After 40 Years, Hoffa Disappearance Solved!

Dan E. Moldea, author of The Hoffa Wars and Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer, will be writing a piece for Jerry Capeci's GangLand News that will be published this coming Thursday.

Apparently, he'll tell us, once and for all, what the hell happened to James R. Hoffa.

From Gangland News:

Coming next week, a Gang Land special. On the 40th anniversary of one of the great Mafia mysteries — the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa — investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, the leading expert on Hoffa, will tell you, based on his 40 years of investigating the storied mob rubout, what happened, who did it, and where Hoffa ended up.

Moldea is an independent journalist, which says a lot today, when a handful of giant global entities own the majority of this nation's media. Truth is trumped by the bottom line and Homeland Security's needs, and angering other corporations that purchase ad space (or time) is out of the question. Nothing ever highlighted more for me how fabricated "the news" can be than an indy film I recently viewed on Netflix about Flight 800.

Moldea has been an independent journalist except for a stint he served for former patron Larry Flynt, the Hustler baron, who has repeatedly sought to expose the nation's biggest and most dangerous hypocrites: radical right-wingers. In 1998 Moldea served as Flynt's hired gun, investigating the investigators and their minions seeking to take over the government by impeaching President Clinton.

Moldea's work lead to the dramatic resignation of then-incoming House Speaker Bob Livingston.

,
We're not sure what Gangland News will publish this coming Thursday but we did find a blogger who previously pieced together -- primarily from Moldea's work -- what federal investigators believe is the closest we will ever get to the truth about Hoffa’s death. The blogger in question was primarily seeking to expose Richard Kuklinski, but we'll gloss over that to focus on Hoffa.

(As for Kuklinski, if you're interested, please check out: Last Word on Kuklinski)

Obviously this version of events is outdated as we're certain Moldea's upcoming story has got to have at least one or two stunning new revelations in it.

Take for instance this general given: Hoffa expected to meet with Anthony Giacalone of Detroit and Anthony Provenzano on the afternoon he vanished, according to several people, including Hoffa's wife. Supposedly, Provenzano wasn’t even in Detroit that day; he was in Union City.

However, The Gangster Report has noted recently:

Deceased New Jersey-based Mafioso and Genovese crime family captain Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano was in Detroit the night before labor leader and mob associate Jimmy Hoffa disappeared and was slain 40 years ago this month, according to an imprisoned FBI informant who came forward in the mid-2000s. The informant, former Teamster insider Don Wells, claims Provenzano dined at a favorite mafia haunt with Motor City underworld figures on July 29, 1975. Some experts further speculate Tony Pro could have also been in Michigan the next afternoon when Hoffa vanished from a suburban Detroit restaurant parking lot on July 30, 1975, not where his alibi placed him, at his New Jersey Teamsters union hall playing cards. Then-Jersey Teamsters boss Provenzano was feuding with Hoffa at the time he went missing. Hoffa was in the midst of trying to regain his post as Teamsters International President and Tony Pro, an ally-turned-enemy of his, is still considered one of the top suspects in the notorious kidnapping and murder which hasn’t been solved to this very day.

Also, in one of several recent breaking-news stories about Hoffa, TGR also says:

Ferocious and dangerously-stubborn Teamsters union chieftain Jimmy Hoffa was killed at deceased Detroit mafia soldier Carlo Licata’s house, not where famous mob turncoats Frank (the Irishman) Sheeran or Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli – both dead– assert the notorious gangland assassination went down 40 years ago this week in their respective confessions, according to exclusive Gangster Report sources. Licata’s house was at 680 W. Long Lake Road in Bloomfield Township, less than a five minute drive from where Hoffa disappeared from, as opposed to Sheeran’s and Zerilli’s claims that place his murder occurring at locations at least 20 minutes away. Licata, mob royalty in Detroit and California, died an untimely death at 680 W. Long Lake Road as well.

Whether the Moldea's upcoming story agrees with Scott Burnstein's reporting remains to be seen; we do know that Moldea is familiar with and endorses Burnstein's work based on a Facebook sharing of an announcement for the film Killing Jimmy Hoffa.

The basic theory is that Hoffa was known to have angered two powerful mobsters of his day: both Anthony Provenanzo, a Genovese capo who also served as vice president for Teamsters Local 560 in Union City, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania crime boss Russell Bufalino.

Hoffa and Provenzano had even exchanged a few punches while behind bars.

On the morning of July 30, a man Hoffa considered a son, Charles O’Brien, picked up three of Provenzano’s henchmen at a Detroit-area airport and drove them to a house where he was staying, not far from the Machus Red Fox restaurant.

Sal Briguglio, his brother Gabriel, and another New Jersey Teamster official named Thomas Andretta were their names. All were subsequently named as the suspected assassins by the federal grand jury.

(Moldea suspected that Frank Sheeran of Teamsters Local 326 in Wilmington, Delaware, was another conspirator/witness. In fact, Moldea accused Sheeran of belonging to the cabal before Sheeran later made his controversial "deathbed confession" about his role as the shooter in the Hoffa slay. Many informed readers of Cosa Nostra News have long made clear their belief that Sheeran lied.)

In the afternoon, O’Brien picked Hoffa up at the restaurant and drove him to the house, where the three men were waiting for him.

Picardo alleged that Hoffa’s killers stuffed him into a 55-gallon drum, loaded him onto a truck in Detroit, and shipped him to an unknown destination. His remains were later squashed in a car-compacting machine. This was brought before a grand jury.

It seems while we may soon learn a few colorful and intriguing new details, the feds already have a basic grasp of who was involved in the Hoffa hit. Have known.....so how much of the Hoffa mystery is still a mystery?


Further reading:
Chapter One of Moldea's The Hoffa Wars
Playboy magazine excerpt of The Hoffa Wars
"My afternoon with Jimmy Hoffa's alleged killer"
Rise & fall of Jimmy Hoffa (1978): Part One and Part Two
1979 letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books about Hoffa and the JFK murder
The JFK Murder and Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante: Crediting The Hoffa Wars for saying it first
The Washington Post about the movie, Hoffa: "Tales of Hoffa: Why Does Hollywood Make Thugs Into Heroes"
On Rolland McMaster and Frank Sheeran
Andy Petepiece's review of I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt
Anthony Zerilli and the 2013 search for Hoffa's body (CNN)
The FBI on Jimmy Hoffa

Moldea at The Mob Museum to speak on a symposium about Jimmy Hoffa
             on Killing Jimmy Hoffa, a documentary by Al Profit and Scott Bernstein
             on The Hoffa Wars as a 2015 updated eBook, published by Open Road Media

             on the 50th anniversary of the Warren Report
             on Frank Sheeran
             on Death of Jack Tocco, the former boss of the Detroit Mafia
             on Death of Phillip "Brother" Moscato
             on the 50th anniversary of the JFK murder
             on the 38th anniversary of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance


"After I alleged that Frank Sheeran was involved in the murder conspiracy against Jimmy Hoffa in my 1978 book about Hoffa, I received this letter from Sheeran's attorney, threatening me with litigation. . . . From 2001 to 2003, Sheeran made a series of confessions--although there was a problem distinguishing the truth from his conflicting versions of events."


20 places Jimmy Hoffa could be buried
9 Places Jimmy Hoffa (Probably) Isn’t Buried