Grand jury investigating Jimmy Snuka's role in Nancy Argentino's death

[supremebve]

 

 

 

To me, the most damning thing from a law enforcement perspective was when the Allentown Morning Call got their hands on th autopsy report, where the coroner ruled Nancy's death a homicide pending investigation. Well, if it was a homicide and the only person of interest admits being the only person with her the whole time...

 

The damning thing is that there's really not all that much new information that led to today's indictment (although that's not the way the DA spun it). The forensic information was there (although not public record). Snuka's rapidly changing story was known. If they didn't discover during their first investigation that Snuka had been arrested for attacking Nancy in a hotel room a few months earlier, then that would be shockingly bad police work.

 

I don't know why you don't believe that this is just police work. The first time I heard about this story was probably 10 years or so ago and wasn't really all that surprised he didn't get arrested. This is kind of just how these type of cases work. The police don't really do as much investigating as people think. If there is a reason for them to stop looking into a case, they generally just move on to something else. The only reason people think that the cops are out here solving crimes is television. In the real world they kind of just arrest the first suspect, if they don't feel like they'll get a conviction they just kind of drop it and move on. That is why the vast majority of people in prison are there on petty drug crimes, it is easy to prove you caught someone with a bag of weed, but if there isn't a witness to a murder it is hard to prove someone killed someone. The cops get to act like they're fighting crime and the people get to pretend that they're safe, but in reality the vast majority of violent crimes don't lead to a conviction. That doesn't even take into consideration that a lot of crimes aren't even counted. This woman's death was never even officially ruled an accident or a homicide. As far as the law was concerned she died of natural causes. Jimmy Snuka most likely killed that woman, but since no one really bothered to investigate he was never charged with anything.

 

 

They actually did investigate it. The presentment walks through the evidence that was there at the time. The inconsistencies from one day to the next, along with the number of different witnesses he made statements to, is pretty much what they're looking for if they want to chase the case. There was plenty to charge him with. Convict him? Quite possibly enough of a scare for him to perhaps cop a plea to involuntary manslaughter and a low end sentence rather than risk a murder rap.

 

It's not a great case to defend. Snuka is a shitty witness who is accused of killing his mistress while his wife & kids are back home. You have all his statements others who have built in credibility to a certain degree (doctor / nurse / paramedic / cop). How do you counter that they're full of shit? Put Jimmy on the stand? He'd be a trainwreck. Offer up other witness on what Jimmy told them? Those would most be people in the wrestling business, which is another trainwreck. This was in the era before some jury folks felt the need to see everything on video tape to convict, or had watched loads of CSI and thought they were super geniuses.

 

Then work the case a bit deeper, and you get Jimmy The Coke Head, and the prior violent act which. I don't recall of the Allentown Cops were aware at the time of his incident in Syracuse in January 1983 involving Nancy. If not and they dig deeper, then they get that as well and drag it in.

 

My guess is that a decent lawyer representing looking at the case at the time with charges filed and seeing just how shitty of a witness Jimmy is would work to get a plea.

 

* * * * *

 

My "brutal" comment earlier was less aimed at what Jimmy did (which has been largely known nationally for 20+ years), but in how much the cops had to work with right from the start. This wasn't a hard one compared to a stone cold whodunit that they would work knowing there was little chance of cracking it.

 

I agree 100% with everything you said, but it is still crazy that the police never ruled her death accidental or a homicide. My point was more about how sad it is that woman was killed and instead of at least charging the person who most likely killed her, they decided to abandon the case. Her murder wasn't even counted as an unsolved murder, despite the fact that the coroner ruled her death a homicide. The cops just decided it wasn't worth pursuing.

[cm funk]

 

 

 

To me, the most damning thing from a law enforcement perspective was when the Allentown Morning Call got their hands on th autopsy report, where the coroner ruled Nancy's death a homicide pending investigation. Well, if it was a homicide and the only person of interest admits being the only person with her the whole time...

 

The damning thing is that there's really not all that much new information that led to today's indictment (although that's not the way the DA spun it). The forensic information was there (although not public record). Snuka's rapidly changing story was known. If they didn't discover during their first investigation that Snuka had been arrested for attacking Nancy in a hotel room a few months earlier, then that would be shockingly bad police work.

