Sheeran is returned to prison for violating parole

Frank Sheeran’s return to prison at seventy-five turned a parole violation into a public test of the code he had lived by: he would not become an informant, even when the FBI had recordings that could have made silence costly. The violation sent him back to jail for ten months, but his press conference made clear that he meant the choice to be seen as well as made.

The Violation

In 1991, at seventy-one, Sheeran had been released early on medical hardship grounds because he needed surgery or risked paralysis. He remained on parole, and the FBI continued trying to get it revoked. In a separate investigation, agents wired a former sports-ticket dealer who wanted his wife killed before their divorce so he could keep her money. The man offered Sheeran $25,000 up front, another $25,000 after the killing, and a further reward after the estate was settled. Sheeran declined, advising him to find a marriage counselor instead.

The authorities ultimately sent Sheeran back to jail for drinking Sambuca with John Stanfa, whom the account describes as the alleged Philadelphia boss. Sheeran noted the custom of floating three coffee beans in the drink, one for yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and observed that he did not have much of a tomorrow left. At the parole hearing, officials played the wired man’s tapes and argued that Sheeran should have reported the solicitation to kill his wife. The basis for the violation and the accusation played at the hearing were distinct: the formal violation concerned the Sambuca, while the tapes put his refusal to inform before the authorities.

A Public Refusal

On the day his parole was revoked, Sheeran held a press conference. He wanted the public, as well as people in government and the prisons, to know that he was not a rat and would not fold because age and illness had weakened him. He also wanted those he had dealt with over the years to know that he would not follow the path he associated with John Francis and Lou Cordi, both dead by then, whom he described as having given in before they died.

The declaration had a practical purpose as well as a code-bound one. Sheeran hoped that making his position public would get the FBI to stop visiting him late at night in jail. The recordings had turned silence into an issue at his hearing; his press conference turned that silence into a statement he wanted his former associates and the authorities alike to hear.

The Book He Promised

At the same press conference, Sheeran told reporters that he would write a book to prove that Richard Nixon had done it to Jimmy Hoffa. The claim linked his renewed insistence on silence to the account of Hoffa he intended to make public. His return to prison therefore ended not with a retreat from his code, but with a conspicuous refusal to inform and a promise to put his version of Hoffa’s fate into print.