YABLONSKI MURDERS

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33493, 26 March 1974, Page 11

YABLONSKI MURDERS

Boyle goes on trial CN.Z. Press Assn — Copyright) MEDIA, (Pennsylvannia),

March 25. The former president of the United Mineworkers' Union, W. A. (“Tony”) Boyle, now 72, goes on trial for murder today. He is accused of authorising payment for the killings of a union rival and two members of his family after the bitter 1969. union election. The case is expected to last six weeks. Still Lail and wan from a • heart condition and an overdose of sleeping pjlls, Boyle is the ninth person to be charged with the slayings of the union reform candidate, Mr Joseph (“Jock") Yablonski, and his wife and daughter. The Yablonskis were shot dead as they slept in their Clarksville home on December 31, 1969, by three men, who, it is alleged, were hired killers. The prosecution maintains that when Boyle was president of the union he authorised the payment of SUS2O.OOO from union funds for the killing of Mr Yablonski. Four men have been convicted of first-degree murder: two of them are now under ;he death penalty, and four others have pleaded guilty to Federal or state charges. Boyle has been serving a three-year prison term for conviction of a charge of misuse of union funds, and has been in the Federal prison hospital in Springfield, Montana.