 

I don't know why you don't believe that this is just police work. The first time I heard about this story was probably 10 years or so ago and wasn't really all that surprised he didn't get arrested. This is kind of just how these type of cases work. The police don't really do as much investigating as people think. If there is a reason for them to stop looking into a case, they generally just move on to something else. The only reason people think that the cops are out here solving crimes is television. In the real world they kind of just arrest the first suspect, if they don't feel like they'll get a conviction they just kind of drop it and move on. That is why the vast majority of people in prison are there on petty drug crimes, it is easy to prove you caught someone with a bag of weed, but if there isn't a witness to a murder it is hard to prove someone killed someone. The cops get to act like they're fighting crime and the people get to pretend that they're safe, but in reality the vast majority of violent crimes don't lead to a conviction. That doesn't even take into consideration that a lot of crimes aren't even counted. This woman's death was never even officially ruled an accident or a homicide. As far as the law was concerned she died of natural causes. Jimmy Snuka most likely killed that woman, but since no one really bothered to investigate he was never charged with anything.

 

 

They actually did investigate it. The presentment walks through the evidence that was there at the time. The inconsistencies from one day to the next, along with the number of different witnesses he made statements to, is pretty much what they're looking for if they want to chase the case. There was plenty to charge him with. Convict him? Quite possibly enough of a scare for him to perhaps cop a plea to involuntary manslaughter and a low end sentence rather than risk a murder rap.

 

It's not a great case to defend. Snuka is a shitty witness who is accused of killing his mistress while his wife & kids are back home. You have all his statements others who have built in credibility to a certain degree (doctor / nurse / paramedic / cop). How do you counter that they're full of shit? Put Jimmy on the stand? He'd be a trainwreck. Offer up other witness on what Jimmy told them? Those would most be people in the wrestling business, which is another trainwreck. This was in the era before some jury folks felt the need to see everything on video tape to convict, or had watched loads of CSI and thought they were super geniuses.

 

Then work the case a bit deeper, and you get Jimmy The Coke Head, and the prior violent act which. I don't recall of the Allentown Cops were aware at the time of his incident in Syracuse in January 1983 involving Nancy. If not and they dig deeper, then they get that as well and drag it in.

 

My guess is that a decent lawyer representing looking at the case at the time with charges filed and seeing just how shitty of a witness Jimmy is would work to get a plea.

 

* * * * *

 

My "brutal" comment earlier was less aimed at what Jimmy did (which has been largely known nationally for 20+ years), but in how much the cops had to work with right from the start. This wasn't a hard one compared to a stone cold whodunit that they would work knowing there was little chance of cracking it.

 

 

 

Known nationally? no way. By people in "the wrestling bubble" sure. But your average person who is aware of the existence of Jimmy Snuka probably had no clue about any of this. Unless you are in the IWC or a newsletter reader you wouldn't know. It was probably talked about in a Phil Mushnick column or two, but how many people would even know that?

[jdw]

The previous incident should have been known to the cops at the time, as it was mentioned in at least some Northeast newspapers in their coverage of Argentino's death: https://twitter.com/davidbix/status/639093184665137152

 

More evidence that they just didn't give a shit about chasing Snuka, rather than them not having a reasonable case.

[jdw]

 

Known nationally? no way. By people in "the wrestling bubble" sure. But your average person who is aware of the existence of Jimmy Snuka probably had no clue about any of this. Unless you are in the IWC or a newsletter reader you wouldn't know. It was probably talked about in a Phil Mushnick column or two, but how many people would even know that?

 

 

I wasn't talking about Wrestling Fans knowing about it. Just that it was nationally out there as opposed to just something talked about in the sheets.

 

The Village Voice isn't a "wrestling bubble" publication.

 

It was at the time a nationally read publication. Major publication? No, it didn't have a massive circulation. Bigger than the WON? Yep. And it was read across the nation.

 

This is just the same as the Penthouse article about the Von Erichs. It was a story that escaped beyond just being talked about by the people inside the business and out into wider world.

