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- [00:01]
Kaylin Moore
Hi, it's Kaylin Moore. Crime House is home to the most gripping true crime shows and you don't want to miss what's coming up on my show, Clues that I co host with Morgan Abshur. We are digging into the chilling details of Amy Archer Gilligan, a nursing home proprietor whose trail of natural deaths turned out to be anything but. Join us as we examine the evidence one clue at a time. Listen to clues every Wednesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
- [00:37]
Morgan Abshur
This is Crime House.
- [00:42]
Vanessa Richardson
During the week of July 28, 2015, a piece of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was found in the Indian Ocean, giving rise to new theories about the plane's mysterious, mysterious disappearance. Forty years earlier, Mafia aligned union leader Jimmy Hoffa vanished, prompting rumors about his whereabouts that continue to this day, making this week's theme Conspiracy Theories. Welcome to Crime House the Show. I'm Vanessa Richardson. Every Monday we'll be revisiting notorious crimes from this week in history, from serial killers to mysterious disappearances or murders. Every episode will explore stories that share a common theme. Each week we'll cover two stories, one further in the past and one more rooted in the present here at Crime House. We know none of this would be possible without you, our community. Please support us by rating, reviewing and following Crime House the Show wherever you get your podcasts and for ad free and early access to Crime House the Show, plus exciting bonus content. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. This week's theme is Conspiracy Theories. First, we'll start on July 29, 2015, when a local beach cleanup crew on the East African island of Reunion found a piece of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 which had vanished without a trace over a year earlier. Then we'll jump back to July 30, 1975, when Jimmy Hoffa left home for a lunch meeting and never made it back for dinner. Both of today's stories are about mysterious and inexplicable disappearances. One of them an enormous plane full of people, the other a nationally known union leader. In the absence of any hard facts about what happened to them, all sorts of theories arose to find an explanation. Explanation leading many to wonder, where was the line between truth and conspiracy? All that and more coming up. Just wrapped another chilling case or unsolved mystery. Give your brain a break and keep the thrill going with Chumba Casino, your online social casino where funds just a click away play slots, blackjack and live casino games, all without downloads or pressure. Sign up to claim your free welcome bonus plus daily login rewards to keep the excitement rolling. Chumba Casino when the case is closed, the real fun begins. No purchase necessary. BGW group void were prohibited by law. 21 tncs apply.
- [03:44]
Unknown
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- [04:23]
Vanessa Richardson
July 29, 2015 was just another day in paradise for Johnny Begg. He was the foreman of a local BE cleaning crew on the French owned island of Reunion, 400 miles east of Madagascar. As he and his employees made their way down the pristine shoreline picking up litter, they stumbled across a piece of junk far too large to fit into a plastic garbage bag. It was a 9 foot by 3 foot fragment of an airplane's wing, a segment known as a flapperon. Johnny recognized the debris as aircraft wreckage. It wasn't the first time he'd found a piece of a plane on the beach, but he didn't know where it came from. When the police took the flapperon away to be analyzed, they made a shocking discovery. Serial numbers on the wreckage identified it as a piece of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, a missing plane that had disappeared over a year ago thousands of miles away from Reunion. Ever since, the families of the flight's 239 passengers and crew had lived in limbo, never knowing if their loved ones were alive somewhere waiting to be rescued. This debris was a grim confirmation that the plane had crashed and everyone on board was likely dead. But so many more questions remained. Why did the plane crash? Who was responsible? And how is it possible in this day and age for a jumbo jet for full of people to simply disappear into thin air? The mystery began 16 months earlier with a late night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, known by its call sign MH370, departed from Kuala Lumpur International Airport at 12.42am on March 8, 2014. It was a clear moonlit night and weather conditions were good. The plane was a 12 year old Boeing 777 with no history of mechanical failures. It had been subjected to a full maintenance check just two weeks before the flight and passed with flying colors. 