April 14, 2025 • 53 mins
In his day, American labor union leader James "Jimmy" Riddle Hoffa was one of the most well-known figures in the US. On July 30th, 1975, Hoffa disappeared. He has not been seen, living or dead, since that day. In the decades following his death numerous investigators have tried (and failed) to figure out what exactly happened to this infamous American icon. So what actually happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Tune in to learn more in tonight's Classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, guys, you know James Haffa. His middle name is Riddle.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I did not know that.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I don't think any of us did.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
But it's a bit weird, right Jimmy to his friends.
Jimmy Hoffa is one of the most well known historical
figures in these United States, and on July thirtieth, nineteen
seventy five, he disappeared.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
Yes he did, Yes he did. Lot's been said about
mister Haffa. A lot, A lot of allegations have come
out about people around Jimmy Hoffa. It's a it's a
murky story, let's say, and lots has been made about
his life and his disappearance in movies such as Haffa
(00:53):
and Well it was contemporary to I guess twenty nineteen
when we originally made this episode The Irishman.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Oh yeah, I forgot about The Irishman. I'm still baffled
about the depth of investigation and the lack of official
results in this one. Someone conspired for this guy to disappear,
and in tonight's classic episode spoiler, folks, we hope you
(01:24):
enjoy it, but we also hope you contact us directly
if you happen to know what happened to Jimmy.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Please do please do listen along and then write to us.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They call
me Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission control deck, and most importantly are you.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
You are here and that.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Makes this stuff they don't want you to know. From
the offset, it is important for us to collectively establish
that this episode is not an advertisement for the Irishman.
The newest Scorsese film that just dropped on Netflix to
no small amount of acclaim and a little bit of controversy.
(02:36):
Al Pacino plays one of the I don't know, maybe
secondary is a good word, a secondary character in the film.
He plays a character named Jimmy Hoffa, which is based
on the real life Jimmy Hoffa. Now, Noel, you and
I had talked about this film a little bit off
air when we saw it, and Paul you watched it,
(02:58):
so you brought it up to us without spoiling the
film for anyone. It's based on a book right by
this guy named Charles Brandt.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Right, it's called What I Say I Heard You Paint Houses?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I Heard you Paint Houses, which is a fantastic title.
This book purports to be nonfiction. It includes interviews and
alleged confessions made to the author, Charles Brandt, by a
former Mafia hitman named Frank Sheeran like Ed Sheeran and Irishman. Yes,
and this film inspired our own super producer Paul Deccan
(03:33):
to say, Hey, guys, have we ever delved into the
story of Jimmy Hoffa? And I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I assumed that we had. We had.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Not that changes today. So here are the facts.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Yeah, let's talk about Jimmy Hoffa. Who is this guy? Well,
he was born James Riddle. He went by Jimmy Hoffa,
and he was born on Valentine's Day, that's February fourteenth,
nineteen thirteen, called Brazil, Indiana.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I did not know there was a Brazil Indiana.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
It's kind of cool. I'd never heard of that place either.
Assuming the climate is a bit different in that Brazil
he was aware of. Let's say the American labor force,
the American laborer, the person who was using their hands
to create something, generally for somebody else. His father was
(04:25):
a coal miner, and he passed away when Hoffa was
very very young, or Jimmy was young, and his mom
had to end up joining the workforce to support her family,
which which was a fairly common occurrence, as you know,
the heads of households would die off, whether it was
through war conflict, or a workforce accident or something like that.
(04:48):
He had three siblings of four children, including Jimmy, and
eventually they moved to a place called Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Which at the time was a hotbed of of industry
and growing. You know, this is still before the enormous
boom of the American auto industry, but still it's very
much an industry's place.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
It's a great place to get a job.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And we don't know how much formal education Jimmy Hoffa
was able to achieve. You know, you'll hear history and
say they don't know whether he reached high school, much
less graduated, but we know that eventually while he was
in school, he had to drop out. He had to
help support his family, so he worked on the loading
dock for a chain of grocery stores there in Detroit,
(05:37):
and while working there, imagine how young this guy is.
While working there, he organizes his very first labor strike
and it all hinges on shipments of strawberries.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, and he actually was pretty demonstrating some pretty serious
streets smart to this point already, because he used a
recent shipment of strawberries as leverage to help get his
coworkers better deal, better contracts for their labor. They refused
to unload the strawberries until they had secured a better
(06:10):
pay and in the thirties, well, I.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Just have to say right there with the strawberries, like
that's a smart thing, because strawberries go bad pretty quickly,
and if you don't unload the strawberries. He's like he
was gumming up the works for everybody basically by doing that.
And it's interesting how it set a timer, like very
clear timer on when you're gonna lose all your money
on these strawberries, and you're also losing money because that
(06:34):
truck is now stuck there. It was just really smart.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
We don't have worked with canned peas.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Honestly, it wouldn't because this canpeas.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I don't know, Yeah, hard to say if that was
just like a serendipitous thing or if he very much,
you know, was being calculated about that. But it was
absolutely a smart move and he got what he wanted. Then,
in the nineteen thirties, Hoffa officially joined the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters, which is what he went on to become
the president of at least the union's Detroit chapter. So
(07:05):
he kind of laid the groundwork for a career in labor,
and it would seem it it came by honestly based
on his trajectory and his upbringing.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
At that point.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, and we should also stop too for anyone who
doesn't know. Doubtless, doubtlessly we have several Teamsters in the
audience today, but a lot of people in this country
and abroad don't really know what a teamster is. The teamster,
the old word, atymologically is like someone who drives a
team of horses right now. According to their website teamster
(07:38):
dot org, the Teamsters are America's largest, most diverse union.
They started in nineteen oh three as the merger of
two team driver associations Team by the way, not team
in case my annunciation is off. And today you'll you
may be most familiar with them as truck drivers, right,
(08:01):
because we've replaced to a great degree, we've replaced animal
labor with mechanical labor. So at this time he is
he is, as you said, Noel joined up with the Teamsters.
He starts as the president of the Detroit chapter. For
many less ambitious people, that would be the version of
(08:23):
making it, you know what I mean, I'm king of
the town. And the thing is that Haffa is not
a guy satisfied with being a big fish in a
small town. Make no mistake, he is a shark. He
expands union membership, He quickly garners a reputation for getting
better contract agreements by any means necessary. Cough cough, corruption,
(08:46):
cough cough, mafia cough cough threats cough. Right, But he
started out honest, right, that's a very important thing. By
nineteen fifty two, he's vice president of the entire union,
so not just Detroit, but the entire international brotherhood of Teamsters.
In just five years after that, nineteen fifty seven, he
(09:08):
is the president of the entire organization.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Well, it's one of these things where especially in the
way he's portrayed in film like I haven't s been
a long time since I've seen that Jack Nicholson film
that I believe Danny DeVito directed. It's called Hofa. But
at least in The Irishman, you do get the sense
that he felt as though he were still representing the
common man and doing something positive, even though he was
(09:31):
clearly heading up what was not a strictly legal enterprise.
He would he seemed like he maybe could convinced himself
that it was all for the greater good. It was
all forgetting his fellow brothers a better deal, like with
the strawberries. But in order to do that, you know,
we're swimming with sharks here. We got to play nice
with the sharks. You got to be a bigger shirt,
(09:52):
a bigger shark exactly, because it's all about in us
versus them mentality, and in this case, us did include
some pretty nefarious characters. Haffa was to be the subject
of numerous criminal investigations, and it was a shadow that
kind of relentlessly followed him throughout his career, and this
is portrayed really, really well in the Scorsese film. Was
(10:14):
it entirely surprising his direct predecessor, Dave Beck, had also
been investigated and he was ultimately tried and convicted of
corrupt practices within the union.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Dave Beck, which was convicted, which gave Hafa the opportunity
to ascend to this position. Yet Haffa persevered. Nineteen sixty
four was a big year for him in a number
of ways, not all of them fantastic. His big win
was that he got nearly all of the truck drivers
(10:46):
in the entire continent of North America under a single contract.
