mcsluggo Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 this has been a bad year for 1980s era wrestlers..... but in this case, hopefully finally a good year for, you know, justice... for a woman killed in more than 30 years ago. http://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/wrestling-legend-'superfly'-jimmy-snuka-charged-with-murder/ar-AAdQir4?ocid=ansmsnent11 Wrestling Legend ‘Superfly’ Jimmy Snuka Charged With Murder Wrestling legend “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka has been charged with third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter stemming from the death of his girlfriend, the district attorney’s office in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, told TheWrap on Tuesday. Snuka, 72, is believed to have killed his girlfriend, Nancy L. Argentino, in 1983. Argentino was 23 at the time of her death. <<more at link..>> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Sinister Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 Damn. This is crazy There's no link btw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcsluggo Posted September 2, 2015 Author Share Posted September 2, 2015 Damn. This is crazy There's no link btw that original post was beaten to death by the website interface... and now I can't delete that empty "quote box" ... it has been turned into a black hole. Nancy Argenino Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sacase Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 Is there really any new evidence? not sure why this wasn't brought to grand jury 32 years ago. I think they are going to have a tough time getting a conviction, but if he did it he needs to pay. 32 years is a long time for people to try and remember facts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosher Ham Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 Say it isn't so Jimmy. That's crazy. I suspect the only proof they have is a witness ? I don't know that even his DNA would hurt a case for him at this point. Speculation of course. I will click the link to read the article though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DM72 Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 From what I understand, the only reason they're charging him now is because of some comments he made in his autobiography where his story changed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lombardi's_kid_brother Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 Is there really any new evidence? not sure why this wasn't brought to grand jury 32 years ago. I think they are going to have a tough time getting a conviction, but if he did it he needs to pay. 32 years is a long time for people to try and remember facts. There was enough evidence to convict in 1983 frankly. He was a drug addict with a temper. She was alone with him when she died from what is essentially blunt force trauma. He lied to the police on several occasions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lombardi's_kid_brother Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 Say it isn't so Jimmy. That's crazy. I suspect the only proof they have is a witness ? I don't know that even his DNA would hurt a case for him at this point. Speculation of course. I will click the link to read the article though. Irv Muchnick (Sam's son who is a real journalist) has been on this story for 20+ years. He published a story on this in 1992 book. http://slam.canoe.com/Slam/Wrestling/2013/05/05/20795786.html That night, after finishing his last match at the WWF TV taping at the Lehigh County Agricultural Hall in Allentown, Pennsylvania, he returned to Room 427 of the George Washington Motor Lodge in nearby Whitehall to find his girlfriend of nearly a year, Nancy Argentino, gasping for air. Two hours later, this 23-year-old wrestling fan – who'd worked as a dentist's assistant in Brooklyn and dropped out of Brooklyn Community College to travel with Snuka – was pronounced dead at Allentown Sacred Heart Medical Center of "undetermined craniocerebral injuries." "Upon viewing the body and speaking to the pathologist, I immediately suspected foul play and so notified the district attorney," Lehigh County coroner Wayne Snyder told me on a recent trip to Allentown. In '83, Snyder was deputy to coroner Robert Weir. Yet no charges were filed in the case, no coroner's inquest was held, and no evidence was presented to a grand jury. Officially the case is still open – meaning Argentino's death was never ruled either an accident or a homicide – though the original two-month-long investigation has been inactive for nine years. Under Pennsylvania's unusually broad exemptions from freedom of information laws, the Whitehall Township Police Department has so far refused my requests for access to the file. Of particular interest would be two documents: the autopsy and the transcript of the interrogation of Snuka immediately thereafter. One local official involved in the investigation, as well as one of the Argentino family's lawyers, told me the autopsy showed marks on the victim other than the fractured skull. And former Whitehall police supervisor of detectives Al Fitzinger remembered that the forensic pathologist, Dr. Isadore Mihalakis, confronted Snuka to ask him why he'd waited so long before calling an ambulance. Gerald Procanyn, the current supervisor of detectives, who worked on the case nine years ago, maintained that Snuka cooperated fully with investigators after being informed of his right to have a lawyer present, and was accompanied only by McMahon. Another investigator, however, saw things differently; he said Snuka invoked his naïve jungle-boy wrestler's gimmick as a way of playing dumb. "I've seen that trick before," the