Vanessa Richardson (37:07)
It's Wednesday. Adams, I see you're trying to distract yourself from your own banal thoughts. Let me help. Here's a recording thing made of my latest Root canal Wednesday. Season two begins August 6th only on Netflix. After organizing a grocery workers strike when he was still a teenager, Jimmy Hoffa spent the next 30 years rising through the ranks of the Teamsters Union on his way to becoming president of the Teamsters. Jimmy grew up the union from 75,000 members to over a million by the mid-1950s. But to do that, he'd forged an alliance with the Mafia, which brought corruption to every level of the organization and eventually led to his downfall. Jimmy had successfully avoided taking responsibility for his criminal ties at a Senate hearing run by Robert F. Kennedy in the late nineteen nineteen fifties. But after his brother John F. Kennedy won the presidency in 1960, he named Robert as his Attorney General. It wasn't long before Jimmy found himself in RFK's crosshairs once again. At first, the Kennedy years were good for Jimmy. In the early 60s the Teamsters membership was almost 2 million and he signed a landmark agreement that brought over 400,000 of America's long haul truckers under a single contract, giving them unprecedented negotiating power. But he was also spending a lot of time in court as members of Robert Kennedy's Justice Department, nicknamed the Get Hoffa Squad, probed his finances and mob ties. Kennedy's investigators discovered that in the late 1950s, Jimmy used money from the Teamsters pension fund to invest in in Florida real estate, then committed accounting fraud to try and cover it up. He also used union pension funds to invest in Mafia owned casinos in Las Vegas. To fight these charges in federal court, Jimmy had his associates bribe jurors in hopes of getting them to vote in his favor. It did not go well. One of Jimmy's men who was involved with the scheme tipped the feds off and in 1963 federal prosecutors charged Jimmy with attempted bribery of a federal jury. In 1964 he was convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. That same year he was also convicted of fraud for his misuse of the Teamsters pension fund and sentenced to an additional five years. After two years of unsuccessful appeals, 54 year old Jimmy reported to Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania to begin his 13 year sentence. Even behind bars, Jimmy remained extremely popular with rank and file Teamsters. So popular in fact, that a year after he went to prison for embezzling money from the union's pension. The Teamsters re elected him as their president while he was in prison. Many of them acknowledged that Jimmy was corrupt, but so was everybody else. And at least Jimmy fought for them. But Jimmy had a hard time doing his job while he was incarcerated. So he tapped one of his deputies, Frank Fitzsimmons, to serve as acting president while he served his time. For the most part, Jimmy Hoffa was a model inmate. He read a lot of books and stuffed mattresses in the prison shop. But he got into some trouble with one of his fellow prisoners. A New Jersey gangster serving a seven year sentence for extortion named Anthony Provenzano. Jimmy and Anthony had known each other on the outside. Anthony had been president of his local Teamsters chapter in New Jersey, and he testified at the same Senate corruption hearings that Jimmy did. The two of them used to be friends, but they'd had a falling out before they went to prison. And in the early 1960s, Anthony had wanted Jimmy to help him secure a loan for a restaurant he wanted to open. Jimmy never followed through with the money, though at the time, Anthony couldn't do much about it. But now Jimmy was just another inmate. Shortly after Jimmy's sentence began, the two prisoners got into an argument and the fight escalated into a full on brawl. Some witnesses said Anthony even smashed a bottle over Jimmy's head before guards separated them. And the feud continued long after both men were released from prison. In 1971, Acting Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons made a deal with President Richard Nixon to let Jimmy go free. If Nixon used his presidential power to commute Jimmy's sentence, the Teamsters would endorse him in the 1972 election. Even though Nixon was a Republican and the union traditionally supported Democrats. Nixon agreed to the deal and In December of 1971, Jimmy was released from prison at the age of 58. But shortly after returning home to Michigan, he realized just how much things had changed while he was behind bars. Frank Fitzsimmons leadership of the Teamsters left a lot to be desired. When Jimmy was president, he kept control of all union business, ensuring that he had final say on everything every local chapter did. Frank was less hands on. He delegated a lot of authority back to the local Teamsters chapters all across the country. This opened up a golden opportunity for the Teamsters Mafia allies. When Jimmy was in charge, he made sure that the Mafia were just partners in the Teamsters operations. But under Frank's leadership, local mob bosses in every city began stepping in and directly taking over Teamsters chapters. Often at the expense of the rank and file workers. By the time Jimmy was out of prison, the mob was calling all the shots and making all the money. Jimmy was furious when he found out. But when he tried to take back control, he learned that as a condition of his release, he was barred from directly or indirectly managing any labor organization until 1980. Jimmy sued to get this restriction overturned and in the meantime took a low level position at the local Teamsters chapter in Detroit. But the Mafia didn't want Jimmy back in any capacity. They were making good money with Frank Fitzsimmons in the top spot and they wanted to keep it that way. The head of the Philadelphia Mafia, Russell