Uncle Sam had been keeping an eye on Jimmy, and
they thought there was something rotten in the teamsters, something
fishy about his rise to fame and his success. Now
at this point, he is very, very similar to a
(11:09):
well known politician or maybe even to some degree a celebrity. Right,
the FBI and then US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
are watching Hafa very closely. They are convinced that a
lot of his union success is less a result of
being a shrewd negotiator and more a result of a
(11:29):
close collaboration with organized crime also known as the mob
or the mafia. Right, So what else happened in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Four, Well, Haffa himself was found guilty of a couple
of things, bribery for one, also jury tampering, ah, jury tampering,
the good old JT. When something goes wrong and somebody
knows it, you gotta tamper a little bit. Yeah right,
And that can be really that can be really terrible
(12:01):
or just going like here's one hundred dollars, don't don't
talk about me, or it could yeah, or it could
be something to the level of you know, memory is
a funny thing, mister Smith, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Like sometimes you think you remember, so you look back
and you realize you don't remember it too good. After all,
you know, it could have been anybody there. But you
know one thing, one thing you never forget is your
children smile. And it's wonderful. We'll be able to see
that every day instead of just looking back and remembering
it and wishing you could say hello to him.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Oh boy, oh boy. Yeah, that was really good science
and memory.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
I was gonna say, just like casually mentioning his or
her daughter's birthday, but like that's like that was on
that was on them, was on the money.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well that's cinematic. I'm sure it was much more subtle.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Yes, but that stuff that that's when he was found
guilty of both of those things in connection with a
previous trial that he had that he had gone through
in nineteen sixty two years prior.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, he was on trial for conspiracy, which I love
you that people could be convicted of conspiracy. And then
he was found guilty in sixty four for charges related to,
as you said, Matt conspiracy. So that was one bad
thing that happened to him that year.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Yeah, he's also convicted of misusing funds from the union's
pension plan.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And that's a big note in the in the film
that Scorsese did, and also a note I believe in
the book I Heard You Paint Houses, because the union's
pension fund was an enormous amount of money and he
pretty much had direct control over it, so he could
make the money dance to the tunes he chose, and.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
A lot of those tunes were mafia backed projects, like
in Las Vegas, for example, paying for wings to be
constructed on you know, casinos, and as we know, a
lot of that money came directly from the mob to
start you know, Las Vegas in the first place. So
there were those relationships that were ongoing and directly tied
(14:04):
to dipping into that money, which would then be invested
and get a return. And it's not like he was
stealing money from the pensioners people who were doe that money.
But it was still playing fast and loose with the rules.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
You know, you're telling me that organized crime organizations launder
money through things like labor unions.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
It's true, Matt, money laundering, but it's got a great return.
I'm just gonna say, if everything goes well, there's a
great return for that stuff. Yeah, money laundering was a
big part of it. Also, at what point do this
may be a story for a different day, but at
what point do campaign donations become.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Illegal?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Right?
Speaker 1 (14:48):
At what point are they interfering with the democratic process?
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Well, I mean, all you gotta do is make them
unlimited and then you're good to go. I should fix
all those problems.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Right, Well, I think it's safe for the five of us. Paul, Noel, Matt, myself,
and you listening to agree that Jimmy Hoffa probably did
not deal with these philosophical quandaries in the same way. Yeah,
it's just costed doing business.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So after three years fighting these charges that his lawyer,
and you know again, as depicted in the Scorceti film,
he was a union lawyer who was also very aware
of what was going on, made the argument that this
was all trumped up. He had exhausted his appeals finally,
and he got thirteen years in prison, and in nineteen
sixty seven he was incarcerated in the Louisbourg Federal Prison
(15:37):
in Pennsylvania. And then came along a like minded individual
who was sent it to the presidency, the little guy
by the name of Richard Nixon, who commuted haff A
sentenced in seventy one, essentially giving him a pard in
a presidential pardon with a year and a half of probation. However,
this came with a string attached Nixon and Haffa from
(16:00):
holding any union leadership position at least until nineteen eighty.
So bit of a slap on the wrists.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
It's a weird one too, because it's a string with
a time limit. He's not saying stay out of the game,
you dirty rat. He's saying, just sit on the bench
until the eighties. Let's let the heat die down a
little bit.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Well, and it's so so odd to me that Nixon,
the president came through and said, you know what, it's okay,
is it odd?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
You're good?
Speaker 4 (16:29):
You're good man, You're gonna be okay. It's only been
a couple of years. You got thirteen, You'll be all right.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Well, Haffa donated heavily. Oh I know this campaign too.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
But just to be able to get a president to
do that, no matter how much money you're donating to them,
because in the end, it's you know, the public appearance
of something like that. But here's the deal. Jimmy Hoffa
and a lot of labor union leaders out there are
like hugely beloved no matter what they're doing, no matter
(17:01):
what they've been committed of. Will you know, over the
course of time and history, will be beloved because there
is this this perception, at least from the outside. And
and you know, like we said, Jimmy Hoffa thought that
he was doing the right thing, or release appeared to
believe he was doing the right.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Thing, at least at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
The ideology outweighed the ego.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
That exactly that ideology it ripples out through the public
of people who are assisted in that way.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And this is a one to one and some might
accuse me of being hyperbolic here, but it's almost the
way you hear about the way folks in Mydan treated
Pablo Escobar. You know, very clearly bad guy, doing bad things,
hurting people, probably directly hurting individuals in that community. But
there's this perception that he's the best chance they've got,
(17:45):
or he's actually looking out for the little people, you know,
and he cares in some way, and they call him
Saint Pablo and all that stuff, even though completely transparent
that this guy is no good.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Well in Hoffel, wasn't some mob boss, No exactly. I
don't want to draw one way similar exactly, but there's
intentions to look out for the labor class or the
working class.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, so we can imagine, you know, I think that
is a good comparison. We can imagine supporters of Escobar
and supporters of HAFA, not that they're the same in
the same line of business, but we can imagine the
supporters saying, hey, this guy is the reason that we
have a paycheck, is the reason that my family can
live comfortably or better than they would have otherwise. So
(18:32):
we have to remember also that with his enormous power,
Jimmy Hoffa could move the vote, he could sway hundreds
of thousands of people to vote for or against a
given candidate. And for the next few years, Haffa wages
something very like a war. He's fighting that ban on
leadership in court. He doesn't want to wait till nineteen eighty.
(18:55):
And he's also working behind the scenes, with mixed success,
to reconsolidate his powerbase within the Union. And then, of course,
as even a casual student of history will recall, things
don't work out the way Haffa planned, or did they.
We're going to rejoin him on July thirtieth, nineteen seventy
(19:18):
five after a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
July thirtieth, nineteen seventy five. Haffa is in a state
of what the streets called deep beef. He has numerous enemies,
he hasn't made a ton of friends, and he's alienated
(19:40):
many of the friends he had. But he wants to
make peace, and he realizes he might have to eat
some crow, he might have to swallow his pride, He
might have to make some inroads with people he swore
he would never work with again. So he leaves his
home in Detroit and he meets the two Tonys Anthony
Tony Jack and Uh Anthony Tony Pro. Tony Jack is
(20:05):
a figure in the Detroit crime scene. Tony Pro is
a mob affiliated union leader who's based in New Jersey.
