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It’s the mid-1960s and there is a succession crisis in America’s most powerful union – the United Mine Workers. Jock Yablonski and Tony Boyle – princes of the UMW – clash for their boss’ throne. Meanwhile, a killer hunts Jock.

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TRANSCRIPT

Nicolo Majnoni: Friends Of The Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now. Join Friends Of The Pod at crooked.com/friends.

[voice over]: Campside Media.

Nicolo Majnoni: It had been a long year for Jock Yablonski, maybe the longest year of his life. And it had come at the end of a long and tumultuous decade. It was November of 1969. Jock was tired. So he did what he always did at 11 p.m. He sat back in his recliner, closed most of the curtains in his Pennsylvania farmhouse, and he turned on the evening news.

[news clip]: This is Bill Burns in the KDKA television newsroom—

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock was so immersed in the news that he didn’t notice the man lurking outside his house, the man who had been sent to kill him, a man named Paul Gilly. He’d been hunting Jock Yablonski for weeks by then. And now he’d made his way to Jock’s home, isolated in rural Clarksville, Pennsylvania. This is from an interview I did a few years ago with Paul.

Paul Gilly: I drove into Clarksville, that little town there where he lived. I parked up on that hill just above his house, just up on the hill above it.

Nicolo Majnoni: Holding a World War II rifle, the hitman crept up Jock’s porch, watching him through the window, taking in his mark. Jock looked exactly as he’d been described to Paul.

Paul Gilly: He was short, heavy set. And big bushy eyebrows, and  gray-headed, mostly gray.

Nicolo Majnoni: The two men had never met. Paul had never even heard of Jock before his father-in-law asked him to kill the man. This man with the bushy eyebrows reclining now in front of the news.

Paul Gilly: I didn’t know who he was, I didn’t know any of them. And my father-in-law was the one that told me about them. He told me Yablonski was trying to wreck the union and they wanted to get rid of him.

Nicolo Majnoni: His father-in-law said Jock was trying to wreck the union, the coal miners’ union, one of the most powerful institutions in America at the time. At its peak, a union with nearly 500,000 members, one with so much sway that its president could storm into the White House without an appointment. Jock Yablonski had been a union leader for 27 years. He knew the rules. You don’t question the Union, ever. The Union was as untouchable as it was powerful. But Jock had become worried about the direction his beloved union was taking, so he’d done the unthinkable. He’d begun to publicly criticize the union, pushing for a change, for a revolution even. It had become a contentious public battle, headline news. So as Jock tilted back in his recliner, oblivious to the armed man outside, he might’ve heard his own name on TV.

[news clip]: Yablonski says the miners want a change / The coal miners in this country want to be treated like the other industrial workers.

Nicolo Majnoni: The killer held his gun, staring point blank at Jock. One minute ticked by, then another, then, another. There was movement in the house, possibly Jock’s wife doing the dishes. Paul Gilly was a house painter, not an assassin. He barely had it in him to kill Jock, he definitely couldn’t kill Jock’s wife too. So Paul backed away from Jock’s house. This would have to be just a dress rehearsal, a scouting trip. But it wasn’t the end. Their paths would cross again and again against a ticking clock, a race between a reluctant killer and a revolutionary. From Crooked Media and Campside Media, this is Shadow Kingdom; Coal Survivor, Episode 1: The Invisible Crown. I’m your host, Nicolo Majnoni.

[overlapping voices]: The tensiom you could cut it you could see it / His eyes inventory the world from behind satanic bonds / There is only one institution that the coal miners can depend upon. / This is gonna be a showdown. /Boyle’s doing nothing for the widows, Boyle’s doing nothing for the pensioners. / That son of a bitch  will rue the day that this happened.

