Word: kierdorf
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Dates: during 1958-1958
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Pillows & Salve. Such brutality was plausible. Kierdorf had an arm-long arrest record, once served 27 months for armed robbery. On parole he had been made, at Jimmy Hoffa's insistence, a Teamster official like his ex-convict uncle, Herman Kierdorf (impersonating a federal officer, armed robbery), before him. As business agent of the 5,000-member Local 332, Kierdorf used brutal methods and produced satisfactory results. Once he tried to run over a stubborn employer. Said another: "You don't give him arguments." By brutal methods (see box) and by picketing until employers anted up money, Kierdorf...
...another explanation soon turned up. Studying Kierdorf's dreadful burns, pathologists concluded that the victim wore no bathrobe when he was hurt. Moreover, he had been dabbed with salve before he arrived at the hospital. A neighbor remembered a Cadillac at Kierdorf's house the night he was burned; another saw a similar car and Kierdorf's green station wagon return two hours later, watched Kierdorf and a companion make four trips to the car with pillows and packages. Police found charred flesh in the station wagon and house...
...There'll Be Another." More flesh and a fire bomb's fragments were spotted at a suburban Flint dry-cleaning shop mysteriously burned out the same evening; a passerby said he saw flames in the shop, noticed two men running, heard screams inside. Police decided that Kierdorf was accidentally burned during an arson job, taken home for first aid, finally dumped at the hospital. All this they put to Patient Kierdorf, who had already been told that he had no chance for life. From Kierdorf came a huskily whispered obscenity -no more. A few hours later he died...
What kind of man was Frank Kierdorf, Jimmy Hoffa's friend and business agent for Teamster Local 332 in Flint, Mich.? For a reading, a TIME correspondent tracked down a Flint businessman ("For God's sake, don't mention my name") who had had labor dealings with Kierdorf. The answer raises other questions. What kind of city is Flint? And what kind of nation is the U.S. when it lets Hoffa-type racketeering stand astride U.S. businessmen and workers? The report...
...first time I met Kierdorf was in 1956. He laid down a union recognition form and asked me to sign. He came right in here and laid it on my desk. We never had had a union before, and we never had been approached. If our employees wanted a union, we had no objections. We asked for a vote...