[cm funk]

The Village Voice is a NY centric journal without wide circulation outside of the city and surrounding areas. Even in it's base of operations it doesn't have a huge readership. The Voice may have been available in LA, Chicago, Seattle, Austin etc. at specialty newstands and by subscription, but one article in the Voice doesn't make it nationally known. How many people do you think actually even read that article....and it got no traction in true national media. Same with Mushnick and his NY Post column. The Post is available in big cities and airports around the country, but how many people outside of New York actually read it, unless they're NY transplants? And Mushnick had one column a week, how many people who bought a copy of the post that day of that week even read it?

 

Just based on seeing some of the responses around the web.....a lot of people who are lapsed/casual or former fans had ZERO clue about this. I've been on the net and the IWC since 95/96 and I didn't hear about it for the first time til the mid 00's. I guarantee I could text a bunch of my friends who were fans in the 80's/90's and they would have no clue about this

 

Again, outside "the wrestling bubble" this was not a well known national story by any stretch

[Johnny Sorrow]

When I was a 13 year old kid it was more like an urban legend. "Did you know that Jummy Snuka killed a woman? Yeah, they were fucking in a hotel room and he did the Superfly leap from the dresser onto her lying on the bed and accidentally killed her, dude."

[Ricky Jackson]

My recollection is a friend telling me about reading an article in, I think, Playboy that detailed a bunch of WWF behind the scenes sleaze, including the Snuka stories. This would've been around 1994 or so, but my memories are a little fuzzy

[jdw]

The Village Voice is a NY centric journal without wide circulation outside of the city and surrounding areas. Even in it's base of operations it doesn't have a huge readership. The Voice may have been available in LA, Chicago, Seattle, Austin etc. at specialty newstands and by subscription, but one article in the Voice doesn't make it nationally known.

 

I got it at my newstand here in LA County. It wasn't, and still isn't, some massive specialty/niche driven newstand. It just was a good newstand in the era. Got my wrestling mags there as well in the 80s.

 

If you're saying that the Village Voice was available in major metros across the nation, then that's my point: most of the people in the country lived in major metros by the 90s. New York and Los Angeles along accounted for 10% of the country's population.

 

I also said "national out there".

 

I was reading the WON at the time the article game out. I had not read about Snuka and Nancy in the WON by that point. Dave certainly hadn't covered it in any detail in my time of reading up to that point. Yet here I was reading about it in the Village Voice.

 

How many people do you think actually even read that article....

 

 

Who cares. It wasn't my point. It was outside the wrestling bubble, which someone up above claimed was where the story lived. The Village Voice had more readers than the WON, anyway. So even if it was in the bubble as someone claimed, it got more coverage in the article than it could have gotten in the bubble.

 

 

and it got no traction in true national media.

 

 

Again: so what. Neither did the Von Erich's story, though it would pop back up from time to time in different local papers. The point is that the story got out there, beyond the bubble of Wrestling Insiders, and even beyond the locality of the original fanbase.

 

 

Just based on seeing some of the responses around the web.....a lot of people who are lapsed/casual or former fans had ZERO clue about this. I've been on the net and the IWC since 95/96 and I didn't hear about it for the first time til the mid 00's. I guarantee I could text a bunch of my friends who were fans in the 80's/90's and they would have no clue about this

 

 

No one is claiming it was on the CBS Evening News, or that 60 Minutes did a piece on it.

 

On the other hand, we've had the discussion here about the 20/20 piece and it's impact on folks knowing that Wrestling Is Faker Than Fake. Major television show that did very good ratings doing a piece on pro wrestling at a time when it was "hot". But we have a number of folks on this board who state, quite believably, that it was something that they never heard about at the time, and only came across years later online.

 

Outside the wrestling bubble on a major show in a major era in a time where there was many less options tv watching, yet lots of people didn't see it.

 

My point with that would be, and has been, is that the story of wrestling being fake was out there nationally. It's not my fault that people missed it, but it doesn't take away that it was out there to be seen.

 

Again, outside "the wrestling bubble" this was not a well known national story by any stretch

 

 

Parse my posts. See if you can find me saying it was "well known".