Nicolo Majnoni: Several years ago, I did something impulsive. I quit my job to make a podcast. It all began when my friend Mario gave me a lead about the death of Roberto Calvi, aka God’s Banker. That lead turned into a multi-year odyssey to find Calvi’s killer, which involved mafia soldiers, spies, and far-right terrorists. And while I was investigating God’s Banker, another story came across my radar. A story that- hit close to home. You see, I grew up hearing the story of Jock Yablonski’s revolution because his son Chip is a family friend. Chip and his buddies got involved in his dad’s revolution way back in the 60s, and pretty much every Thanksgiving since, they get together, have a little too much to drink, and retell the story. A story about secret assassins and a rebellion that rocked the American labor movement. I was a teenager at those Thanksgiving dinners, so I mostly ignored them. I figured they were either exaggerating, or tipsy, or both. But recently Chip got sick, and I heard that he wanted to record his side of the story. I had microphones and audio editing software already, so, I figured it was worth a shot to reach out. And, a bit to my surprise, Chip agreed. We talked for hours and hours, which turned into days and days, and his story sounded unbelievable. But the more I researched, the more followed up with eyewitnesses, the more obsessed I became. This all went beyond unions and politics and family dramas. There’s a question at the heart of this story that captured my imagination. How do you take back power when bullies have hijacked the system? The answer to that question is this story, a story of how one of the most influential unions in American history turned murderous and remade itself. A story that’ll take us through one of the largest FBI manhunts ever and to men so powerful they could cripple the US economy with one phone call. For one man… My friend Chip, it’s just the story of his father. Stay with us. [AD BREAK] The stage was set for Jock Yablonski’s revolution on an actual stage in Florida in 1964, five years before Paul Gilly stood outside Jock’s home with a gun. Union delegates had gathered near Miami for their big convention, as they did every four years. They discussed pressing issues at these conventions, passed new union rules, drank a lot. And at this particular convention, a spark would be lit. The first spark of Jock’s revolution. The first moment he began to split with the union he’d loved and served for almost 30 years.

Steven Yablonski: It was the tension. You could cut it, you could see it. It was like a one pebble after another. And it started, I trace it back to the 1964 convention.

Nicolo Majnoni: This is Jock’s nephew, Steven Yablonski. Jock stood in the ballroom of the Americana Hotel as his fellow union members gathered, buzzing. This year’s convention would be on the evening news, the country watching, Congress watching, the White House, too. This was a day most people had never seen. It was a day that Jock Yablonski felt like he’d been waiting for, for half of his lifetime. After more than 40 years, the head of the United Mine Workers, the UMW, was finally retiring, and he’d chosen his replacement. It came to two possible heirs, Jock, or Jock’s rival, Tony Boyle. [music plays] So this moment was a convention, but it was also a coronation, the crowning of a new king. And if King sounds like hyperbole, then you haven’t met Jock’s boss, John L. Lewis. You can’t find a description of John A. Lewis that doesn’t sound biblical.

[news clip]: His jaw is massive, his hair a lion’s mane, and his eyes inventory the world from behind satanic brows.

Nicolo Majnoni: That’s right. Satanic brows. John L. had the ear of the president. He could summon members of Congress at any time. How? Because this was a man who had the power to turn off the power to the entire United States with one word, strike. He ruled over the coal miners for decades, but he also reshaped American labor far beyond the mines. If you’ve heard of the AFL-CIO, he created the CIO, presiding over an America where one third of workers were in a union. He was a force behind minimum wage laws, the 8-Hour Workday, employer health care. John L. won so many battles for coal miners, they near worshiped him. Here’s a former miner Bill Tattersall.

Bill Tattersall: When I grew up in the coal fields, every house had three pictures on the wall. One was of Jesus and one was of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and one of John L. Lewis. In inverse order, John L. Lewis was their God.

Nicolo Majnoni: So. Whomever John L. Was about to appoint as his heir at the convention would be stepping into the shoes of not exactly Jesus, but not not Jesus. Jock watched anxiously from the convention floor as, one by one, people lauded his boss’s remarkable career.

[news clip]: He is God’s instrument on this earth. Stand with Abraham Lincoln as the emancipator of the working people forever enshrined as king in our hearts.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock Yablonski worshiped John L. Lewis, perhaps even more deeply than most. After all, John L. had plucked him from relative obscurity to be his right-hand man. Jock started running coal as a teenager, then began to help local mines to unionize when he was in his early 20s. Very quickly, he climbed the UMW ranks. He was elected unanimously to chair his local office, then to run the largest district in the union. The miners loved him, which is not to say Jock was a saint.

Chip Yablonski: You wouldn’t want to screw with it.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock’s son there, my friend Chip.

