Jury Finds Boyle Guilty In 3 Yablonski Murders (original) (raw)
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- April 12, 1974
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I MEDIA, Pa., April— W. A. Boyle, the deposed president of they United Mine Workers of America, was found guilty tonight of three charges of first‐degree murder in ordering the “assassination” of Joseph A. Yablonski, a reformist election rival in the union.
The victim's wife, Margaret, and daughter, Charlotte, also were shot to death while asleep on the night of Dec. 30–31, 1969.
The Jury, in its verdict, affirmed testimony that the gunmen had? been paid with Mine Workers money authorized by. Mr. Boyle.
The jury of nine men and three women in the Criminal Division of the Delaware County Court of Common Pleas deliberated about four hours and then found Mr. Boyle, 72 years old, guilty of the maximum charge sought by the special state prosecutor in all of the Yablonski murder trials, Richard A. Sprague.
Mr. Boyle, who last December began, serving a separate three‐year Federal term for the illegal use of U.M.W. funds in the 1968 elections, could receive three consecutive life sentences for the murder conActions.
Kenneth Yablonski, whose parents and sister were slain, said with tears in his eyes: “You don't know how happy am. There's no words that can expiess.”
After the trial Mr. Sprague said “I would hope the public feels—and keeps its emphasis on—the fact that Boyle was prosecuted and convicted. . . .
“When someone like Boyle will literally make puppets of his own membership and use the money from his own union to pay for a murder, it shows an arrogance, it shows a complete loss of one's concept of responsibility.
“I think that too often happens to people at the top. And I think it's time that these people learn that they have responsibilities that they should live up to—and if they don't, good law enforcement can catch them and convict them. And that's the way it should be.”
Mr. Boyle's lawyer, Charles F. Moses, was given permission by Judge Francis J. Catania to file motions for a new trial within seven days, the first step toward an appeal.
The verdict was announced in the hushed and nearly empty courtroom at 6:25 P.M. by the, jury foreman, Clyde Parris, a Sun Oil Company laboratory supervisor.
Mr. Boyle, seated between his defense counsel and surrounded by three United States marshals and two Delaware County deputy sheriffs, shook his head as if in disbelief. He was led quickly from the courtroom, walking briskly with his head down.
Mr. Yablonski was 59 and a former U.M.W. board member. Unexpectedly, in 1969, he began an aggressive election challenge to Mr. Boyle's 10‐year rule as the miners' president, a $50,000‐a‐year job.
In 1972, after the Yablonski murders and Mr. Boyle's reelection, a court‐ordered and federally supervised re‐run of the election occurred. Mr. Boyle was ousted then by Arnold R. Miller, a miner and ideological follower of Mr. Yablonski.
Before the jury began deliberating, Judge Catania delivered to the panel a charge that lasted more than two hours.
The state's evidence, “if believed by you, would indicate that it was a conspiracy to kill Joseph Yablonski,” the judge told the jurors.
At least twice, explaining Pennsylvania law, the sternfaced, 54‐year‐old judge said that Mr. Boyle could be found “as guilty as the actual felons who committed the murder” if the jurors believed the prosecution's assertions that he had been both an accessory before the fact and a continuing conspirator in the Yablonski slayings.
On one side of the courtroom as the verdict was announced tonight sat the murdered reformer's sons, Kenneth and Joseph A., with two of the victim's brothers, Leon and Edward. Mr. Boyle's wife, Ethel, his daughter, Antoinette, and his brother, R. J. Boyle, were on the other side of the MOM.
Later, Mr. Sprague, the prosecutor, predicted that six of the eight other persons already convicted in the Yablonski murder plot would be sentenced quickly.
Aubran W. Martin, one of the gunmen, has been sentenced to death. William J. Prater, a U.M.W. official convicted as one of the conduits of the murder money, has received a life sentence. The, sentencing of the others has been deferred pending their appearances for the prosecution in this trial.
During the trial, which began April 1, the defendant's testimony under oath was contradicted repeatedly by prosecution witnesses including Miss Suzanne Richards. For 20 years she was the former U.M.W. president's closest assistant. Judge Catania told the jurors this morning that they “were justified” in disregarding all testimony by any witness who told “even one untruth.”
Mr. Boyle repeatedly denied any knowledge of the Yablonski murders, telling the jury that the crime had “sickened me.”
The state's case was developed by a team of investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Pennsylvania state police.
The three convicted gunmen, Paul Gilly, Mr. Martin and Claude Vealey, all of Cleveland, left a trail of evidence at and near the murder scene, the Yablonskis' Clarksville, Pa., farmhouse. Mr. Vealey was arrested 17 days after the bodies were discovered on Jan. 5, 1970.
Other arrests followed in February, 1970, and within two months the bureau had arrested five of the conspirators — the three hired killers, Mr. Gilly's wife, Annette, and her father, Silous Huddleston, a U.M.W. local union president in Tennessee.
Last Sept. 6, Mr. Sprague disclosed that William J. Turnblazer, the District 19 president, made a full confession during August, implicating not only himself but also naming Mr. Boyle as the “instigator” of the Yablonski killings.
In testimony here this week, Mr. Turnblazer said that on June 23, 1969, Mr. Boyle had taken Mr. Turnblazer aside at the union's headquarters in Washington, D.C., and, in the presence of another union official, ordered the “assassination.”
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