My father was the mafia hitman who killed Jimmy Hoffa
Robert De Niro is about to bring the extraordinary story of Frank Sheeran - The Irishman - to the big screen. But his daughter reveals how the man who killed his mentor Jimmy Hoffa was a loving father who kept his gruesome past from his family...
When Frank Sheeran, the mafia contract killer known as 'The Irishman', got the order to assassinate his mentor Jimmy Hoffa, he knew he had no choice. It was a case of kill on command or die for disobedience.
The disappearance of Teamsters union leader Hoffa 36 years ago remains one of America's most enduring mysteries.
Contract killing: Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran (right) with union boss - and future victim - Jimmy Hoffa
And if not for Sheeran's Catholic guilt at the end of his life and a tenacious former prosecutor turned crime writer, the story of how Hoffa died would never have been known either.
Schoolgirl: Sheeran's daughter, Dolores Miller, a couple of years before Jimmy Hoffa disappeared
The Irishman starts filming later this year and will also cover Sheeran's alleged role in the assassination of American President John F. Kennedy.
For Sheeran's daughter Dolores Miller, the interest in her father is bittersweet. 'I suspected my father was behind Jimmy's death but I never asked him directly,' says Dolores.
'My mother disagreed. She said he and Jimmy were as thick as thieves but my gut instinct told me otherwise.
'The year before, when I was 19, there was a big benefit party for my father. There must have been 1,000 people there, including Jimmy.
'One of my father's most cherished possessions was a gaudy gold and diamond watch Jimmy gave him. He wore it to the day he died.
'I remember my father phoning to say Jimmy had disappeared from outside a restaurant in Detroit.
'I asked him where he [Sheeran] had been and he said a wedding in the same area. I made a comment about the coincidence but he brushed it off.
'He was among the top suspects and the FBI put him in prison time and again, hoping he'd crack. But he never did.
'Then towards the end of his life he told me he wanted absolution. I remember saying he had to be truly sorry for the things he'd done in the past, that if he had his time again he wouldn't do the things he'd done.
'He said he was sorry and I drove him to the church to confess. He seemed much happier after that.'
In the final five years of his life, Sheeran poured his heart out to writer Charles Brandt. He died in 2003, aged 83, six weeks after reading the finished manuscript, and without revealing to his family what he'd done.
'We never discussed it before he died and Charles didn't tell me the truth until the book came out,' says Dolores, a 55-year-old medical secretary.
Style: Goodfellas star Robert De Niro (centre) wants to bring Sheeran's tale to the big screen
Despite her shock, Dolores knew her father wasn't a saint - in the 1980s then-US attorney Rudy Giuliani named Sheeran as one of only two non-Italians on the list of 26 top mobsters.
Sheeran grew up in the Great Depression in the tough Philadelphia suburb of Darby, with devoutly religious Irish-American parents.
'We could never tell him our problems for fear of what he'd do to bullies'
At 17, Sheeran lied about his age to serve in the war and joined General George S. Patton's 'killer division' - a band of men who showed no remorse as they moved through Europe slaughtering the enemy. He returned to Pennsylvania, drove a lorry and married Mary, an Irish immigrant. Daughters Mary Anne, Peggy and Dolores were born in the years that followed.
'My first big memory of [my dad] was when I was five,' Dolores says.
'My mother told him to take me to see Mary Poppins but instead he took me to The Valentine's Day Massacre.
'I was six when my parents first separated. That's when he met mafia boss Russell Bufalino and my mother said everything changed.
'Bufalino was a nasty, mean man but my father started doing odd jobs for him. It's only now that we know what some of those jobs were.'
Sheeran and Mary divorced when Dolores was 12. He would go on to marry his second wife, Irene, and have another daughter, Connie.
'We saw him at weekends and he was always loving. But we could never tell him about our problems because of what he would do. My sister once knocked something over in a store and was bawled at by the owner.
'My father went round and broke the owner's hands. I was being bullied and my father dragged me out to find the bully.
Family man: A cold and brutal killer, Frank (left) adored all his daughters
'It was the same with the local flasher - God only knows what he would have done to him if I'd told him. My father wanted to protect us because his world was unsafe .'
She adds: 'I was nine when it came on the TV news that my father had been sent to prison.
'No one in the house said a word until I blurted out, "Why's Daddy gone to prison?" I think that's when I got my first inkling that what he did for a living wasn't kosher.'
Years later, Sheeran - who was 6ft 4in, with a fair Irish complexion -- would tell Brandt how he completed hits. 'I look like a broken down truck driver with a cap on, coming to use the bathroom.
'I don't look like a mafia shooter,' he said, explaining how he murdered Joseph 'Crazy Joe' Gallo at Umberto's Clam House in New York's Little Italy.