Chip Yablonski: And I take it that over the years, there probably were people that regretted having done so. But there just was a connection that he made with people.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock had a magnetic sort of charisma. He was tough enough to tumble with the miners, but he was unquestionably sincere. So naturally good at defusing fights and galvanizing supporters that John L. Lewis started to rely on Jock as this sort of secretary of state, the diplomat of coal. Like, he dispatched Jock to the coal fields after mining accidents. Jock’s nephew, Steven again.

Steven Yablonski: He would be there for days when something like that happened.

Nicolo Majnoni: Like literally days?

Steven Yablonski: Yes.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock’s own father died in a mining accident and his mother was denied survivor benefits, which risks sending the family into desperate poverty. So perhaps Jock was trying to do onto others what no one had done for his grieving mother.

Steven Yablonski: I represent the Union and I care. I care deeply.

Nicolo Majnoni: On the other hand, there was Jock’s rival, Tony Boyle. The two could not be more different. Go to a Jock Yablonski speech and you’d see a man with a suit jacket off, sleeves rolled up, roaring out in that gravelly voice of his.

[clip of Jock Yablonski]: But there is only one institution that the coal miners can depend upon, and that institution is right here, the United Mine Workers of America.

Nicolo Majnoni: Go to a Tony Boyle speech for a drier performance.

[clip of Tony Boyle]: First, the Labor Department called the president of this union and asked if he would serve on a committee.

Nicolo Majnoni: Where Jock was a bull of a guy, short, but with a linebacker’s neck and presence, Tony was a physically small man, but also puffed up, his demeanor like a balloon, just one breath of air from popping. Always on edge, his eyebrows forever creased downward in a V like the Grinch. But it’s likely Tony Boyle felt similar feelings as Jock did. As he too sat watching the praise rain down on John L. Lewis, the outgoing president. Because Tony had also been plucked from obscurity by John L. Lewis, but kind of for the opposite reason. Where John L. looked to Jock as his secretary of state, he looked at Tony as his sort of secretary of defense. Because Tony loved a good fight. Tony’s family immigrated from Scotland to Montana, trying to catch the gold rush. But they just missed it. So they found coal mining and poverty instead. Tony was desperate to escape his family’s fate and quickly climbed out of the mines and up the union ladder, making a name for himself, by being the guy you could send in to fight a rival union. See, before John L. rook over the UMW, there were several unions for coal miners, and these unions would compete for members like rival gangs. The way the UMW became the mine workers union was by aggressively eliminating the other unions, often through physical force. Tony was one of John L.’s favorite soldiers. Everywhere a rival union popped up, he would dispatch Tony to battle them. This is an ally of Tony’s, talking about the time Tony fought a rival Union in Montana.

[news clip]: They kicked his ribs loose. They knocked his teeth out, fighting for the united mine workers of America. He won’t tell you these things, but I know.

Nicolo Majnoni: Tony would absolutely tell you these things. He’d love the fight. The man good at inflicting wounds for the Union, against the man good healing them. This was the choice John L. Lewis had to make. Whether to hand off his immense power to Jock, his Secretary of State, or Tony, his Secretary Of Defense. So it’s no wonder the convention hall was buzzing that day. And these were always lively affairs. The one time in four years some of these men ever saw each other. Days of food, booze, live music. As much a party as a convention.

[news clip]: Strikes be over, celebrate. Drink and drink and take and strike. Strike and—

Nicolo Majnoni: But I imagine the convention hall quieted as the time came for the coronation, Jock and Tony fidgeting in their corners of the hotel ballroom. It would be a choice that mattered in that moment more than it might have even a decade before. New forms of fuel were encroaching on coal, making coal jobs more scarce. And the jobs that did exist were increasingly done by machines. Plus, new mining methods were injuring miners at much higher rates. Most troubling of all, a terrifying disease called black lung was killing thousands of miners across the coal fields. And so the lives of the miners hung in the balance. As after 40 years at the helm, John L. Lewis gave up his throne. To Mr. W.A. Tony Boyle.

[convention audio clip]: Therefore be it resolved that this convention assembled pledges our unaltering allegiance to Mr. W. A. Boyle as he wears an invisible crown.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock looked on with a sense of resigned bitterness as his rival took the stage. Bands playing raucous music as the miners gave Tony a 50-minute standing ovation. Conference staff handed out souvenir alarm clocks, Zippo lighters, and transistor radios to the miners, all stamped with Tony’s name and picture. As the applause died down, the floor was open to questions. A chance for people to ask questions to their leader. A chance to learn what kind of a king Tony would be.

