(Publisher’s Note: This is the ninth chapter of a new series of short historical stories that focus on the history of organized crime in Wheeling. A number of eyewitnesses have offered their memories, and interviews were conducted with them and with federal and local officials, including former FBI agent Tom Burgoyne before his passing on January 26, 2023.)
9
A Daddy & His Daughter
There are methods of murder.
By bullet. By beating. By blade. Or by the snap of a neck, too. It was spilled blood. It was lights out. It was vengeance.
Eye for an eye.
In fact, there are many more methods of murder, and the mob’s killers used the most practical ways of execution and they invented a few, too. They shot people, stabbed them, blocked airflow, and in some cases, they created combinations of fatal blows depending on the intended message. It depended, too, on who the hitman was. Was it Asher or Griffin or Anderson, or was it another who carried out orders issued by the boss?
No matter, dead was the death necessary, and sometimes the killer would walk away leaving the wounded to breathe a final breath. There were no witnesses no matter where or when the heart lines fell flat either, and that’s because the murdered always rested in the silence of a settled vendetta.
That is until Bill Kolibash began his career with the U.S. Attorney’s Office that rested inside a stately building that was, ironically, only streets if not feet away from where scores were settled, drug deals were done, prostitutes turned their tricks, and the big bets were won and lost right there in downtown Wheeling. It was ugly, it was mean, it was violent, and it was the unseen business side of what most accepted as part of the Friendly City’s culture.
Piece by piece and two plus two, though, the former federal prosecutor completed puzzles and connected the bookies with the hookers, the burglars with the dealers, and the killers with their victims as members of a cast of law-breaking characters.
No matter the crimes and the government’s investigations, the underworld of Wheeling all came to the surface one evening for Kolibash’s eldest child, his daughter Shariane Kolibash Taylor. Today she’s an attorney practicing out of Pittsburgh, and she also is a co-author of “Justice Never Rests”, a book set for release this Tuesday and available now on Amazon.
But, in the 1980s, Shariane was a high school student at Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy and a pre-law pupil at West Virginia University, and she heard whispers, read headlines, and knew her daddy was a pretty big deal.
“I remember after my parents had gone to bed one night, I saw some of his files, and I just started poking around. That’s when I started to realize in high school that he was investigating things like murder. It’s a surreal feeling now, but I remember it was very chilling back then,” Taylor recalled. “I knew his work was serious and important, but those reports painted such a vivid picture in my mind. It was a high-stakes world he was navigating.
“I remember at one point my stomach dropping,” she said. “I also remember some coded language in there, and there were parts that only hinted at facts of a case. But I knew. All of it was about a world that I didn’t understand, to be honest.”
Just recently, nearly 35 years later, the daughter told her dad she was guilty of the snooping.
“I would have some files at home when I was traveling the next day,” Kolibash remembered. “If I was going to Martinsburg, Elkins, or Clarksburg the next day, I would have brought the files I needed the next day, but I never left them sitting around or anything like that. I usually would get home pretty late when I made those trips, too.
“Shari has told me that she looked through some things, and yeah, some of it was probably some tough stuff. What Hankish and those guys did back then wasn’t pretty, that’s for sure,” he said. “My work wasn’t a secret. It was common knowledge. When we had people testify to a grand jury, that individual could go outside and tell anyone and every one the questions we asked. Everyone knew, but no one asked me anything.”
Accusations, Alibis, and the Evidence
The date was October 3, 1989, when The Wheeling News-Register published pages full of federal indictments against Paul Nathaniel Hankish and 10 other local residents. The counts, according to the “Editor’s Note,” involved in an “alleged racketeering ring” that included intentional engagement of a criminal enterprise that violated a number of laws in the United States code.
The list was long, it enhanced suspicions, and it altered the culture in Wheeling forever. People stopped, took a look, and changed.
Hankish was 58 years old when he was named in 84 of the 218 counts included in the indictments returned by an Ohio County grand jury. Cocaine, corruption, gambling, extortion, murder, and tax evasion were the crimes that made the headlines, but the men and women – including his 48-year-old wife, Patricia – were charged with crimes that took place as a gang’s organized crime network operated for more than two decades.
Kolibash, who was promoted to U.S. Attorney in 1982 by President Ronald Reagan, collected a task force of agents from a number of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies including, of course, FBI agent Tom Burgoyne. He, and they, collected the dirty details as quietly as possible.
“We didn’t ask the newspaper to do that; that was their editorial decision because the public was very interested. They were following the cases and the arrests and what they heard on the street,” he explained. “I remember a lot of talk around town when the newspaper printed those indictments.
“By the time the charges against Hankish and the others were published, I had been through some pretty major cases that were about corruption and organized crime, so it was business as usual to me and to the members of the task force. It was what we had worked for during a four-year investigation.”
