Jimmy Snuka Arrested For Murder

billion dollar baby

Wonder what they'll do with Tamina? I would assume they'd take her off TV pending the investigation. She's right in the mix of the diva revolution story so her absence would be noticeable. But there's no way that people wouldn't know about this story and knowing some of the fans she could get a tough time of it

rovert

Snuka was arrested this morning and sent to jail, bail set at $100K. Will be charged with 3rd degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

Stereomaniac

Did he never stand trial for that thing back years ago, what was her death ruled as if he didn't?

Monokne

He was not charged. The coroner said the death should be investigated as a homicide until proved otherwise. As to why it wasn't, your guess is as good as mine.

This will be the end of him. Since he has cancer already, I can't see him lasting that long.

I do wonder if this will lead to any bad pub for WWE. If you read the detailed stories about what happened, Vince McMahon himself went and sat in front of police claiming Snuka had little English and representing him to get him off a prior domestic battery assault case involving him and Argentino about 3 - 4 months priot.

Stereomaniac

I think WWE ought to just play these things down, because they can't stand to lose that much if they just keep doing what they're doing and not write any of these guys in for cameos on television or anything. The idea that Tamina be punished for something that has nothing to do with her is disgraceful though, I really do think that. WWE would be better off just saying nothing about this whole thing. It's hard to believe that the business was so protected back then though that they were able to convince police Snuka had poor English.

rovert

Stereomaniac is right they play these things down and go on business as usual.

Worst comes to the worst she is 37 so it isn't like she's at the start of her career.

billion dollar baby

Probably be best if they drop the Snuka part of her name from now on.

Had no idea she was 37!

Jerichoholic

They could release her for being God awful?

Pentecost

billion dollar baby wrote: »

Probably be best if they drop the Snuka part of her name from now on.

Had no idea she was 37!

Jaysus I had her down as late 20's early 30's!

Ageyev

billion dollar baby wrote: »

Wonder what they'll do with Tamina? I would assume they'd take her off TV pending the investigation. She's right in the mix of the diva revolution story so her absence would be noticeable. But there's no way that people wouldn't know about this story and knowing some of the fans she could get a tough time of it

Mainstream media pays little attention to WWE (and even less to pro wrestling overall) beyond the odd big event or scandal. It was know for years that the Argentino case stank to high heaven.

billion dollar baby

Ageyev wrote: »

Mainstream media pays little attention to WWE (and even less to pro wrestling overall) beyond the odd big event or scandal. It was know for years that the Argentino case stank to high heaven.

Maybe it was known but it would have been libellous to associate his name with the story given that he wasn't charged.

Snuka has now been charged with third degree murder so I would imagine quite a few news outlets would pick up on the story given that he is a well known name.

Anyway my comment was more directed to the potential heat Tamina could face from the WWE crowds given that her main selling point is being the daughter of Jimmy Snuka. When was the last time she had a match and it wasn't mentioned?

It would be very wrong for her job to be affected by something she had nothing to do with but naive to think that there wouldn't be something said.

Agent Coulson

WWE statement on it.

WWE expresses its continued sympathy to the Argentino family for their loss. Ultimately this legal matter will be decided by our judicial system.”

DEFTLEFTHAND

Amazing how badly the Police handled this investigation, surely they had enough evidence to charge him back in 83. You'd wonder did something shady happen.

Monokne

I wouldn't wonder, I'd be very confident something shady happened.

Nody

Monokne wrote: »

I wouldn't wonder, I'd be very confident something shady happened.

No need to assume shady when simply incompetence is the more common answer.

Monokne

This is what the coroner wrote.
"Argentino suffered more than two dozen cuts and contusions — a possible sign of "mate abuse" — on her head, ear, chin, arms, hands, back, buttocks, legs and feet.

In view of the autopsy findings and the discrepancies in the clinical history, I believe that the case should be investigated as a homicide until proven otherwise"

What happened to the poice case..?

