Jimmy Hoffa

James Riddle Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913, to John and Viola (née Riddle) Hoffa, the third of four children, two boys and two girls. died in 1920 from lung disease when Hoffa was seven years old. His mother was of Irish ancestry. The family moved to Detroit in 1924, where Hoffa was raised and lived for the rest of his life. He left school at the age of 14 and began working full-time manual labor jobs to help support his family. Hoffa married Josephine Poszywak, an 18-year-old Detroit laundry worker of Polish heritage, in Bowling Green, Ohio, on September 25, 1936. The couple had met six months earlier during a non-unionized laundry workers' strike action; Hoffa described the meeting as feeling as though he had been "hit on the chest with a blackjack". They had two children: a daughter, Barbara Ann Crancer, and a son, James P. Hoffa. The Hoffas paid $6,800 in 1939 for a modest home in northwestern Detroit. The family later owned a simple summer lakefront cottage in Orion Township, Michigan, north of Detroit. ==Early union activity==

Hoffa began union organizational work at the grassroots level as a teenager through his job with a grocery chain, which paid substandard wages and offered poor working conditions with minimal job security. The workers were displeased with that situation and tried to organize a union to better their wages. Although Hoffa was young, his courage and approachability in that role impressed fellow workers, and he rose to a leadership position. By 1932, after refusing to work for an abusive shift foreman, Hoffa left the grocery chain, partly because of his union activities. He was then invited to become an organizer with Local 299 of the Teamsters in Detroit. Between 1933 and 1935, Hoffa actively worked to recruit new members to the union; his favored tactic was to pull up on the road alongside sleeping truck drivers, wake them up, and give them his sales pitch. ==Growth of Teamsters==

The Teamsters, founded in 1903, had 75,000 members in 1933. As a result of Hoffa's work with other union leaders, he consolidated local union trucker groups into regional sections and then into a national body, which Hoffa ultimately completed over two decades; membership grew to 170,000 members by 1936, and three years later, to 420,000. The number grew steadily during World War II and in the postwar boom to eventually top a million members by 1951. The Teamsters organized truck drivers and warehousemen throughout the Midwest and then nationwide. Hoffa played a major role in the union's skillful use of "quickie strikes", secondary boycotts, and other means of leveraging union strength at one company, moves to organize workers at another, and finally to win contract demands at other companies. That process, which took several years starting in the early 1930s, eventually brought the Teamsters to a position of being one of the most powerful unions in the United States. Trucking unions in that era were heavily influenced by, and in many cases controlled by, elements of organized crime. To unify and expand trucking unions, Hoffa made accommodations and arrangements with many gangsters, beginning in the Detroit area. Organized crime's influence on the IBT increased as the union grew. ==Rise to power==

Hoffa worked to defend the Teamsters from raids by other unions, including the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and he extended the Teamsters' influence in the Midwest from the late 1930s to the late 1940s. Hoffa obtained a deferment from military service in World War II by successfully making a case for his union leadership skills being of more value to the nation by keeping freight running smoothly to assist the war effort. Although he never actually worked as a truck driver, he became president of Local 299 in December 1946. He then rose to lead the combined group of Detroit-area locals shortly afterwards and later advanced to become head of the Michigan Teamsters groups. At the 1952 IBT convention in Los Angeles, Hoffa was selected as national vice-president by incoming president Dave Beck, the successor to Daniel J. Tobin, who had been president since 1907. Hoffa had quelled an internal revolt against Tobin by securing Central States' regional support for Beck at the convention. In exchange, Beck made Hoffa a vice-president. In 1952, a petty criminal living in New York, Marvin Elkind, was assigned by gangster Anthony Salerno to work as Hoffa's chauffeur. In a 2008 interview, Elkind said of his four years working as a chauffeur: "Mr. Hoffa was a tremendously intimidating man. This man had no fear at all, of nothing, showed very little emotion, had completely no sense of humour, and was dedicated to the people that belonged to his union. When you drive these people you learn a lot and I'll tell you why. They don't know you're there. You become a piece of the car, just like an extra gear shift or a brake, and they talk." The IBT moved its headquarters from Indianapolis to Washington, D.C., taking over a large office building in the capital in 1955. IBT staff was also enlarged, with many lawyers hired to assist with contract negotiations. Following his 1952 election as vice-president, Hoffa began spending more of his time away from Detroit, either in Washington or traveling around the country for his expanded responsibilities. Hoffa's personal lawyer was Bill Bufalino. ==Teamsters presidency==