So they're supposed to meet at this restaurant in Bloomfield Township.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Is at the Macus Red Fox. I believe, so, yes,
something like that.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
They're going to say, correct, They're gonna squash the beef.
They're gonna settle their feud. At least that's what Haffa thinks.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
So Haffa shows up, or we believe at least his
car shows up, and he appears to be the only
one there. You know, he's there. He's going to meet
two people. But Haffa is the only guy there, and
he's wondering what's going on.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Goes assume, We.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Assume, because really we have no idea. We have no
evidence at least that is, that is concrete as to
what occurred after he showed up at that restaurant, or
at least when his car showed up, because because his
car was there. But he was never seen again by
(21:05):
anyone except for the people responsible for what happened to
him or himself. Responsible for whatever happened to him. That's right,
it's a mystery. It's one of the most long standing
mysteries that has existed in this country.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, one of America's most prominent, divisive, important public figures
had simply Kaiser so siaated, he disappeared, and we're almost
a half a century into the post Hafa era. So
what happened to Jimmy Haffa? Here's where it gets crazy.
(21:41):
The answer really depends on who you ask. There's no
shortage of theories that have popped up over the intervening decades,
and the most popular suspects being the mob of course,
But in some cases this surprised me. US federal agencies interesting, right,
did you guys hear about that one? That's a weird
one for sure.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I mean it makes sense considering that he was such
a persona no grada like for you know, Kennedy and
the US government. I mean, they were after him, and
he more or less shook the rap and then was
able to kind of get back into the game.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Well, we'll get into it a little bit further, but
there's also the idea that a federal agency was involved,
but not in disappearing him by killing him or anything,
but by putting him into a protection of some sort.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, So, at this point in the if we take
the high level look at it, at this point in
the world of conspiracy and speculation, the fate of Jimmy
Hoffe's kind of entered urban legend status, which means that
the theories start to obey some of the tropes we
would associate with folk tales or oral tradition. The general
(22:55):
consensus now is that the mob conspired to kill Hafa.
They wanted to stop him from becoming the King of
the Teamsters again. And that's because while he was locked up,
even though he wasn't locked up for the full thirteen
year sentence, while he was locked up, his former vice
president got pretty cozy with the mob, even more so
(23:15):
than Hoffa was, and he was much more willing to
play some games. When Jimmy Hoffa got out, the wise guys,
the mafioso knew that he would try to rain them
in a little bit and they wouldn't be able to
play all the reindeer games that they had become so
accustomed to. Make no mistake, they were probably making more
(23:37):
money under that vice president.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
What was his name.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Meant that was frank Fitzimmons, Frank Edward, I believe Frankie Fitz.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, so they were making they were probably making more
money under Frankie Fitz. Who on earth would say no
to continuing to enhance their profits. They weren't keen to
mess with that relationship. So the the idea then is
that the mob killed him or disappeared him, and we
(24:06):
see a lot of common troops. Just like in other
forms of folklore, there are tons of variations on this theory.
It's kind of like a kind of like a bar
joke or something, you know, where it's like X walks
into a bar. They follow the same gist a mob
hit and then some sort of industrial process to destroy
or hide Haffa's body. There are a ton of examples, yes.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
There are. Indeed. One of them is that Haffa was
killed placed in the trunk of a car, then the
car was crushed in a mob affiliated scrapyard. That'd be
a pretty clever way to go about it, wouldn't that
leave a lot of physical evidence? Though, like I don't know,
you gotta we'll get a wonder when it like seep
out of the cubed car like the remains or anything
(24:49):
like that. I wonder what that would look like.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, I imagine, so it would have to definitely be
a tightly controlled scrapyard. Scrapyards can be really big. But
this was also in the days before DNA testing. It's
true it wouldn't fly today.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
No, certainly not as much, specially if it was a
known kind of mob tide facility or whatever. Another one
is that he was hit in the head with a
shovel and buried alive. Where are these coming from?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Jeez, dramatic? I like it, but that one doesn't make
the most sense.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Do you have any providence for the for the origin
of that one?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, that one comes to us from the great rumor mill.
That doesn't That one doesn't have a lot of sand
to it. A lot of these examples that we find
came out later after because of course this happened before DNA.
It also happened before internet, right, So a lot of
(25:42):
these come about from statements by former mafia associated individuals,
usually when they are tempting to seem as though they
have leverage so that they can get some juice with
the Feds, maybe get a better deal up to and
including relocation and immunity.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
It makes sense, and that also makes sense for some
of the ones to follow, which seemed to be kind
of variations on a theme. Right, Haffa was murdered and
his remains replaced in an oil drum. Haffa, in one
container or another, was thrown into the Great Lakes, or
was abducted by the FEDS and thrown from an airplane.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
It's a waterproof plan, full proof.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
That's uh. I just think about that.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
When has when has anybody said, you know, the best
way to get rid of this prominent figure is to
take them on an airplane and then, in full view
of anyone who happens to be, you know, looking up,
let's throw them from the plane.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
It doesn't that one, okay? So that one comes from
the FED. One specifically comes from a guy named Joseph Franco.
I have no idea whether he's related to the actor.
He was an old, one time associate of Haffa's, and
Franco said that he'd kept the story to himself for
years because he wanted to use them though as leverage
in negotiating an immunity deal if he were caught for
(27:04):
other unrelated crimes. Spoiler alert. It did not work out
for Franco.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
No, it did not.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
There's one that Paul's a particular fan of as well,
the idea that Haffa became this sort of grisly hidden
landmark for a sports team.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
The idea is that Haffa was dispatched, shot maybe whatever
it was. Then he was his limbs were taken apart,
he was dismembered, then frozen, and then get this guess,
buried inside the cement foundation of Giant Stadium. Now, this
was then located in Rutherford, New Jersey and East Rutherford,
(27:47):
New Jersey.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
And what's interesting about this, just to interject, is that
there's a nice mythic tie in here because in some
ancient civilizations and cultures, when you were building a place
of great import, you were required to make a blood
sacrifice of some sort.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
This and Cat's in there right right now.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
This doesn't work with that kind of left hand path
stuff because the idea is that he wasn't killed on
the site. If you really want the magic to hit,
it's got to happen, you know, live and direct on
the place where you plan to lay the stones.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Yeah, yeah, I can't remember the movie that I just
watched that talked all about that, but it had the
actor who plays the Queen of Dragons. She was in it,
and it was like a haunting horror movie on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Anyway, I'll check it out. It's out there.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
They they mentioned they mentioned burying a cat like and
a live cat in the in.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
The walls jerks.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Gross.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Well anyway, in this case, it was in Giant Stadium.