27 year old Fariq Hamid, the first officer was at the controls. This was his final training flight. Afterwards he would be fully certified as a pilot. Supervising him was the flight's captain, 53 year old Zahari Ahmad Shah, one of the most experienced pilots at Malaysian Airlines. The crew also included 10 flight attendants who were looking after 227 passengers, most of them Chinese. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary as the flight got Underway just after 1am, Captain Zahari radioed air traffic control in Kuala Lumpur to report they had reached their cruising altitude of 35,000ft. Almost 20 minutes later, MH370 was nearing the edge of Malaysian airspace. In a few moments they would be entering Vietnamese territory which meant they would soon start communicating with air traffic controllers at the airport in Ho Chi Minh City. At 1.19am, the air traffic controller in Kuala Lumpur contacted Flight 370 and gave them the radio frequency for the Vietnamese air traffic control center. Captain Zaharie responded Good night Malaysian 370. After that, MH370 was never heard from again. 20 minutes later, air traffic controllers in Ho Chi Minh city realized that MH370 wasn't visible on their radar. They tried repeatedly to contact the plane but got no response. Due to miscommunications between Vietnamese and Malaysian air traffic controllers, a search and rescue operation didn't begin until more than five hours after MH370 disappeared. This slow start seriously jeopardized rescuers chances of finding debris or survivors. Over the next two days, 34 ships and 28 aircraft from seven different countries scoured the South China Sea along MH370's flight path. After nearly 48 hours, there were no no signs of the missing jet. It was unusual for a plane crash to leave no debris field whatsoever. But soon rescuers would learn why they hadn't found any trace of MH370. Late in the day on March 9, the Malaysian government notified them that they were looking in the wrong place. The search and rescue operation was taking place in the South China Sea because it was along the plains from flight path. But just because the plane's transponder went offline over that body of water, that didn't mean it crashed there. Using radar data from the Malaysian Air Force, investigators realized that the plane's transponder hadn't gone dead. Somebody had seemingly turned it off immediately after disappearing from air Traffic Controller's radar MH370 deviated from its flight plan and turned sharply to the southwest. For the next hour, it flew, flew back across Malaysia, banked over the island of Penang, then began flying across the Andaman Sea northwest of the country until it faded out of military radar range. Although the Malaysian government learned this information fairly early in the search, they inexplicably waited a day to tell anyone about it. By the time search and rescue teams began searching the Andaman Sea, 1200 kilometers away from their original location, the debris they were looking for would have already sunk or drifted away. On March 13, five days after the plane disappeared, the Wall Street Journal published new details from the MH370 search. Investigators had discovered that in the six hours after the transponder went off, the flight had made contact with a communication satellite seven different times. The satellite belonged to a company called Inmarsat, which provides phone service, WI fi, and other network features to planes in flight. All seven of the contacts were automatic pings as the satellite sent signals to the plane with no signals going back the other way. But they were proof that MH370 continued to fly for hours even after it disappeared from Malaysian military radar. Investigators were able to use these pings to get a very rough idea of the plane's location each time one was sent. When the seventh and final ping happened at 8:19am on March 8, experts believed MH370 was somewhere between Kazakhstan and a wide swath of the southern Indian Ocean. By that time, the plane would have been almost completely out of fuel. This is the last piece of hard evidence we have about where Flight 370 ended up. But as the search continued, investigators, online sleuths and conspiracy theorists started trying to come up with an explanation for who took the plane on this bizarre detour and why.
- [11:59]
Unknown
She's made up her mind to live Pretty smart Learn to budget responsibly right from the start she spends a little less and puts more into savings Keeps keeps her blood pressure low and credit score raises she's curtained debt right out of her life she tracks her cash.
- [12:21]
Vanessa Richardson
Flow on her spreadsheet at night Boring.
