Jimmy Hoffa's Last Ride

Two new books examine the mystery of the Teamster's fate

Who killed Jimmy Hoffa? And why, where and how? The main outlines of Hoffa's death were widely reported after he disappeared in 1975, but two writers provide some new details about the nation's largest and most crime-ridden major union in their forthcoming books: The Teamsters by Steven Brill, and The Hoffa Wars by Dan E. Moldea.

The beginning of the end for Hoffa came in 1971, when President Nixon commuted his 13-year sentence in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary for jury tampering. Once free, Hoffa set out to regain control of the union from Frank Fitzsimmons, his hand-picked successor. But Fitzsimmons had come to enjoy the power and perks and had no intention of stepping down. The mobsters, who had been flourishing during Fitzsimmons' genially relaxed reign--joining various regional Teamster bosses in lucrative loan sharking, pension-fund frauds, sweetheart contracts, management-union kickback deals and other rackets--did not want Hoffa back either. They feared that he would centralize power again and deal out a few racketeers who had rubbed him the wrong way.

Both writers agree with the FBI that Hoffa's murder was engineered by Anthony ("Tony Pro") Provenzano, the heavyhanded boss of New Jersey's Teamsters, who was convicted in June of the 1961 murder of Anthony Castellito, a Teamster hoodlum who had challenged Tony Pro's cut of the rackets.

Jimmy and Tony Pro had long been buddies, but they almost came to blows in July 1967, when both were serving time in Lewisburg, Tony Pro for extortion. A fellow convict told Brill that the two argued over how to divide up Teamster turf, and Hoffa made it clear that he would give no help to Tony Pro. "Tony was explaining to Jimmy how he was going to get right back into things in New Jersey," recalled the convict. "Well, Jimmy exploded at him. 'Look,' he said, 'when you get out, you guys are going to have to be on your own.' Tony's cheeks were red and twitching, he was so mad. Finally, he came towards Hoffa screaming, 'If you don't get out of my shit and back off of me, you'll end up like Castellito! They won't find so much as a fingernail of yours!' Jimmy yelled, 'Bullshit!' and that's when I broke them up."

The feud continued both in prison and after Hoffa and Provenzano were released. According to Moldea, Hoffa told a fellow Teamster that Provenzano had "threatened to pull my guts out or kidnap my children if I continue to attempt to return to the presidency of the Teamsters." But, at the urging of Anthony ("Tony Jack") Giacalone, a Detroit gang lieutenant and longtime friend, Hoffa finally agreed to meet with Tony Pro on July 30, 1975, to try to resolve their differences.

That afternoon, according to both accounts, Hoffa left his suburban Detroit home and drove alone in his car to the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township. He expected to be picked up there to go elsewhere for the meeting with Provenzano. Soon afterward, Charles ("Chuckle") O'Brien, 41, pulled into the parking lot. Hoffa apparently got into the car voluntarily. He had good reason to trust O'Brien; the Hoffas had raised him after the death of his father. His mother had been a close friend of Mrs. Hoffa's. Brill reports that also in the car were two of the three musclemen from Tony Pro's New Jersey Teamsters ranks assigned to carry out the killing: Gabriel Briguglio, 36, his brother Salvatore, 47, and Thomas Andretta, 38. Brill, however, does not mention a fourth mobster regarded by the FBI as a prime suspect in the slaying, Thomas Principe.

One man sat in the back seat beside Hoffa as O'Brien drove; a second sat in front. During the trip, the thug in back hit Hoffa over the head with some kind of blunt instrument, knocking him out. Traces of Hoffa's blood and hair were found in the back seat of the car.

Hoffa may have been strangled in the vehicle. There would have been more blood if he had been shot, evidence that his assailants did not want to leave behind. Or he may have been taken somewhere else and killed. Brill believes that Hoffa's body was later completely destroyed in a large trash shredder, compactor or incinerator--or some combination of all three--at Central Sanitation Services in nearby Hamtramck, Mich. The refuse-disposal company is owned by two Detroit crime figures, Raffael Quasarano and Peter Vitale.

Though the FBI knows what happened to Hoffa, it does not have a strong enough case to go to court. "We all know who did it," one unidentified Teamsters vice president told Brill. "It was Tony with those guys of his from New Jersey. It's common knowledge. But the cops need a corroborating witness, and it doesn't look like they're about to get one, does it?" The FBI, according to Brill, has been playing a persistent and patient game, trying to get evidence against the suspects on other charges in the hope that one of them will talk in return for leniency.

One problem is the suspects' fear of being permanently silenced by the Mob. Brill describes O'Brien as living in such terror of Tony Pro that he hid under a bed for two days at the Teamsters' Las Vegas convention in 1976. Last March Salvatore Briguglio was shot to death outside a restaurant in New York's Little Italy to keep him from talking to the FBI about the Hoffa case. Agents promptly tried to convince the other suspects that they had a better chance to survive as protected Government witnesses than on the loose in the streets. So far, none have been willing to testify in court about Jimmy Hoffa's last ride.

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