John Gorey

John Gorey appears in Frank Sheeran’s account as a low-ranking Voice member and gambler killed in a 1964 shooting at the Teamsters Local 107 union hall. His death, and the death of his girlfriend Rita, becomes a contested episode: Sheeran challenges the claim that Gorey was killed for being a union rebel, but does not establish who ordered the shooting or why it happened.

Identity and Place in the Union Dispute

Gorey was associated with the Voice, a dissident group within the Teamsters Local 107 milieu. Sheeran stresses the disparity between that affiliation and Gorey’s standing: the head of the Voice was Charlie Meyers, while Gorey himself was, in Sheeran’s description, nobody of particular importance. If the purpose of the killing had been to silence the group, Sheeran reasoned, a more prominent figure such as Meyers would have been the more obvious target.

That distinction challenges a political explanation without resolving the case. Sheeran rejects the idea that Gorey’s death exposed corruption, arguing that corruption was already widely known. His recollection therefore presents the shooting not as a clear-cut strike against a dissident leader, but as violence whose stated rationale did not fit the victim’s limited influence.

The Shooting and Possible Motives

Gorey was killed at the union hall in 1964 alongside Rita, his girlfriend, whom Sheeran describes as being in the wrong place with the wrong man. Sheeran regards her death as an especially troubling consequence of the attack: she was not described as a union combatant, but as a civilian caught up in the violence.

Sheeran identifies Gorey as a gambler and sets out several ways gambling debts might lead to violence in that world. A debtor might be negotiated with, roughed up, or attacked after defying someone, owing too much, exhausting the patience of creditors, or becoming an example to other customers. He also suggests that an altercation could get out of hand. These are possibilities, not a confirmed explanation of Gorey’s killing; Sheeran does not say which, if any, applied. He contrasts such violence with a later practice of simply refusing to take a debtor’s bets until the debt was paid.

The Lawyers’ Fund and the Limits of Sheeran’s Account

On the night before Jimmy Hoffa entered prison, Sheeran drove from Wilmington to Washington to see him. Jimmy Hoffa gave Sheeran $25,000 for the lawyers defending Johnny Sullivan and two other men indicted over the shooting. Sheeran said Hoffa explained the donation as keeping a promise. He maintained that the payment did not mean Hoffa had ordered the killings, and asserted that Hoffa would not have arranged an attack on Gorey and his girlfriend inside a union hall. Sheeran also speculated that whoever solicited the contribution might later have described Gorey as a Voice troublemaker; he presented this as uncertainty, not established fact.

The money itself became a further source of danger and suspicion. After Sheeran returned to Philadelphia, Bobby Marino asked him for the funds, saying he would pass them to the lawyers. Sheeran refused, questioning Marino’s motives; Harry Riccobene later offered to help get the money to the lawyers, and Sheeran refused him too. In Sheeran’s telling, both men wanted the cash for themselves rather than for the defendants. Gorey’s story thus survives through an account full of competing explanations, denied implications, and mistrust: his affiliation is clear, but the reason he and Rita were killed remains uncertain.