The local police investigation went cold on June 1, 1983 after a follow-up interview with Snuka that was ordered by Lehigh Valley authorities and attended by WWF mogul Vince McMahon. It is still open to this day.

Vince had gotten Snuka out of trouble with the police before. Here is Snuka's explanation of the meeting with the police & Vince from his book:
"All I remember is Vince had a briefcase with him. I don't know what happened. I think Vince Jr. picked me up at the hotel and took me to the police station. He didn't say anything to me. I don't know if he gave Nancy's family money

So the coroner says it was clearly homicide, the defendant gives multiple contradictory stories, and the case goes cold when Vince McMahon meets with the police. Celebrities getting away with stuff has happened forever. You'd have to be pretty naive to think there's nothing shifty there.

You can read more here:
http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-jimmy-snuka-cold-case-20130608-story.html

Stereomaniac

I never even heard of this case until 3 years ago when a non/casual at very best fan told me that he thought Mick Foley was a piece of **** because he raised money for Jimmy Snuka doing something or other. It was at this point that he told me it was no secret that Snuka murdered his partner at the time. I couldn't believe it. Granted, at the time I probably didn't research professional wrestling as much on the internet as I have done since. Looking at the pictures of that woman, who was only 23 when this happened to her, I can't understand how someone could do that to such a beautiful young woman under any circumstances. The fact that Snuka has been able to continue in the public eye at different times over the last 32 years is just baffling. Did he convince himself that he was innocent, I wonder, or that maybe he was in the right doing whatever he did? My heart goes out to Tamina this morning when I read this article, and I hope that she has the support she needs from people around her. If she disappears off of television for a while, I sincerely hope that it's of her own accord and not some idiotic knee-jerk reaction from WWE/Vince. She's only his daughter, not his accomplice. Anyway.

gimmick

Split from the news (no chat) thread.

Stereomaniac

I was wondering when I saw the thread title there, how that grew to 2 pages in length quickly.

rovert

Attention is turning to Vince:

https://twitter.com/thebiglead/status/639083072089034752

JohnMc1

Stereomaniac wrote: »

I think WWE ought to just play these things down, because they can't stand to lose that much if they just keep doing what they're doing and not write any of these guys in for cameos on television or anything. The idea that Tamina be punished for something that has nothing to do with her is disgraceful though, I really do think that. WWE would be better off just saying nothing about this whole thing. It's hard to believe that the business was so protected back then though that they were able to convince police Snuka had poor English.

Agreed. They might give her some time off to get her right [they just found out he had Cancer and now this] and let the dust settle so she doesn't have to deal with the stupid smarks that would no doubt badger her over it. She doesn't deserved to be fired over it.

Reganio 2

Is it to early to say Osw had a part in all of this?

Diabhal Beag

Vince telling people Snuka couldn't speak or whatever to the shades is the quintessential "wrestling is fairly scummy" story.

RedemptionZ

Jesus. I don't understand how the evidence wasn't there. Must have been some brown envelopes involved. Would Vince be looking at serious charges if that came out? Because questions must be raised and answered over why it's taken this long.

billion dollar baby

Well she wrestled on the Smackdown taping which was after the story broke so I don't think they are pulling her off TV. Which is a good thing

Jerichoholic

"What's Jimmy Snooker doing in the Impact Zone Mike Tenay?"

Reebrock

I imagine the WWF had a bit of a mafia don approach to NY in the 80's. Different times.

Monokne

Jerichoholic wrote: »

"What's Jimmy Snooker doing in the Impact Zone Mike Tenay?"

***3/4

Scavenger XIII

Jerichoholic wrote: »

"What's Jimmy Snooker doing in the Impact Zone Mike Tenay?"

I feel like I shouldn't have laughed at that, but I did.

Ageyev

The fat lady isn't singing just yet....

