his family slaughtered in the home, and then just the necessary witnesses to frame the story properly. And then there were the testimony of Veley testifying against these defendants, and the verdict from the juries, which happened fairly quick after deliberation.
Right, Yeah, And he started with Martin because Martin was the toughest. That Martin committed more crimes, He committed more violent crimes. He was kind of a small statue guy, but he assaulted police officers and it was sort of the toughest of them all. And great figure that if he could get this guy, you know that the rest would start to fall into place. Because he was going to be the toughest and in a lot of different ways. Martin was sort of a small but he's kind of
a good looking guy. He used to wear his hair back in the as in the times, with the duct tail and the pompadoor, and you know, he had his own little fan club of young women who kind of screamed and yelled every time he came to the courthouse, and he'd wink and very self assured. A tough guy. And so Sprague decided he was start with him, knowing that if he could get this guy, then Gilly Gilly, who had refused to cooperate so far Healy had cooperated,
Phillips had come around to cooperate. Phillips wasn't at the murder scene, but he knew about everything leading up to it that Gilly might come around, and he knew Sprague knew that Gilly was the connection to Huddleston. In Huddleston up the l Ladder, Martin was just a a gunman and he did not have the connections into the Mineworkers'
Association that Gilly did. So Sprague new knew that he needed Gilly, and he figured if Gilly heard or saw that Martin was convicted, then he would start worrying about you know, here it comes to death penalty if I don't start talking.
He also talked about Annette Dave's in and confesses, which also motivates Huddleston her father.
Right, this is this sort of an avalanche theory that Sprague is working on that if he can push one rock down the hill by getting Martin and then well, first he gets Gey to testify because he needs that, or he can't get Martin and Phillips to testify, or he can't get Martin, and then you know, pushes that rock, pushes the Martin rock down the hill, and the Martin rock possibly gets Gilly to testify.
It.
Now we start Hilly starts talking about you know, his wife and his father in law, Huddleston, and now we start having this avalanche of rocks that are starting to come down, and he knows that this is these Basically, this is Boyle set this up like a mafia. You know Don would have done, Godfather would have done, is that he insulates himself by having a basically telling his henchman to tell some other henchmen to tell some other henchmen to get this done to insulate himself from this
getting back to him. So Spray has got to work his way up through this this chain, and he can't leap from Gilly up to Boil. You know, nobody knows enough until they get closer and closer that can actually say, Boylful was to do this, so he knows he's in for a long all. And I mean this will Lot Hall.
This is half a dozen capital murder cases over a period of seven or eight years, and working with we had needed to get and eventually get these pensioners to say, yeah, we were paid money and we were just cash the checks until us give it to our pass who is going to give it to somebody else. So I'm not sure there's a lot of prosecutors who would have looked at this case and been able to lay that kind of strategy out over that many years and that many cases to get from one end to the other end.
Let's use this as an opportunity.
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Everybody else stop per second for these messages. Now you write that. In nineteen seventy two, Boyle got a five year prison term and fined one hundred and seventy nine thousand dollars fifty thousand dollars also to pay back the union, but he was out on appeal. Also in June seventy two, the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty, which doesn't help Di Spray whatsoever. But the trial of Field Representative District nineteen, the district that said we'll get it done,
William Jackson Prader fifty two years old. This is March thirteenth, nineteen seventy three. You're right that Boyle knew if that Prader was convicted, that Boyle was in trouble. So what does Boyle and some other people do in terms of trying to help Jackson Prader. William Brady.
Well, they kind of called in the uh, you know, had everybody testifying that this is the line in the sand. If they get Prader, Boyle knows he's in trouble because now Prader can start talking about our pass and Boyle himself, he knows too much to just let him go. So you know, he's got to boil himself, goes in to testify and puts himself on the stand, and which is of course dangerous because now a Spray can question him and get him under oath on some things. So this
was the waterloo. This is where they either have to get Prader acquitted or there's going to be It's not over. There's still a bunch of trials, and there are a lot of things could have gone wrong, but this is where they knew they needed to hold the line or there was going to be some trouble down the line.