investigator said. "He was letting McMahon act as his mouthpiece." Another curious circumstance was the presence at the interrogation of William Platt, the county district attorney. According to experts, chief prosecutors rarely interview suspects, especially in early stages of investigations, for the obvious reason that they may become witnesses and hence have to recuse themselves from handling the subsequent trials. Detective Procanyn gave me the following summary of Snuka's story: On the afternoon before she died, Snuka and his girlfriend were driving his purple Lincoln Continental from Connecticut to Allentown for the WWF taping. They'd been drinking, and they stopped by the side of the road – the spot was never determined, but perhaps it was near the intersection of Routes 22 and 33 – to relieve their bladders. In the process, Argentino slipped on mossy ground near a guard rail and struck the back of her head. Thinking nothing of it, she proceeded to drive the car the rest of the way to the motel (Snuka didn't have a driver's license) and, after they checked in, picked up take-out food at the nearby City View Diner. Snuka had no idea she was in any kind of distress until he returned late that night from the matches at the Agricultural Hall. Procanyn said Snuka's story never wavered, and no contradictory evidence was found. Curiously, contemporary news coverage, such as the front page of the next day's Allentown Morning Call, made no mention of a scenario of peeing by the roadside; it focused, instead, on the question of whether Argentino fell or was pushed in the motel room. Nine years later the reporter, Tim Blangger, vividly recalled that at one point in his interview of Procanyn, the detective grabbed him by the shoulders in a speculative reenactment of how Snuka might have shoved the woman more strongly than he intended. Procacyn also claimed to have no knowledge of any subsequent action by the Argentino family, except for a few communications between a lawyer and D.A. Platt over settling the funeral bill. In fact, the Argentinos commissioned two separate private investigations, and it's difficult to believe that Procanyn was unaware of them. The first investigator, New York lawyer Richard Cushing, traveled to Allentown, conducted extensive interviews, and aggressively demanded access to medical records and other files. "It was a very peculiar situation," Cushing told me. "I came away feeling Snuka should have been indicted. The police and the D.A. felt otherwise. 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 physical fear of the size of these people." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lombardi's_kid_brother Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 From what I understand, the only reason they're charging him now is because of some comments he made in his autobiography where his story changed. I don't know why this is suddenly happening. But Muchnik's first story came out in '92. When I started getting involved in the online wrestling world in '94 or '95, this was just widely accepted that Snuka killed a woman and got away with it. In all honesty, Snuka was maybe the biggest star in the WWF in '82 and '83, but they fed him to Piper in '84 and by WrestleMania he is basically an afterthought. I assume that Vince was always waiting for the other shoe to drop and didn't want a top star arrested for murder as the national expansion was happening. (In fairness, Snuka was a drug addict who could barely talk so there's other reasons for not building the company around him). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kosher Ham Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 Are we to believe that the WWF was so powerful in '83 that McMahon along with Snuka and his story at the time were good enough to ignore the death of someone ? Ehhh. There has to be more. Pretty sure without looking that Snuka couldn't write a book on his own. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d0ublestr0ker0ll Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 I never knew this. Wow. Learned in Scott Hall's E:60 piece that he killed somebody in an altercation. Supposedly wrestled the guy's gun away and shot him with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sacase Posted September 2, 2015 Share Posted September 2, 2015 From what I understand, the only reason they're charging him now is because of some comments he made in his autobiography where his story changed. Yeah but stories change in 32 years.....I am sure if we were all asked to retell a story after 32 years it would be significantly different. Not saying he is innocent, but I can see it as a tough road to go down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRAVEONTHEWARPATH93 Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 There was enough evidence to convict in 1983 frankly. He was a drug addict with a temper. She was alone with him when she died from what is essentially blunt force trauma. He lied to the police on several occasions. Yeah I've been hearing about this for years. He should have kept his mouth shot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zazzaro703 Posted September 3, 2015 Share Posted September 3, 2015 Are we to believe that the WWF was so powerful in '83 that McMahon along with Snuka and his story at the time were good enough to ignore the death of someone ? Ehhh. There has to be more. Pretty sure without looking that Snuka couldn't write a book on his own. Vince also went to a police interview with him. It's been a wrestling urban legend for quite some time that he had a briefcase full of money with him at that meeting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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