50 Years Ago Jimmy Hoffa Vanished in Metro Detroit

It’s been 50 years since Jimmy Hoffa – one of America’s most powerful labor leaders – vanished from a Metro Detroit restaurant.

Vanished without a trace.

Guessing his whereabouts have reached epic proportions as the finest FBI agents from around the nation worked the case. Amateur sleuths have also had their hunches about one of the most perplexing and unsolved mysteries in U.S. history.

More on that later.  But first, we need to go back to July 30, 1975.

That’s the day when the 62-year-old Hoffa, former president of the Teamsters Union, disappeared. He told his wife he was meeting Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone and Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano — both linked to the mob — at 2 p.m. at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township.

Hoffa called home at 2:15 p.m. from a pay phone saying he was still waiting. Around 3 p.m., witnesses saw him enter a maroon car with three men. He was never seen again.

Hoffa’s green luxury sedan, a 1974 Pontiac Grand Ville, was found unlocked in the restaurant parking lot with no signs of a struggle. The FBI quickly launched a massive investigation. Over 200 agents worked the case, but no arrests were made and his body was ever recovered.

Many believe his demise came at the hands of La Cosa Nostra, which means "our thing" in Italian and is the name used to describe the American Mafia. The term became popular in Italy after mobster Tommaso Buscetta revealed the Sicilian Mafia's name was "Cosa Nostra."

James Riddle Hoffa was born in 1913 and had a rough and tumble start in life, where it originated in Brazil, Indiana. His father died young and the family fell on hard times and eventually moved to Detroit’s west side. Since the family had little money, he quit school after the 10^th grade to help with the bills.  Hoffa took a job at a Kroger grocery warehouse and that's where he took his first stand - refusing to unload a shipment of strawberries due to the treatment of delivery drivers.

That act of defiance got the attention of the Teamsters Union and Hoffa would become a labor legend. He rose through the union ranks and thousands would line up at union halls to hear him speak. In 1957, he was catapulted to the top of the Teamsters Union. As the union president, he traveled cross-country to crusade for workers and go head-to-head with powerful politicians.

Hoffa led the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1957 to 1971, growing it to over 2 million members. He was a tough, admired negotiator but long suspected of ties to organized crime. In 1967, ten years after being elected president of the union, Hoffa was convicted of fraud, conspiracy, and jury tampering. The fraud conviction came from Hoffa using pension funds to pay off mob members in exchange for kickbacks.

He was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, but served only five years before President Richard M. Nixon commuted his sentence in 1971 — under the condition he stay out of union leadership until 1980.

Hoffa, of course, ignored that condition and launched a comeback in 1975, alarming both Teamsters officials and Mafia figures who feared exposure. Many surmised that Hoffa was murdered by the Mafia to prevent his return and that his body was destroyed.

Over the past five decades, there have been theories, tips, digs, and searches, which have included:

• Being cremated at a mob-controlled facility

• Shot in a Detroit house, per mob hitman Frank Sheera

• Buried under New York Giants Stadium

• Dumped in a New Jersey landfill

• Ground up at the Detroit Sausage Co.

• Buried in the concrete under the Renaissance Center in Detroit

• Buried in the concrete during the construction of I-696

Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982.  The case remains open.