Tell us how Dick Sprague finally is able to get Tony Boyle to trial.
Well, there's a number of things that happen. Some of it is very interesting in that the work of some of the FBI agents and even in the case of a prayer where he's convicted and is talking about and tells his wife that, well, they convicted an an innocent man, and you know, and all this sort of stuff. And his own attorney came in and said, look, you're saying you're innocent and all this sort of thing. I think
we both know differently. And so what you're doing is you're leaving your wife and your sons to believe for the rest of their lives and your life bitterly that you were wrong and this is an injustice and this sort of stuff. Or you can do the right thing. You can both admit to guilth that you know that justice is being served and do the right thing as far as testifying them against these people farther up the line,
or you can just cling to this line. And so, you know, basically he comes around and agrees to.
Testify him, and what damaging things does he reveal in that testimony.
Some of the meetings, some of what is said, the money trail, who's connected to who, and they start to finally connect the people who are farther down the line, the hillbilly hitman. You know, at most they knew that some guy named Tony wanted this guy dead, but nobody, you know, they didn't know enough or didn't put two and two together enough to be able to say that it's Tony Boyle. You got to have more than some guy named Tony to connect something like this. This complicated
a case. So this is where this stuff starts to fall apart. And you know Albert passed and his connection to Tony and all the others. So this is where now they're starting to get to the higher ups, the people who could have stopped this, could have said something and didn't, but they can connect it now, start connecting it now to the higher ups and the Tony Boyle.
You write that in that trial there was a three hour deliberation. He was convicted of three counts of first degree murder and sent to prison. However, January twenty eighth, nineteen seventy seven, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania reversed the murder convictions after the jury trial of tough Tony Boyle and ordered a new trial.
Right, and this was the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. And that's as Bob In particularly in the book addressed this, you know, is a really questionable reasoning and overturning the original conviction based on some really faulty legal maneuvering, and it sort of shows the lingering power of United Mind Workers Association and tough Tony Boyle and this sort of saying that this decision was made so they overturned it.
And you know, of course the idea there is, you know, get this overturned and maybe we win the next trial, or you know, the government is willing to let it go, and some smaller thing and that sort of thing. But you know, Sprague went right back at it. He wasn't letting this go, so he just refiled and they prepared for trial again.
Yes, you also write the fates of Annette Gilly and her father, Silas Huddleston. You say, August seventy four, Judge Sweet found Huddleston sixty five year old, his daughter Annette was thirty four, and both of them guilty of second degree murder. But there was sentenced only four and a half years for murder and two years for obstruction, ten years probation. The pair were given new identities, you write,
and released from custody and sent outside of Pennsylvania. Hearn Blazer was sentenced to fifteen years for his testimony at the Prayer trial, which you say was pivotal, and all of the research and investment or research pensioneers received probation and suspended sentences. And you write about Albert Pass, who was originally sentenced to three life sentences. He is the person that wanted to tell the truth. And Albert Pass was the person that testified at Boyle's trial, didn't he Yeah.
Our passed at first in the first trial, refused to testify, refused to He was absolutely loyal to Boil through that. You know, even though he was going to go down. He was willing to go down. He was a tough, very tough union guy and willing to do this. But Boyle made a strategic err in that he basically tried to say, this is all Albert Pass's idea. District nineteen in District nineteen within the United Mindworkers' Association is sort
of legendary. This is Buddy Harlan, this is where the worst of the worst union war fights we're done, and Albert Pass was right in the middle of it. So Oil rather than returning loyalty with loyalty, I think we have now former president doing the same sort of thing where he throws loyal people under the bus. When did this with Albert Pass? And Albert Pass interesting guy, he had a child with severely handicapped child, that he was very as tough as he was, and many other things.
