Jimmy Hoffa

:See also: James R. Hoffa's son and current Teamster union president James P. Hoffa

Conviction and disappearance

In 1967 he was convicted of attempted bribery of a grand juror and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. In 1971, however, he was released when President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence to time served on the condition he not participate in union activities for 10 years. Hoffa was planning to sue to invalidate that restriction in order to reassert his power over the Teamsters when he disappeared on 30 July 1975 from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, at about 2:30 p.m. He was to meet with two Mafia leaders, Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone of Detroit and Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano of Union City, New Jersey.

Related Topics:
1967 - 1971 - Richard Nixon - 30 July - 1975 - Machus Red Fox Restaurant - Bloomfield Hills, Michigan - Detroit - Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone - Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano - Union City, New Jersey

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His fate is a mystery that continues to this day and there are many guesses as to what happened to him. Among these are that Hoffa was dumped from a boat into Lake St. Clair, Lake Huron, or Lake Erie, is buried in northern Michigan, in the yard of either his house in Bloomfield, or another Detroit area house, under the New Jersey Turnpike, in an abandoned shaft of a coal mine near Pittston, Pennsylvania, somewhere in Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, New York, under the end zone at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, or at the PJP Landfill in Jersey City underneath the Pulaski Skyway. Other hypotheses are that Hoffa's corpse was actually put in a cement-making machine and turned into cement, dissolved in an acid tank used to rechrome car bumpers, rendered into fat at a rendering plant, put in a car-crusher at a wrecking yard, or put into a smelter and melted in a local Detroit plant. No theory has been proven and his body has never been found, and on 30 July 1982 he was declared legally dead, and a death certificate was formally issued.

Related Topics:
Lake St. Clair - Lake Huron - Lake Erie - Michigan - New Jersey Turnpike - Coal mine - Pittston - Pennsylvania - Fresh Kills - Staten Island, New York - Giants Stadium - New Jersey - Jersey City - Pulaski Skyway - 30 July - 1982

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Recently, the Discovery Channel show MythBusters arranged to have the locations in Giants Stadium where Hoffa was rumored to be buried scanned with a ground penetrating radar to see if any disturbances were present that would indicate a human body had been buried there. No trace of any human remains was found. Additionally, a FBI search in 2003 at a backyard of a home in Munger Township, Michigan turned up no results. The home is a former place where Frank Sheeran used to frequent.

Related Topics:
Discovery Channel - MythBusters - Ground penetrating radar - FBI - 2003 - Munger Township, Michigan - Frank Sheeran

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In 2001, DNA evidence placed Hoffa in the car of longtime Teamster associate Charles O'Brien, who claimed Hoffa was never in his car. However, new police interviews that year failed to produce any indictments.

Related Topics:
2001 - Charles O'Brien

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The backyard of a house in Hampton Township, Michigan was excavated, mainly under a swimming pool, in July of 2003. A convicted killer, Richard Powell, told authorities that a briefcase, containing a syringe used to subdue Hoffa, was buried in the backyard of the house. Nothing was found, but whenever someone finds any bones in southeastern Michigan, he or she might think that the bones are the remains of Hoffa. http://www.freep.com/news/mich/hoffa17_20030717.htmhttp://www.clickondetroit.com/news/2336656/detail.html

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In 2004, Charles Brandt, a former prosecutor and Chief Deputy Attorney General of Delaware, published a book, I Heard You Paint Houses, in which he recounts a series of confessions by Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran, who claimed to have killed Hoffa. Sheeran, a World War II veteran, Mafia hitman, truck driver, Teamsters official, and close friend of Hoffa's, began contacting Brandt with the intention of assuaging his guilt over his murderous past. Over the course of several years, Sheeran and Brandt had numerous phone calls (recorded by Brandt) during which Sheeran confirmed his role as Hoffa's killer. According to Sheeran, he had been ordered by the Mafia to murder Hoffa in 1975. Claiming to have used his friendship and influence with the former Teamsters leader, he lured him to a bogus mob meeting in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. They then drove to a House in Northwest Detroit where Sheeran shot Hoffa twice and fled, leaving the body behind. To "paint houses" is a euphemistic term for murder, alluding to the splatter of blood on the walls.

Related Topics:
2004 - Charles Brandt - Frank "the Irishman" Sheeran - World War II - Mafia - Michigan - Detroit - Euphemistic

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In the end, Hoffa was not nearly as beholden to the mob as his successor and longtime crony Frank Fitzsimmons, who avoided imprisonment because of death due to cancer. While Hoffa was a brilliant tactician who knew how to play one employer off against another and who used the union's power to rationalize the industry by driving out weaker employers, "Fitz" was content to play golf (he always won when playing other Teamster officials) and take in other benefits of high office. The deregulation of the trucking industry pushed by Edward Kennedy and others in the late 1970s during Fitzsimmons' tenure eventually destroyed much of what Hoffa had won for his members under the National Master Freight Agreement by making it much harder to maintain the high standards that Hoffa had achieved.

Related Topics:
Frank Fitzsimmons - Cancer - Golf - Edward Kennedy - 1970s

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Hoffa's son, James P. Hoffa currently leads the Teamsters. His daughter, Barbara Ann Crancer, currently serves as an Associate Circuit Court Judge in St. Louis, Missouri.

Related Topics:
James P. Hoffa - Barbara Ann Crancer - St. Louis, Missouri

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