Gallo's death - in front of his wife and young daughter - remained a mystery until Sheeran confessed to Brandt.
'I know now Dad had no choice but to kill his friend Jimmy Hoffa'
He also told how IRA man John 'The Redhead' Francis drove the getaway car, explaining how mobsters were given different tasks during a hit so that no one knew the entire details.'If one person did everything, they'd be shot afterwards to keep them quiet. So everyone had a role without anyone else knowing. It meant there wouldn't be a massacre afterwards,' Sheeran told Brandt, a former Delaware prosecutor.
Brandt called his book I Heard You Paint Houses - the first words Hoffa uttered to Sheeran. The phrase was mob slang for a killer - as in splattering blood over floors and walls.
Sheeran replied that he was also a carpenter - mafia-speak for someone who disposes of bodies.
Hoffa was a working-class icon who turned the Teamster union into a nationwide movement before falling from grace and going to jail for racketeering.
He was pardoned by President Richard Nixon and was making his comeback when he was summoned to a meeting with two mafia dons on July 30, 1975.
His abandoned car was found outside the Detroit restaurant and no trace of him has been found since.
There are many theories about why the mob wanted Hoffa dead.
One suggests that the Teamsters' pension fund had been supporting mafia projects such as building in Las Vegas and the mob was afraid Hoffa's bid to take over the union would lead to funds drying up.
It is thought JFK's assassination was a way to placate Hoffa - as Bobby Kennedy was closing in on him with racketeering charges. Some within the mafia believed Hoffa wasn't grateful enough for the intervention
Some within the mafia believed Hoffa wasn't grateful enough for the intervention.
Sheeran told Brandt how he lured Hoffa into an empty house and shot him twice in the back of the head. A second mafia hit squad disposed of the body.
'The Irish FBI guy Bob Garrity wrote a memo about the chief suspects - Sheeran's name was always there,' Brandt, 68, says.
'But no one could prove it. I met Sheeran when the mafia hired me to get him out of jail. He was 74 and in poor health. I got him out on medical grounds and we sat down for a chat.
'He invited me to a mob trial - this wasn't in the book and De Niro and Scorsese were fascinated by it when we met to discuss the script.
'Two mobsters owed Sheeran money and there was a mafia civil court. Sheeran let me listen in, then we went back to my house and started talking. It was 1991 and he had a lot to get off his chest.
'We spent five years going through everything. I used to be a prosecutor and I kept cross-examining him. I checked and double-checked everything he told me.
'My mother told him to take me to see Mary Poppins but instead he took me to The Valentine's Day Massacre'
'He was actually a very likeable man. My wife said she used to have to pinch herself to remind herself he was a hitman. He was full of Irish charm, very intelligent and witty.'But he adds: 'Sometimes I'd get chills as I checked out his stories.'
Brandt goes on: 'Hoffa was Sheeran's friend but you didn't defy orders. If he hadn't killed him he'd have been shot himself. He said the mafia was upset because Hoffa hadn't shown enough gratitude over Dallas.
'I realised he was talking about the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963. It was always rumoured that the killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, wasn't working alone and that the mob was behind it.
'So I asked Sheeran and his face turned to stone, he raised his right hand at me and just brushed me off, saying "I'm not going anywhere near Dallas".
'I was sure he had something to do with it and kept asking. It was a classic mob hit - Oswald thought he would get away, but Jack Ruby then killed him.
'Eventually Sheeran admitted to taking three rifles to Baltimore - he understood these had then gone to Dallas. I didn't get anything more juicy than that but when I told De Niro and Scorsese they were fascinated.
'We met with the scriptwriter around 5pm and we were still talking at 9.30pm.
It was a real thrill that they wanted to know all the background, all the stuff that wasn't in the book.'
One of Sheeran's final acts was to read the manuscript of Brandt's book. By now wheelchair-bound and a widower, Brandt recalls: 'He held the pages up in front of a video recorder, said everything in the book was true, then stopped eating. Six weeks later he was dead.'
Sheeran gave daughter Dolores power of attorney, explaining he didn't want to be force-fed - he had no intention of living once his mind started to falter.
After his death, Dolores and her husband Michael cleared out Sheeran's apartment and discovered the extent of his passion for clothes.
'He was always dressed like something out of Gentlemen's Quarterly,' Dolores says.
'He had 200 designer suits, 100 pairs of shoes. Then there was his jewellery...'
'I know now that he killed his friend Jimmy,' Dolores says. 'He had no choice, he was acting on orders. If he hadn't done it, he would have been killed.
'My father lived to a great age. Most of his associates died horrible early deaths. I am eternally grateful he didn't die like that.
'He chose his own time to go after confessing to his sins.'
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