And this is pretty crazy because it originates from an
interview that a guy named Donald Francos gave in nineteen
eighty nine to Playboy magazine.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Which I want to say, at the time was doing
great journalism.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Actually still Playboys get Soldiers on.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I'm not as familiar. I'm not as familiar with modern
Playboy nowadays.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I mean, there's the old joke that you just read
it for the articles, but apparently, like for a while,
it was absolutely a place where a lot of short
stories writers broke their work and kind of went on
to great things.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
My favorite shel Silverstein poem was published in Playboy, and
I stole a copy as a kid so I could
read the poem.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Isn't that weird?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
That is quite weird.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, it's a good but it's about the Devil. It's
a whole thing.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Oh, I know the one. Yeah, that one's kind of filthy, Yes,
it is not for all. I remember that one. Yeah,
that's a good one. What's the name of the Oh, gosh,
the Devil and Billy Markham, that's the one. Yeah. And
in that article in Playboy, he claimed that Hoffe was
killed by a New York Irish mafia by the name
(30:00):
of Jimmy Coonan and buried at the home field of
the New York Giants and New York Jets football teams,
so ac Cordy de Franco's. After Coonan shot Hoffe with
a silence twenty two caliber pistol and a house in
Mount Clemmens, Michigan, he and New York Mafia and John
Sullivan bagged up the body parts and stored them in
(30:21):
a freezer for months.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
See that's weird.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Because you would think you would want to get rid
of the body as soon as you can, because every
time anybody else who knows about the freezer, even if
they don't know there's a body in it, could be
an avenue of exposure. But okay, so they've got been
in this freezer for months apparently nobody opens the freezer
at this part of town. What do they do after
(30:46):
those months have passed.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Well, you find a stadium that is under construction, a
giant concrete monstrosity, and you find a place where concrete
is being poured and you place it sortish underneath there. Right,
that's the whole idea. So so for real, though, Giant
Stadium was under construction and it was going to open
(31:08):
up the next year, or it was planned to at least,
the bags were then mixed into the concrete foundation in
what became a certain section. So if you go, if
you went to Giant Stadium and you looked at section
one oh seven down there deep, that's where Jimmy Hoffe
late at least according to this theory. And this section
was located near the end zone of the stadium's football fields.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
There's one one of the end zones.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, there's one problem with this, which is that there
is no evidence other than these claims by people speaking
years after the fact. In fact, the FBI, while they
had initially entertained most descriptions or allegations of the fate
of Jimmy Hoffa and they, you know, days and months
following his disappearance. They really cooled on this theory, and
(31:53):
when the stadium was demolished in twenty ten, the FBI
did not even bother to show up and search them site.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Because they put him there. I'm just kidding, that's that's
not true.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I'm joking, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I just I don't think people really get thrown from
planes as often as fiction would have us believe.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Well, that's the that's the other part of the stories.
He was thrown from a plane and he went right through,
straight through that concrete and just like embedded inside there.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
And oh and the FBI went, yeah, good enough, she.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Was wet though concrete was still wet, and he just went.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Uh, so, let's get back to shen Shechern is the
source of the claims that are made in the book
I Heard You Paint Houses, Uh and The Irishman. The
film is based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses.
Chern says that he had betrayed Jimmy Hoffa, and he
says multiple times that Jimmy Hoffa was a friend of
(32:46):
his right and he said he pulled the trigger because
it was inevitable that someone was gonna kill Hafa, and
so he thought he felt honor bound that it should
be him, and he thought, also, you know, at least
I'll make it quick. He'll die instantly. So here's what
he said happened. He said that he brought Haffa to
(33:07):
a house in northwestern Detroit. He stood behind Jimmy Hoffa,
and while Jimmy hoff was distracted, Chron shot him twice
in the back of the head the double tap, and
then he said they cremated Haffa's remains an a trastion
cinerator in the suburbs of Detroit. Shechrin actually gave the
address of the house, and we'll get to this. We
(33:30):
gave the address of the house where the murder supposedly
took place. Investigators treated seriously. They searched the site for
evidence of the killing, and they found traces of blood
in the house, but later testing revealed that this blood
did not belong to Haffa, so someone probably died. Maybe
Sherin was just misremembering. This, however, was just one of
(33:53):
several searches conducted. We'll get to a few of those
after award from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
And we're back.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Now let's get into some of the official attempts to
find Jimmy Hoffer to recover his body or even to
locate him if he was still alive. So get let's
jump to nineteen eighty nine to the FBI and Kenneth Walton.
He's the agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office
and he was speaking with the Detroit News in nineteen
(34:29):
eighty nine and he was talking about how he knew
what had happened to Haffa, and we have a quote
from him here.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I'm comfortable, I know who did it, but it's never
going to be prosecuted because we would have to divulge informants,
confidential sources. Mm hmmm, foremants common confidential sources cis. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
Well, now let's just say I can imagine in a
case like this, with somebody like Jimmy Hoffa that has
so many connections to probably multiple organized criminal organizations, that
if you did, let's say, charge somebody that you knew
or you were aware of who did it. But if
(35:10):
by doing that, it's going to compromise like two or
three major let's say vice investigations or you know, investigations
of conspiracy like that would be a hard that would
be a difficult choice to make at least just to
find the killer or to apprehend the killer of another
known criminal or associated So like, why would you give
(35:35):
up on this other thing that is viable right now
just to just to close that case?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
I don't know, Yeah, because if and I don't want
to put words into the mouths of the law enforcement here,
but I think that's a fantastic point, because if you
think that someone is already inherently corrupting kind of a
dirt bag for one reason or another, then do you
feel the same moral obligation to pursue a case, especially
(36:03):
if it means pursuing that case may preclude your ability
to lock up other living criminals?
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Yeah, who are out there still doing things that you
find morally or you know, legally.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Terrible.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
That's a really good point, man, I don't I mean
it would it would make sense that Walton at.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Least believed, like truly believed he knew.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, And I would say also, I would say also
to as anyone in the enforcement community listening to the
show today, including our NSA intern Steve knows full well,
I imagine that the vast majority of professionals working in those
fields would say, well, it doesn't matter whether I like
(36:50):
someone who is a victim of a crime. It's my job,
it's my career.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Correct. But it is a cold hard fact that somebody
somewhere would have to make the decision to to you know,
if there was and this is the big if here,
if there was a conflict in that way that we're
speaking of here, somebody would have to make the decision
to either continue searching for Haffa and going down those leads,
(37:15):
or saying, okay, we got to leave this alone.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's true, it's true. The search continues.
In two thousand and one, you know, we had mentioned
earlier the lack of DNA evidence for testing. Now, forensic
DNA is a thing, forensic DNA investigation. Rather, in two
thousand and one, these hair strands found in a nineteen
seventy five Mercury marquee linked Haffa to a vehicle that
(37:42):
authorities believed was used in this disappearance. This vehicle, this
Mercury was owned by a friend of Haffa's named Charles
Chucky O'Brien, and they were actually they were actually friends.
Police and survivors. Members of Haffa's family had always believed
that O'Brien played some sort of role in the disappearance,
(38:06):
but O'Brien for decades had denied being involved in any shape,
form or fashion. He said, in fact, Haffa had never
even been a passenger in his car. Now, just to
tip here for all the nair dwells in the crowd today,
if you want a stone wall, that's a that's a
pretty good way to do it, you know what I mean.
(38:27):
That's like just under the level of playing so dumb
that you say I own a car.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Yeah, okay, we found these hairs of Jimmy Hoffa's in
your car. He's never even been in there.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I own a car.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
What's hair?
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Guys? This is a lot for me to take in.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Gosh, but this lead this search also petered out because
you see authorities linked Hafa or some strands of his
hair to the car, but they were not able to
determine when Hafa would have been in the car. This
also could mean that since he and Chucky hang out
a lot, that maybe the hair just got on some
(39:11):
of Chucky's clothing or something.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
And I think we maybe bury the lead here a
little bit. Chucky was more than just a friend. He
was Halfa's adopted son, right, and the way it's portrayed
in the movie. I was a little confused about it too,
because there's a scene where somebody pulls a gun on
Hafa during one of his trials or like, you know,
one of his corruption trials, and Chucky kicks the crap
(39:33):
out of the guy, and Haffa makes a big scene
by saying, as my boy, you know, like I raised
him or whatever.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
You run for a knife, you charge your gun, you charge.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
A gun, exactly, A point being it wasn't his blood son,
it wasn't his biological son, but essentially was someone he
had taken under his wing and referred to more or
less as his adopted son. So my question is surely
he if they were as close as as as the
record indicates, he would have been in that car before.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
He's never been in my What is a car? I
have a car.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
I don't understand, Charles w Chucky O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
So there were more searches they've continued. We mentioned that
twenty twelve search based on the testimony of Sheeran or
the statements of Sherian. Investigators did search that residence based
on a tip twenty twelve. They didn't They didn't find anything.
