Confession as a way to shed guilt

Confession in Charles Brandt’s account is a slow, contested passage toward relief: Frank Sheeran wants to unburden himself, but he also wants to protect the living, preserve old loyalties, and avoid the identity of an informer. His disclosures about James R. Hoffa therefore arrive by stages, accompanied by hesitation, retraction, and renewed admission. The book presents confession not as a final clearing of the record, but as an effort to approach truth without abandoning the code by which Sheeran had long defined himself.

A Circuitous Route to Disclosure

Brandt describes confession as a route marked by “many fits and starts,” where hints and glimpses may precede a direct account. That description illuminates the shape of Sheeran’s disclosures. He repeatedly called Brandt, sometimes reconsidered what he had admitted, and occasionally tried to take it back. Brandt noticed that the number, volume, and nervous energy of these social calls increased when Sheeran was having second thoughts; after a while, his nerves settled and he became comfortable, even pleased, with having told someone. The admission did not end the struggle. It began another turn through it.

The subject that most clearly tests this process is James R. Hoffa’s disappearance. Sheeran told Brandt that he had been the shooter, but the account was constrained by concerns extending beyond his own conscience. He did not want his daughters to think worse of him, or Barbara Crancer to regard him as an ogre; he worried about offending Russell Bufalino’s widow, Carrie, and about what disclosure might expose concerning other living people. He explained the bind in terms of the life he had already lived: “I lived my life a certain way. I don’t want people thinking I went the other way.” Confession could tell the truth about a killing while threatening the identity and obligations he had built around silence.

Loyalty, Secrecy, and the Limits of Truth

Sheeran’s reluctance was not simply a refusal to speak. He wanted some things known and kept other things protected. He told Brandt that even speaking about Russell Bufalino after his death could signal to others that Sheeran knew things about them. The danger of disclosure thus extended beyond the person being discussed: it could unsettle a whole network of relationships. Sheeran’s concern that people might think he had “gone soft” also made confession a public test of his standing among those with whom he had worked.

This limit appears in the way Sheeran handled the killings associated with John Francis. Francis, dying of cancer and unwilling to die in prison, had implicated himself and Sheeran in the deaths of Sal Briguglio and Joseph Gallo. Sheeran would confirm Francis’s involvement because Francis had already implicated himself; Brandt says it took substantial effort to get Sheeran to implicate even a dead man in something he was not already suspected of doing. Sheeran could disclose, but he resisted going beyond what he considered established. His repeated plea to Brandt was: “You got enough, Charles…. Be satisfied, Charles…. You got enough. Don’t be probing.” The phrase makes the boundary part of the confession itself: the truth is offered, but not without a limit set by the speaker.

Russell Bufalino and the Prospect of “Something More”

A different kind of opening came in prison, where Sheeran and Russell Bufalino sometimes spoke alone about James R. Hoffa. Sheeran said both men had not wanted events to go as far as they did and that James R. Hoffa did not deserve his fate. The regret is significant, though it does not undo the act or amount to a full account of it. Their conversations bring remorse into view through a relationship in which Sheeran still regarded Bufalino as his teacher.

One Sunday, Sheeran saw Bufalino being wheeled toward the chapel and asked where he was going. Bufalino answered that he was going to church; when Sheeran laughed, Bufalino told him, “Don’t laugh, my friend. When you get to be my age you’ll realize there’s something more than this.” Sheeran later said those words stayed with him. In Brandt’s telling, they become a quiet preparation for a religious reckoning: the former teacher’s belief offers Sheeran a way to imagine an order beyond prison, old loyalties, and bodily decline.

Absolution, Illness, and the Final Endorsement

After his release on medical hardship, Sheeran’s health worsened. His walking became difficult, he relied first on two canes and then a walker, and he feared that he might not be buried in a Catholic cemetery. His daughters arranged a private meeting with Monsignor Heldufor at St. Dorothy’s Church in Springfield, Pennsylvania. Sheeran spoke with the priest, who forgave him for his sins; Sheeran then bought a green casket, and his daughters bought him a crypt in a Catholic cemetery. The episode gives religious absolution a concrete place in his final preparations. Forgiveness is not presented as proof that every consequence has been settled; it is a ritual and hope directed toward death and the possibility of what Bufalino had called something more.

Near the end of his life, Sheeran was hospitalized, in severe pain, and bedridden. He told Brandt that he did not want to live in that condition and asked for pain to be kept at a minimum, for his physical needs to be cared for, and for God to decide what came next. After speaking with his lawyer, Emmett Fitzpatrick, he agreed to appear on videotape and stand behind the book’s account, including what happened to James R. Hoffa on July 30, 1975. He answered Brandt’s question about whether he would do it with “I might as well.” The next evening, referring to the sacraments he had received from a visiting priest, he said, “I’m at peace.” When the camera was turned on, however, he became hesitant and withdrawn, then insisted that he would proceed. The final endorsement was therefore an act he had to work himself into, not an effortless declaration.

Confession Without Complete Disclosure

The videotaping had been intended as an affirmation of a confession already preserved on audiotape. Yet Sheeran let one more suggestive phrase slip out: “The real estater….” When Brandt tried to ask for details, Sheeran cut him off. The words remained unresolved. Their force lies partly in the mismatch between the urge to confess and the determination to withhold: even at the threshold of death, disclosure could open another door that Sheeran would not let Brandt pass through.

Brandt’s account thus separates spiritual relief from unlimited candor. Sheeran wanted to tell someone, sought forgiveness, and publicly stood behind the book’s account of James R. Hoffa’s fate. At the same time, he guarded names and boundaries, feared the stigma attached to informing, and insisted that Brandt stop probing when he had said enough. Confession offers him a measure of peace, but not a complete explanation or an unqualified surrender of silence. Its defining movement is toward truth, repeatedly checked by loyalty and fear of betrayal.