Jimmy Snuka Ex-Girlfriend: ‘Nancy’s Head Hit the Bathtub’

by Irvin Muchnick

One of Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka’s girlfriends in the years following the death of Nancy Argentino says Snuka gave her an account of the 1983 incident that was both at odds with Snuka’s several and conflicting police statements, and the most specific explanation yet for the traumatic brain injury that killed Argentino.

The ex-girlfriend contacted Concussion Inc. with the information this spring, several months before Snuka was indicted by a Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, grand jury on two counts, including third-degree murder. The 32-year-old cold case is on course for trial, with the next hearing set for Tuesday, December 8, in the Allentown courthouse.

At the hearing, Snuka’s defense team will argue in favor of its motion last month for discovery.

One thing discovery could uncover is something potentially unfavorable to both the prosecution and the defense: whether prosecutors have spoken to the ex-girlfriend who emailed me in the spring, and how they intend to use her information. The woman called herself Snuka’s girlfriend “for several years in the 90s.” This was confirmed by wrestling industry insiders in her area.

The woman said that, in the course of their relationship, Snuka regularly beat her with his fists and slammed her against walls. She also said Snuka talked to her about the Argentino death and explained that “Nancy’s head hit the bathtub” of the room they were sharing at the George Washington Motor Lodge in Whitehall.

Snuka’s numerous mix-and-match versions of what happened to Argentino vary from “horseplay” to “a lovers’ quarrel.” They even vary in settings. In some versions, the altercation occurred in the motel room; in others — and in what county detective Gerald Procanyn told the Allentown Morning Call was the account Snuka “hung with the best” — Argentino hit her head during a roadside urination stop, in a fall completely on her own, without being pushed.

At the time of the incident, Procanyn was one of the three Whitehall Township police detectives who conducted the original homicide investigation resulting in no charges against Snuka. The other two Whitehall detectives, Al Fitzinger and Vincent Geiger (both now deceased), were dissatisfied with the decision of William Platt, then the district attorney, not to prosecute.

Procanyn rose to Whitehall chief of detectives before retiring and accepting the county job, for which he is apparently paid on top of his Whitehall police pension. Procanyn has been all over the place on the Snuka investigation — staunchly exonerating Snuka in a lie-filled 1992 interview with this reporter, which was followed weeks later by Procanyn’s more equivocal statements to another national magazine writer.

Platt’s first assistant at the time, James B. Martin, is now the district attorney prosecuting Snuka. Observers of the case will be watching with interest how the information in this article interplays with the defense discovery motion and the overall shape of the trial.

Complete headline links to our coverage are athttps://concussioninc.net/?p=10501.