Jimmy Snuka and the 1983 death of his girlfriend, Nancy Argentino, was brought up again last month when the story was told on Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring series. Today, a new piece for MEL Magazine examines the detains of both Argentino’s death and Snuka’s domestic violence arrest months earlier, and reveals new information about the involvement of Vince McMahon.
How much of a role Vince McMahon played in Snuka not initially facing criminal charges related to Argentino’s death has been one of the wrestling industry’s bleakest questions for decades. “Who Failed Nancy Argentino?” doesn’t have a concrete answer for that, but the piece does show that McMahon was directly involved in making sure Argentino didn’t go through with pressing charges against Snuka for a domestic violence incident about five months before her death in 1983.
Though Argentino was initially willing to press charges, she ended swearing that Snuka “never struck me or intentionally harmed me in any way on January 18, 1983, nor at any other time in the past,” a claim that doesn’t mesh with police and other witnesses’ reports of what happened between her and Snuka that night. Why did Argentino change her tune?
According to an interview during the investigation of Argentino’s murder with law enforcement officers who worked on the January case, “Vince McMahon tried to talk her out of making the complaint against Snuka.” Meanwhile, McMahon claimed during the murder investigation that he had never heard of any issues between Snuka and Argentino even though the January assault was in the news.