Bufalino, repeatedly told Jimmy to step away from the Teamsters and enjoy his retirement. Jimmy didn't listen though. So in 1974, as his case made its way through the court system, his old rival Anthony Province Renzano was more direct. He told Jimmy that he'd pull out his guts and kidnap his grandchildren if he didn't give up on trying to regain the presidency. But Jimmy Hoffa had spent his entire life standing up to powerful men who hated him and he wasn't about to stop now. Instead of backing down, he announced that he was writing a tell all book and would expose Frank Fitzsimmons mob connections unless his opponent left him alone. Tensions were at an all time high. So on July 30, 1975, 58 year old Anthony Provenzano invited 62 year old Jimmy Hoffa to talk things out over lunch. Jimmy knew that he was dealing with dangerous people. That's why he tried to call his friend Louis Lento to join him at the meeting. But when Louis did, didn't pick up. Jimmy went to the meeting alone. He'd made a career out of negotiating with tough guys who didn't like him. With his life's work on the line, why not try to make one more deal? But something went wrong. Jimmy's wife Josephine reported him missing when he didn't come home that night. And soon the Michigan State Police and the FBI were on the case. Witnesses told investigators that they'd seen Jimmy pacing around beside his car in the restaurant's parking lot as he waited for Anthony to show up. One witness reported seeing Jimmy in the back of a maroon colored sedan with three other people sometime around 2:45. At first, Jimmy's disappearance was treated as a potential kidnapping and that the meeting was a setup. Anthony Provenzano was seen by multiple witnesses playing cards with his friends in New Jersey on the day Jimmy disappeared. Tony Jack Giacalone the local gangster who'd set up the lunch meeting, was at a health club in the Detroit suburbs When Jimmy vanished. Neither of them was anywhere close to the restaurant. If they were involved in Jimmy's disappearance, they kept their hands clean. After a couple of days, with no ransom note and no other leads, investigators knew they were dealing with a murder case. That investigation continues to this day. In the half century since Jimmy Hoffa vanished, police and the FBI have followed up on hundreds of tips, searching for his remains all over the Detroit area. Investigators dug up the concrete drive driveway of a gangster's house in the Detroit suburbs when they learned that he'd had it paved. On the day Jimmy went missing, they tore down a barn on a horse farm outside the city where one of his associates used to live. Someone even excavated the former site of a mob affiliated casino in Gardena, California, Popular with the Teamsters to look for his body. But every time, all they found found was dirt. And as the hunt continues, countless conspiracy theories have sprung up about where Jimmy's remains were hidden. One urban legend is that the mob stashed Jimmy's body underneath the Renaissance Center, a massive office complex in downtown Detroit that was being built at the time. Another theory, that Jimmy's body was buried beneath one of the end zones of Giant Stadium in New Jersey, was so popular that the TV show Mythbusters searched the site with ground penetrating radar in 2004. They didn't find him. Others believe his body was hidden in a New Jersey landfill or crushed in a compacted car and sent to Japan in a shipment of scrap metal. In the decades since Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance, many retired mobsters have claimed to have been involved with his killing. These stories are disputed, and as a general rule, lifelong criminals are not reliable sources. But mob experts and one of Jimmy's biographers agree that the story told by mob hitman Frank Sheeran, the title character in the movie the Irishman, is generally plausible. According to Sheeran, Jim Jimmy was picked up outside the restaurant by one of Anthony Provenzano's associates, who Jimmy knew and trusted. He was told the meeting location had changed and was driven to a house on Detroit's west side, where he was killed. Then his body was cremated at a garbage incinerator in the neighborhood. Forensic experts later found blood at the house where Sheeran claims the killing happened, but the the DNA didn't match Jimmy's. It was just one more dead end in a case full of them. The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance may never be solved. It's a question mark at the end of a long life spent fighting for the working man and making more than a few deals with the devil along the way. Looking back at this week in crime history, it becomes sadly clear that not every mystery has a solution. When a passenger jet goes missing in midair, or a public figure vanishes off the street, people crave an explanation. And in the absence of answers, they'll often invent their own. Even when those theories are a little bit out there, it's easier to believe an implausible tale than to accept that some. Some stories just don't have an ending. And maybe never will. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Vanessa Richardson and this is Crime House the Show. Crime House the Show is a Crime House original. Powered by Pink Cave Studios. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing and following Crime House the Show. Wherever you get your podcasts, your feedback truly matters. And for ad free and early access to Crime House the Show plus exciting bonus content, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. We'll be back next Monday day. The show is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Crime House the Show team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benidon, Natalie Pertovsky, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Truman Capps, Sheila Patterson and Michael Langsner. Thank you. Thank you for listening.