- [12:22]
Unknown
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- [13:02]
Vanessa Richardson
8, 2014, Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disappeared roughly 40 minutes into a 6 hour flight from Koala Lumur to Beijing. Once Investig had deviated from its original flight path, search parties scanned a large swath of the Indian Ocean looking for debris. After a month with no success, they began searching the ocean floor instead. Even though it was all but certain that everyone on board was dead, investigators wanted to find the plane's black box, which contained the cockpit voice recorder. They hoped that this would shed some light on MH370's final hours. In the absence of an official explanation, conspiracy theorists began cooking up wild explanations for the plane's disappearance online. Many of these theories centered on the Malaysian government and their inexplicable decision to wait a day before telling rescuers they were searching in the wrong place. That made some people believe that the Malaysian government had been involved in the plane's disappearance. Maybe they'd shot the plane down by accident and were sabotaging the rescue effort to hide the evidence. Others claim claim that the government shot the plane down on purpose in order to assassinate a political opponent on board. In reality, although the Malaysian government was covering up crucial details, they weren't doing it to hide their involvement in the plane's disappearance. They were just panicking because the loss of a passenger jet from Malaysia's national airline was a major embarrassment. The prime minister at the time was a corrupt authoritarian named named Najib Razak, who was known for sending goons after anybody who was critical of his administration. So nobody wanted to be the one to say anything to make him look bad. It wasn't a conspiracy, just a bunch of people trying not to make their boss angry. But that still didn't explain what happened to MH370. Some people wondered if someone had hijacked the plane, especially because it seemed like the transponder was purposefully shut off. Online sleuths looked through the list of passengers aboard the plane and found multiple potential hijackers. One passenger had worked as a flight engineer for a Swiss charter jet company. Since he knew how to fly a plane, conspiracy theorists suggested that he may have forced his way into the cockpit, disabled the transponder and turned MH370 around. But when Malaysian police discovered that two of the passengers on the flight had been Iranians flying with forged passports, they became the new prime suspects for the hijacking theory. A Russian newspaper claimed that the Iranians had stormed the cockpit and flown the plane to Afghanistan, where the passengers and crew were now being held hostage on Reddit. A popular theory suggested that the Iranians flew the hijacked plane to North Korea instead. However, one problem with any hijacking theory is that the cockpit door was heavily fortified and electronically bolted specifically to prevent that from happening. But some claimed that the hijackers had an accomplice who'd stowed away an MH370's cargo hold. There they could disable the circuit breakers controlling the cockpit's electronic locks. It was tantalizing, but unrealistic. None of these theories explained how two unarmed hijackers could get past the 10 flight attendants or the hundreds of other passengers on board. It's also worth noting that the FBI determined that the two Iranians were political refugees seeking asylum. They had no history of criminal activity or connections to terrorism. And even if the Iranians had somehow taken control of the plane, it's not clear how they flew a stolen jet into Afghanistan or North Korea undetected. The US Military keeps close watch on the airspace around both countries. If a jumbo jet showed up out of the blue, somebody would have noticed. We'll probably never know for sure what happened to MH370. However, many investigators, experts and journalists who followed the search have all aligned on one fairly plausible theory. Their explanation centers on the flight's captain, Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Captain Zahari was one of Malaysian Airlines most experienced pilots. In the wake of the plane's disappearance, Malaysian police investigated Zahari and released a report stating that there was nothing suspicious about his actions in the lead up to the flight. And yet, like many aspects of the Malaysian government's investigation, this report was falsified to overlook key details. People who knew Captain Zahari later told journalists that he was lonely and quite depressed. He and his wife had separated, and he rarely saw his kids. He told friends that he often passed the time between flights just pacing from one empty room of his house to another. He was reportedly in love with a married woman, and he'd also grown fixated on a pair