They found some blood, but it wasn't half as you.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
I think every time I hear the name Shearon, Yes,
ed she no, she ra, Oh you know power, it's
the better version myself here.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, that wasn't me.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
No.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
I never understood why it wasn't she woman because there
was this internal consistent man.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, and then she rah.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Why couldn't be he Ra?
Speaker 2 (40:47):
That'd be cool. I was actually of a ThunderCats guy.
I was a superior muscly mutant show. In my opinion,
I was ThunderCats.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Oh wow, we're doing the low dubstep.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
That was kind of the the Hank Hill versus.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
I was gonna.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
I thought it's gonna be so much more intense than that.
I was kind of bracing myself and there.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Well, because we were we were reacting to your brace. Yeah,
we held back because you were clearly.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
I think we both thought that you were.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
You were just letting the moment build and you were
going to scream it.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Oh yeah, no, it was great.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
We'll fix it in post. No, I don't need it,
so it's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Unrelated saw rewatched the live action he Man.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, I liked it you know who plays Skeletor.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Uh oh uh not Dolph Lunggren.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Uh frank No, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
And he he's the only person who hasn't disowned the
film because his kids liked it. He played a very
strange Skeletor. Also, you know, some toy lines just don't
have the narrative haft to hold a feature. You know,
they even had man at arms in there.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Anyway, what else was Franklin going, Oh, yeah, he's.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
In a bunch of stuff, but he was not in
the Haffa investigation.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
No, which should probably return to you to wrap this
one up.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
In June of twenty thirteen, the FBI gets another tip
and they search a field in Oakland Township, Michigan, that's
about twenty miles away from where Halfa was last scene.
There was a guy involved in crime named Tony Zarelli,
not the stereotype, but this is this is a Tony
heavy tail and Zarelli gave the gave the authorities info
(42:35):
about where he said Halfa was buried. He also described
how Haffa died. He said, oh, yeah, he's the he's
the person who said that Haffa was hit on the
head with a shovel and buried alive. But he said
this in an ebook that he was selling for profit,
and nothing came of it. So either the authorities were
(42:56):
bad at digging or Zarelli was miss remembering. But at
this point no one has verified any remains. The closest
they've come would be those strands of hair with Haffa's DNA.
But this also leads us to controversies. The Irishman is
based on, as we said, a single book. Both Scorsese
(43:18):
and de Niro, who plays Sherin, described the character Sherian
in the film as a fictional persona based on or
loosely inspired by the real guy. And furthermore, not all
Haffa experts agree with Sheern's story. A couple of them
think it's total malarkey.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Oh yeah. The author Dan Mouldea, he wrote the book
The Hoffa Wars, and he's been researching the disappearance of
this gentleman for god forty years. So he was speaking
with Robert de Niro in twenty fourteen, and he basically
was trying to ward off de Niro, saying that you know,
he's got all these doubts about Sheeran's story. I'm just
(44:00):
telling DeNiro that you're in in Brandt where I, for
let's say, essentially running a con job on de Niro,
saying this is you should not be doing this, like
why would you make this movie? But again, like this
is pretty this is a pretty interesting story. Even if
it's not true. I would say it's it's pretty good storytelling,
(44:24):
and and it makes me want to watch it.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Are we in spoiler territory here for the film? I
feel like we've kind of danced around it, right.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Uh, we can, Yeah, we could go ahead.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Let's do the spoiler countdown because it is a new film, right,
three two and one.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
There's I was I didn't and I didn't hadn't done
my homework. Is that much Before watching this I knew
it was based on a book. I did not realize
that it was meant to be unequivocally like this guy
killed Jimmy Hoffap this is it. And when the moment
in the film where that happens, I wasn't expecting it.
And then I immediately googled Irishmen fiction, you know, And
(45:02):
I think that's sort of the consensus is that it's
a little more fiction or at least you know, conflation
of fact and fiction. It is pure nonfiction storytelling because
it again is based on one book, one man's account,
a deathbed confession. Essentially, you know, this guy did not
live much longer past this interview, and that's that's dramatized
(45:24):
in the film as well. The fact that he's delivering
this story to the perspective camera, which is you know,
supposed to be the journalist of parent you know, which
is you are the stand in for that kind of
as a viewer. Excellent film. But when I saw that,
I was like, WHOA, Okay, I guess we're this is
sort of a hybrid thing I'm seeing here, like Once
upon a time in Hollywood, for example. But if you
(45:47):
were to believe the book, then this this is how
it happened.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
I do want to bring something up. My father in
law talked with me about this pretty extensively. He is
also a tony and he told me that, without getting
into too much detail, if this kind of thing was
gonna go down with somebody like Jimmy Hoffa, the only
way you could pull it off is to get one
(46:11):
of his closest associates or friends to do.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
It himself, because he's so protected uh huh.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
So it would make sense for Scheran's character to actually
be the one who's able to get close enough to
do it.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Because we haven't really talked about this exactly, but I
mean they're basically brothers, yeah, in the film. And there's
another character, the head of the Buffelini crime family, you know, Russell,
who's played by Joe Peshy wonderful performance. The three of
them are kind of inseparable. They're almost like a family.
But Jimmy in particular gets a really close relationship with
(46:45):
his daughter and that's the whole thing. But yeah, he
trusts him like a blood brother.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Well, one of the other reasons, I mean, think of
the logistics. If you're trying to pull off a job
like this, you have somebody who not only has a
protective close circle, but they also have a established schedule, calendar.
People know where and when they're supposed to be at
the majority of times. It's not like if you're just
(47:14):
doing you know, if you're just landing in a strange
town and finding someone under a bridge that no one
will miss for a few weeks, like this is an
established thing where you have you know, you have at
most probably a few hours to get out of town, right,
So it's it definitely. I think your father in law
(47:36):
is on the money.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
Yeah, and it's kind of scary, but yes, let's continue.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
So Dan Moldea has his own theory. He believes Hoffa's
disappearance was, in his mind, a New Jersey operation. He
said he's interviewed all the suspected killers in his decades
long search for the truth of the matter, and he
he thinks it's most likely that it was a production
(48:00):
of New Jersey operators. Paul Mission Control Decat raised a
great point off air earlier when we were talking, and
he said one thing that he found, one thing that
he found compelling was that the story she Run's account
felt kind of understated, like the way Noel depicted it.
(48:21):
This death is you know, there's not a lot of
gravitas build up. It feels abrupt and brutal. If that
is this last one was the last one, promise, If
that is Jimmy Hoffe killed himself.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
We didn't talk about this.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
We're not going to talk too much about it because
there's not a ton of evidence to lean on here.
But what if he committed pseudo side, which as we
all know, is the fancy pants cravat wearing word for
faking one's death. It is very very difficult to do
successfully if you want to make any money. It is
not impossible to do if you want to just dis
(49:00):
appear and lived by her wits.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
Or if you have access to someone who makes some
very accurate id of some sort.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Could he have gone with the Federal Witness Protection program?