Steven Yablonski: There were microphones stationed around the room.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock’s nephew, Steven, again. Miners lined up and started asking questions.

[convention audio clip]: We pay dues, assessments, and support our union. However, we are not allowed to vote for or against any officers of our district.

Nicolo Majnoni: This was one of the most contentious questions in the union, democracy, whether the miners should be allowed to elect the leaders of their districts. You can think of the union like the U.S. and districts like states. Technically, union democracy is a legal right under federal law, but outgoing president John L. Lewis had believed democracy was too messy, that the union needed just a single voice, his voice. In order to beat the powerful coal companies. So using questionable legalese, John L. took control of nearly all union districts. It would be like the U.S. President taking over 40 states, handpicking the governors, and taking over state budgets. Jock was pro-democracy, had been elected president of his home district, District 5, one of the very few districts allowed to do this. So he probably nodded as this minor spoke at the mic.

[convention audio clip]: But we West Virginia delegates want democracy. Let the rank and file have a little say so instead of being controlled by a few.

Nicolo Majnoni: Tony Boyle, however, was the one taking the reins. And he would not have liked this line of questioning. Tony agreed with John L., especially now that he was the dictator. He actively campaigned against democracy.

[convention audio clip]: We’d be derelict if we didn’t tell the delegates here at this convention, our officers up front, that this is how our people feel.

Nicolo Majnoni: As the miners continued their questioning, Jock could see a different group of people approach the microphone.

Steven Yablonski: Around each microphone there were two guys who wore white hard hats, miners hats, with a decal saying, loyal to Boyle.

Nicolo Majnoni: Loyal to Boyle, it was like a collective intake of breath in the room. The man at the mic continued.

Steven Yablonski: And he started to question Boyle. We’re not satisfied. And he was jerked away from the microphone and beaten with clubs.

Nicolo Majnoni: Tony’s men beat him with clubs, beat him for opposing the new leadership, beat him until he was so bloody they had to call a recess.

Steven Yablonski: I mean, it was ugly.

Nicolo Majnoni: It felt like a warning shot from the new king, as if to say, hey, Jock, you lost. I’m in charge now. Do not forget that. Jock and Tony had worked together for decades alongside John L. Lewis. They didn’t love each other, but they’d work together just fine. It didn’t look like that was gonna continue. As if to underscore his point, Tony prepared a special musical number for the close of the convention.

[convention audio clip]: I got a request here from your president. He asked me for a song called Harlan County Boys, but I sing it.  Any Harlan County fellows here?

Nicolo Majnoni: The boys of Harlan County, Kentucky were no boys. They were the mafia of the coal mines. They’d killed dozens of police, coal operators, and rival union gangs to ensure the supremacy of John L. Lewis’s union. It appeared Tony was turning them into his own private army now. A lot of the men in those Loyal to Boyle hard hats were from Harlan country. And now that we’re getting a serenade, Commissioned by Union President Tony Boyle.

[convention audio clip]: Which side are you on? Which side are you on? Which side are ya on? Which side you are, my daddy was a miner I’m a miner son, I’ll stick with the union till every battle is won. Which are you on? Which side are you on?

Nicolo Majnoni: It all seemed so petty, so unnecessary to Jock. He wasn’t happy Tony got the job, but he had no intention of challenging him. After all, Jock was just a year from retirement. He had a stake in a local racetrack, loved opera, was close with his wife and kids. Plus, he was deeply loyal, if not to Boyle, to the union. So for cohesion’s sake, he’d plan to just tuck his tail between his legs and ride into the sunset on his pension. But then Tony beat the hell out of guys from Jock’s district. And so he left the convention fuming, the first match lit, the first step toward revolution.

Steven Yablonski: So at that point, it became clear that there was a break.

