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Chip Yablonski and Tony Boyle face off, as Tony must take his day in court. He calls the prosecutor’s bluff and the fate of the union hangs in the balance.

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TRANSCRIPT

[voice over]: Campside Media.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip Yablonski got the call he’d been waiting for for three years. On the other end of the line was prosecutor Richard Sprague, who’d been building the case against Tony. He told Chip they finally had enough to prosecute Tony Boyle. And he also asked for Chip’s help. The prosecutor was trying to figure out exactly when and where to make the arrest.

Chip Yablonski: And Sprague was concerned Boyle might take off or might do something to try to evade arrest. And I said, well, I can tell you where he’s gonna be on such and such a day at such and such a time because his deposition is being taken.

Nicolo Majnoni: After losing the election, Tony and his supporters were getting hit by a ton of lawsuits. He was being called to testify left and right. And by mere coincidence, Chip, now the top lawyer for the union, was scheduled to depose Tony the same week as the planned arrest. Chip told the DA, I wouldn’t be upset if you interrupted Tony’s testimony. So Chip and Clarice coordinated time and place with the prosecutor.

Clarice Feldman: And they swore, they swores to secrecy. They said, we’re gonna come in and we’re going to arrest him, but you may not tell anybody. Do not tell anybody.

Nicolo Majnoni: On the morning of September 6th, 1973, Chip, an eight-month pregnant Clarice, Tony and his lawyer, sat down in a D.C. Conference room. They began the deposition, which was just down the street from the Union headquarters. It was tense. Chip hurled questions at the man he was sure had his family killed, a man seated just feet away from him. But for Chip, it was tense also with anticipation of what he knew was about to come. As the clock approached 11:30, there was some noise down on the street. Tony seemed to ignore it. He just continued to deflect Chip’s questions.

Clarice Feldman: So we’re sitting in there and we’re deposing Tony Boyle and all of a sudden—

Chip Yablonski: Two United States Marshals knocked on the door at this law office.

Clarice Feldman: And he said, uh, Tony Boyle. And I said, yeah. He said, you’re under arrest for the murder of Jock Yablonski.

Clarice Feldman: And Boyle’s lawyers said, you can’t interrupt this, this is a legal proceeding. And they basically said, watch us.

Clarice Feldman: Federal Marshal said, I’m pretty sure this takes precedent.

Clarice Feldman: So they led him away.

Nicolo Majnoni: This was the moment Chip had been working toward. The moment that he’d set aside his entire life for. A moment that required him to fight and then win a labor revolution. All of that building toward this moment. And here it was, right in front of him. Tony Boyle in handcuffs arrested for his family’s murder.

Clarice Feldman: So, Chipp and I got up our papers and we walk outside. The whole street is full of reporters and cameramen and everything.

[news clip]: Were waiting outside when FBI agents, towering over Boyle, let him out of a downtown office building into their car. And it may or may not have been a coincidence that one of the attorneys in the room at the time was Chip Yablonski, the son of the man Boyle is accused of murdering.

Nicolo Majnoni: Reporters approached Chip and asked him what had happened.

Chip Yablonski: FBI agents came into the room and announced that he was under arrest.

Nicolo Majnoni: Not the world’s most expressive person, but there I think you can catch a glimmer of the smile, of the excitement Chip was feeling in that moment. Though he quickly reverted back to strict, general Chip when they asked him what Tony was arrested for.

[news clip]: Do they say for what?

Chip Yablonski: Violations of the United States Code.

Nicolo Majnoni: But when reporters approached Tony, he made it clear that he was stunned by these allegations. Even after years of Chip pointing the finger at him.

[news clip]: Boyle said he was shocked. Shocked? Why? / Never expected that that was going to come through anything like this. / Why? / I had no forewarning.  No forewarning.

Chip Yablonski: I’d love to have smacked him around, but I knew I couldn’t do that. So they let him away. It was a moment of great satisfaction.

Nicolo Majnoni: From Crooked Media and Campside Media, this is Shadow Kingdom; Coal Survivor, Episode 8: Trial. I’m your host, Nicolo Majnoni. [music plays]

[overlapping voices]: The government will seek to prove that Boyle paid for the killings with $20,000 in union funds. / Boyle said that he and Joseph Yablonski have become close friends over the years. / Come on, Mr. Boyle, you’re the head of the union. You certainly read the notes to make sure they’re accurate. I didn’t touch them.

Nicolo Majnoni: After several months of legal prep, Chip walked into a Pennsylvania courthouse on the morning of April 1st, 1974. It was the moment he’d been working toward for nearly four and a half years.

