Crime: A Hand from the Grave

“Jock’s hand reached back from the grave and caught his own killers.” The words were those of the attorney for Joseph (“Jock”) Yablonski, slain insurgent candidate for the leadership of the United Mine Workers Union. They fairly characterized the capture of three suspects in the murder. Yablonski, 59, had spent the last few weeks of his life in steadily mounting terror. Fearing assassination, he began keeping a gun at his bedside, installed floodlights outside his secluded Clarksville, Pa., home, and kept a list of license-plate numbers of unfamiliar cars in the area.

One of the cars belonged to a Cleveland house painter, Paul Eugene Gilly, 37, who had come to Yablonski’s home on Dec. 18, ostensibly to ask for help in getting a job in the mines. Local police turned the slain man’s list of license plates over to the FBI, and last week Gilly and two others, Aubran Wayne Martin, 23, and Claude Edward Vealey, 26, were arrested in Cleveland and charged with shooting Yablonski, his wife and his daughter in their beds before dawn on Dec. 31.

According to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, “Yablonski had been stalked and his residence cased on several occasions. Forcible entry was made into the Yablonski home, telephone wires were cut, and automobiles on the property were disabled.” Yablonski’s daughter Charlotte, 25, was shot first, as she slept, then Yablonski’s wife Margaret, 57, then Yablonski himself as he lunged for his shotgun.

Hamburgers. Yablonski’s anxiety began last summer, when he became the first insurgent to challenge U.M.W. leadership in 43 years. He lost the bitterly contested election for president on Dec. 9, but charged irregularities that the Labor Department is now investigating. Yablonski’s two sons claimed that the murders had grown out of the election, but U.M.W. President W. A. (“Tony”) Boyle denied any union involvement. Last week, after the arrests, the union issued a statement saying that “We are most happy to learn that they [the three suspects] apparently have no connection” with the U.M.W.

The FBI has not yet said that. Indeed, the sons’ contention that the murders were related to union affairs was borne out by federal charges against the suspects that they killed Yablonski to prevent him from testifying before a federal grand jury. The jury is investigating the alleged mishandling of U.M.W. pension and retirement funds. But Yablonski, a 30-year U.M.W. veteran, had numerous enemies, any one of whom could conceivably have been hurt by Yablonski’s reform efforts or his grand-jury testimony.

About the only thing that could be reasonably assumed from FBI information was that the three suspects had not acted on their own. None were known as coal miners, and robbery was not a motive. Moreover, whoever ordered Yablonski murdered did not have access to the services of professional killers —or chose not to employ them. He could scarcely have come up with a sorrier clutch of losers—”a bunch of hamburgers,” according to one courthouse veteran.

Who or Why. Products of the grim Appalachian hills, the three had drifted to Cleveland and failure. Gilly was once arrested for nonsupport of his family. Vealey was on parole from a burglary conviction. Martin was serving a 55-day term in the workhouse for assaulting a policeman.

The killings were amateurish, with fingerprints left at the scene. The accused had in their possession guns that FBI ballistics experts are comparing with bullets recovered from the victims. At week’s end FBI scuba divers dredged up mysterious evidence from the bottom of the icy Monongahela River near Clarksville. The investigation was broadening into other states, including a Boyle stronghold in east Tennessee, and more arrests were expected. Meanwhile, the Senate announced a major investigation into the U.M.W. But the FBI refused to reveal who, if anyone, they suspect wanted Jock Yablonski dead—or why.