Nicolo Majnoni: He’d have to fight the union head on to change things. He’d have take on his new boss, the king, Tony Boyle. [AD BREAK] The Florida convention was over. Hotel staff were sweeping up confetti and flyers with Tony’s face on them. On the beach, Jock Yablonski was making peace with his defeat. He’d lost the union crown to Tony. Okay. But. He was still president of his local district. Maybe he’d let it go, let Tony be Tony. But flying back to Pennsylvania, he just couldn’t. He kept looking into this mysterious disease that was popping up. People were calling it black lung, like the plague. And what he found enraged him. Perhaps the story would have ended here, with a disappointed jock and a powerful Tony, had it not been for black lung disease. Miners desperately needed Tony to help them. They kind of felt like only Tony could help them, because there was something fairly unique about the coal industry at that time. Normally, if you worked for a coal company back then

Eddie Burke: You lived in a coal camp and I didn’t know the difference you know until I got up in years.

Nicolo Majnoni: That’s a miner named Eddie Burke and the difference is this: by coal camps he means a town, but a town owned by controlled by even named after the coal company you worked for.

Eddie Burke: The company’s name was Carbon Fuel, and the coal camp was named Carbon, West Virginia.

Nicolo Majnoni: It would be like growing up in FedEx, West Virginia, where everything in the town is owned by FedEx. You go to FedEx Elementary School, your kids play at FedEx Community Park.

Eddie Burke: And you had a company store, a doctor’s office, the swimming pool, a beauty shop.

Nicolo Majnoni: And there were whole regions like this dotted with coal towns. So your kid’s regional soccer championship would be something like FedEx Junior High versus UPS Middle School. The company controlled everything. And this wasn’t always great. For instance, sure, you could go to the company store down the street, but it was nothing compared to the nearest supermarket 50 miles outside of town.

Eddie Burke: You just had more of a variety, the prices were cheaper out in the real world.

Nicolo Majnoni: But if you had a problem with that or anything else.

Eddie Burke: Well, I mean, you didn’t have a mayor. If you had any problems, you’d go to somebody in upper management. You know, they controlled everything.

Nicolo Majnoni: Including, medical care.

Eddie Burke: If you had a cold or you had the flu or whatever you had, you go to the company doctor.

Nicolo Majnoni: Eddie and his family didn’t have much cause to call the company doctor until he was about 15. That’s when Eddie started to notice a change in his otherwise vibrant dad who worked in the local coal mine.

Eddie Burke: He couldn’t hunt like he used to, he’d walk up a flight of steps, have to stop, catch his breath. Like taking the deep breaths, you know, and sort of fighting to get some air in there. That it’s really bad.

Nicolo Majnoni: Eddie’s dad’s lungs were drawing in air but weren’t getting any. Like he was drowning a little bit every day, but on land. Lungs look tough, but the way they get oxygen to us is through these really fragile little conveyors. Each is like a millionth of an inch wide and coal dust scars them a little each time you inhale it until one day your lungs are as porous as fishing nets and the air goes right through them. And it’s tens of thousands of coal miners, like Eddie’s dad, found themselves gasping for air. They went to the company doctor. The company doctors were telling them, it’s a coincidence, happenstance, that a large swath of men who can’t breathe just happened to be coal miners. They’d be told it’s probably just asthma. Or the company doctors suggested that the miners perhaps smoke a little less. Just, you know, relax miners. Here’s a coal executive.

[news clip]: We have frankly been surprised at the great amount of attention about this disease.

Nicolo Majnoni: A disease that became known as black lung. But since this disease didn’t exist, when people like Eddie’s dad died of it, the company would refuse to pay survivor benefits. Because, you know, it wasn’t the company’s fault.

Eddie Burke: So he gets nothing, his survivor widow gets nothing. And that’s just wrong, something wrong there.

Nicolo Majnoni: So miners like Eddie, stonewalled by the coal companies and their doctors, of course, began to petition the union for help in pressuring the companies to address this problem.

Eddie Burke: You know, the company’s only going to give out what the union makes them do. So I like me and four or five other guys, hell, let’s go down to the union office in Charleston and find out what was going on.

Nicolo Majnoni: Outside a convention in the real world, this is the moment a union is made for. Jock and Tony’s union was here to protect workers from harm when no one else would. And look, coal companies were huge at the time. The power grid, it relied on coal. And almost no one realized how dirty it was to burn. And these workers need their union, perhaps more than any other union in America. Because these workers are completely captive to the companies that own their towns, their schools, their doctors. And so the miners like Eddie started to gather and protest all across the coal fields, but not the kind of protest you might expect.