Could he have gone with you or with the UH?
Could he have gone with the institution that is sometimes
called witless protection? And if so, what happened to him? Well,
we know that Jimmy Hoffa died for legal purposes on
(49:30):
July thirtieth, nineteen eighty two. He was declared legally dead
as we record today's episode. His disappearance and his likely
death have yet to be confirmed. Let's do a little math.
If he were alive in twenty nineteen as we record this,
he would be one hundred and six years old. That
means even if somehow he actually went off the grid,
(49:51):
you know, changed his name to himI Jaffa or whatever,
and lived in a small town in Saskatchewan or something,
he probably all already passed away. But that hasn't stopped
the investigation. As a matter of fact, this is one
of the things we can leave you with. The film
and the book that we've mentioned today may have inspired
(50:15):
US investigators to get back on the case.
Speaker 4 (50:18):
So this was December twenty nineteen. This is right now
as we're recording this, as The Irishman has come out.
There's an interview with US attorney Matthew Schneider, and this
guy was asked by you know, a reporter, by someone there,
what do you you know? What do you think about
the Irishman? What are your thoughts? Well, his statement was
(50:38):
certainly intriguing.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
I will talk about this, but not now. I have
a lot of thoughts about it. It's unresolved. I have
my own theories. There will be more to come on this.
WHOA yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't mean to
dismiss this whole thing as being like some sort of fantasy. Obviously,
there's information in this film, in this book that is meaningful.
(51:02):
But you can draw your conclusions. But anybody like this
who's actually really close to the story, surely there's gonna
be some stuff that there's a ring of truth to,
or that he knows unequivocally is true. And I'd be
interested to hear this perspective. I think that it's the
people that are still alive that I think that can
really shed some light on which parts of this are real.
And that's yet to be determined.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
And this is also a.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Situation because many of the people who would have been
in their prime and directly involved have passed on. That's
just how, you know, That's just how the body crumbles, right, And.
Speaker 4 (51:37):
Yeah, it makes me, it makes me wonder if a
deathbed confession has already occurred. It just kind of went
unnoticed because the family and the surrounding people were just like, okay, whatever, whatever, Grandpa,
you're crazy, or even grandpa, what are you saying? No, no, no,
(51:58):
no, no no.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
We don't talk about their grandpa Rampo.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
It's supposed to be Omeerica.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
You know the rules, get the pillow.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
I'm just you know, that was dark.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
I apologize.
Speaker 4 (52:08):
We're gonna take it. Hey, Grandpa, We're gonna take a
quick trip over to the Giants stadium. It's gonna be fine, Grandpa,
just come with us.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
The best view is from outside the player.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Oh, this is terrible.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Just that field of dreams, right.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
It's right let us know what you think. You can
reach to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok work Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
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Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
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If you got more to say than can fit in
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Speaker 1 (52:53):
We are the entities to read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (53:23):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, guys, you know James Haffa. His middle name is Riddle.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I did not know that.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
I don't think any of us did.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
But it's a bit weird, right Jimmy to his friends.
Jimmy Hoffa is one of the most well known historical
figures in these United States, and on July thirtieth, nineteen
seventy five, he disappeared.
Speaker 4 (00:32):
Yes he did, Yes he did. Lot's been said about
mister Haffa. A lot, A lot of allegations have come
out about people around Jimmy Hoffa. It's a it's a
murky story, let's say, and lots has been made about
his life and his disappearance in movies such as Haffa
(00:53):
and Well it was contemporary to I guess twenty nineteen
when we originally made this episode The Irishman.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Oh yeah, I forgot about The Irishman. I'm still baffled
about the depth of investigation and the lack of official
results in this one. Someone conspired for this guy to disappear,
and in tonight's classic episode spoiler, folks, we hope you
(01:24):
enjoy it, but we also hope you contact us directly
if you happen to know what happened to Jimmy.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Please do please do listen along and then write to us.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 4 (02:01):
Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They call
me Ben.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Mission control deck, and most importantly are you.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
You are here and that.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Makes this stuff they don't want you to know. From
the offset, it is important for us to collectively establish
that this episode is not an advertisement for the Irishman.
The newest Scorsese film that just dropped on Netflix to
no small amount of acclaim and a little bit of controversy.
(02:36):
Al Pacino plays one of the I don't know, maybe
secondary is a good word, a secondary character in the film.
He plays a character named Jimmy Hoffa, which is based
on the real life Jimmy Hoffa. Now, Noel, you and
I had talked about this film a little bit off
air when we saw it, and Paul you watched it,
(02:58):
so you brought it up to us without spoiling the
film for anyone. It's based on a book right by
this guy named Charles Brandt.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Right, it's called What I Say I Heard You Paint Houses?
Speaker 1 (03:08):
I Heard you Paint Houses, which is a fantastic title.
This book purports to be nonfiction. It includes interviews and
alleged confessions made to the author, Charles Brandt, by a
former Mafia hitman named Frank Sheeran like Ed Sheeran and Irishman. Yes,
and this film inspired our own super producer Paul Deccan
(03:33):
to say, Hey, guys, have we ever delved into the
story of Jimmy Hoffa? And I don't know.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
I assumed that we had. We had.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
Not that changes today. So here are the facts.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
Yeah, let's talk about Jimmy Hoffa. Who is this guy? Well,
he was born James Riddle. He went by Jimmy Hoffa,
and he was born on Valentine's Day, that's February fourteenth,
nineteen thirteen, called Brazil, Indiana.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
I did not know there was a Brazil Indiana.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
It's kind of cool. I'd never heard of that place either.
Assuming the climate is a bit different in that Brazil
he was aware of. Let's say the American labor force,
the American laborer, the person who was using their hands
to create something, generally for somebody else. His father was
(04:25):
a coal miner, and he passed away when Hoffa was
very very young, or Jimmy was young, and his mom
had to end up joining the workforce to support her family,
which which was a fairly common occurrence, as you know,
the heads of households would die off, whether it was
through war conflict, or a workforce accident or something like that.
(04:48):
He had three siblings of four children, including Jimmy, and
eventually they moved to a place called Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
Which at the time was a hotbed of of industry
and growing. You know, this is still before the enormous
boom of the American auto industry, but still it's very
much an industry's place.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
It's a great place to get a job.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
And we don't know how much formal education Jimmy Hoffa
was able to achieve. You know, you'll hear history and
say they don't know whether he reached high school, much
less graduated, but we know that eventually while he was
in school, he had to drop out. He had to
help support his family, so he worked on the loading
dock for a chain of grocery stores there in Detroit,
(05:37):
and while working there, imagine how young this guy is.
While working there, he organizes his very first labor strike
and it all hinges on shipments of strawberries.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, and he actually was pretty demonstrating some pretty serious
streets smart to this point already, because he used a
recent shipment of strawberries as leverage to help get his
coworkers better deal, better contracts for their labor. They refused
to unload the strawberries until they had secured a better
(06:10):
pay and in the thirties, well, I.
Speaker 4 (06:12):
Just have to say right there with the strawberries, like
that's a smart thing, because strawberries go bad pretty quickly,
and if you don't unload the strawberries. He's like he
was gumming up the works for everybody basically by doing that.
And it's interesting how it set a timer, like very
clear timer on when you're gonna lose all your money
on these strawberries, and you're also losing money because that
(06:34):
truck is now stuck there. It was just really smart.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
We don't have worked with canned peas.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
Honestly, it wouldn't because this canpeas.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
I don't know, Yeah, hard to say if that was
just like a serendipitous thing or if he very much,
you know, was being calculated about that. But it was
absolutely a smart move and he got what he wanted. Then,
in the nineteen thirties, Hoffa officially joined the International Brotherhood
of Teamsters, which is what he went on to become
the president of at least the union's Detroit chapter. So
(07:05):
he kind of laid the groundwork for a career in labor,
and it would seem it it came by honestly based
on his trajectory and his upbringing.
