The Publisher of I Heard You Paint Houses Responds to “The Lies of the Irishman”

Chip Fleischer, the publisher of Steerforth Press, sent the following letter in response to Slate’s Aug. 7 cover story,“The Lies of the Irishman.” Slate is running the letter as it was submitted, followed by a reply from the story’s author, Bill Tonelli. To the editors: Bill Tonelli’s August 7 write-up for Slate on I Heard You Paint Houses, Charles Brandt’s book about Mafia hit man and Teamsters official Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, is a hit job. • On March 6, 1995 Jimmy Hoffa’s daughter Barbara Crancer wrote to Sheeran that she believed he was one of the “loyal friends who know what happened to James R. Hoffa, who did it and why.” • On September 7, 2001 when Hoffa’s son, James P. Hoffa, was asked at a press conference if his father could have been lured into the car that drove him to his death by several well-known suspects, he shook his head in response to each man on the list and at the end said, “No, my father didn’t know these people.” When asked if Frank Sheeran could have lured his father into the car, James said, “Yes, my father would have gotten into a car with him.” • On October 25, 2001 Judge Barbara Crancer called Sheeran from her chambers in St. Louis to make a personal appeal to Frank for him to “do the right thing” and confess what he knew about her father’s death. Tonelli tries to downplay reference to Sheeran in “something called” the Hoffex memo, the FBI’s official summary of findings six months into of its investigation of Hoffa’s disappearance. He called it an “integrity test.” Coffey’s account is detailed along with numerous other bits of corroboration in the 57-page Conclusion that is part of the book’s latest edition, and in which Coffey is quoted as saying of Brandt’s Gallo investigation, “the Gallo case is solved.” Now, what of the fact that the Daily News reported the gunman to be “about 5-foot-8, stocky, about 40 years old and with receding dark hair?” Brandt quotes Sheeran in his book as saying that killing Gallo in Little Italy in the wee hours made sense because Gallo would feel safe there and also because there would be no tourists as witnesses: “They might not have sense enough to tell the cops that there were eight midgets about three feet tall and they all had masks on.” In other words, for their investigative purposes, police often have good reason to circulate false information, especially in the wake of a professional gangland hit that is not going to be solved by citizens coming forward.