Irvin Muchnick in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter wrote:

From wrestling fans, the most frequently asked questions of me are “Did McMahon actively cover this up? and “Will evidence along these lines be introduced? The continued presence of Procanyn as a face for the prosecution suggests that the answer to the latter is “No.”
....

What I wrote was that McMahon sped back to Allentown and, in the observation of an investigator at the time (whom I named, by the way), served as Snuka’s “mouthpiece” during the wrestler’s interrogation -- while Snuka, essentially, worked his naive jungle-boy gimmick.

Procanyn was a detective in 1983 and is now an investigator at the DA's office. William Platt was the DA in 1983 and is now a judge.

Stereomaniac

JohnMc1 wrote: »

Agreed. They might give her some time off to get her right [they just found out he had Cancer and now this] and let the dust settle so she doesn't have to deal with the stupid smarks that would no doubt badger her over it. She doesn't deserved to be fired over it.

Charlotte tweeted about her match against Tamina on SmackDown tonight just there a short while ago, and said, "generations collide." I wonder will that stay up.

Monokne

If anyone hasn't heard the radio show Meltzer, Muchnick and Alvarez did on this on Wednesday night, it's an absolute must listen.

Itssoeasy

Monokne wrote: »

If anyone hasn't heard the radio show Meltzer, Muchnick and Alvarez did on this on Wednesday night, it's an absolute must listen.

How do we listen to it ?

Monokne

http://www.f4wonline.com/component/content/article/112-wrestling-observer/44367-wrestling-observer-radio-92-irv-muchnick-on-jimmy-snuka-plus-all-the-news-in-wrestling-and-mma

Mick Murdock

I've just subscribed to listen. A good excuse to check out f4w audio.

HeathenWolf

I suppose Undertaker is back down to 21-1 at WrestleMania then.

jaykhunter

Reganio 2 wrote: »

Is it to early to say Osw had a part in all of this?

Ha! You're a peach! Good riddence to baaad rubbish!

A Primal Nut

By the sounds of things, if the full truth got out it could be Vince McMahon's worst scandal yet. Unlikely we'll ever know for sure why the case was dropped though.

Stereomaniac

Has something else come out about Vince McMahon's involvement in the thing? I'm assuming that that briefcase was full of money. You'd think Snuka would've left that part out.

A Primal Nut

Stereomaniac wrote: »

Has something else come out about Vince McMahon's involvement in the thing? I'm assuming that that briefcase was full of money. You'd think Snuka would've left that part out.

Not sure if you heard the Wrestling Observer Radio or read the Newsletter but they were strongly insinuating that there was a cover up. The case was dropped after a meeting with Vince and Snuka, with Vince doing all the talking and the police wrongly believing that Snuka didn't speak much English (as in his WWE character).

The evidence that Snuka did it was very strong yet the case was dropped suddenly after two weeks. Nobody knows for sure what was in the briefcase but according to the newsletter:

"In those days, celebrities had a much easier time getting off on things. Cash talked when it came to both avoiding negative publicity and legal problems."

It seems hard to believe but who knows. There must be a reason the case was dropped.

Snuka may have been WWE's biggest babyface at the time (Hogan arrived the following year).

Stereomaniac

Without changing the subject too much, was Bob Backlund not that over with fans towards the end of his reign? I think I read somewhere before that Vince Sr. was trying to prove a point (like father like son) by keeping his reign going for so long, even though people weren't really that into him. I'm sure whatever it was it wouldn't be as hostile as today's environment. Anyway, I think it's pretty clear that there was some sort of cover up. I just can't understand what possessed Jimmy Snuka to include stuff like that in his book. I didn't listen to the Wrestling Observer Radio talking about it but what you outlined there sounds like what we could have all deduced from what we knew already.