Hoffa took over the presidency of the Teamsters in 1957, at the convention in Miami Beach, Florida. Beck, his predecessor, had appeared before the John L. McClellan-led U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor or Management Field in March 1957 and took the Fifth Amendment 140 times. Beck was under indictment when the IBT convention took place and was convicted and imprisoned in a trial for fraud held in Seattle. Teamsters expelled from AFL-CIO At the 1957 AFL-CIO convention, held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, union members voted nearly five to one to expel the IBT. Vice-president Walter Reuther led the fight to oust the IBT on charges of Hoffa's corrupt leadership. President George Meany gave an emotional speech, advocating the removal of the IBT and stating that he could only agree to further affiliation of the Teamsters if they dismissed Hoffa as their president. Meany demanded a response from Hoffa, who replied through the press, "We'll see." At the time, the IBT was bringing in over $750,000 annually to the AFL-CIO. National Master Freight Agreement Following his re-election as president in 1961, Hoffa worked to expand the union. In 1964, he succeeded in bringing virtually all over-the-road truck drivers in North America under a single National Master Freight Agreement, which may have been his biggest achievement in a lifetime of union activity. Hoffa then tried to bring airline workers and other transport employees into the union, with limited success. His tenure became increasingly complicated by personal troubles, as he was under investigation, on trial, launching appeals of convictions, or imprisoned for virtually all of the 1960s. Hoffa was re-elected without opposition to a third five-year term as president of the IBT at the union's Miami Beach convention in 1966, despite having been convicted of jury tampering and mail fraud in court verdicts that were stayed pending review on appeal. Aware of his perilous legal situation, the delegates also elected Frank Fitzsimmons as first vice president, who would become president "if Hoffa has to serve a jail term." ==Criminal charges==

after a 1957 court session in which they pleaded not guilty to illegal wiretap charges Hoffa faced major criminal investigations in 1957, as a result of the McClellan Committee. On March 14, 1957, Hoffa was arrested for allegedly trying to bribe an aide to the Select Committee. Hoffa denied the charges (and was later acquitted), but the arrest triggered additional investigations and more arrests and indictments over the following weeks. One of Hoffa's associates, Frank Kierdorf, on the night of August 3, 1958, while torching a cleaning and dyeing establishment, accidentally set himself on fire. When asked by a prosecuting attorney, a devout man, in a hospital, if he wanted to confess to anything, he uttered his final words, "Go fuck yourself." Hoffa tried to prevent John F. Kennedy's election in 1960, endorsing the challenger and incumbent Vice-president Richard Nixon. In prior elections, the union had normally supported Democratic nominees. However this failed and Kennedy appointed his younger brother Robert as Attorney General. Robert Kennedy had been frustrated in earlier attempts to convict Hoffa, while working as counsel to the McClellan subcommittee. As attorney general from 1961, Kennedy pursued a strong attack on organized crime and he carried on with a "Get Hoffa" squad of prosecutors and investigators. In 1963 Hoffa set up DRIVE (Democratic, Republican, Independent Voter Education), the Teamsters political action committee that funded its favored candidates. During a court hearing on December 5, 1962, a former mental patient, Warren Swanson, fired several pellets at Hoffa. The pellets did no harm, and the enraged Hoffa punched Swanson and knocked him down, while Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien and others overpowered him. Hoffa later told reporters "You always run away from a man with a knife, and toward a man with a gun." Prison sentences In May 1963, Hoffa was indicted for jury tampering in Tennessee, charged with the attempted bribery of a grand juror during his 1962 conspiracy trial in Nashville. Primarily on the testimony of Edward Partin, Hoffa was convicted on March 4, 1964, and subsequently sentenced to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine. While on bail during his appeal, Hoffa was convicted in a second trial held in Chicago, on July 26, 1964, on one count of conspiracy and three counts of mail and wire fraud for improper use of the Teamsters' pension fund, and sentenced to five years in prison. on March 7, 1967, at the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. Appointment of Fitzsimmons as caretaker president When Hoffa entered prison, Frank Fitzsimmons was named acting president of the union. Hoffa had planned for his possible conviction, and intended to use Fitzsimmons as a figurehead through which he could remain in control. Fitzsimmons was a Hoffa loyalist, fellow Detroit resident, and a longtime member of Teamsters Local 299, who owed his own high position in large part to Hoffa's influence. Despite this, Fitzsimmons soon distanced himself from Hoffa's influence and control after 1967, to Hoffa's displeasure. Fitzsimmons also decentralized power somewhat within the IBT's administration structure, forgoing much of the control Hoffa took advantage of as union president. While still in prison, Hoffa resigned as Teamsters president on June 19, 1971, ==After prison==