[news clip]: Today, trial proceedings began against Tony Boyle himself on charges that he authorized the payment for the killings.

Nicolo Majnoni: The courtroom felt like a circus when Chip entered. Lawyers in power suits and retired minors in their cleanest bibs and overalls. There were 60 reporters and a patrol of armed officers. One of Tony’s fans complained that the feds were railroading their man the same way they were conspiring against Nixon for Watergate. And finally, there was prosecutor Richard Sprague. He drove to the courthouse each day in an all-black Chrysler muscle car. Loaded with police electronics, complete with an antenna on the top. Journalists nicknamed it the Batmobile. Everyone settled in for what was expected to be a lengthy trial.

Speaker 12 Both the prosecution and defense have predicted that it will last at least a month. The witness list is long, the issue is complex, and with first-degree murder and the balance, the stakes are very high.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip took his seat just behind the prosecutor. Then Tony Boyle was pulled into the courtroom, flanked by U.S. Marshals. He smiled weakly and waved to his wife and daughter, who was, remember, also named Tony. Chip glared at the man who he knew had murdered his family. It looked like the short time Tony had spent in his holding cell had taken a real toll.

Chip Yablonski: He was so incapacitated. He was in a wheelchair. And I’m saying, hang on you son of a bitch cause I want you to get your just desserts from this jury.

Nicolo Majnoni: Once everyone was inside, the courtroom was locked. Arm guards stood outside the door. Richard Sprague stood up. Knowing this would be all over the evening news, he began to lay out his case.

[news clip]: The government will seek to prove that Boyle paid for the killings with $20,000 in union funds and that he tried to protect himself by channeling his order through eight other people, all of whom have now confessed or been found guilty.

Nicolo Majnoni: Prosecutor Richard Sprague knew that at their core, trials were theater. He talked to me here from his law firm, where he practiced law well into his mid-90s.

Richard Sprague: I love the courtroom. To me, in handling a trial, I’m really a Broadway producer. I’m producing this.

Nicolo Majnoni: And he opened that story by laying out the murder weapons on his table, in full view of the jury. Then he started at the lowest rung of the ladder, with the murderers themselves. Richard Sprague called in the most ruthless character, Buddy Martin, the first shooter.

Richard Sprague: I had the sheriff’s like. Pull him into the courtroom, and as he came right by where I was, he spit on me, which I thought was great. [laughs] In fact, the lawyer working with me wanted immediately to wipe the spit off, and I said no, because I wanted the jury to really see the wild animal.

Nicolo Majnoni: Animal here. Then it was Paul Gilly’s turn. He went through all the logistics of the crime. D.A. Sprague turned to Paul and asked him, where did this hit come from? And Paul told him about the orders from his father-in-law.

Richard Sprague: Did he say why? Gilly, as I recall, it was for the welfare of the UMW.

Nicolo Majnoni: His father-in-law was one step closer to Tony. He was one of the Boyle loyalists in Harlan County, one of most violent men in the most violent corners of the Union. A man who once beat a minor bloody with chains for refusing to join the Union, he treated the UMW like a religion, almost like a cult, and was happy to kill Jock at the pleasure of the union leaders. Paul’s father- in-law had also turned state’s evidence. And now also testified at Tony’s trial.

[news clip]: Said he and two other men met in 1969, discussed killing Yablonski.

Nicolo Majnoni: The two other men Paul’s father-in-law had pointed to were one more rung up the ladder. One of them was the president of the union down in Harlem County, a man named Bill Turnblazer. And he was the clincher in all of this. For as long as Tony had been in power, Bill Turnblazer had refused to turn on Tony. But after Tony lost the election, as Chip’s crew had predicted, as they’d hoped, members like Turnblazer finally did turn.

[news clip]: Were you present when the order was given? The prosecutor asked Turnblazer. Yes, sir, said Turnblazer. Who gave that order? Mr. Boyle.