Speaker 3 (07:15):
At that point.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, and we should also stop too for anyone who
doesn't know. Doubtless, doubtlessly we have several Teamsters in the
audience today, but a lot of people in this country
and abroad don't really know what a teamster is. The teamster,
the old word, atymologically is like someone who drives a
team of horses right now. According to their website teamster
(07:38):
dot org, the Teamsters are America's largest, most diverse union.
They started in nineteen oh three as the merger of
two team driver associations Team by the way, not team
in case my annunciation is off. And today you'll you
may be most familiar with them as truck drivers, right,
(08:01):
because we've replaced to a great degree, we've replaced animal
labor with mechanical labor. So at this time he is
he is, as you said, Noel joined up with the Teamsters.
He starts as the president of the Detroit chapter. For
many less ambitious people, that would be the version of
(08:23):
making it, you know what I mean, I'm king of
the town. And the thing is that Haffa is not
a guy satisfied with being a big fish in a
small town. Make no mistake, he is a shark. He
expands union membership, He quickly garners a reputation for getting
better contract agreements by any means necessary. Cough cough, corruption,
(08:46):
cough cough, mafia cough cough threats cough. Right, But he
started out honest, right, that's a very important thing. By
nineteen fifty two, he's vice president of the entire union,
so not just Detroit, but the entire international brotherhood of Teamsters.
In just five years after that, nineteen fifty seven, he
(09:08):
is the president of the entire organization.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Well, it's one of these things where especially in the
way he's portrayed in film like I haven't s been
a long time since I've seen that Jack Nicholson film
that I believe Danny DeVito directed. It's called Hofa. But
at least in The Irishman, you do get the sense
that he felt as though he were still representing the
common man and doing something positive, even though he was
(09:31):
clearly heading up what was not a strictly legal enterprise.
He would he seemed like he maybe could convinced himself
that it was all for the greater good. It was
all forgetting his fellow brothers a better deal, like with
the strawberries. But in order to do that, you know,
we're swimming with sharks here. We got to play nice
with the sharks. You got to be a bigger shirt,
(09:52):
a bigger shark exactly, because it's all about in us
versus them mentality, and in this case, us did include
some pretty nefarious characters. Haffa was to be the subject
of numerous criminal investigations, and it was a shadow that
kind of relentlessly followed him throughout his career, and this
is portrayed really, really well in the Scorsese film. Was
(10:14):
it entirely surprising his direct predecessor, Dave Beck, had also
been investigated and he was ultimately tried and convicted of
corrupt practices within the union.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Dave Beck, which was convicted, which gave Hafa the opportunity
to ascend to this position. Yet Haffa persevered. Nineteen sixty
four was a big year for him in a number
of ways, not all of them fantastic. His big win
was that he got nearly all of the truck drivers
(10:46):
in the entire continent of North America under a single contract.
Uncle Sam had been keeping an eye on Jimmy, and
they thought there was something rotten in the teamsters, something
fishy about his rise to fame and his success. Now
at this point, he is very, very similar to a
(11:09):
well known politician or maybe even to some degree a celebrity. Right,
the FBI and then US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
are watching Hafa very closely. They are convinced that a
lot of his union success is less a result of
being a shrewd negotiator and more a result of a
(11:29):
close collaboration with organized crime also known as the mob
or the mafia. Right, So what else happened in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Four, Well, Haffa himself was found guilty of a couple
of things, bribery for one, also jury tampering, ah, jury tampering,
the good old JT. When something goes wrong and somebody
knows it, you gotta tamper a little bit. Yeah right,
And that can be really that can be really terrible
(12:01):
or just going like here's one hundred dollars, don't don't
talk about me, or it could yeah, or it could
be something to the level of you know, memory is
a funny thing, mister Smith, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
Like sometimes you think you remember, so you look back
and you realize you don't remember it too good. After all,
you know, it could have been anybody there. But you
know one thing, one thing you never forget is your
children smile. And it's wonderful. We'll be able to see
that every day instead of just looking back and remembering
it and wishing you could say hello to him.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Oh boy, oh boy. Yeah, that was really good science
and memory.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
I was gonna say, just like casually mentioning his or
her daughter's birthday, but like that's like that was on
that was on them, was on the money.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Well that's cinematic. I'm sure it was much more subtle.
Speaker 4 (12:51):
Yes, but that stuff that that's when he was found
guilty of both of those things in connection with a
previous trial that he had that he had gone through
in nineteen sixty two years prior.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, he was on trial for conspiracy, which I love
you that people could be convicted of conspiracy. And then
he was found guilty in sixty four for charges related to,
as you said, Matt conspiracy. So that was one bad
thing that happened to him that year.
Speaker 4 (13:17):
Yeah, he's also convicted of misusing funds from the union's
pension plan.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
And that's a big note in the in the film
that Scorsese did, and also a note I believe in
the book I Heard You Paint Houses, because the union's
pension fund was an enormous amount of money and he
pretty much had direct control over it, so he could
make the money dance to the tunes he chose, and.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
A lot of those tunes were mafia backed projects, like
in Las Vegas, for example, paying for wings to be
constructed on you know, casinos, and as we know, a
lot of that money came directly from the mob to
start you know, Las Vegas in the first place. So
there were those relationships that were ongoing and directly tied
(14:04):
to dipping into that money, which would then be invested
and get a return. And it's not like he was
stealing money from the pensioners people who were doe that money.
But it was still playing fast and loose with the rules.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
You know, you're telling me that organized crime organizations launder
money through things like labor unions.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
It's true, Matt, money laundering, but it's got a great return.
I'm just gonna say, if everything goes well, there's a
great return for that stuff. Yeah, money laundering was a
big part of it. Also, at what point do this
may be a story for a different day, but at
what point do campaign donations become.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Illegal?
Speaker 3 (14:48):
Right?
Speaker 1 (14:48):
At what point are they interfering with the democratic process?
Speaker 4 (14:51):
Well, I mean, all you gotta do is make them
unlimited and then you're good to go. I should fix
all those problems.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Right, Well, I think it's safe for the five of us. Paul, Noel, Matt, myself,
and you listening to agree that Jimmy Hoffa probably did
not deal with these philosophical quandaries in the same way. Yeah,
it's just costed doing business.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
So after three years fighting these charges that his lawyer,
and you know again, as depicted in the Scorceti film,
he was a union lawyer who was also very aware
of what was going on, made the argument that this
was all trumped up. He had exhausted his appeals finally,
and he got thirteen years in prison, and in nineteen
sixty seven he was incarcerated in the Louisbourg Federal Prison
(15:37):
in Pennsylvania. And then came along a like minded individual
who was sent it to the presidency, the little guy
by the name of Richard Nixon, who commuted haff A
sentenced in seventy one, essentially giving him a pard in
a presidential pardon with a year and a half of probation. However,
this came with a string attached Nixon and Haffa from
(16:00):
holding any union leadership position at least until nineteen eighty.
So bit of a slap on the wrists.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
It's a weird one too, because it's a string with
a time limit. He's not saying stay out of the game,
you dirty rat. He's saying, just sit on the bench
until the eighties. Let's let the heat die down a
little bit.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Well, and it's so so odd to me that Nixon,
the president came through and said, you know what, it's okay,
is it odd?
