Mick Foley spoke about Snuka, a man who inspired him to pursue a career in wrestling. And despite the caked on foundation applied by the ambitious mortician on this day the grim sight haunted her pro wrestling beau to the core. With regards to the actual events witnessed and lived by deputies at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, although the newspaper articles accurately describe the melee between Snuka and the Sheriffs Department, the deputies had much more to say than the papers reported. The autopsy report has never been transcribed, wrote the lawyer. He was the mouthpiece, trying to direct the conversation.. Her sisters, Louise Argentino and Lorraine Salome, tell me that they believe that this was the first time Snuka had gotten violent, meaning that Argentinos resolve wouldnt necessarily be worn down yet. Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka visits "The Opie & Anthony Show" at SiriusXM studios on January 9, 2013 in New York City. During the hearings to determine whether Jimmy Snuka was mentally competent to stand trial, his defense attorney Robert Kirwin said that Snuka suffered from brain trauma so severe that he had developed CTE and, subsequently, dementia. I remember Vince McMahon being what Vince McMahon has always been very effusive. October 29, 2020. If you missed it, the immediate things you need to know are that Argentino died of complications from a skull fracture; that Snuka initially told a variety of stories that involved pushing her, only to change his tune claiming she slipped and fell at the side of the road after she died; that the coroner ruled it a homicide in a report that wasnt made public; and that the case mysteriously stalled out after just three weeks. When speaking to the Whitehall Police hours after Argentino died as the result of a skull fracture (four months after the New York motel room attack), McMahon backed up the claims around Snukas needing Argentino to be able to travel between live shows and taping venues. For over two decades investigative reporter and author Irvin Muchnick has been namechecking the former Leheigh County District Attorney William Platt (now a state judge) and the lead detective on Argentinos case for the Whitehall PD, Gerald Procanyn (who became a DAs investigator), as purposely bungling the case. Does [Snuka] understand whats going on? All day Snuka claims that he returned to the hotel between TV shoots to check on Argentino. He believed that there was enough to take it to a grand jury as a murder case, but William Platt thought otherwise. It was a very worrisome case. Argentino swore in a deposition after the alleged assault that Snuka never hit her or intentionally harmed her. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/life-death-chris-benoit/, All of these wrestlers in the WWE have head trauma, they cant avoid it, its part of their job, Hamilton stated. Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka wrestles in a match on September 4, 1995 in New Hampshire. Its impossible to discern causality, too whether the explanation is simply innocent, lazy reporting, or something more sinister. Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka found Nancy Argentino gasping for air inside a motel room here in May 1983. Muchnick is the author of Wrestling Babylon: Piledriving Tales of Drugs, Sex, Death, and Scandaland the 1992 book JUSTICE DENIED: The Untold Story of Nancy Argentinos Death in Jimmy Superfly Snukas Motel Room. During one of the hearings, prosecutors noted Snuka did not begin complaining of head trauma until after he learned he was under investigation. The WWE has also furloughed manyworkers amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka arrives for day four of his competency hearing at the Lehigh County Courthouse in Allentown on June 1, 2016. Images. ), A year after Argentino was killed, with her family having retained lawyers from Schonwald, Schaffzin & Mullman, one of the lawyers on the case travelled to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to meet with Lehigh County District Attorney William Platt. The charges were dismissed in 2017 as Snuka . Jimmy 'Superfly' Snuka arrives for the second day of a competency hearing at the Lehigh County Courthouse on Wednesday, May18, 2016. In 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy left a party near midnight with Kopechne. I dont know what happened. It was a. Me, personallyif you ask me, Do you think Jimmy did it? No. Some additional context is needed here to truly understand where both Snuka and McMahon stood at the time. Argentino died in May 1983 of traumatic brain injuries consistent with a moving head striking a stationary object. Snukas wife, Carole Snuka, told the producers of Dark Side of the Ring that her husband told her that McMahon came into town with his briefcase and told him it was done.. Snuka does mention in his autobiography that the details are hazy but that he went with Vince McMahon to a court or a law office, and that Vince had a suitcase. They beat me with their batons I never laid my hands on anyone, and I didnt see any naked women, aside from the one in my room., Snuka copped a guilty plea just to get it over with and adds, I did not assault Nancyshe was fine. All was swept under the wrestling mat in fact. Many critics, however, would argue that justice delayed was justice denied.". Smell of alcohol., To the hospitals chaplain, he said Argentino may have hit her head on the side of the chair or the bed.. Nancy Argentino, in happier times. Even a movie was made in 2018 about the Chappaquiddick scandal where many people believe the senator got away with murder. On top of being, according to his then on-screen manager/real-life babysitter Buddy Rogers, Snuka was big money, and with McMahon in the process of plotting a national expansion for his regional promotion their initial trip