MURDER BY CONTRACT The People v. 'Tough Tony' Boyle

Hardback. Shortly after midnight on December 31, 1969, 3 hired assassins entered the isolated Pennsylvania farmhouse of United Mine Workers (U.M.W.) rebel leader Jock Yablonski and emptied bullets into the sleeping Yablonski, his wife and daughter. In this riveting piece of investigative reporting, the author compresses the day-by-day accounts of the 5yrs of investigations and trials that followed - courtroom dramas that are ultimately the story of one man: Prosecuting Attorney Richard A. Sprague, whose relentless efforts finally brought to justice the man behind the slayings, U.M.W. President W.A. ("Tony") Boyle. Beginning with the first case, 'Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Aubran Wayne Martin', through the trials of the other two gunmen, a father-daughter killer team, and two U.M.W. district officers, Sprague masterminded an investigation that spread through six states and involved over 150 witnesses. Slowly he began to unravel a massive conspiracy within the union, and trace $20,000 in blood money directly back to Boyle. Finally on April 10, 1974, Sprague's tenacity paid off: a jury convicted Boyle on 3 counts of murder in the first degree and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Caught up in the terror of the executions were professional dynamiters, Navy deep-sea divers, judges, lawyers, bankers, ministers, schoolteachers, anguished wives and children, and 23 fatally ill coal miners. With plots, counterplots, betrayal, graft, corruption, and, of course, murder, the Yablonski slayings will remain one of the most heinous crimes of the 20th century. And as Prosecuting Attorney Sprague has emphasised, the investigation also will be remembered for another reason: "This case becomes a noteworthy example of what can be accomplished when branches of law enforcement agencies - courts, F.B.I., Pennsylvania State Police, county sheriffs, and city police - are willing to forget respective rivalries, sublimate individual ambition, resist political pressure, and work toward a common goal." With Epilogue. 324pp. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. Lightly browned pp. o/w Vg+ in Vg. protected dw.