[news clip]: At first glance, it almost looked like a union meeting. Locals of the United Mine Workers from all over the state were there, but in defiance of the union. To the miners, the union has been dragging its feet on black lung just as much as the coal operators.

Nicolo Majnoni: These protests were not organized by the union, they were in defiance of the union. As men like Eddie went to their local union offices and asked for help.

Eddie Burke: And they say, well, you’re not getting them, you know just basically told us to get the hell out.

Nicolo Majnoni: Get the hell and shut the hell up. Just like at the convention when Jock supporters asked for more local democracy. One minor told an NBC reporter about pleading with the union for help.

[news clip]: We ask them, try to get them to help us, and they just turn us down. Tell them they ain’t gonna stick their neck out for us, but their hands are tied.

Nicolo Majnoni: We can’t help you because, the union said, our hands are tied.

[news clip]: Well, who’s tied their hands? Did they tell you? No, they didn’t tell us.

Nicolo Majnoni: They could not get a straight answer from the union, which is to say, from Tony Boyle. These protests went on for years, with Jock becoming more and more outspoken. Yet, as time went on, Tony Boyle kept to his routine. Almost every day, Tony woke up and looked at a picture of himself. He hung pictures of himself in the bedroom, pictures of Tony in the bathroom, pictures of Tony in the living room. And all these portraits of Tony would watch him as he got dressed in colorful shirts and wide mod ties. Tony would reapply his light brown hair dye around a mostly bald head. And he might kiss his daughter, also named Tony. Goodbye. Then, Tony Boyle would be driven to the downtown D.C. Headquarters in his black Cadillac and walk up a marble staircase to his office, closed off to visitors by a brass gate. On his way, he’d try making dirty jokes to secretaries, but he’d forget the punch lines. He’d refer to himself in the third person, muttering, they’re all out to get Tony Boyle. Tony Boyle would spend most of the day alone in his office. He was prone to insecurity that festered as people compared him to the labor god, John L. Lewis.

Chip Yablonski: After he was elected, he negotiated a horrible contract.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip Yablonski, Jock’s son again.

Chip Yablonski: And he resented the miners who thought he hadn’t done a good job.

Nicolo Majnoni: As Tony started getting beat up in the press about these contracts, he began responding ever erratically, trying his hand at, I don’t know, slam poetry.

[clip of Tony Boyle]: Boyle’s doing nothing for the widows. Boyle doing nothing for the pensioners. I’ll give you this. I’ll give you that. I’ll give you pie, if I can reach high enough in the sky, in the sweet by and by.

Nicolo Majnoni: As Tony kept himself isolated, his insecurities spiraling, Jock was spending more and more time with the miners across the coal fields, almost doubling down on his secretary of state role after he’d lost the presidency. And as he traveled, increasingly, he watched men like Eddie Burke’s father struggle to breathe and be ignored by the man who’d sworn to protect them. More and more, it troubled him.

Steven Yablonski: He couldn’t get past the fact that he had devoted his life to that union. And he really cared about these men, and it tore him apart.

Nicolo Majnoni: So on the doorstep of his retirement, instead of peacefully gliding into the sunset, Jock chose to dive into the fight, to break publicly with the union he’d been loyal to for decades. Jock started speaking out in favor of the black lung laws Tony was resisting.

[clip of Jock Yablonski]: In every coal mining state in America they get proper compensation for people who are suffering from co-workers pneumoconiosis—

Nicolo Majnoni: Working alongside miners, Jock became a leader in the campaign to pass black lung laws, lending what power he still had to the rank and file.

Steven Yablonski: Against Tony Boyle’s direct orders, Jock managed to get black lung legislation passed in the Pennsylvania legislature and had the governor sign it.

[news clip]: A committee of doctors is convinced enough about the danger of coal dust to take action / having voted in the affirmative I declare the bill will take effect

Nicolo Majnoni: For as long as there have been coal mines, men have been dying of black lung. Now, for the first time, this was being officially acknowledged because of Jock and in spite of Tony. And so Tony does an about face and goes on the offensive. He starts publicly telling anyone who would listen, hey, I’ve been fighting for black lung laws all along.

[news clip]: The Union has been trying desperately to get these things passed session after session.

