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Tony Pro Convicted of Extortion in Newark

June 11, 1963 - Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano (pictured), 46, hulking president of Teamsters Union Local 560 and friend of Teamsters czar James R. Hoffa, was convicted of extortion by a Federal Court jury in Newark, N.J., this evening. He could be sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $10,000. He appeared stunned at the verdict. With no protest from the prosecution, Judge Robert Shaw continued Mr. Provenzano at liberty under a nominal $1,500 bail. As Mr. Provenzano left the courtroom flanked by scowling truckdriver buddies, a newsman asked how he felt. “Fine, fine,” he said, but unsteadily. He brushed aside other queries with the comment: “Talk to my lawyers.” Judge Shaw dismissed the six women and six men jurors with the thanks of the court. “When you get home,” Shaw said, “you will understand some of the reasons why you were sequestered. It was done so that nothing would come between you and the evidence produced in this court.” On May 24, two days after Provenzano went on trial on charges of extorted $17,100 from Dorn Transportation, a trucking firm, as the price of labor peace in its New Jersey terminal, Judge Shaw ordered the jury locked up for the duration of the proceedings. A few hours before, Walter Glockner, 27, of Hoboken, had been shot to death near his home as he prepared to go to work for the Dorn firm. Glockner was a shop steward in Local 560 and a fervent foe of Tony Pro’s leadership. The night before he was slain, Glockner had a fistfight at a union shop steward’s meeting and was thrown out bodily. The verdict this evening was brought in at 7:38 p.m. after 8-and-a-half hours of deliberation. Said Judge Shaw, in sending the juror’s home: “You have done your job well. I thank you for myself and for the other judges of the court.”

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