Nicolo Majnoni: Bill Turnblazer testified that shortly after Jock announced his intent to run for president, Tony had stormed out of a union board meeting at the UMW headquarters. Bill Turnblazer followed Tony. Tony l ooked at Bill and said, quote, take care of Yablonski. He let that sit in the air for a moment, Jock’s life hanging in the balance. Tony must have known that if anyone would kill for him… If anyone would take that order and run with it, it would be someone from Harlan County. With Bill Turnblazer’s testimony, they were standing at the very top of the ladder. They’d climbed from Gilly, Velaey, and Martin, the murderers, all the way to the man who’d ordered the murder. Checkmate. Or so they thought. As the trial stretched on into the evening and the defense hammered away at the witnesses, it became clear that this game wasn’t over at all. Because the case against Tony Boyle ultimately rested on the testimony of those underlings. Almost all, as the defense pointed out repeatedly, confessed criminals. And almost all of these witnesses were trying to cut a deal for leniency with the DA. They’d give up Tony to save their own skins. So for all this testimony, for all the witnesses, Tony knew there was still no physical evidence linking him to the crime. And with the trial almost over, there was more than a chance Tony could walk free. The next morning, when Chip and the lawyers and the miners and the reporters, when they all filed back in the courtroom, they noticed a change in Tony. The old president’s eyes were more alert. He began to take notes on a yellow legal pad. At two o’clock, he stood up to testify and slowly walked to the witness box. He began to smile and turned to the jury like a kindly old man.

[news clip]: The 72-year-old deposed president of the mine workers said that he and Joseph Yablonsky had become close friends over the years.

Nicolo Majnoni: Tony leaned toward the jury and told them how devastated he’d been to hear that his close friend Jock had been murdered. He explained how hard it was to run a big union and how he had to trust so many people below him, and that he simply couldn’t believe that anyone at the union was involved. And when his attorney closed by asking him if he had anything to do with the killing, Tony forcefully replied.

[news clip]: Did I have anything to do with it? Absolutely not. His attorney again, did you ever talk with Mr. Turnblazer about killing the Yablonskis? Mr. Boyle, even more emphatically now, I did not.

Nicolo Majnoni: Then Tony’s lawyer laid out an alternate theory. Yes, those men you’ve heard testify did plot to kill the Yablonskis, but Tony had nothing to do with it. They murdered Jock because Jock was about to expose them for misusing union funds. Now they were all pointing to Tony to cover up their own crimes. In his testimony, Tony was cagey, sometimes even confused. So he came off as suspicious, sure, but not necessarily a killer. Maybe the stammering was just that he was, after all, a fragile old man. By the time the defense rested, it was not clear which way this trial would tip. Or at least, it wasn’t clear to Tony. The prosecutor had one final card to play. That’s after the break. [AD BREAK] Unbeknownst to the public, investigators had zoomed in on Harlem County’s Union District. They found records of a, quote, research committee with a $20,000 budget. That budget was supposed to go towards researching new minds to unionize. But investigators found that it didn’t. It went to the murderers. UMW officials had even created false records to make the committee seem legit. And Tony allegedly gave these false records to his lieutenant. Bill Turnblazer as part of the cover-up.

Richard Sprague: And Boyle arranged to have those notes sent to each of these mine workers with what was supposed to be the story.

Nicolo Majnoni: Prosecutor Richard Sprague again. When he says mine workers there, he means the union.

Richard Sprague: We found with one of the mine workers the notes that were sent to him. And on those notes were the fingerprints of Tony Boyle. So Tony Boyle did not know that we had recovered one of actual notes.

Nicolo Majnoni: Back in the courtroom, Richard Sprague went to his desk, still full of all the murder weapons, and produced a piece of paper, one of those meeting minutes. But—

Richard Sprague: I made it look like we only had a copy because I was thinking that if Tony Boyle knew that we had the actual notes, when he took the stand, big deal, he’d say, so what, I go over the notes, my fingerprints on them, what difference does it make?

Nicolo Majnoni: Richard Sprague stepped toward Tony Boyle and said—

Richard Sprague: Mr. Boyle, you heard this in sending the notes. That’s true, isn’t it, that you sent those notes? No way. Oh, come on, Mr. Boyle, you’re the head of the union. You certainly read the notes to make sure they’re accurate.

Nicolo Majnoni: I didn’t touch them. He must have asked Tony a half dozen different ways to confirm that he’d never seen, knew about, much less touched this document. Tony was then excused from the stand. And Richard Sprague, I imagine now bursting with trial lawyer giddiness, called an FBI agent to the stand, the notes that Tony Boyle had just insisted he’d ever touched, this agent had dusted for fingerprints. So Richard Sprague asked the agent, do we have not a copy, but the original note?

Richard Sprague: Do we recover the notes? Yes. What do you find on them? The fingerprints of Tony Boyle.

Nicolo Majnoni: After four and a half years of hoping, hunting, trying to trace the murder back to Tony Boyle, there it was, the smoking gun. Tony Boyle had his hands on a document intended specifically to make sure union officials could cover up their role in the murder. This was the final act of the theatrical production Richard Sprague had expertly directed. He was hopped up.

