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Daily Mail
23 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Jimmy Hoffa's family still hopes his body will be found 50 years after the mafia-linked union boss disappeared without trace
Jimmy Hoffa's son still believes that his father's remains will someday be found. 'Sure, it's a long shot. But you hope against hope that maybe they'll come across something, anything that would bring us closure after all these years,' James Hoffa Jr., 84, told Daily Mail. 'You want to know what happened to your father.' It was 50 years ago on Wednesday – July 30, 1975 – that the charismatic, yet controversial labor leader vanished from a suburban Detroit parking lot. He was never seen again, at least publicly. His corpse has never been found despite countless searches. And nobody has ever been charged for his disappearance. What happened to the once-powerful union boss became one of the late 20th century's most enduring mysteries – a whodunnit above which question marks linger to this day as law enforcement agencies and news outlets still receive tips about the location of his remains. As recently as July 2022, for example, a deathbed statement of a man who in the late summer of 1975 worked at a landfill near the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey prompted the FBI to dig for a steel drum the man said contained the labor leader's body parts. The pursuit came up empty. Hoffa's disappearance and the mafia figures popularly suspected of causing it rattled the labor world, captured the imaginations of conspiracy theorists, became a punchline for comedians and captivated the nation from the mid to late 1970s. A half-century later, it also still haunts his family. 'Thank you for remembering that sad time for us. But it hurts to talk about it,' his daughter, Barbara Crancer, 87, a retired judge in St. Louis, told Daily Mail. She referred questions to her brother in Michigan. 'It's still so emotional, so painful for us all,' said Hoffa Jr., who was a young union lawyer at the time of the disappearance and went on, like his dad, to lead the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1988 to 2022. The elder James Riddle Hoffa was born in Indiana in 1913 and moved to Detroit, where he dropped out of school at the age of 14 to support his mother and three siblings after their father died in 1920. His activism stemmed from his fury as a teenager about the low wages and poor labor conditions at the grocery company where he worked. He was 19 when he took a job as an organizer with his Teamsters local in Detroit. Partly because of his efforts over the next several decades, the union representing American and Canadian truck drivers, warehouse workers and laborers in a variety of other freight-industry jobs grew from about 75,000 members in the early 1930s to about 1.5 million in the 1950s. At that peak during the post-WWII economic boom, companies were rushing to deliver products to customers. Hoffa – whose presidency of the union lasted from 1957 to 1971 – built the union's power largely on what he called 'quickie strikes' that held up freight deliveries. Companies feared him, his strong-arm tactics, and the sway he seemed to have among workers. Union brass credit him to this day with the job security and living standards of its members. But Hoffa had many corruption scandals that also gave the Teamsters – and the labor movement in general – a black eye. He was arrested in 1957 on allegations of trying to bribe an aide serving a US Senate committee investigating union practices. Although cleared on those charges, he faced more arrests after US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy vowed to root out organized crime, especially from the labor movement. Hoffa went to prison after convictions first for jury tampering, then for fraud by misusing the Teamsters' pension funds. He tried leading the union from inside a federal prison but ultimately resigned as president as part of an agreement with President Richard Nixon, who commuted his sentence in 1971 on the condition that he not directly or indirectly manage any union for at least nine years. Hoffa nevertheless tried to regain his presidency of the Teamsters in the mid-1970s despite pushback from the mafia, which by then had infiltrated the union. On the day of his disappearance, he was scheduled for a 2pm meeting at the Machus Red Fox, an upscale eatery in the northern Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Township, with Anthony Giacalone, a purported kingpin in a Detroit-based mafia. The FBI believes that Giacalone set up the appointment in hopes of brokering a reconciliation between Hoffa and Anthony Provenzano, a labor racketeer connected to the notorious Genovese crime family. Hoffa had met and been close with Provenzano in prison before the two had a bitter falling out. Hoffa noted Giacolone's initials and the time and location of the