Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is more than a backdrop in Frank Sheeran’s account: it is the contested ground where union authority, organized muscle, and personal loyalty converged around Teamsters Local 107. The local’s disputes escalated from the 1964 shooting at its hall to a major confrontation on Spring Garden Street in 1967. That battle left one man badly wounded, brought Sheeran under arrest, and helped turn his relationship with Fitz into something markedly different from the allegiance he had known under James R. Hoffa.

Union Geography and Local Power

The Philadelphia story was tied to the wider structure of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, but it played out through local institutions and street-level rivalries. About a year before James R. Hoffa went to prison, he divided Local 107 into three locals, expecting that reorganizing the union might reduce violence. He gave Sheeran a charter for a new Wilmington local, Local 326, and made him its acting president pending an election by its members. The appointment placed Sheeran between the Philadelphia local and a new union jurisdiction to the south, with responsibilities that were organizational as well as personal. Hoffa’s first assignment for Sheeran in that role was to go to Philadelphia and dismiss five disruptive organizers whom Local 107 president Mike Hession was afraid to fire. Sheeran drove up I-95 and dismissed Johnny Sullivan, who was appealing the case connected to the 1964 shooting at the hall; Stevie Bouras, who had secured his job after firing a gun into the ceiling to frighten Hession; and three others, including Big Bobby Marino and Benny Bedachio. Sheeran said the men had friends and that the dismissals made him unpopular. He stayed in Philadelphia for a time afterward, watching for retaliation, before returning to Wilmington. The 1964 shooting remained part of the political argument surrounding the local. Sullivan and two others had been indicted in connection with the shooting of John Gorey and Rita at the Local 107 hall. Sheeran disputed the FBI’s suggestion, as he recounted it, that Gorey had been targeted because he was a Voice of Teamsters Local 107 rebel. He argued that Gorey was not a senior figure in the opposition and that, if the motive had been to silence the Voice, its leader, Charlie Meyers, would have been a more obvious target. In Sheeran’s telling, the dispute could not be reduced to a clean contest between reformers and corrupt officials: corruption was already widely known, while gambling debts and the perceived need to discipline or intimidate a debtor offered other possible explanations for violence.

The Spring Garden Street Confrontation

After the firings, tensions continued to rise. Sheeran described Joey McGreal and his allies as seeking control of Local 107 and its union jobs, which they could use to extract money from trucking companies. One September night in 1967, McGreal’s faction held a large rally outside the hall on Spring Garden Street. Sheeran estimated that roughly 3,000 people from competing factions gathered there. People moved along the street shouting, fistfights broke out, and mounted police struggled to manage the crowd. McGreal’s supporters included downtown muscle such as Robert “Lonnie” DeGeorge and Charles Amoroso, whom Sheeran identified as part of an effort to frighten organizers, business agents, and local officers into leaving their positions. Sheeran said he was not at the rally. Late that night, however, Fitz called him and told him to come the next morning because the conflict might intensify. Sheeran understood the instruction to get things under control as a request for a show of force. He called Angelo Bruno and borrowed men, including Joseph Ciancaglini and Rocco Turra. The following morning, some men watched from inside the union hall while others took positions on the street. Sheeran stood with his back to the building as two groups approached from opposite ends of Spring Garden Street: McGreal’s supporters from one direction and men loyal to the local from the other. Gunfire began suddenly. Sheeran said the first shot came from behind him and passed his head. He denied that anyone could reliably determine who began shooting or who shot whom, although he recalled accusations that he had signaled the attack and pointed out DeGeorge. With many people firing, the scene became difficult to reconstruct; the police who had been present on horseback the previous night had not yet arrived. Joseph Ciancaglini was hit twice in the abdomen. Sheeran pulled him into a car and drove him to a doctor, who told him that the wounds could prove fatal. Sheeran then took him to St. Agnes Hospital, across the street from the doctor’s office, and attracted attention by rattling garbage cans until someone came out to receive the injured man.

Arrest, Trial, and the Hall’s Aftermath

After the shooting, Sheeran drove to Newport, Delaware, and hid in an apartment above a bar. He called Fitz with a brief report: one person was down and two were limping. Fitz hung up in a panic. Sheeran later treated that reaction as his first clear sign that matters would be different under Fitz than they had been under Hoffa. He did not yet know, he said, that Fitz would refuse to cover his expenses after Sheeran was arrested for handling the situation Fitz had asked him to manage. A district attorney’s office issued a warrant for Sheeran. Police arrested Ciancaglini, Johnny West, and Black Pat, while Sheeran remained in Delaware before deciding that he did not want an additional flight charge. He arranged for Bill Elliot, formerly a senior figure in the Wilmington Police Department, to drive him back to Philadelphia. In an attempt to disguise himself, Sheeran wore a granny dress and bonnet. He surrendered through Philadelphia Bulletin reporter Phil Galioso, who took him to Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo. Ciancaglini survived. According to Sheeran, investigators tried to persuade Johnny West to testify against the other men by telling him that Sheeran had informed on him. West refused to believe the accusation. The three defendants were tried within six weeks and acquitted. Sheeran, however, remained jailed for four months while his own case continued; his lawyer, Charlie Peruto, was on vacation in Italy, and Sheeran said Fitz did nothing to help. The time in jail cost him the Local 326 election in Wilmington: unable to campaign, he lost by only a few votes. A judge eventually allowed him to sign his own bail, and he was released. The Local 107 hall later burned to the ground. Sheeran said those around him suspected either the Voice faction or McGreal’s group, but the cause was never established in his account. Soon afterward, Hession stepped down as president. Meanwhile, Arlen Specter pressed his top prosecutor, Dick Sprague, to bring a first-degree murder case against Sheeran over DeGeorge. Sprague, as Sheeran recounted the exchange, thought the evidence did not even support manslaughter. The charges nevertheless remained in the system from 1967 until 1972. When the case finally reached the jury-selection stage, Sheeran told the judge that the Commonwealth had requested sixty-eight postponements while he had asked for none. The judge called the delay a disgrace, and Sheeran’s new lawyer, Jim Moran, obtained dismissal on a speedy-trial motion. Sheeran rejected a proposed nolle prosequi, arguing that a dismissal by the judge was preferable because the prosecutor could otherwise bring the charges again.

Philadelphia in the Book’s Account

Philadelphia’s union hall concentrates the account’s conflicts into a single place: an institutional center where control of jobs and union offices could spill into street violence, and where political explanations remained disputed. The events there also mark a change in Sheeran’s position. Hoffa had entrusted him with a new local and then sent him to remove troublesome organizers; Fitz later called on him to contain the next crisis, but did not support him when the legal consequences followed. Philadelphia thus becomes the setting for both Sheeran’s exercise of union power and his recognition that the leadership he served might not protect him in return. The narrative does not settle who fired the first shot, who shot DeGeorge, or who burned the hall. Instead, it preserves the distance between a chaotic public confrontation and the certainty that different factions later claimed about it. The years of delay and the eventual speedy-trial dismissal add another layer: the episode’s aftermath was not a single verdict on the violence, but a prolonged legal and political contest that had already cost Sheeran an election and damaged his confidence in Fitz.