[news clip]: Richard Sprague’s summation was impassioned and bitter. He begged the jury to think in terms of Boyle’s motivation. He called Boyle testimony cunning and pious.

Nicolo Majnoni: In his summation, Sprague gave Boyle a chilling name, the originator. The slaughter of the family, the cover-up, the hiring of Paul Gilly as men, it had all come from the originater, Tony Boyle. I demand a verdict of guilty,” said Sprague. With that, the jury filed out to deliberate and just a few hours later they returned with their verdict.

[news clip]: Tony Boyle, former head of the United Mine Workers, was convicted of murder today. He displayed no emotion when the jury came in with its verdict.

Nicolo Majnoni: It was a distant second to the thing Chip really wanted. His parents, his sister back, his family together again. But watching Tony Boyle escorted out of the courtroom that day, stripped of every last ounce of his power, Chip felt justice had been served. Do you remember the moment where the jury read out the verdict?

Chip Yablonski: We were under a microscope. We weren’t going to yell and hurrah. It was another brick in the wall. We went to a dinner with all the FBI agents and the state policemen, and we thanked them. And we hoped that that was the end of it. We always knew that we could never really get closure.

Nicolo Majnoni: And now, with all the murderers and the originator behind bars, Chip was left with one final mission, to give the Union back to the miners. In other words, not just put his father’s murderer behind bars but also fulfill his father dream. The dream his father preached on the campaign trail still rang in Chip’s head.

Jock Yablonski: The membership of our union want this organization to be the great trailblazer that it once was. They want this organization to lift up its membership and for this membership to be considered ahead of everything else.

Nicolo Majnoni: Chip supporters cleaned up the union’s dark money, and they even created a credit union for miners in remote areas. There was a long time mission of Jock’s. In 1974, right after the big strike in Harlan, they went to the negotiation table for the first time, and they bargained for a new contract, one that would determine the miners’ pay, pension and safety for years to come. It was Chip’s crew versus the coal industry. Which did not expect big things of these young guys.

Chip Yablonski: They were obnoxious like, this is collective bargaining 101. Why don’t you guys come and we’ll teach you how to collectively bargain.

Nicolo Majnoni: The coal industry quickly discovered they were the most prepared bargainers in a generation. They came to the table with all of their demands laid out in a stack of thick spiral-bound books, based almost entirely on miner input, by the way. And they won. Big time. One of the biggest contracts in union history.

Chip Yablonski: We got huge changes in working conditions, safety, wages, retirement benefits, paid days off. All those things.

Nicolo Majnoni: They got an unprecedented 37% pay increase over three years, the highest pensions the miners had ever seen. They got sick days, the right to walk out if you felt unsafe, safety training paid by the company. After that, 40,000 new jobs were created and fewer coal miners died on the job than ever before. They enshrined union democracy in a groundbreaking new constitution. Their work served as a model for the cleanup of the Teamsters in the 80s when they booted out the mob. As recently as 2020, Chip’s crew served as a model of the United Auto Workers, which had a similar rank and file revolution. I asked Chip what his parents would think of his crew and how things turned out.

Chip Yablonski: They would probably tell us, tell me, well, there’s more you could have done. And they’d be right. Don’t get full of yourself. [laughs]

Nicolo Majnoni: And this is actually something Chip has thought a lot about. There’s so many things he’s learned, things he’d like to pass on.

Chip Yablonski: There is a book to be written about our group of 20-somethings that assisted the miners in their revolution.

Nicolo Majnoni: I like to imagine that book being written one day, a book or podcast about a group of forgotten kids who brought democracy to an old American dictatorship. Kids who had no fancy tools, so they pioneered their own. From information warfare to relentless use of the courts. Kids who campaigned for every vote, boldly storming past death threats. And, it turns out, this weird little class of 20-somethings went on to become leaders of American labor and politics.

Chip Yablonski: People  went on that have remarkable careers. It boggles the mind what folks have gone on to do. That makes me proud.

Nicolo Majnoni: Eddie the Miner and Bob the Kid went on to help incite that cleanup of the Teamsters. Bernie became an Assistant Secretary of State. Almost-A-Priest Ed went on to represent thousands of American airline pilots. Professor Don became the Director of Public Relations for the massive United Auto Workers.  Clarice became a DOJ lawyer, prosecuting people who helped Nazis during World War II. Another member of Chip’s crew, Rich Trumka, even became president of the AFL-CIO. And Chip, their general, he stayed in the labor fight for the rest of his career. His eyes light up to this day when he recounts the enormous settlements he got for widows of people killed in the mines. But as varied and illustrious as all their careers were, every single one of them traces their work back to that one movement in the coal fields.