appointment on his office calendar: 'TG-2pm-Red Fox.' But the meeting never took place. Hoffa called his wife, Josephine, from a nearby pay phone at about 2.30pm that afternoon to say the two mobsters had stood him up and that he would be home by 4pm. His family contacted the police when he hadn't returned by the next morning. A witness told detectives that Hoffa – whose years of union leadership had made him recognizable throughout metro Detroit – had left with some other people at about 2.50pm in the back of a maroon vehicle believed to be a Mercury Marquis Brougham, rather than in his own, which was still parked in the restaurant's lot. Authorities ultimately took possession of that other car, which turned out to belong to Giacalone's son, Joseph, but was believed to be driven that day by Charles O'Brien, a union organizer who had been a close friend and protégé of Hoffa. A police crime dog picked up Hoffa's scent. Detectives also recovered a strand of hair in the back seat that DNA testing in 2001 confirmed matched a sample from Hoffa's hairbrush. Both Giacalone and Provenzano, who are long dead, had alibis for the afternoon of Hoffa's disappearance and denied having made the appointment at the Red Fox. Local police, state police and the FBI received thousands of tips about Hoffa's fate, responding to some by digging up fields, a horse farm, driveways and landfills searching for signs of his remains. The recovery efforts seemed so common in metro Detroit that locals would joke, 'They're looking for Jimmy,' at the mere sight of a track hoe. Authorities declared Hoffa legally dead in 1982. That same year, one of his associates told a Senate committee that Hoffa had been killed on Provenzano's orders, and that Provenzano's minions ground him up 'in little pieces,' which they 'shipped to Florida and tossed in a swamp.' Donald 'Tony the Greek' Frankos, a purported mafia hitman, claimed to have been part of a group that dismembered Hoffa's corps e and buried it in cement at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Another theory surmised that Hoffa was killed near the restaurant where he was abducted and his body parts run through a shredding machine at a mob-owned garbage disposal company north of downtown Detroit. That plant burned down in an arson fire half a year later. A mob lawyer claimed that Hoffa's remains were buried at the former Savannah Inn and Golf Country Club in Georgia. Another theory asserted that he was buried in the concrete foundation of General Motors' seven-tower, 73-story Renaissance Center in Detroit. Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran claimed to have taken part in killing Hoffa in Detroit, although prosecutors didn't buy his story and never prosecuted him. Sheeran's account was made famous by Martin Scorsese's 2019 Netflix film The Irishman, in which he was played by Robert De Niro. Some theories speculated that Hoffa never disappeared at all but rather faked his own death and ran off to be with a mistress, or to avoid financial problems, or to escape threats from mafia families tied to the Teamsters. Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982. The theory prosecutors put forward during a 1975 grand jury was the mob had been raiding the Teamsters' pension fund and put a hit on Hoffa to stop him from going to police Other theories surmised that the then leadership of the Teamsters ordered a hit on Hoffa to silence him. The theory prosecutors put forward during a 1975 grand jury investigation was that the mob had been raiding the Teamsters' pension fund and put a hit on Hoffa to prevent him from disclosing it to authorities. But prosecutors lacked conclusive evidence to charge anyone, causing hopes of ever solving Hoffa's disappearance to fade in the 1980s and 1990s. Although the case is inactive in Eastern Michigan's US Attorney's office, it is not officially closed. Most of the named suspects – a list of mafia members or union operators with mob ties – have since died, and with them the long litany of late-night comedians' jokes about their gangster nicknames. Meanwhile, the old-school and clubby Machus Red Fox restaurant closed in 1996 and reopened a year later as Andiamo, meaning 'Let's go' in Italian. Despite much urging, the new owner, restaurateur Joe Vicari chose against renaming the place after Hoffa, deeming that 'would be in bad taste.' At one point in the ensuing decades, the restaurant did name a dish for the union boss – Aragosta alla Hoffa, a lobster tail in garlic butter sauce served with broccoli rabe and mushroom risotto. The lore of Hoffa's disappearance lives on vintage matchbooks, swizzle sticks and ashtrays from the restaurant selling for high-dollar on Ebay, and in dozens of books, songs and movies about the mystery, as well as a video game. Hoffa Jr. said he must have driven by the restaurant 'a thousand times' since his father's disappearance, but 'never had the stomach to go in.'