Monokne

You have to remember Vince Jr was not running the company when this happened, - he was specifically dispatched to Allentown by Vince Sr to go and be the clean up man so Snuka wouldn't miss any shows. Look at the bare facts:

- When interviewed by Irv Muchnick in 1992, Detective Procranyn said that Snuka had one consistent story and had never veered from it - This despite the fact that there were at least 5 different versions Snuka had given to people at the hospital and the police station, which Procranyn knew as he was the primary investigator.

- There was a coroner saying it was a clear homicide

- The perp was changing his story over and over again.

- Vince McMahon, who's been sent to town to get Snuka out of trouble, goes into a meeting with Procranyn with a briefcase, comes out an hour later and the case goes cold for 32 years.

Hmm. Probably just a coincidence.

Monokne

Key to the story is the fact that Procranyn is still on the police force, and the DA at the time, William Platt is now a senior judge in the county:
http://www.pacourts.us/courts/superior-court/superior-court-judges/senior-judge-william-h-platt

So plain as day as the cover up is, there's little to no chance that the cover up will be exposed or Vince will get dragged into it, unless the media blows the story up.

Stereomaniac

So basically the people who were there when it was covered up never allowed it to be forgotten, and when they got into positions that wielded enough power to do so, they reopened the case? It's only right, after all. I hope her family feel some sort of resolution now.

Monokne

That literally could not be further from the truth.

The people in power left the case open deliberately as it prevented the evidence from becoming public record. Had they closed the case, then the fact the coroner said it was a homicide and the fact Snuka changed his story so much would all have been public record.

The case went cold for 30 years before the Allentown Morning Call did a piece on it on the thirty year anniversary. Crucially they had the coroners report which was the first time that had ever been made public. This made it clear Argentino had about 30 marks and bruises all over her body which meant the idea she'd slipped and fallen was completely ridiculous. With the advent of the internet there was a groundswell of support in the community for this to be looked into. This led to a grand jury investigating it and charges being brought.

Irv Muchnick - who wrote a book on the situation and has pursued the case for 20+ years - believes that between the time elapsed since the crime happened, and Snuka's likely 'diminished capacity' defence, the chances of a conviction are slim so the Argentino's & people who want justice should celebrate now and not wait for more later.

Stereomaniac

Is there a possibility that Snuka could get one of those convictions but then doesn't have to go to jail because he's going to die soon due to his illness? That happens sometimes I know.
From the sounds of things it's the reporters who have written about this story who are responsible for not letting it go away and trying to make sure that the truth comes to light eventually.
I didn't understand that the case being left open without any fresh information for so many years was probably just a tactic to keep people safe from the cover-up being discovered!
This whole thing sounds like it would make for a great edition of Serial. I'm sure there a lot of people having a hard time accepting this information about a childhood hero of theirs.

Monokne

I'm a big fan of true crime movies and when I read the book a couple years ago by Irv Muchnick I thought this would make a good one - but even more so now that he's been brought to trial.

Snuka has had the surgery for his cancer and by all accounts should be cancer free so it seems that the diminished capacity stuff is just a tactic. Both Dave Meltzer and the Torch's Bruce Mitchell made mention that they've spoken to friends of Snuka who said the idea he can't carry on a conversation or is not aware of exactly what is happening is bullsh*t.

A Primal Nut

Monokne wrote: »

You have to remember Vince Jr was not running the company when this happened, - he was specifically dispatched to Allentown by Vince Sr to go and be the clean up man so Snuka wouldn't miss any shows.

Actually Vince Jr. bought WWE in 1982, about a year before this happened, so he was very much in charge.

Monokne

A Primal Nut wrote: »

Actually Vince Jr. bought WWE in 1982, about a year before this happened, so he was very much in charge.

Right you are. My mistake. I either misheard something Muchnick said to Meltzer, or he misspoke.

This, incidentally, is what Muchnick had to say in this weeks Observer.:

Irv Muchnick wrote:

Snuka Murder Indictment Asks Some of the Right Questions -- Also Begs a Few Big Ones


by Irvin Muchnick



The indictment of Jimmy Snuka in the Nancy Argentino death finally -- as in after 32 years, finally-- brings the criminal justice system of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, into some alignment with reality.