Chip Yablonski: All of us look back on those days as being the greatest days of our lives.

Bob Hauptman: And this felt like a chance to learn a bunch of things and to try to help fix something that was broken. I was thinking of it as an internship. You know, when you go to an internship, what do you expect? To learn something, to meet some new people, have some new experiences. And this feels like a chance to learn a bunch things and to help try to fix something that was broken.

Clarice Feldman: It’s very, very rare, a small group of people with no real resources going against this union, the entrenched bureaucracy, the National Bank of Washington, and we did it. When you think about it, how many times has that happened?

Nicolo Majnoni: 50 years later, several of them still go on vacations together, still gather for Thanksgiving every year. Eddie Burke has had a full career. He’s been trying to retire for years, but his phone keeps ringing. Another union needs him. One last job, he always says, but it never is. As I was reporting the story, Eddie took me on a road trip around coal country. And we ended up at a cemetery in West Virginia where miners are buried. There’s this one particular grave here that Eddie really wanted me to see, one that he’s helped restore.

Eddie Burke: We’re looking for Sid Hatfield’s grave.

Sid Hatfeld was a local union supporter who died in a shootout 100 years ago. We passed by obelisks and mausoleums for the wealthier residents of the town. Do you want something like this for you?

Eddie Burke: No, hell no. I want to scatter my ashes around some of my opponents [laughs] so I can keep an eye on them.

Nicolo Majnoni: Finally, we got to Sid Hatfield’s grave, and Eddie read me the inscription.

Eddie Burke: In memory of Sid Hatfield, defender of the rights of working people, gunned down on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse during the great mine wars.

Nicolo Majnoni: During the early 1900s, as unions were just getting established, there was a war in the coal fields. Hundreds of men, like Sid, died fighting the coal companies to let the miners organize. He was shot down by the coal company’s private guards, but he succeeded in getting the union to his town.

Eddie Burke: The union came and stayed after that, you know.

Nicolo Majnoni: The Union stayed because of people like Sid. And then it was driven out again. And then, it came back again. The cemetery is filled with men like Sid, who, in a sense, handed the baton to Jock, who handed it to people like Eddie and Chip. One more generation and a long line of people fighting this fight. When I started this story, I wanted to know how one of America’s most powerful bullies was ousted by a group of broke kids. And as I stood there between Eddie and Sid that day, the answer hit me. Sid had fought the company bullies and brought the union in. And right before being gunned down, Sid had thrown the torch to people like Jock, who then ran through Appalachia, telling the miners about democracy. Before the bullies killed him on New Year’s Eve 1969, Jock passed the torch to his son, Chip, who then broadcast his father’s message on television for a new generation to hear. Chip’s crew is a link in a chain that runs from the early coal miners all the way to the civil rights leaders of the 60s. Every new movement building on the lessons and sacrifices of the last. Chip’s crew was never alone in their fight against Tony. They were standing on the shoulders of giants. And so, as we drove away from the cemetery, Eddie turned to me.

Eddie Burke: I can’t get this Amazon thing out of my head.

Nicolo Majnoni: Wait, so you’re saying the Amazon people who have…

Eddie Burke: Exactly.

Nicolo Majnoni: Just a few weeks before this road trip, Amazon workers in Staten Island had voted to unionize, which had seemed impossible. You know, a bunch of young 20-somethings trying to start a new labor revolution.

Eddie Burke: They’re entering at such an exciting time, and I just hope they don’t get waylaid by a bunch of union bosses.

Nicolo Majnoni: It’s these the Amazon kids sound like you guys in 74.

Eddie Burke: Exactly, exactly right. It’s almost the same opportunity, you know, and these guys really went out and ran a excellent campaign. And if they could somewhere or another just put that in a real, you know, organized fashion—

Nicolo Majnoni: Do what Eddie, Chip, the whole crew wanted to do. What they tried to do.

Eddie Burke: I would love to talk to you, I would love to, you know. Hey, I come cheap.

Nicolo Majnoni: So we started strategizing. How do we connect Eddie to the Amazon kids? How do take the baton that Jock handed him and hand it to the next revolution in the hopes that they will carry the lessons forward?

Eddie Burke: And they’ve got to put together the proper teams, they’ve gotta put together plans. You can’t have 20, 50, 100 page white papers. You gotta have bullet proof bullet points that workers can say, huh, that’s right. One of their most important decisions will be who is going to develop their communications and their research. Those two separate functions. Are a must. [music plays]

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.