It's very tender with and his wife. And yet he the man he has given his absolute loyalty with two throws him under the bus and tries to say this is all his fault. I had nothing to do with this. These guys made these decisions on their own. So Albert Pass decides he's going to testify against Boyle in the second trial. Is that you know the loyals. He goes so far and I was as loyal as you could get,
and you tossed me in on the bus. And the only thing he really wanted was he as you noted, he got three life sentences, and this was true life in those days. There was no more death penalty at the time. He just wanted the possibility, even though he was pretty aged at that time, of one last time being able to get out of prison so that he
could see his child and his wife again. But Sprague didn't make any promises, didn't guarantee him this would happen, and in the end Albert Pass never made it back out of prison again, but he did testify against Tony Boyle, which pretty much did boil. No longer had any sort of escape. You know, he made a bad mistake, you know, to throw his one most loyal servant or or worker under the bus. And finally that was it, you know, he he'd kicked his lass guy.
Yeah, that was his undoing. It's interesting too, how you portray tough Tony Boyle as anything but tough once he gets in that courtroom. Before he gets in the court room, at press conferences, he's much different. But once in that courtroom, that facade baited, didn't it.
Yeah, he's doing the act and everything else. He actually tries to commit suicide one point and almost doesn't go to trial, trying to avoid it, but they goes into a coma, but comes out of the coma and eventually he has tried anyway, and then he's, uh, you know, shows himself as this frail old man in a wheelchair and you know, hoping for some sympathy from the jury of how could this this poor old man have done all these sorts of things he's being accused of and
and that sort of thing. But that's another thing about Spray is Sprague knew how to push this guy's buttons and got him to flash that anger and that ego and everything else. And you know, so Sprague was a master not just at putting together detailed cases, but as
a trial lawyer. You know, he knew how to work the courtroom, and he knew how to push the buttons on defendants and witnesses, and how to get the jury to look in the direction he wanted them to to see the defendants or the witness And there aren't many like to Sprague anymore.
Yeah, you're right, how relentless he was eighteen hour days, seven days a week, with a total recall of events and particulars. So it really benefited him, especially in this but his tenacity. You say that he will end up in the pantheon of the just.
Yes, I think that's Bob's wording. But if there is such a thing that and he proved it throughout his career in many other ways, many other cases. Yes, that he is what you wanted to prosecutor. I mean, he is fair. He didn't go after cases where he didn't think he could prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. He believed in the way the system should work, but was relentless in the pursuit of justice.
Yes, and he had an incredible winning record as well.
Yes he did.
I well, thank you very much Steve Jackson for coming on and talking about coal country killing, culture, a union and the murders to change it at all. For those that might want to take a look at this book, can you tell us about your social media website? Can you tell us about that?
Well, the easy way to find the book is to go to WBP dot bz slash CCK at WBP dot bz slash CCK for Coal Country Killing and that to take you right to the Amazon page and you can read about the book. Can also go to wild bluepress dot com and find that the book there, and I can either find it by going to my my pages on the website are just straight to the book and it will give you some information about it. But it
is it is. I've done I think a good dozen true crime books, and I think this was the most incredible of those as far as the investigation and putting together a trial and in the significance of it. This is you know, we've we've forgotten this case in a lot of places. But this is the end of the sixties. So you have John F. Kennedy has been assassinated, and Martin Luther King has been assassinated, and Robert Kennedy has
been assassinated. And while we often don't think of Union candidates for presidency as being in that same area, it was an assassination and a political assassination that reverberated through this country. It changed the entire culture of the United mind Workers' Association. It changed some of the culture in Appalachia.
Was that Jock Leblonski had wanted to instill, for instance, black Long associate in the Black Long, medical help for whole minders, better pensions, better income education, these sort of things, the things that Jock Leblonski tried to champion and was killed before he could instill. Still it they came to fruition, you know, in part because of his death.
Yes, I want to thank you very much Steve Jackson, Coole country killing culture, a union and the murders that change it at all. Thank you very much for this interview, and you have a great evening tonight.
You do, Dan, goodbye.
Thank you