Frank Sheeran

Francis Joseph Sheeran (October 25, 1920 – December 14, 2003), also known as "The Irishman", was an American labor union official and enforcer for Jimmy Hoffa and Russell Bufalino. Raised in a devoutly Catholic Irish-American family in Darby, Pennsylvania, a working-class town near Philadelphia, he grew up poor during the Great Depression and enlisted in the US Army after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. He served with the 45th Infantry Division during the Italian Campaign in the Mediterannean Theater as both an infantryman and in the Military Police Corps. After returning to Pennsylvania, he did various odd jobs before becoming involved with the Teamsters and its president, Jimmy Hoffa. Sheeran was a leading figure involved in the infiltration of unions by organized crime in the 1960s and ‘70s, and allegedly helped the Teamsters assist the CIA with the Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. In 1980, he was convicted of labor racketeering and sentenced to 32 years in prison, of which he served 13 years. He was accused of having links to the Bufalino crime family, including its boss, Russell Bufalino, in his capacity as a high-ranking official in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the president of Local 326 in New Castle, Delaware. After being indicted on federal charges by the FBI and the Philadelphia PD, he was sentenced to three decades in prison, of which he would spend 13 and was released due to his old age. He then went to live at a nursing home in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Shortly before his death in 2003, he said he had killed Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa in 1975. Author Charles Brandt detailed what Sheeran told him about Hoffa in the alleged confession in the narrative nonfiction work I Heard You Paint Houses (2004). The truthfulness of the...