New York Post
3 days ago
- New York Post
Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance remains among America's most infamous, unsolved mysteries — but there's a new theory
It's been 50 years — and countless conspiracy theories — since Jimmy Hoffa first disappeared, and his case remains one of the most infamous and vexing unsolved mysteries in U.S. history. The ex-Teamsters boss left his cottage home in suburban Lake Orion, Mich., near Detroit on July 30, 1975 for a 2 p.m. meeting at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in nearby Bloomfield Hills. He was reportedly gathering with a group of gangsters, including Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano, a New Jersey-based capo for the Genovese crime family, and Detroit mob boss Anthony 'Tony Jack' Giacalone. Hoffa was trying to regain control of the union after stepping down as its leader four years earlier — and the mob wanted no part of that since it meant they'd lose access to the the Teamster's lucrative pension fund. Advertisement At around 2:15 p.m., Hoffa, 62, called his wife, Josephine, from the restaurant's parking lot to tell her no one showed up. It was the last time anyone ever heard from him. 9 It's been 50 years since Jimmy Hoffa was last seen alive, but his disappearance remains one of the most infamous, unsolved mysteries in American history. Bettmann Archive He was officially declared dead seven years later, but the whereabouts of his remains have baffled the FBI ever since. Advertisement Over the past five decades, the agency has assigned hundreds of agents to the case who've debunked conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory – while costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, estimated Hoffa historian and author Scott Burnstein. 9 Police in 2012 block a driveway in Roseville, Mich., so authorities could drill into a cement driveway and search for Hoffa — only to come up empty. AP 9 FBI agents in 2006 sifting through a mound of dirt on the site of a demolished barn in Milford Township, Mich., while searching for Hoffa's remains. ASSOCIATED PRESS The case also spawned more than 20 books, multiple movies and documentaries – and a cottage industry of investigative journalists, amateur sleuths and former wise guys claiming to know what really happened. Advertisement Just this week a new theory emerged — that Hoffa's corpse was literally turned into mincemeat, The Post can reveal. Burnstein — who believes the hit on Hoffa was carried out by Detroit's Tocco–Zerilli crime family — said the case's mythology took on a life of its own because remains were never found. 'This was something they thought was a perfect crime – and in a lot of ways it was the perfect crime,' he told The Post, referring to the crime syndicate also known as 'Detroit Partnership.' 'I just don't think they anticipated people would still be talking about it 50 years later, and this is a mob family that thrives in the shadows. They like being stealth. 9 Hoffa left his cottage home in suburban Lake Orion, Mich., near Detroit on July 30, 1975 for a 2 p.m. meeting at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant (shown) in nearby Bloomfield Hills. He called his wife, Josephine, from the restaurant's parking lot at 2:15 p.m. to tell her no one showed up. It was the last time anyone ever heard from him. Bettmann Archive Advertisement 'They're not a New York-type family or Chicago-type family or Philadelphia-type family that really covets the press.' On Wednesday, Burnstein teamed up with former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino and ex-mob soldier Nove Tocco at an event at Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich., to reveal the latest theory to surface about what happened to Hoffa. They claimed Hoffa was whacked by late Detroit mobster Anthony 'Tony Pal' Palazzolo — and the body ground up in a sausage grinder at the former Detroit Sausage Company Palazzolo used for his operations. 9 Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano, a New Jersey-based capo for the Genovese crime family, was one of the reputed mobsters Hoffa was supposed to meet with the day he went missing. ASSOCIATED PRESS The remaining pieces were then dumped in an incinerator of a mob-owned waste disposal business in nearby Hamtramck, Mich., that was destroyed in an arson fire eight months later, the trio claimed. The site is now part of a local jail complex. Other popular theories about Hoffa's demise include: He was whacked on Provenzano's orders, and his body was chopped into little pieces, taken to South Florida and thrown into the Everglades. The FBI never found evidence to support the claim. Hoffa was buried during construction of the old Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. — which is now part of MetLife Stadium's parking lot. The FBI dismissed the claim that Hoffa was buried under what would become Section 107 of the old stadium — made by mob hitman-turned-informant Donald 'Tony the Greek' Frankos during a 1989 Playboy magazine interview. The agency didn't even bother to check it out when the stadium was demolished in 2010. Hoffa's pal Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran claimed on his deathbed in 2003 that he lured Hoffa to a house in Detroit and shot him twice in the back of the head on mobsters' orders. Key parts of the tale spurred the 2019 hit flick 'The Irishman.' Local police ripped up floorboards at the same house in 2004, and the FBI later determined that blood found on