On December 23, 1971, less than five years into his 13-year sentence, Hoffa was released from prison when U.S. President Richard Nixon commuted it to time served. Hoffa accused senior Nixon administration figures, including Attorney General John N. Mitchell and White House Special Counsel Charles Colson, of depriving him of his rights by imposing that condition. It was suspected that the condition had been imposed upon Hoffa because of requests from the Teamsters' leadership, but that was denied by Fitzsimmons. Hoffa sued to invalidate the restriction so that he could reassert his power over the Teamsters. John Dean, former White House counsel to Nixon, was among those called upon for depositions in 1974 court proceedings. Dean, who had become famous as a government witness in prosecutions arising from the Watergate scandal by mid-1973, had drafted the clause in 1971 at Nixon's request. Hoffa ultimately failed to win his case since the court ruled that Nixon had acted within his powers by imposing the restriction, as it had been based on Hoffa's misconduct while he was serving as a Teamsters official. Facing immense resistance to his ambition to regain the Teamsters presidency, and with much of his old influence lost, Hoffa accepted a non-management position with Local 299 in Detroit, his old power base; Hoffa likely hoped that with time, he would be able to work his way back up the ladder. In 1975, Hoffa was working on an autobiography, Hoffa: The Real Story, which was published a few months after his disappearance. He had earlier published a book titled The Trials of Jimmy Hoffa (1970). At the time of his disappearance, Hoffa lived with his family at their summer cottage in the village of Lake Orion, which was about a half-hour drive from the restaurant where he was last seen. His home was located on a multi-acre wooded lot on Square Lake. The property had a house with over 2,500 square feet, as well as outbuildings. ==Disappearance==

