The year is 1975 …
And Jimmy Hoffa, the famous American labor union leader who served as the president of the Teamsters, is pacing around in a restaurant parking lot in Bloomfield Township, Michigan. He is about to disappear and will never be seen again.
Long believed to have ties to the mafia, Hoffa’s disappearance is one of the most mysterious criminal cases in American history. The day he went missing, Hoffa planned to meet with two well-known mafia figures: Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano and Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone.
Tony Pro was a New Jersey Teamster leader and a caporegime (captain or “capo”) in New York’s Genovese crime family. Tony Jack, long acquainted with Hoffa, was also a high-ranking captain, but in Detroit’s mafia, known as the Detroit Partnership.
Hoffa had served prison time from 1967 to 1971 following a conviction on charges of jury tampering, attempted bribery, and wire and mail fraud. He was released early, though, after President Richard Nixon commuted his 13-year sentence. It is believed that Hoffa wanted to meet with Tony Pro and Tony Jack to settle old disputes and regain control of the Teamsters Union.
However, it is also believed that the mafia had much different plans for the Teamsters. Although organized crime previously supported Hoffa’s presidency, they now favored his successor, Frank Fitzsimmons.
Hoffa set up the meeting with Tony Pro and Tony Jack on July 30, 1975. Early in the afternoon, Hoffa left his home in Lake Orion and stopped in Pontiac to visit his friend, former Teamster official Louis Linteau. Linteau was not at his office, so Hoffa left a message, then drove on to the restaurant, Machus Red Fox.
Sometime between 2:15 and 2:30 p.m., Hoffa called his wife from a nearby payphone to complain that they were late and he was getting stood up. His wife said that no one had called his home phone, and he told her he’d be home by 4 p.m. to grill steaks for dinner. Hoffa also called Linteau. Linteau later said this call happened around 3:30 p.m., though the FBI believed it happened earlier. The FBI also believed that Hoffa left the parking lot without a struggle between 2:45 and 2:50 p.m., while one witness said he was last seen getting into a maroon car with three other people.
Hoffa never made it home.
It is widely believed the mob whacked Hoffa. In his 2004 book, I Heard You Paint Houses: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and the Closing of the Case on Jimmy Hoffa, author Charles Brandt wrote that Frank Sheehan, an alleged mob hitman and Hoffa’s friend, confessed to killing Hoffa. But this account has been disputed.
Hoffa was declared dead in absentia July 30, 1982, but the case remains open to this day. One rumor is that he was buried in concrete poured for the New York Giants’ football stadium, which opened in 1976. If so, he was never found. The location of his corpse, as well as the identity of his killer(s), is still shrouded in mystery.
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