Whether Snuka is guilty of third degree murder and involuntary manslaughter is for a trial to determine. But no one in charge of law enforcement should ever have been making the preposterous argument that there wasn’t a triable case here. Now, to the relief of everyone not stubbornly planted in an alternate universe, no one is.

Though the case against Snuka was circumstantial, the defendant incriminated himself by heaping lies about this mysterious incident atop a disturbing and substantial record of violence against women. Nancy’s injuries were anything but incidental and accidental. And there was no semblance of a third-party assailant or a claim of one -- only Jimmy and her in Room 427 of the Whitehall’s George Washington Motor Lodge prior to May 1983 syndicated TV tapings in Allentown for the then-WWF.

One of the byproducts of three-plus decades of justice denied is that what we wind up with a grotesque spectacle at the back end: in this instance, deciding the fate of a 72-year man with cancer who banks on sympathy wherever he can find it, as well as on the selective memories of those easily mesmerized by celebrity, wealth, and power. I could find myself persuaded by either side of the argument as to whether a prison term for such a broken figure, with such a broken legacy, meaningfully meets the definition of Justice with a capital J.

As a journalist, I am content to declare victory with the process that was the county’s Seventh Investigating Grand Jury. District Attorney James Martin tackled the Snuka-Argentino scenario -- pro wrestling’s answer to Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick Bridge -- way too late, but at least he got it right.

Where I would like to turn the public’s attention next is to remaining questions that the grand jury artfully dodged: What is the accountability of local public officials, including some of the very ones participating in Tuesday’s press conference to explain the presentment of the charges?

DA Martin’s predecessor in 1983, William Platt, is now a senior judge. Snuka’s autobiography goes to the trouble of highlighting that Vince McMahon carried a briefcase into a climactic meeting with Platt and others. They decided not to prosecute. Yet they never officially closed the case, either -- which meant that the records of their “open police investigation”could remain sealed from the prying eyes of, first, me in 1992 and, then, the Allentown Morning Call’s Adam Clark and Kevin Amerman on the 30th anniversary in 2013.

An even more malodorous specimen of the smell test is Gerald Procanyn, who is still working as an investigator in the DA’s office.

In 1983 he was a Whitehall police detective. In 1992, as chief of detectives, he told me one untruth after another in Snuka’s favor. The core lie -- demolished by my reporting and later the Morning Call’s, and ultimately exposed in devastating detail in the indictment attachments -- was that Snuka was consistent in maintaining that Nancy had slipped, fallen, and hit her head during an impromptu roadside urination. Procanyn’s serial lies, which in turn covered those of his eternal “person of interest,” were as gratuitous as they were outrageous.

But the 2015 prosecution proceeds by pretending that only the defendant’s happened.

From wrestling fans, the most frequently asked questions of me are “Did McMahon actively cover this up? and “Will evidence along these lines be introduced? The continued presence of Procanyn as a face for the prosecution suggests that the answer to the latter is “No.”

On June 16, 2008, in the course of a long email complaining about my reporting on the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide, WWE lawyer Jerry McDevitt wrote, “[Y]our insinuation that Mr. McMahon in some unspecified way kept the authorities from charging Jimmy Snuka for murder in 1983 is an odious lie.”

What I wrote was that McMahon sped back to Allentown and, in the observation of an investigator at the time (whom I named, by the way), served as Snuka’s “mouthpiece” during the wrestler’s interrogation -- while Snuka, essentially, worked his naive jungle-boy gimmick.

I also quoted Richard Cushing, the Argentino family’s first attorney, saying this: “The D.A. seemed like a nice enough person who wanted to do nothing. There was fear, I think, on two counts: fear of the amount of money the World Wrestling Federation had, and fear of the size of these people.”