STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Charles Brandt, whose non-fiction book was made into “The Irishman” starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, passed away on Tuesday, Oct. 22.
Brandt died of renal failure at a hospice in upstate Delaware where he had moved from the Wood River Valley last year after kidney disease and dementia began taking its toll. He was 82, said his wife Nancy Brandt.
Brandt wrote a memoir titled “I Heard You Paint Houses” about Frank Sheeran, a gangster who confessed to killing labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa. The book served as the basis for Martin Scorsese’s 2019 film “The Irishman.”
Brandt told Eye on Sun Valley that the title of the book referred to gang slang referring to blood splattering on walls during a shooting.
Brandt also wrote “The Right to Remain Silent,” “Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business,” “We’re Going to Win this thing: The Shocking Frame-up of a Mafia Crime Buster” and “Suppressing the Truth in Dallas: Conspiracy, Cover-Up and International Complications in the JFK Assassination Case.”
The latter, published in 2022, purports to solve the triple homicide of Kennedy, Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippet and Lee Harvey Oswald, as well as the coverup to protect his friends by Warren Commission Chairman and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
It was prompted by Sheeran—Hoffa’s 6-foot-4, 220-pound bodyguard—who turned white at the mention of Lee Harvey Oswald.
“I don’t want to go near Dallas, ever,” the man who confessed to having killed Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa told Brandt.
“Frank Sheeran was telling me how the Mafia got rid of witnesses by murdering them in Sicily,” said Brandt, a former homicide investigator, prosecutor and chief deputy attorney general of Delaware. “And I said, ‘You mean like Lee Harvey Oswald?’ Frank turned white, his hands shaking, and I knew from my interrogation experience that he knew something. Then he told me how he’d been ordered to carry three rifles in a duffel bag to Baltimore where they were sent to Dallas just before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”
Brandt met Sheeran when the then-70-year-old hit man who had killed mobster Joey Gallo, asked his help with legal issues involving a surgery he needed. Sheeran, who was released from prison in 1993 after serving 13 years of a 32-year sentence for labor racketeering, told Brandt he’d read Brandt’s book, “The Right to Remain Silent” based on his experiences as a homicide investigator.
It was a book that had prompted President Ronald Reagan to send Brandt an unsolicited blurb. And Sheeran said he liked it, too—so much so that he wanted to make his confession to Brandt. Having had a father who had studied for the priesthood, Sheeran wanted to be buried in a Catholic cemetery.
Brandt had his initial interview with Sheeran in 1991, but Brandt had to wait another eight years to get the entire story since Sheeran was hesitant to reveal some things while those he was talking about were still alive.
“It was very cruel how dementia could did to someone with an such an incredible mind and memory,” said Nancy Brandt.
In addition to his wife, Brandt leaves behind a daughter Jenny Rose Brandt, two stepchildren—Mimi Royer and Trip Weir—and four grandchildren. There will be a celebration of life for him in Wilmington, Del., on Nov. 3.