 

It was out there.

 

* * * * *

 

As a side note, Bix did a solid job of finding articles in 1983 on both the death and the January incident. It really brings home how actively people didn't give a shit in chasing it. Not just law enforcement, but also the media when wrestling got hot the following year with Snuka still in the promotion. If it was a fairly easy case for law enforcement to chase, it was just as easy for the media to chase. Pretty appalling.

[kjh]

It was harder for the media to chase the story, given that law enforcement threw up many roadblocks along the way:

 

1. Laurence Reisman, a local reporter at the time, claimed that "For months we tried to get information on the progress of the death investigation, but were stonewalled — if I recall correctly, by then District Attorney William Platt. Authorities refused to release details of the case, including an autopsy report, claiming the case was under investigation and that it would soon be completed." See: http://www.knoxnews.com/opinion/columnists/laurence-reisman-32yearold-superfly-case-shows-need-for-police-transparency_64232771

 

2. Irv Muchnick insists that the lead investigator lied to him about Snuka being a credible witness and maintaining a consistent story when he interviewed him in 1992.

 

3. They purposefully left the case open so journalists even 30 years later couldn't obtain the autopsy and transcript of the police's first interview with Snuka directly from them (and when asked refused to hand it out). The Morning Call had to find them via the wrongful death lawsuit filed against Snuka in 1985 (which they won via a default judgement, but never received a penny of the award from Snuka).

 

4. Muchnick also claims that the police lied to the Argentino family shortly after the incident about Nancy having a congenital skull defect that led to her death.

[Jingus]

I got it at my newstand here in LA County. It wasn't, and still isn't, some massive specialty/niche driven newstand. It just was a good newstand in the era. Got my wrestling mags there as well in the 80s.

 

If you're saying that the Village Voice was available in major metros across the nation, then that's my point: most of the people in the country lived in major metros by the 90s. New York and Los Angeles along accounted for 10% of the country's population.

I don't think I've ever seen a copy of the Voice. Despite living in various cities in three different states, and also working at a bookstore and hitting up every library within convenient distance.

[Bix]

Irv's article never ran in the Village Voice. They went back on the deal (for a Titangate article when Snuka as a sidebar), he won $4,000 in small claims court. and it made its debut online around 2001 even he added it to his website.

 

That said, Jeff Savage covered it in his Penthouse article about Titangate. IIRC, it was a big seller due toa Howard Stern cover story

 

Weird side note: Irv got booked on Fox's late night show with Ross Schafer to promote the Con Erichs article. So it's not like there was no awareness of it beyond those who read it.

[Bix]

 

 

To me, the most damning thing from a law enforcement perspective was when the Allentown Morning Call got their hands on th autopsy report, where the coroner ruled Nancy's death a homicide pending investigation. Well, if it was a homicide and the only person of interest admits being the only person with her the whole time...

The damning thing is that there's really not all that much new information that led to today's indictment (although that's not the way the DA spun it). The forensic information was there (although not public record). Snuka's rapidly changing story was known. If they didn't discover during their first investigation that Snuka had been arrested for attacking Nancy in a hotel room a few months earlier, then that would be shockingly bad police work.

I mean singularly, but really it's kind of six of one and half sixteen of the other. But when you consider that part of there legacy of the case was that Nancy's matter of death was inconclusive, it stands out as a pretty messed up individual piece that screams cover up.

[kjh]

More from Irv Muchnick about Procanyn's lies:

 

The incident a few months before Nancy’s death, at a Howard Johnson’s motel just outside Syracuse, was trifling, a misunderstanding. “It was just a nervous desk clerk,” Procanyn told me.

[El-P]

If Snuka is thrown in jail, does he lose his HOF spot ?

[jdw]

Irv's article never ran in the Village Voice. They went back on the deal (for a Titangate article when Snuka as a sidebar), he won $4,000 in small claims court. and it made its debut online around 2001 even he added it to his website.

 

That said, Jeff Savage covered it in his Penthouse article about Titangate. IIRC, it was a big seller due toa Howard Stern cover story

 

Penthouse does make a lot more sense of where I read about Snuka.