of models on social media, often leaving sexually suggestive comments on their Facebook posts, which were almost always ignored. All to say, he was a deeply troubled man and he may have seen MH370 as a way out, Zaharie had an elaborate flight simulator set up in his home, which he would often play with in his spare time. After the disappearance, Malaysian police and later the FBI, reviewed the flight simulator logs and made a grim discovery. Captain Zahari had made a simulated flight that closely matched the route taken by MH370 in its final hours. His simulated flight started at Kuala Lumpur, made a sharp turn at the edge of Vietnamese airspace, then flew out over the Indian Ocean for hours until running out of fuel and crashing. The consensus among the professionals who investigated Flight 370 is that Captain Zahari intentionally crashed the plane in an act of mass murder and suicide. Based on years of investigation, analysis of flight data, and a deep understanding of the Boeing 777, this is what experts believe actually happened to Flight 370. After the plane took off, Captain Zahari sent his co pilot Fariq Hamid out of the cockpit on an errand shortly before they left Malaysian airspace. Once Fariq was gone, Zaharie presumably locked the cockpit door behind him. Now alone, the captain switched off the transponder as soon as the plane crossed into Vietnamese airspace, timing it so that the plane would disappear from radar during the handoff between air traffic controllers in Malaysia and Vietnam. Immediately afterward, the plane made its sharp southern turn. Details in the data Transmitted from Flight 370 to the Communications satellite suggest that it. At this point, the plane's electrical system was deliberately shut down and the plane's cabin was depressurized at the same time. Engineers who've studied the flight Data believe that Captain Zaharie increased the plane's elevation from 35,000ft to 40,000ft, about as high as the 777 could safely fly. This would depressurize the plane even faster, suffocating everyone outside the cockpit in a matter of minutes. If Zaharie was trying to keep Fariq and the rest of the flight crew from interfering with his plan, this would be the perfect way to do it. Over the next several hours, it's likely that Captain Zaharie was the only person left alive aboard MH370 as it flew out over the Indian Ocean. The final pieces of satellite data suggest that the plane was making making a rapid descent before crashing, far faster than if it had run out of fuel while on autopilot. Experts who've looked at the data estimate that in its final moments, Flight 370 could have been losing altitude at 15,000ft per second. To achieve those speeds, someone would need to be at the controls to steer the plane into a steep nosedive straight into the ocean. But until that flapperon washed up on the shores of Reunion, no one could say for sure what happened to the plane. Since then, several dozen more fragments of Flight 370 have been found along the shores of Madagascar. Although MH370 is believed to have crashed roughly 4,000 miles east, Ocean currents have been slowly transporting the debris to the island for years. However, that hasn't stopped some conspiracy theorists from insisting that the wreckage was planted to cover up the plane's actual location. Meanwhile, the Malaysian government's official report on the matter, released four years after Flight 370 vanished, simply states that investigators could not determine why the plane disappeared. The search for MH370 was the most exciting, expensive search and rescue operation of all time. Based on the limited information available, we have a pretty good idea of what happened to the missing plane. But unless someone is able to find the missing black box, we'll never know for sure. For now, it seems like the answer is resting somewhere deep on the bottom of the ocean. Coming up, another mysterious disappearance that prompted wild speculation and conspiracy theories.
- [23:15]
Unknown
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- [23:45]
Morgan Abshur
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- [24:15]
Jules
Jules, your host of onomedia's newest podcast, Rise and Crime. Your morning caffeine crime hit. If you're a true crime enthusiast who wants the newest details of current criminal cases, then get your crime caffeine hit with me on Mondays and Thursdays each week on Rise in Crime, we will create a breakfast club of sorts where we dive into the most recent details of the highest profile cases as well as those current cases you may know nothing about. Rise in Crime will also provide you updates on those cases that just left that nagging what happened after everyone stopped paying attention feeling let us scratch your need to know itch. The best part is Rise in Crime is available everywhere. Watch us on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you catch your favorite podcasts.
