Blood Runs Coal

August 3, 2020
Former CIA officer Bradley (A Very Principled Boy) delivers a page-turning study of the 1969 triple-murder of union leader Joseph Yablonski and his wife and daughter, and the crime’s impact on the United Mine Workers of America and organized labor in general. Head of his local district of the UMWA in southwestern Pennsylvania, Yablonksi was locked in a power struggle with union president Tony Boyle, who had provoked outrage by publicly defending the Consolidation Coal Company in the aftermath of an explosion that killed 78 miners in West Virginia. Yablonski challenged Boyle for the union presidency in 1969 and lost, but asked the U.S. Labor Department to “impound the ballot boxes and investigate the election’s irregularities.” Less than a month after the election, three hit men hired by Boyle (with funds embezzled from the UMWA) murdered Yablonski and his family. The killings galvanized a reformist takeover of the union that advanced the interests of rank-and-file members on safety standards, wages, and health benefits. Bradley fluidly interweaves union politics with insider accounts of the murder plot and details of the investigation and five trials it took to bring Boyle to justice. The result is both a juicy true crime story and a tribute to the power of effective labor movements.

September 1, 2020
Cat-and-mouse account of the murder of a union activist battling corruption in the coal fields. Attorney and former CIA officer Bradley recounts the 1969 murder of Joseph Yablonski, who rose through the ranks of the United Mine Workers of America to become a lieutenant of John L. Lewis, a champion of miners' rights. Yablonski, writes the author, was "stunned" when Lewis selected an empty suit named Tony Boyle to become his vice president. While Lewis took his union members out on a long strike and denounced coal companies for ignoring worker safety, Boyle was an accommodationist who, after a terrible mine accident, went out of his way to absolve the owner of responsibility and "reminded the families, as if they did not already know it, that coal mining was a very dangerous way to make a living." Clearly Boyle wasn't the right man for the job, but when Yablonski mounted a campaign to replace him as union president, Boyle arranged for his murder. When hired killers infiltrated Yablonski's home, they killed his wife and daughter as well. It took years of courtroom tedium, coordinated by prosecutor Richard Aurel Sprague, to arrive at the facts of the killing. Readers may feel that justice was not fully served when they learn that a couple of the principals, including a manipulative woman who betrayed her own father, were allowed to slip away into the witness protection program. Still, like Sprague, who had a remarkable winning record ("He had sought first-degree murder convictions in sixty-four cases and got what he asked for in sixty-three"), Bradley sets forth a methodical, step-by-step account of the vicious murders and Boyle's fall from power and life imprisonment. Yablonski loyalists were able to effect some of the reforms he'd argued for, including a more effective pension plan and overall stronger union. A well-paced, thorough investigation of a half-century-old crime whose effects are still felt in the Appalachian coal fields.

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Starred review from September 1, 2020

On New Year's Eve, 1969, three men crept into a farmhouse near Clarksville, PA. They had come to kill Jock Yablonski, and anyone else in the house. Jock, his wife, and daughter died as a result of multiple gunshots wounds. Bradley (Information Security Oversight Office, National Archives and Records Administration) weaves a masterful story of Yablonski's life and times. Yablonski, a coal miner, had been trying to wrest control of the United Mine Workers from its brutal and corrupt president, Tony Boyle. Bradley depicts how the murders had been ordered by Boyle--who had been looking into the secretive operations and finances of the United Mine Workers of America--and managed by a string of union officials. The author dissects the story of the three killers and their trials, along with the detective work that eventually put all participants, including Boyle, on trial. All were convicted, save for a father and daughter who pleaded guilty, turned state's evidence, and disappeared into witness protection. The well-researched book includes extensive endnotes. VERDICT An absorbing narrative of pride, greed, arrogance, and retribution that will find a place in history and true crime collections.--Edwin Burgess, Kansas City, KS

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