By the time the indictments were issued, Shariane was studying at WVU.
“There were times at home when his investigations were mentioned, and I got to know some of the names and some of the topics of the investigations, but I didn’t hear much from my friends or anything like that. I do remember realizing that no one had ever done anything like it before,” she said. “I remember when I was looking at his files and reading about the murders and how they took place. I read things about a motorcycle gang and about how those killers went about the murders. Those are the moments that really shaped my understanding of his career, and it scared me.
“When I went to college, it was a surreal feeling trying to balance the normalcy of college life with what was going on at home because those files gave me a glimpse of the risks that he was taking on. I didn’t look at his files again.”
Her father, on occasion, would visit his pre-law daughter at college from time to time.
“Sometimes after I was finished working in Clarksburg on the cases I had in that part of the Northern District, I would stop to see Shari at school in Morgantown. She said when her friends knew I was coming, they would hide whatever they thought they needed to,” he said. “The joke was that when I came to town, the toilets would be flushing in dormitories all over Morgantown.”
Nothing But the Facts
There had been bombings and assassination attempts, and some believed back then that mob murders ended in body dumps somewhere along the region’s country roads. So, when Kolibash or Burgoyne or FBI agent Dick Jones received threats, precautions were taken and attention was paid, and yet the good guys didn’t hide from the bad guys and vice versa.
That’s the way these crazy games were played, but the hate was real, the smiles were fake, and the different worlds often collided in the middle of a valley where people were praying for a struggling steel industry and rooting for the local high school football team. The citizens knew Wheeling’s mob was real even if Kolibash’s daughter believed organized crime was only a big-city dilemma.
“Back then, I thought the mob or mafia was John Gotti. You know, that New York-style stuff that you see on those true crime stories on TV or on the streaming networks. And there were ‘The Godfather’ movies, too,” Taylor said. “I never expected anything close to it in the city I grew up in. That really did surprise me.
“The more I learned about it all, the more I realized what he was up against because of how connected the people in Wheeling were, and I’ve learned a lot more about everything by working with him on (‘Justice Never Rests’) because we’ve gone through all his files. It’s really amazing what he did. It’s impressive.”
For years, Kolibash and Burgoyne discussed writing a book about how they helped dismantle the Hankish organization, and how corruption cases in Hancock County and in the Morgantown area warmed them up to the challenges involved with developing a R.I.C.O. (racketeering influenced and corrupt organization) case against the man described by the former federal prosecutor as a “street thug with a clever criminal mind.”
Not until the trial was over, though, did Kolibash offer much explanation for the late nights, the long hours, and for his silence at his family’s home.
“I didn’t talk to the kids about any of it, and I didn’t talk to (wife) Rita about anything either. They didn’t ask any questions either. The less they knew, the better,” he said. “That’s one reason why I never worked at home.
“It’s hard for me to explain. It wasn’t like Christmas or anything when the indictments came out because, by then, it was something I’d been doing for almost 20 years, and I was satisfied that we were trying to make this area a safer place.”
“Justice Never Rests: A U.S. Attorney’s Battle Against Murderers, Drug Lords, Mob Kingpins & Cults” is 304 pages in length and will be released this Tuesday. The book, published by Post Hill Press, will be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Bookshop. It has been reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Tribune, and the San Francisco Post.
Kolibash is scheduled to speak on February 1st during the “History of Wheeling – The Adult Version” at the J.B. Chambers Performing Arts Center. The forum meets once per month, it’s instructed by history educator Ryan Stanton and will be a little more than one hour in length. He also will speak at Noon on Feb. 4 during the weekly “Lunch With Books” gathering at the Ohio County Library in downtown Wheeling.
Those in attendance at both events will have the opportunity to purchase signed copies of the book.
“Once his years with the U.S. Attorney’s Office were over, he joined the (Phillips, Gardill, Kaiser & Altmeyer) firm where he’s been ever since,” Taylor said. “He still goes into the office every day, and he’s been working on the book a great deal during the past year or so.
“I’m thankful for my role with (“Justice Never Rests”) because it allowed me to pull back the curtain so I could really see the incredible career he had as a U.S. Attorney. He upheld justice during those 20 years, and he wasn’t afraid of some of the most dangerous and most influential organized crime figures on the East Coast. Working with him on it really let me know the fight he fought against corruption.”
The Series:
(Author’s Note: Each week I’ll be sharing a link to one of the chapters of my first “Wheeling Mob” series I wrote while serving as the founding editor-in-chief of Weelunk, a digital media site now owned and operated by Wheeling Heritage, a non-profit organization that promotes the history and heritage of the city of Wheeling.)