- [25:14]
Vanessa Richardson
Forty years before Pieces of Flight 370 began washing up on the shores of Reunion, another prominent disappearance had the world talking. The search for Jimmy Hoffa and the nationwide obsession with tracing his final movements has made his name synonymous with mysterious disappearances. On July 30, 1975, 62 year old Jimmy left his vacation home in Lake Orion, Michigan and drove to Detroit to meet up with an old friend named Anthony Provenzano. Jimmy was the former president of one of America's most powerful labor unions, the Teamsters. He'd spent most of his life building up the union before stepping down as president in the late 1960s. But now he wanted to regain the top spot in the organization. To do that, though, he'd need help from his old pal Anthony, a captain in the fearsome Genovese crime family. The two of them had been close in the past. The Mafia's support had helped Jimmy turn the Teamsters into one of the most influential unions in the country. But he and Anthony weren't exactly close anymore. Just a year or two earlier, Anthony had threatened to pull out Jimmy's guts and kidnap his grandchildren. But if Jimmy wanted to get back in with the Teamsters, he needed Anthony's help. So he'd reached out to Detroit area gangster Tony Jack Giacalone to facilitate the meeting at a restaurant called Maccas Red Fox. Jimmy knew he was taking a risk, but it was his only option. On the way to the restaurant, Jimmy called one of his associates, Louis Lento. He was hoping Lento could join him at lunch to watch his back. But Louis didn't pick up the phone, so Jimmy went ahead alone. At 2pm he arrived at the restaurant in the Detroit suburbs. At 2:15, he called his wife Josephine and complained that Anthony Provenzano was late. Jimmy told her he'd be back by 4 o' clock to start making dinner. Then he continued to hang around the restaurant, eventually making another call to Louis Lento. After that, Jimmy Hoffa seemingly vanished into thin air. Nobody has seen him since. In 1982, Jimmy was declared legally dead, and there's no shortage of theories about where his body might be hidden. But to understand why so many people cared so much about Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance, we need to look back at what he did before he vanished. James Riddle Hoffa was born in 193013 and moved to Detroit, Michigan when he was 11 years old. He lived there for the rest of his life. It was the city that shaped him, and eventually he shaped it. Back in the early 20th century, Detroit was a fast growing industrial hub with a steady supply of shipping and manufacturing jobs. Jimmy dropped out of school and took one of those jobs when he was 14. Working long hours to help support his family, he quickly learned the value of hard work. He also learned that the bosses who ran Detroit's businesses liked to underpay and exploit their workers. The Great Depression started when Jimmy was just 16 years old. With so many people out of work, employers had enormous leverage. Anyone who complained about unsafe conditions or low pay could easily, easily be replaced. When workers tried to protect their rights by forming unions, companies paid off the police or hired private detectives to rough up the union organizers. These experiences radicalized Jimmy into a lifetime of fighting for workers rights. His first battle in that war came in 1932, when he was only 19. That year, Jimmy was working at a food distribution distribution center for the Kroger grocery store empire. Kroger made employees wait at the loading dock for hours without pay until a train load of food came in and only paid them a low hourly rate for the time they spent unloading the shipment. Jimmy did not like that, and he was ready to do something about it. Along with some fellow workers, Jimmy waited for the next shipment the of of food to come in a load of fresh strawberries. But they refused to unload it until they got a raise and were paid for the time they spent waiting. Jimmy's timing was perfect. The bosses didn't have time to call in strike breakers or try to hire replacement workers. The strawberries would spoil if they weren't immediately moved from the train car to the refrigerated warehouse. And so Kroger reluctantly, reluctantly agreed to Jimmy's demands. Afterwards, the striking workers would be known throughout Detroit as the Strawberry Boys. And their leader, Jimmy Hoffa, would be known as a fierce, crafty advocate for workers rights. His success with the Strawberry Boys showed Jimmy just how powerful workers could be when they stuck together. So he started looking for a larger union to form an alliance with. He soon settled on the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters. The Teamsters Union started in the early 1900s to represent workers who transported goods pulled by teams of horses. By the 1930s, they represented all sorts of professionals who worked in jobs related to shipping. The Kroger workers who made their living loading and unloading shipments of freight food were a natural fit. And soon the Strawberry boys became Teamsters. The Teamsters leaders were impressed with Jimmy's work during the Strawberry strike. So they gave him a job as an organizer with their Detroit chapter. He proved to be a valuable asset. Throughout the 1930s, the Teamsters secured higher wages and better