them wasn't Hoffa's. He was buried at a horse farm in Milford Township, Mich. In 2006, the FBI searched the site, once owned by a Teamster official, after a 75-year-old inmate claimed he remembered seeing men using a backhoe to dig a hole there a day after Hoffa disappeared. The FBI brought cadaver dogs and fully demolished the barn – but found zilch. The failed search cost the agency $265,000, including $160,000 to replace the razed barn. Hoffa was abducted by federal marshals and agents and dropped out of an airplane into one of the Great Lakes surrounding Michigan, according to former Hoffa associate Joseph Franco who wrote a book about it. Authorities found Franco's book and claims to be fiction, not fact. He was buried beneath a swimming pool in Hampton Township, Mich. The 2003 tip came from convicted murderer Richard Powell, who told cops Hoffa was buried beneath his former property. Police demolished the pool to dig beneath it, but found no trace of Hoffa. Hoffa's driver Marvin Elkind claimed in the 2011 book 'The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob' that Hoffa's killers buried him beneath the 73-story Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, which is General Motors' headquarters. The claim was rejected by authorities. A group of cold case crime investigators claimed in 2023 they believed Hoffa was buried on the site of the Brewers' old ballpark, Milwaukee County Stadium in Wisconsin. 9 Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran claimed on his deathbed in 2003 that he lured Hoffa to a house in Detroit and shot him twice in the back of the head on mobsters' orders. Key parts of the tale spurred the 2019 hit flick 'The Irishman.' ASSOCIATED PRESS Advertisement Dan Moldea, a 75-year-old journalist and author of 'The Hoffa Wars' who has written extensively about the case since the ex-Teamster boss went missing, spurred one of the most recent searches for Hoffa in 2021 by providing the feds information he secured from multiple mob sources. Moldea told the FBI he believed Hoffa was buried in a steel drum in an alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, near the site of a former Jersey City landfill. Before the FBI began its search, Moldea and Fox News contracted teams of investigators to use ground-penetrating radar to check for anomalies under the site, such as steel drums. Both tests flagged possible evidence, he said. 9 Investigative journalist Dan Moldea told the FBI his sources said Hoffa was buried in a steel drum in an alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, near the site of a former Jersey City landfill. The FBI conducted a search but Moldea believes they dug in the wrong location. AP Advertisement The scans were then provided to the FBI's Detroit Field Office, but Moldea said that office never shared the information with the FBI's Newark Field Office — and he believes this led to the feds digging in the wrong spot a mere 10 yards away and coming up empty. 'We spoon-fed them this information, so it was tragic the way the whole thing worked out,' Moldea told The Post. He wants to re-examine the suspected burial site, which is now owned by the New Jersey Department of Transportation, but said he's been blocked because the agency claims the area is currently an active work zone for overhead construction on the highway. Burnstein said he has great respect for Moldea's work but believes the murder and body disposal was done locally — not out of state. Advertisement 9 One of the most infamous theories about Hoffa's remains is that they were buried during the construction of the former Giants Stadium under what would become Section 107 by in the field's western end zone. AP 'I think people are making this way more complex than it actually was,' Bernstein said. 'This was a job done by the Detroit mob, and it was probably done within a half hour or 45 minutes.' Besides Hoffa's bid to reclaim the Teamsters' presidency — a title he held from 1959 to 1971 — Burnstein said his sources told him there's another reason mobsters wanted Hoffa dead: He was a 'confidential informant working for the FBI.' 'The rumors were starting to spread on the street in the spring of 75,' he said. Advertisement The FBI said the case remains active but declined to answer questions. 'As the 50th anniversary of Mr. Hoffa's disappearance approaches, the FBI Detroit Field Office remains steadfast in its commitment to pursuing all credible leads,' said Cheyvoryea Gibson, the office's Special Agent in Charge. 'We continue to encourage anyone with information to submit a tip at or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.' 9 Hoffa poses shortly before his appearance on the TV program 'Face the Nation,' on July 26, 1959, in Washington DC. ASSOCIATED PRESS James P. Hoffa, son of the late Teamsters boss, told the Detroit News he doesn't buy that his father's remains were taken out of state, and he denied that his father planned to testify for the feds. He's proud of the 'legacy' his father left behind, but regrets the disappearance became comedy fodder for late-night television and that his mother died in 1980 with a 'broken heart.' 'My father went to a meeting he shouldn't have gone to, and he was murdered,' said the younger Hoffa, 84, who served as Teamsters president from 1998-2022. 'I know there are a lot of theories out there, but we've stopped trying to figure out who did what to whom. 'This is a tragedy our family has had to live with, and we're still hoping to have closure someday.'