Nicolo Majnoni: But the miners knew the truth. They knew that it was Jock who had supported them in their time of need. Jock had always been popular with them. He was a man of the people. And so, privately, Tony’s natural insecurities started to spin into a sort of paranoia and anger at Jock. Tony started having Jock tracked. He sent men on his payroll to Jock’s district, and in the shadows they begin to monitor him, his movement, his finances. Tony exiled Jock brother, who was a union leader in nearby Ohio, sent him to a post in Colorado. He scrambled to reassure the union brass, I have Jock under my control. He even started asking Jock to introduce him at public appearances in these really groveling ways. And remember, at this point, Jock is still a loyal union man in need of a pension. So even though he’s privately clashing with Tony on black lung, publicly he’s in line.

[clip of Jock Yablonski]: Tony Boyle has moved the mine workers of America forward to a greater degree than any other president of any labor organization anywhere in the world.

Nicolo Majnoni: But none of this seemed to hurt the growing bond between Jock Yablonski and the miners grateful for his black lung support. In fact, it only continued to grow. So in June of 1966, Tony called Jock and asked him to come in from district five in Pennsylvania to the UMW headquarters in Washington DC.

Chip Yablonski: If there was a Rubicon, that probably was as close to it as any other event.

Nicolo Majnoni: Jock’s son, Chip, again.

Chip Yablonski: He asked me to go to Washington with him. He said, this is gonna be a showdown with Boyle. And he was worried, physically concerned. That’s the reason he had asked me to go DC with them. And I waited in the park outside of the mine workers headquarters.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip watched his father walk into the headquarters of the union he’d given his life to. And inside, Tony gave Jock an ultimatum. He said, I’ve been looking into the finances of District 5, and I’ve noticed some, let’s say, irregularities. These were almost definitely trumped up. Tony said, I need you to resign your position as president of District Five. If you do that, I’ll let those irregularities, I’ll let them slide. And then the twist of the knife. Tony said, if you won’t resign, I’ll have no choice but to remove District 5’s autonomy. The thing Jock had fought so hard to keep for his men, their freedom, their own little democracy in their little corner of this monarchy. It seemed like an hour passed until Jock walked out of the headquarters and back to his son, Chip.

Chip Yablonski: My dad said, well, he made me sign the letter. I had to give up the district presidency.

Nicolo Majnoni: And as they walked away from the park, the Union castle looming in the distance, Jock turned to his son and said.

Chip Yablonski: That son of a bitch will rue the day that this happened.

Nicolo Majnoni: The fight over Black Lung was just the first battleground in a war between Jock and Tony. A war that would be fought in the DC halls of power and in the depths of mountains. It was a war that threatened to destroy these men and everyone close to them. That’s coming up next on this season of Shadow Kingdom.

[overlapping voices]: The FBI tonight is engaged in its most intensive murder investigation since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. / It’s disturbing and evil beyond words to describe. We ask why and who. / They swore us to secrecy. They said, do not tell anybody. / I mean, you had a union that basically was under dictatorship for eons. Now you’ve got all this new democracy flowing through the field. / I did anything I had to, because there’s no turning back at this point. / Billy was out there hollering. He jammed, he jammed. He wouldn’t shoot, he wouldn’t fire. / It was just bam bam bam bam and I’m saying hang on you son of a bitch— / I solemnly swear to Almighty God that I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. / Today to tell everybody that we intend to stay here.

Nicolo Majnoni: Shadow Kingdom is a production of Crooked Media and Campside Media. It’s hosted and reported by me, Nicolo Majnoni. The show is written by Joe Hawthorne, Karen Duffin and me. Joe Hawthorne is our managing producer. Karen Duffin is our story editor. The associate producers are Rachel Yang and Julie Denesha. Sound Design, mix and mastering by Erica Wong. Our theme song and original score are composed by me and Mark McAdam. Cello performed by Linnea Weiss. With additional sound design support from Mark McAdam. Studio engineering by Rachel Yang and XXX. Fact Checking by Amanda Feinman. Our executive producers are me, Nicolo Majnoni. Along with Sarah Geismer, Katie Long, Mary Nauf and Alison Falzetta from Crooked Media. Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Shaer and Vanessa Grigoriadis are the Executive producers at Campside Media.