Trials: Tales from a Teamster

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The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has long been accused of ties to organized crime, but seldom has the linkage been confirmed as baldly as it was last week by former Teamsters President Roy L. Williams, 72. Serving a ten- year sentence on a 1982 bribery and fraud conviction, Williams testified on videotape at the Manhattan trial of twelve reputed Mafia members and associates for alleged racketeering. He described how emissaries of the late Kansas City, Mo., Mafia boss Nick Civella brought him a message: If he did not become Civella's "boy," he could anticipate the deaths of his two children, his wife and himself, in that order. He became the boy. "Organized crime was filtered into the Teamsters union a long time before I came there," he summed up, "and it'll be there a long time after I'm gone."