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
This week in politics: Why was Jimmy Hoffa, Teamsters Union leader, discussed in MS House?
If you know how many times the 'disappearance' of former Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa has been mentioned during debates in the Mississippi Legislature, let somebody know. A bill to restrict union access throughout Mississippi was killed on Wednesday by a motion to reconsider just before the House gaveled out of the 2025 session. The bill was not readdressed, killing it. Before the House adjourned for the year on Wednesday, Republicans and Democrats fiercely debated the legislation, in which several Democrats argued that unions had helped to guarantee labor rights and protections for Mississippians and Americans across the country. At one point Rep. Oscar Denton, D-Vicksburg, asked Rep. Lee Yancey, R-Brandon, who presented the bill, who unions ever actually hurt. Yancey quickly shot back, stating that "they still haven't found Jimmy Hoffa." 2025 special session: MS governor considering 'priorities for conservatives' for 2025 special session. Read why Public broadcasting seat denied: Senate votes 'no' on governor staffer's appointment to MPB board. Read why Hoffa, who was the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1957 until 1971, disappeared suddenly in 1975. In 1981, he was officially declared dead. Hoffa had become and still is notorious for his alleged ties to organized crime and for his disappearance. In 2003, years after his death, Frank Sheeran, a man who also had deep alleged ties to the Mafia, admitted to killing Hoffa as part of a book titled "I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank 'The Irishman' Sheeran and Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa," by Charles Brandt. Mississippi lawmakers on Wednesday killed a piece of legislation aimed at banning most intoxicating hemp products while allowing for the sale and regulation of hemp beverages containing "low" amounts of THC, the psychoactive part of cannabis. The bill had been put through the ringer twice in the Senate, where it first passed by only a slim margin in the first half of the 2025 Legislative Session. However, the bill died by less than a few votes in the Senate early last week. It was held back from death by a motion to reconsider the bill, but Senate lawmakers did not take it back by the time they gaveled out the 2025 session. Hemp ban: Hemp THC ban bill facing challenges in MS Senate. Read why DEI ban update: DEI bans for schools, colleges passed by Mississippi Legislature The situation will leave many of these intoxicating hemp products on Mississippi shelves, mostly in gas stations and convenience stories, for at least another year. Currently no regulations exist to restrict who, regardless of age, can purchase these products. It's probably not common knowledge among average Mississippians, but the first sign that the 2025 session was ending early this year came when tomatoes were placed on the desks of House lawmakers, and on Thursday when they were put on the Senate's. The tradition is a long-standing one in the Mississippi legislature and is often the sign for lawmakers to wrap up the session and go home, if for no other reason, than to plant tomato seedlings before they die on lawmakers' desks. On Thursday, the Legislature ended the session early after budget negotiations stalled and thus stonewalled the final stretch of the session. That work stoppage on the budget came when the House skipped a Saturday working deadline day last week to hash out a budget, citing that it did not want to pass a rushed budget at the last minute without proper vetting, as is done every year. The Senate blasted the House for not showing and then refused to consider suspending the legislature's deadlines to revive more than 100 budget proposals. The House tried to send a suspension resolution to the higher chamber, but after the Senate didn't take it up by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, the House adjourned and left the Capitol. The Senate did the same the next morning. As House members and Senators were leaving the Capitol this week, most were seen carrying these little plants, a bit of an odd image of the session coming to a close. Grant McLaughlin covers the Legislature and state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@ or 972-571-2335. This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: State Politics: Jimmy Hoffa discussed during union debate in MS House
