Word: yablonski
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...reform administration was up against its first great test, and it was widely acknowledged that if the "new UMW" could succeed in re-organizing a mine in Harlan County--for 15 years the stronghold of murderer and corrupt UMW president W.A. (Tony) Boyle--it could succeed anywhere. Reformer Jock Yablonski had feared to campaign there in 1969. The Boyle henchmen who slayed Yablonski, his wife and his daughter in their beds had done the bidding of District 19 officials...
...even need draft boards during the war because young men were enlisting like Tennessee volunteers; where eight-year-olds with distorted inbred faces and rifles in their hands stare blankly at the cars from a porch fronting a house with no plumbing, may be a TV. Where Jock Yablonski ran for president of the UMWA and got himself, his wife and his daughter murdered in their beds for it. And where things haven't changed since a long time ago when coal companies from Pittsburgh and New York and Philadelphia came down to buy up land for fifty cents...
...came to national fame when Pennsylvania named him special prosecutor to investigate the murders of Insurgent Mine Workers Leader Joseph Yablonski and members of his family. Sprague cracked the case by doggedly pressuring defendant after defendant until he had convicted everyone in the conspiracy, all the way up to U.M.W. President Tony Boyle. It was an extraordinary achievement that prosecutors will discuss for years to come. But now Sprague is out of a job. He has been suddenly and angrily fired...
Shot Dead. Finally, Boyle's leadership was seriously challenged in a 1969 election by Joseph ("Jock") Yablonski, a member of the U.M.W. executive board. Yablonski lost the election, but for daring to defy the leadership's code of blind loyalty, he, his wife and daughter were brutally gunned to death in their beds on New Year's morning 1970 -on the orders, it later came out, of Tony Boyle, who was eventually convicted of murder and is now in prison. The murders sent shock waves of indignation across the coal fields. Shortly afterward, Miller, who had risen...
...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...