Snooky Walls injured in car accident
A Brownsville man twice convicted for murders among other crimes in Fayette County was seriously injured in a single-vehicle car accident last week in Washington County.
State police said Gerald “Snooky” Walls, 66, was ejected from his vehicle after it crashed into a guide rail around 2:20 a.m. Wednesday. Police said the impact caused the vehicle to roll over onto its side and strike a large traffic sign pole on Route 40 at Malden Road in Centerville.
Police said firefighters had to free Walls’ passenger, Bobbie A. Sargent, 47, of Brownsville, who was trapped inside the vehicle.
Police said Walls and Sargent sustained major injuries and were taken to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.
A hospital spokesman said Sunday there is no patient listed under Walls’ name at the hospital and that Sargent’s health status is listed as good condition.
Long known to local police as an “enforcer,” Walls’ lengthy criminal history dates back to the mid 1960s.
In 1967, Walls gunned down a young Marine on a Uniontown street corner. Walls, then 20, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in prison for shooting Vincent DelVarme, 23, of Allison.
Walls was paroled in 1972, according to Herald-Standard archives.
In subsequent years, Walls was convicted for his participation in a counterfeit money operation, for racketeering and for possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia.
In 1979, Walls was found guilty of possessing some of the more than $7,000 worth of bogus bills distributed by the ring and of conspiracy of the case.
Walls also testified for the federal government in exchange for a lesser sentence on the racketeering charges and spent time in a witness protection program. Walls testimony was instrumental in the indictment of 11 individuals on charges of gambling, racketeering and narcotics operations in the Wheeling, W.Va., area.
Four of the individuals were charged in the death of reputed Uniontown racketeer Melvin Pike, who was gunned down in a volley of three shotgun blasts fired by an unknown gunman outside a Washington County dance studio in 1978. Walls testified about a plot to kill Pike in a highly publicized probe.
Pittsburgh Press reported that Walls was not implicated in in Pike’s death but that he replaced Pike as the “muscle man” around Uniontown.
“If someone needed to be intimidated, it was Walls who got the call,” said one police source in a Pittsburgh Press story from 1980.
According to Herald-Standard accounts, Walls’ cooperation also helped land the convictions of Robert “Codfish” Bricker, James Griffen and James “Sonny” Watson, all formerly of Pittsburgh, in the slaying of Norman McGregor as well as the conviction of William “Egghead” Prosdocimo, formerly of Greenfield, in the deaths of Gary Stefano and Thomas Sacco.
Walls’ racketeering sentence was cut in half in 1987, and he was given five years probation.
In 1993, Walls was convicted of possession of drug paraphernalia and sentenced to six to 12 months in prison.
Walls’ troubles did not end there, because he was charged with murdering a 46-year-old Uniontown man in 1995. Police said Walls punched George Julius Mikolowsky in the face in the parking lot of a Jackson Farms Dairy store in Redstone Township. Mikolowsky’s head struck the pavement, and he died from that injury soon after at Brownsville General Hospital.
Walls fled to Florida for nearly a year before he was apprehended and sent back to Fayette County to stand trial in his hometown.
Walls pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter, and he was sentenced to five to 10 years for delivering the fatal blow that felled Mikolowsky.