to California was several weeks away McMahon. All I remember is he had a briefcase with him. Adding to the controversy was that . And he was an innovator, and he inspired so many people. When she came back, she told me she slipped on the way and hit her head. Snuka, a native of Fiji who lives in Waterford Township, New Jersey, was charged last year in the death of 23-year-old Nancy Argentino, whose body was found in their Whitehall Township hotel. At one point Argentino hopped over a stream before she lost her footing. Also, to reinforce the aforementioned, Dr. Manish Fozdar, a Raleigh, North Carolina expert in Neuropsychiatry and forensic psychiatry, said, "There are no cause-effect relationships as Snukas defense attorney argued. But the revelation that if we take Procanyns contemporaneous interview with Bronstad and Romanenko at face value Vince McMahon may have been one of these failures is something that, in 2020, casts her death in a different light. He didnt say anything to me. I want to make clear that I only pushed her away to keep her from hitting me. And in the ring Snuka remained true to his native island roots by swearing off wrestlings regalia of boots, opting to go barefoot instead; as well as donning a distinct headband and leopard-printed garb as odes to his on-screen idol Tarzan. In his autobiography, Jimmy Snuka publicly admitted to drinking heavily, smoking tobacco, liberal marijuana use, ingesting cocaine and using anabolic steroids throughout his adult life. The original investigation went cold on June 1, 1983, after prosecutors met with Jimmy Snuka and World Wrestling Federations Vince McMahon in the district attorneys office law library. If he does, hes responsible., On the matter, Jim Cornette lamented, "The word started getting around. The medical evidence showed that he was not getting better, and in fact, hes getting worse.". referring to a $500,000 wrongful death suit nancy's family won in 1985. Right from the get-go, the one constant with him was he kept saying, I want the truth. Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka (center) arrives with his wife Carole (right) for day four of his competency hearing at the Lehigh County Courthouse in Allentown on June 1, 2016. Four months before Nancy Argentino died, Snuka was charged with assaulting her in a New York Howard Johnson motel. pointedly mentioning McMahons briefcase and dropping hints: Procanyn, meanwhile, was no longer available at a phone number that he had been giving out last year; neither the Lehigh Valley DAs office (where he worked more recently) nor the reporter, According to the contemporaneous newspaper reports, Snuka who gave an exclusive, ramblingly vague account of what happened to, The hotel manager just got a little excited. The paramedic wrote that Snuka said they may have wrestled too much last night and as a result Argentino hit her head on the concrete last night., That lovers quarrel line was repeated to an ER doctor who learned that Snuka and Argentino were fooling around and then he pushed her, she fell striking the back of head she lost consciousness and he picked her up by the upper arms and she came to.. She later dropped charges and claimed he didnt hurt her. An illustration of a heart shape Donate. "You have a look and an attitude, I think,. She would sadly die at the young age of 23 in a Pennsylvania motel room. I could not understand why the district attorney could not see it., 30 years later, the case was still unsolved, but an opportunity for the case to be re-opened presented itself. , addressed from a lawyer identified as DNZ to colleague SRW (Steven R. Waxman, according to filings from the civil case), the lawyer recounts what he learned from his discussions with Platt while going over the prosecutors file, which he wasnt allowed to copy. Trying to prove that Jimmy Snuka was mentally and physically capable of standing trial, the prosecutors showed fliers from charity events that Snuka attended during times the psychologist said he showed signs of dementia. Jimmy Snuka and the Death of Nancy Argentino: Directed by Jason Eisener. He even remembered telling her, Ill see you later, honey. Snuka, having lost his physical green card in 2007, began the process to get a new one, which included a new criminal background check. Vice's Dark Side of the Ring took on the death of Nancy Argentino in anewepisode, which aired April 12. I met him, and he was the kindest man possible. [Photo Courtesy of The Daily Beast] Nancy Argentino was just 23 when she died in 1983 after being rushed to a hospital with a serious head injury. As she did, I moved in front of the doorway and the male ran towards me and struck me in the chest area with his left forearm and pushed me against the wall. Argentino was dating World Wrestling Entertainment wrestling star James Reiher Snuka known professionally as Jimmy Superfly Snuka when she died under suspicious circumstances in 1983. On top of that, according to her sisters, Nancy also had her own specific value to McMahon: With Snuka being illiterate and without a drivers license, McMahon needed a driver to get him to and from shows, but with his increasingly problematic drug use and erratic behavior, other wrestlers now refused to chauffeur him around, Speculation has long swirled around McMahons involvement in the murder investigation, specifically his presence during Snukas last police interview, the contents of which unlike every other interview summary in the Whitehall file are notoriously not described in the report at all (a fact that then-Chief Frederic Conjour wrote off as nothing in the, documentary). ", Dr. Paul Hoyer, a forensic pathologist for the Montgomery County coroners office, added, "Dementia can be a muddy diagnosis, as there is no clear-cut test to determine whether a person suffers from it." 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