Wednesday (30 July) was the 50th anniversary of one of the most famous disappearances in American history.
Jimmy Hoffa, the once and future President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was supposed to meet two mobsters, enforcer Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone and New Jersey mob capo (caporegime) Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, at Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) northwest of downtown Detroit and 5 miles (9 km) southeast of the brand-new Pontiac Silverdome, which would begin hosting the Detroit Lions in less than two months.
Hoffa showed up. Giacalone and Provenzano supposedly did not.
I say “supposedly” because Hoffa disappeared shortly after arriving at the Red Fox and was never seen again.
From reading online articles and watching televised snippets about the abduction, both on television and online, I believe Provenzano and Giacalone kidnapped Hoffa, murdered him, then disposed of his remains in an unknown location.
One joke has gone that Hoffa was buried underneath the field of Giants Stadium in East Rutheford, N.J., which hosted the New York Giants from 1976-2009 (and the Jets from 1984-2009). However, that theory was debunked when no remains turned up after Giants Stadium was demolished in 2010 to make way for Met Life Stadium, the new home for the NFL clubs.
Provenzano made John Gotti look like a common criminal. The Coreleone family from The Godfather were pillars of the community compared to Tony Pro.
Long before Hoffa vanished from this planet, Provenzano rigged union elections for the presidency of the Teamsters Local in Hudson County, N.J., making sure his favored candidate won, mostly by shady means.
One challenge to an election was dismissed by a judge Provenzano reportedly bribed. Another opposition candidate was murdered in front of his home in Hoboken.
In 1967, Provenzano was sent to federal prison for extorting $17,000 from a carrier. He was assigned to the United States Penteteniary (USP) in Lewisburg, Pa.
Ironically, the most famous prisoner at Lewisburg was none other than the head honcho of the Teamsters, James Riddle Hoffa, who was convicted in 1964 of jury tampering, but did not report to prison until 1967 after exhausting his appeals.
Hoffa and Provenzano hit it off at first, but when Tony Pro learned Hoffa was still receiving his full Teamster pension as president emeritus and he was getting zilch, Tony Pro was angry to say the least.
Additionally, Hoffa told Provenzano “it’s because of people like you that I got into trouble in the first place”.
Ouch.
Some would let a comment like that run off their back like water off of a duck.
Anthony Provenzano was one of the last people on Earth who would let something like that slide.
Hoffa’s 13-year prison sentence was commuted in late 1971 by Richard Nixon, supposedly after his 1972 re-election campaign–whose committee initiated the Watergate burglary–received a $200,000 donation from Frank Fitzsimmons, Hoffa’s successor as Teamsters president.
One of the conditions of Hoffa’s release was ineligibility to seek a management position with the Teamsters, or any other union, until March 1980.
Hoffa wasn’t about to let Fitzsimmons control the union HE built into a powerhouse. Hoffa sued the Nixon administration in 1974 to invalidate the leadership banishment provision of his commutation. However, the courts sided with the President, stating Hoffa’s prison sentence was directly related to Teamsters activities and all conditions placed upon Hoffa were constitutional.
Hoffa attempted to mend his relationship with Provenzano in 1973 and ’74, but Tony Pro basically told Hoffa to go fuck himself, threatening to “pull out Hoffa’s guts” and kidnap his grandchildren (Jimmy and Josephine Hoffa had two children, son James Phillip and daughter Barbara Ann (Crancer)).
The meeting at the Red Fox on the last Wednesday of July 1975 was supposedly a “peace conference” between Hoffa and Provenzano.
If that was the case, then there is a fabulous beach resort somewhere between Dodge City and Garden City that I haven’t heard about.
Another theory stated Hoffa’s body was burned in a 55-gallon (208-litre) vat of acid. Yet another said Hoffa was run through a garbage shredder.
Speaking of a garbage shredder, Provenzano went back to prison in June 1978 when he was convicted of the 1961 murder of Anthony Castellito, whose body was disposed of in that manner. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, since New York is too much of a pussy state to have the death penalty.
Nearly one year later, Tony Pro was convicted of RICO charges in a labor bribery case and sentenced to 20 years in federal custody. Since federal law trumps state law, the U.S. Department of Justice extracted Provenzano from New York and sent him to Lompoc Penitentiary in California.
Provenzano died at Lompoc on 12 December 1988 at age 71.
Jimmy Hoffa was declared legally dead by the state of Michigan on 30 July 1982.
James P. Hoffa served as Teamsters president from 1998-2022.
Yes, Hoffa’s murder was never OFFICALLY solved. Yet if Tony Provenzano did not order the hit, then O.J. really didn’t kill Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman.
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