working conditions through a series of strikes all over the Midwest. Jimmy was a regular presence on the picket lines where he received dozens of injuries in brawls with strikebreakers. But while Jimmy was fighting with business tycoons for workers rights, he was also fighting with rival unions. Every worker who left the Teamsters to join another union made the Teamsters less powerful, which gave them less leverage at the negotiating table. For laborers to get ahead, Jimmy thought they needed to be united under one union. And he was dead set on that union being the Teamsters. Their chief competitor was a union organization called the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or cio. When the CIO moved into Detroit, they tried to poach members of the Teamsters into their organization. Jimmy fought tooth and nail to keep the CIO off of his turf, even if it meant making some unsavory alliances along the way. One of his ex girlfriends had gone on to date a Detroit area gangster named Frank Coppola. She introduced them to each other and convinced Frank to support the Teamsters. With his backing, Jimmy and his fellow Teamsters were able to run the CIOs organizers out of Detroit. In return, the Mafia got a cut of the union dude the Teamsters collected from members. It was the beginning of a long and lucrative relationship between organized labor and organized crime. Over the next 20 years, Jimmy became more and more powerful. And so did the Teamsters. In 1937, when he was only 24, he was elected president of the union's Detroit branch. And his influence grew as the US entered World War II. In fact, the government considered him so important that they exempted him from the draft so he could keep America's supply lines running smoothly. The manufacturing boom during the war years led to a boom for the Teamsters membership too. By 1952, they had over a million members. And that year the union showed its appreciation by electing 39 year old Jimmy as their Vice President. Five years later, the Teamsters president stepped down after being indicted for embezzlement of union funds. And Jimmy was elected to replace him. At this point, Jimmy was extremely popular with working people throughout the country. He'd won major pay raises for Teamsters and had established a generous health care and pension fund for them. Among the general public, he was seen as a tireless fighter for the working class. But among lawmakers in Washington, D.C. he was seen as a low class crook with deep ties to organized crime. There was some truth to both viewpoints. Jimmy cared deeply about the welfare of his union members. But the partnership he'd forged with the Mafia in the late 1930s had flourished over the past 20 years. The mob was deeply intertwined with Teamsters chapters all over the country, embezzling pension funds, extorting businesses by threatening strikes, and beating up or killing anybody who defied them. By the late 1950s, the Teamsters had grown so corrupt that the American Federation of Labor voted to expel them from their organization. This contributed to a growing belief in Washington that the Teamsters were basically an extension of the Mafia. Soon after he took over as president of the Teamsters, Jimmy was called to testify in front of a Senate committee on union corruption. The investigation was headed up by an aggressive lawyer named Robert F. Kennedy. Jimmy hated Robert Kennedy, who he saw as an upper class Harvard boy who'd never done a hard day's work in his life. He took pleasure in arguing with Kennedy during the nationally televised hearings, skillfully evading questions about his ties to organized crime and often claiming to have forgotten incriminating details. He called the hearings a witch hunt and an attack on working people everywhere. By the time the hearings ended, Kennedy had failed to expose any union wrongdoing and Jimmy was more popular than ever. But the victory was short lived. In 1960, Robert's brother, John F. Kennedy, was elected president and JFK made Robert the Attorney General, which meant Jimmy Hoffa's legal troubles were just heating up.
- [36:08]
Unknown
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- [36:38]
On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages, that could basically become a podcast your personal messages. Stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with Everyone.
- [37:07]
Vanessa Richardson
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.
- [51:31]
Morgan Abshur
I'mma put you on, nephew.
- [51:32]
Vanessa Richardson
All right. Un.
- [51:33]
Unknown
Welcome to McDonald's.
- [51:34]
Vanessa Richardson
Can I take your order, miss?
- [51:35]
Morgan Abshur
I've been hitting up McDonald's for years. Now it's back. We need snack wraps. What's a snack wrap? It's the return of something great. Snack wrap is back.
- [51:47]
Kaylin Moore
Hi, it's Kaylin Moore. Crime House is home to the most gripping true crime shows. And I would love for you to check out my show that I co host with Morgan Absher. Clues want to sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases? Well, each week on Clues, we open up a new case file and dig into the key evidence that either solved or left authorities baffled behind the most infamous criminal cases. Join us every Wednesday and listen to Clues on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.