Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran definitely was involved in union corruption and organized crime, with alleged ties to the Bufalino Crime Family out of Pennsylvania. However, it is not what Sheeran did as a criminal that makes him noteworthy but what he might have done. In a book published after his death, an author with close ties to Sheeran claimed he had admitted to a wide range of infamous crimes, including knowledge of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, killing Jimmy Hoffa, and bribing President Nixon. Although many of these claims are controversial and in dispute, it is clear that Frank Sheeran had an interesting life shaped by both the violence of war and his relationships to organized crime figures.
An Early Life Shaped by the Brutality of War
Frank Sheeran was born in 1920 in Camden New Jersey to working class parents. He enlisted in the Army in the summer of 1941, prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor later that year. After World War II began, Sheeran eventually shipped off to the European theater of combat operations and experienced a great deal of direct ground combat.
Later in life, when Sheeran had long been a hardened criminal, it appeared that the brutality of war -including the blatant war crimes that he witnessed while in uniform – had shaped him more than anything else. When nonchalantly describing having to kill in the Mafia, Sheeran noted that “It was like when an officer would tell you to take a couple of German prisoners back behind the line and for you to ‘hurry back.’ You did what you had to do.”
Easing in to Organized Crime and the Teamsters
After being discharged from the Army, Sheeran settled in Philadelphia, drove trucks, married, and started a family. However, his violent nature, hardened during the War, would stay with him throughout his life. In the late 1940s he was arrested for the first time, after a fist fight with two men on a trolley car. Several years later, Sheeran made acquaintances with members of the Pennsylvania-based Bufalino Crime Family and started doing work for them. He found organized crime, and the lifestyle that came along with it, a good fit.
Posthumous Claims of Key Events in Mafia (and American) History
Later, the Bufalinos introduced Sheeran to Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, and the two men grew close. Sheeran became a teamster official and rose through the ranks. When Hoffa was eventually convicted and went to prison, Sheeran remained in the Teamsters and continued working for the new Teamster’s head. By 1981 however, Sheeran’s corrupt ways and ties to organized crime finally caught up to him. As the head of the Wilmington Teamsters Local, he was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to prison. He’d ultimately spend thirteen years behind bars. After his parole, he spent much of his remaining life in a nursing home coping with numerous ailments and died there in 2003.
A year after Sheeran’s death author (and former Sheeran attorney) Charles Brandt published a book allegedly based on conversations with Sheeran entitled I Heard You Paint Houses. In it Brandt claimed that Sheeran had confessed to some infamous crimes, including the murder of his former Teamster associate Jimmy Hoffa, who had disappeared in 1975. Sheeran claimed he had killed Hoffa on Mob orders, who were concerned that the former union leader’s attempts to muscle back in to the Teamsters union would upset the lucrative balance of power there. Additionally, Sheeran claimed that he carried out the hit on gangster Joseph Gallo at Umbertos Clam House in Manhattan, on behalf of the Colombo Family. Brandt’s book claimed that Sheeran had carried out further hits on Hoffa’s behalf as well, while he was working for the Teamster leader.
Brandt’s book detailed even more fantastic claims that Sheeran was alleged to have done or been cognizant of. Sheeran, for example, claimed to have delivered a bribe to the U.S. attorney General to arrange for Nixon’s commutation of Hoffa’s prison sentence. He also claimed that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was a mob hit, arranged due to Mafia displeasure with the Pressure the Kennedy administration was placing on organized crime. He further claimed to have been involved with CIA-backed efforts to overthrow the Castro regime in Cuba as well.
Whether all, some, or none of the claims made about Sheeran in Brandt’s book are true remains a controversial subject. To this day, none of the extraordinary claims have been proven true or false. However, some have been more corroborated than others. For instance, Sheeran is alleged to have confessed to the crime of killing Hoffa and some other mobsters to multiple people prior to his death. However, no hard evidence exists one way or another for Sheeran’s alleged claims, so he took the answers to these mysteries with him to the grave.
A Mob-Connected Criminal Leaves More Questions Behind than Answers
While Sheeran was clearly a hardened, corrupt criminal, the true extent of his crimes may never be known. He may have played the key role in the most infamous disappearance in American history. Then again, he may have been another aging ex-con with a penchant for embellishing tales about the glory days of the Teamsters and organized crime. Until more evidence is found proving or disproving claims Sheeran allegedly made prior to dying, we will all just have to live with the mysteries Frank Sheeran left behind.