Prelude Hoffa's plans to regain the leadership of the union were met with opposition from several members of the Mafia. One of them was Anthony Provenzano, who had been a Teamsters local leader in New Jersey and a national vice-president of the union during Hoffa's second term as its president. Provenzano was a caporegime in the New York City Genovese crime family. At least two of Provenzano's opponents in the union had been murdered, and others who had spoken out against him had been assaulted. Provenzano, once an ally of Hoffa, became an enemy after they reportedly had a feud when both were in federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in the 1960s. In 1973 and 1974, Hoffa asked him for his support to regain his former position, but he refused, and reportedly threatened Hoffa by saying he would pull out his guts or kidnap his grandchildren. Other Mafia figures who became involved in the conflict between Hoffa and Provenzano were Anthony Giacalone, an alleged kingpin in the Detroit Mafia, and his younger brother, Vito. The FBI believes that they were positioning themselves as "mediators" between Hoffa and Provenzano. The brothers had made three visits to Hoffa's home at Lake Orion and one to the Guardian Building law offices. Their avowed purpose in meeting Hoffa was to set up a "peace meeting" between Provenzano and Hoffa. Hoffa's son, James, said, "Dad was pushing so hard to get back in office, I was increasingly afraid that the mob would do something about it." James was convinced that the "peace meeting" was a pretext to Giacalone's "setting Dad up" for a hit since Hoffa had been increasingly uneasy each time the Giacalone brothers arrived. Events of July 30 Hoffa disappeared on Wednesday, July 30, 1975, after he had gone to a meeting with Provenzano and Giacalone. The meeting was to take place at 2:00 p.m. at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, a Detroit suburb; it was the same place where the wedding reception of Hoffa's son James had been held. Hoffa wrote Giacalone's initials and the time and location of the meeting in his office calendar: "TG—2 p.m.—Red Fox." Hoffa left his Lake Orion home at 1:15 p.m. Before heading to the restaurant, he stopped at the Pontiac office of his close friend Louis Linteau, a former president of Teamsters Local 614 who now ran a limousine service. Linteau and Hoffa had been enemies early in their careers, but eventually became friends. When Hoffa left prison, Linteau had also become Hoffa's unofficial appointment secretary and had arranged a dinner meeting between Hoffa and the Giacalone brothers on July 26 in which they had informed him of the July 30 meeting. Linteau was out to lunch when Hoffa stopped by, so Hoffa talked to some of the staff present and left a message for Linteau before he left for the Machus Red Fox. Between 2:15 and 2:30 p.m., an annoyed Hoffa called his wife from a payphone on a post in front of Damman Hardware, directly behind the Machus Red Fox, and complained that Giacalone had not shown up and that he had been stood up. His wife told him she had not heard from anyone. He told her he would be home in Lake Orion by 4:00 p.m. to grill steaks for dinner. Several witnesses saw Hoffa standing by his car and pacing the restaurant's parking lot. Two men saw Hoffa, recognized him, and stopped to chat with him briefly and to shake his hand. Hoffa also made a call to Linteau in which he again complained that the men were late. Linteau gave the time of his call from Hoffa as 3:30 p.m., but the FBI suspected that it must have been earlier, based on the timing of other phone calls from Linteau's office from around that time. The FBI estimated that Hoffa left the location without a struggle around 2:45–2:50 p.m. One witness reported seeing Hoffa in the back of a maroon "Lincoln or Mercury" car with three other people. Investigation At 7 a.m. the next day, Hoffa's wife called her son and daughter to say that their father had not come home. At 7:20 a.m., Linteau went to the Machus Red Fox and found Hoffa's unlocked car in the parking lot, but there was no sign of Hoffa, nor any indication of what had happened to him. Linteau called the police, who later arrived at the scene. The Michigan State Police were also brought in, and the FBI was alerted. At 6 p.m., Hoffa's son James filed a missing-person report. The Hoffa family offered a $200,000 reward for any information about his disappearance. The primary piece of physical evidence obtained in the investigation was a maroon 1975 Mercury Marquis Brougham, which belonged to Anthony Giacalone's son Joseph. The car had been borrowed earlier that day by Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien to deliver fish. Giacalone and Provenzano, who denied having scheduled a meeting with Hoffa, were found not to have been near the restaurant that afternoon. Despite extensive surveillance and bugging, investigators found that the Mafia members were generally unwilling to talk about Hoffa's disappearance, even in private. In October 1975, Michigan Attorney General Frank J. Kelley went to Waterford Township to supervise an expedition to locate and exhume Hoffa's remains. The search (which was unsuccessful) was triggered by "a tip from an unnamed informer who said a group of Mafiosi wanted Hoffa's body found". After years of investigation involving numerous law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, officials have not reached a definitive conclusion as to Hoffa's fate or who was involved. Hoffa's wife, Josephine, died on September 12, 1980, and is interred at White Chapel Memorial Cemetery in Troy, Michigan. On December 9, 1982, Hoffa was declared legally dead as of July 30, 1982, by Oakland County, Michigan Probate Judge Norman R. Barnard. In 1989, Kenneth Walton, the agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office, told The Detroit News: "I'm comfortable I know who did it, but it's never going to be prosecuted because we would have to divulge informants, confidential sources." In 2001, the FBI matched DNA from Hoffa's hair, taken from a brush, with a strand of hair found in Joseph Giacalone's car, but it is possible that Hoffa had traveled in the car on a different day. As of 2021, digs were still periodically conducted in the Detroit area in search of Hoffa's body, but a common theory among experts is that the body was cremated. Scott Burnstein, a crime historian and journalist, argued in 2019 that Provenzano's only role in the case was to act as a lure. The Hoffex Memo includes this as a possible motivation for murder. Buccellato listed two waste incinerators and a crematorium, all in the Detroit area. He doubted the body had been transported a long distance: "It's just not practical." The Hoffex Memo similarly said: "If the Detroit LCN was used to assist in the disappearance, it is unknown why the body would be transported back to New Jersey when Detroit Organized Crime people have proven in the past that they are capable of taking care of such things." Sheeran then claimed Hoffa's body was taken to a crematorium in another state and cremated. Other evidence refutes Sheeran's claims. The truthfulness of the book, including the parts about Sheeran's confessions to killing Hoffa, has been disputed by "The Lies of the Irishman", an article in Slate by Bill Tonelli, and "Jimmy Hoffa and 'The Irishman': A True Crime Story?" by Harvard Law School Professor Jack Goldsmith, which appeared in The New York Review of Books. Buccellato doubts that the Mafia would have entrusted an Irish American with this role and also believes that Hoffa would have refused to travel that far from the restaurant. In one of his jailhouse confessions published in a biography released after his death in 2006, Richard Kuklinski claimed that he was part of a four-man team who kidnapped and murdered Hoffa. Former FBI agent Robert Garrity, who worked on the Hoffa case, dismissed Kuklinski's claims as a hoax. Other authorities have also stated that Kuklinski's involvement in Hoffa's disappearance is unlikely. In 2006 a horse farm owned by Teamsters official Rolland McMaster at the time of Hoffa's disappearance was searched by the FBI for a period of two weeks, with the total operation cost reaching $250,000. The search was brought on by a tip received from federal detainee Donovan Wells, who had lived with McMaster on the farm. He told the FBI that on the day of Hoffa's disappearance he witnessed seeing a number of cars on the farm, which a short time later were gone. McMaster denied any involvement in Hoffa's murder and stated that he was away on union business in Indiana at the time. In 2012, Roseville, Michigan, police took samples from the ground under a suburban Detroit driveway after a person reported having witnessed the burial of a body there around the time of Hoffa's 1975 disappearance. Tests by Michigan State University anthropologists found no evidence of human remains. In January 2013, the reputed gangster Tony Zerilli implied that Hoffa was originally buried in a shallow grave, with plans to move his remains later to a second location. Zerilli said the plans were abandoned and Hoffa's remains lay in a field in northern Oakland County, Michigan, not far from the restaurant in which he had been last seen. Zerilli denied any responsibility for or association with Hoffa's disappearance. On June 17, 2013, investigating the Zerilli information, the FBI was led to a property in Oakland Township, in northern Oakland County, which was owned by Detroit mob boss Jack Tocco. After three days, the FBI called off the dig. No human remains were found, and the case remains open. Thomas Andretta, who died in 2019, and his brother Stephen, who reportedly died of cancer in 2000, were named by the FBI as suspects. Both were New Jersey Teamsters and reputed Genovese crime family mob associates. The FBI called Thomas Andretta a "trusted associate of Anthony Provenzano; reported to be involved in the disappearance of Hoffa". In an April 2019 interview with DJ Vlad, the former Colombo crime family capo Michael Franzese stated that he was certain that Hoffa's disappearance had been mob-related. He said he was aware of the location of Hoffa's body and of the identity of his shooter, and had tapes that revealed details of his disappearance. When pressed for information on Hoffa's body, Franzese said, "I can tell you that it's wet, that's for sure", and "Upon good information, again, I think I know who the real shooter was; still alive today, in prison." In a 2018 interview with Value Entertainment, Franzese also makes the "it's wet" claim and adds that "it's deep". He also claims that he has in his possession a recorded tape that "spells everything out" and that he might release this at a later date. In a deathbed statement, a landfill worker claimed to have buried Hoffa's body in a steel drum, 15 feet below the surface in a landfill beneath the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City, New Jersey. In October 2021, the FBI obtained a warrant and completed a site survey of the landfill. In July 2022, the FBI announced that "nothing of evidentiary value was discovered" from the survey. ==Legacy==