[RCS1988]

This incident happened about 35 miles from where I live. I wasn't around in 1983, but I had relatives that attended the tapings in Allentown & Hamburg. In fact, a person I knew who lives in my area once dated referee Gilberto Roman.

[Bix]

https://www.gofundme.com/snuka

 

For fuck's sake.

[sek69]

Well at least it's the family behind it and not some deranged Benoit-truther type fan.

[artDDP]

https://www.gofundme.com/snuka

 

For fuck's sake.

 

Fuck's sake, indeed. Characterizing this as a battle for liberty? What fucking garbage.

[Sidebottom]

Yikes.

[El-P]

Well at least it's the family behind it and not some deranged Benoit-truther type fan.

 

Fuck these people. The guy beat up his girlfriend several times, until he beat her to death. Every three days of so, a woman dies because she gets beatten to death. This is bullshit. Fuck these people and fuck Snuka.

[fxnj]

 

Well at least it's the family behind it and not some deranged Benoit-truther type fan.

 

Fuck these people. The guy beat up his girlfriend several times, until he beat her to death. Every three days of so, a woman dies because she gets beatten to death. This is bullshit. Fuck these people and fuck Snuka.

Then why not spend the precious time and money on those current victims of domestic violence (women aren't the only ones abused) instead of going after a 72 year old dude who might have done it over 30 years ago and who now has stomach cancer. At his current shape, I don't see him posing much of a danger to anyone and I have no idea why people here are so supportive of what is basically a waste of resources.

[BillThompson]

 

 

Well at least it's the family behind it and not some deranged Benoit-truther type fan.

Fuck these people. The guy beat up his girlfriend several times, until he beat her to death. Every three days of so, a woman dies because she gets beatten to death. This is bullshit. Fuck these people and fuck Snuka.

Then why not spend the precious time and money on those current victims of domestic violence (women aren't the only ones abused) instead of going after a 72 year old dude who might have done it over 30 years ago and who now has stomach cancer. At his current shape, I don't see him posing much of a danger to anyone and I have no idea why people here are so supportive of what is basically a waste of resources.

 

 

Because people should pay for their crimes. You murder someone, you should pay for that transgression. But, more to the point, the family of the victim often gains solace in knowing that the killer has been brought to justice. Bringing them that sense of closure is far from a waste of resources.

[goc]

I thought I read that Snuka was considering a plea deal that quickly put him in jail solely because he didn't have the money to fight his stomach cancer and that if he was a prisoner then treatment would be provided for him. I guess that wasn't true.

[The Thread Killer]

From everything I have read/seen, it appears Snuka is absolutely guilty and deserves to go to jail. If I was the family, I would be just as outraged and consider legal action against those who sat around with their collective thumbs up their butts for years and years, while Snuka was allowed to roam free, while the exact same evidence they are planning on trying to use to convict him was pretty much just sitting there. That is one of the real crimes here, the years Snuka got to live that his victim did not, when it could have been dealt with.

 

I do agree with the sentiment that going after him now seems strange and almost pointless. There won't be much justice served here, even if he is convicted. He's in his twilight years but on top of that between his cancer and dementia, it's not like there is much the penal systen can do to him now, that life isn't already doing. They might be able to stop him from spending the last years of his life surrounded by his family - to a degree - but if his dementia advances he may not even be aware of that. Plus the system would have to take his illnesses into account. If convicted he might not even end up seeing the inside of a jail cell, house arrest or a hospital ward might be more likely.

 

I also can't see my way clear to get too angry at his grandkids and family for the fundraising. Like a lot of people, I grew up worshiping my grandparents (my grandmother is still kicking at 100!) and if somebody accused them of something I would probably not want to believe it and leap to their defense, regardless of the evidence stacked against them. If my grandfather said something, to me it was the truth when I was a kid - so I can't come down too hard on grandkids for believing in their grandparents. No moral outrage, just sad.

 

The whole situation is so sad. Justice easily could have been served decades ago if not for apathy. Doing something about this now just underscores that fact to me, and almost makes it worse for the victim's family.