Ex-Teamsters Chief Williams to Enter Prison

A federal judge on Monday ordered former Teamsters President Roy L. Williams to report to prison today to begin serving a 10-year sentence for conspiring to bribe a U.S. senator and to defraud a Teamsters pension fund.

Williams thus became the third of the powerful union’s four former presidents to go to prison. He is the first to break the code of silence and speak both in public and in secret about organized crime links to the Teamsters.

In recent months Williams, 70, sought to have his sentence reduced or changed to probation by testifying at a trial of crime syndicate figures in Kansas City and by giving secret testimony to a presidential commission on organized crime.

But on Monday U.S. District Judge Prentice H. Marshall said Williams, who was not in court, was convicted of a crime that “cuts at the vitals of a free society: A conspiracy to bribe a member of the United States Senate,” and there was nothing the one-time union boss could do to get his sentence reduced.

“Even if I were convinced that Mr. Williams had made a contribution of value (in cooperating with federal investigators), I do not believe I would reduce his sentence,” Marshall said at the end of a three-hour hearing.

Special U.S. Atty. Gary S. Shapiro called Williams’ recent cooperation with the government “at best a flickering candle in a hurricane” and said getting information from Williams “was like pulling teeth.”

The judge ordered the former union boss to report to the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., by 4 p.m. today. Williams’ attorney Michael LeVota said he fears that his client, who suffers from severe emphysema, “will die in prison.”

Ends Investigation

Monday’s ruling ends a federal investigation that began more than eight years ago and resulted in the indictment of Williams and four others for conspiring to bribe former U.S. Sen. Howard W. Cannon, a Nevada Democrat, to influence a trucking regulation bill. Williams is the last to begin serving his sentence.

Cannon was not indicted, and the legislation the Teamsters opposed was eventually made law. Cannon was defeated in a 1982 reelection bid.

The son of a farmer, Williams started his career as a $60-a-month truck driver. He rose to the $225,000-a-year Teamsters presidency by building the union’s base in Kansas City where, it has recently been disclosed in court, he worked closely with organized crime figures.

Fit Stereotype

Before his recent illness Williams was a muscular, thick- necked, cigar-chomping man whose language resembled Hollywood’s stereotype of a tough union boss. He was indicted and exonerated three times on various other charges before he was finally convicted, joining two of his three immediate predecessors.

Former Teamsters President James R. Hoffa went to federal prison in 1967 after being convicted of jury tampering. Former President Richard M. Nixon pardoned Hoffa in 1971 and, while in the midst of an attempt to regain control of the union, he mysteriously disappeared and is presumed dead.

Hoffa’s predecessor, Dave Beck, was convicted of tax evasion and of embezzlement.