Hoffa's legacy remains controversial. In 2023, a historical marker was erected in his home state of Indiana by the Indiana Historical Bureau, Clay County Historical Society, and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In film and fiction Hoffa has been portrayed by: • Robert Blake (1983) (Blood Feud) (TV Miniseries) • Tom Bosley (1984) (The Jesse Owens Story) (TV Movie) • Trey Wilson (1985) (Robert Kennedy and His Times) (TV Miniseries) • Jack Nicholson (1992) (Hoffa) • Thomas Wagner (1993) (Marilyn & Bobby: Her Final Affair) (TV Movie) • Al Pacino (2019) (The Irishman) In the film F.I.S.T. (1978), Sylvester Stallone plays Johnny Kovak, a character based on Hoffa. In the Sergio Leone film Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Treat Williams' character, syndicalist James Conway O'Donnell, was inspired by Hoffa. In the parody film Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994), a file folder labeled "Location of Jimmy Hoffa's body" is prominently displayed in a cabinet during the sperm bank and fertility clinic scene. "Don't Tug on Superman's Cape", sixth episode of the third season of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1995), features a wealthy couple collecting unique objects. Among them is a concrete block with a hand sticking out. They claim it to be Hoffa's body. Author James Ellroy features a fictional historical version of Hoffa in the Underworld USA Trilogy novels as an important secondary character, most prominently in the novels American Tabloid (1995) and The Cold Six Thousand (2001). In the comedy film Bruce Almighty (2003), the titular character uses powers endowed by God to manifest Hoffa's body in order to procure a story interesting enough to reclaim his career in the news industry. ==See also==