Speaker 2 (16:28):
You're good?
Speaker 4 (16:29):
You're good man, You're gonna be okay. It's only been
a couple of years. You got thirteen, You'll be all right.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Well, Haffa donated heavily. Oh I know this campaign too.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
But just to be able to get a president to
do that, no matter how much money you're donating to them,
because in the end, it's you know, the public appearance
of something like that. But here's the deal. Jimmy Hoffa
and a lot of labor union leaders out there are
like hugely beloved no matter what they're doing, no matter
(17:01):
what they've been committed of. Will you know, over the
course of time and history, will be beloved because there
is this this perception, at least from the outside. And
and you know, like we said, Jimmy Hoffa thought that
he was doing the right thing, or release appeared to
believe he was doing the right.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Thing, at least at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
The ideology outweighed the ego.
Speaker 4 (17:18):
That exactly that ideology it ripples out through the public
of people who are assisted in that way.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
And this is a one to one and some might
accuse me of being hyperbolic here, but it's almost the
way you hear about the way folks in Mydan treated
Pablo Escobar. You know, very clearly bad guy, doing bad things,
hurting people, probably directly hurting individuals in that community. But
there's this perception that he's the best chance they've got,
(17:45):
or he's actually looking out for the little people, you know,
and he cares in some way, and they call him
Saint Pablo and all that stuff, even though completely transparent
that this guy is no good.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Well in Hoffel, wasn't some mob boss, No exactly. I
don't want to draw one way similar exactly, but there's
intentions to look out for the labor class or the
working class.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Yeah, so we can imagine, you know, I think that
is a good comparison. We can imagine supporters of Escobar
and supporters of HAFA, not that they're the same in
the same line of business, but we can imagine the
supporters saying, hey, this guy is the reason that we
have a paycheck, is the reason that my family can
live comfortably or better than they would have otherwise. So
(18:32):
we have to remember also that with his enormous power,
Jimmy Hoffa could move the vote, he could sway hundreds
of thousands of people to vote for or against a
given candidate. And for the next few years, Haffa wages
something very like a war. He's fighting that ban on
leadership in court. He doesn't want to wait till nineteen eighty.
(18:55):
And he's also working behind the scenes, with mixed success,
to reconsolidate his powerbase within the Union. And then, of course,
as even a casual student of history will recall, things
don't work out the way Haffa planned, or did they.
We're going to rejoin him on July thirtieth, nineteen seventy
(19:18):
five after a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
July thirtieth, nineteen seventy five. Haffa is in a state
of what the streets called deep beef. He has numerous enemies,
he hasn't made a ton of friends, and he's alienated
(19:40):
many of the friends he had. But he wants to
make peace, and he realizes he might have to eat
some crow, he might have to swallow his pride, He
might have to make some inroads with people he swore
he would never work with again. So he leaves his
home in Detroit and he meets the two Tonys Anthony
Tony Jack and Uh Anthony Tony Pro. Tony Jack is
(20:05):
a figure in the Detroit crime scene. Tony Pro is
a mob affiliated union leader who's based in New Jersey.
So they're supposed to meet at this restaurant in Bloomfield Township.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Is at the Macus Red Fox. I believe, so, yes,
something like that.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
They're going to say, correct, They're gonna squash the beef.
They're gonna settle their feud. At least that's what Haffa thinks.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
So Haffa shows up, or we believe at least his
car shows up, and he appears to be the only
one there. You know, he's there. He's going to meet
two people. But Haffa is the only guy there, and
he's wondering what's going on.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Goes assume, We.
Speaker 4 (20:43):
Assume, because really we have no idea. We have no
evidence at least that is, that is concrete as to
what occurred after he showed up at that restaurant, or
at least when his car showed up, because because his
car was there. But he was never seen again by
(21:05):
anyone except for the people responsible for what happened to
him or himself. Responsible for whatever happened to him. That's right,
it's a mystery. It's one of the most long standing
mysteries that has existed in this country.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, one of America's most prominent, divisive, important public figures
had simply Kaiser so siaated, he disappeared, and we're almost
a half a century into the post Hafa era. So
what happened to Jimmy Haffa? Here's where it gets crazy.
(21:41):
The answer really depends on who you ask. There's no
shortage of theories that have popped up over the intervening decades,
and the most popular suspects being the mob of course,
But in some cases this surprised me. US federal agencies interesting, right,
did you guys hear about that one? That's a weird
one for sure.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
I mean it makes sense considering that he was such
a persona no grada like for you know, Kennedy and
the US government. I mean, they were after him, and
he more or less shook the rap and then was
able to kind of get back into the game.
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Well, we'll get into it a little bit further, but
there's also the idea that a federal agency was involved,
but not in disappearing him by killing him or anything,
but by putting him into a protection of some sort.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah, So, at this point in the if we take
the high level look at it, at this point in
the world of conspiracy and speculation, the fate of Jimmy
Hoffe's kind of entered urban legend status, which means that
the theories start to obey some of the tropes we
would associate with folk tales or oral tradition. The general
(22:55):
consensus now is that the mob conspired to kill Hafa.
They wanted to stop him from becoming the King of
the Teamsters again. And that's because while he was locked up,
even though he wasn't locked up for the full thirteen
year sentence, while he was locked up, his former vice
president got pretty cozy with the mob, even more so
(23:15):
than Hoffa was, and he was much more willing to
play some games. When Jimmy Hoffa got out, the wise guys,
the mafioso knew that he would try to rain them
in a little bit and they wouldn't be able to
play all the reindeer games that they had become so
accustomed to. Make no mistake, they were probably making more
(23:37):
money under that vice president.
Speaker 3 (23:40):
What was his name.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Meant that was frank Fitzimmons, Frank Edward, I believe Frankie Fitz.
Speaker 1 (23:45):
Yeah, so they were making they were probably making more
money under Frankie Fitz. Who on earth would say no
to continuing to enhance their profits. They weren't keen to
mess with that relationship. So the the idea then is
that the mob killed him or disappeared him, and we
(24:06):
see a lot of common troops. Just like in other
forms of folklore, there are tons of variations on this theory.
It's kind of like a kind of like a bar
joke or something, you know, where it's like X walks
into a bar. They follow the same gist a mob
hit and then some sort of industrial process to destroy
or hide Haffa's body. There are a ton of examples, yes.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
There are. Indeed. One of them is that Haffa was
killed placed in the trunk of a car, then the
car was crushed in a mob affiliated scrapyard. That'd be
a pretty clever way to go about it, wouldn't that
leave a lot of physical evidence? Though, like I don't know,
you gotta we'll get a wonder when it like seep
out of the cubed car like the remains or anything
(24:49):
like that. I wonder what that would look like.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
Yeah, I imagine, so it would have to definitely be
a tightly controlled scrapyard. Scrapyards can be really big. But
this was also in the days before DNA testing. It's
true it wouldn't fly today.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
No, certainly not as much, specially if it was a
known kind of mob tide facility or whatever. Another one
is that he was hit in the head with a
shovel and buried alive. Where are these coming from?
Speaker 1 (25:13):
Jeez, dramatic? I like it, but that one doesn't make
the most sense.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
Do you have any providence for the for the origin
of that one?
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Yeah, that one comes to us from the great rumor mill.
That doesn't That one doesn't have a lot of sand
to it. A lot of these examples that we find
came out later after because of course this happened before DNA.
It also happened before internet, right, So a lot of
(25:42):
these come about from statements by former mafia associated individuals,
usually when they are tempting to seem as though they
have leverage so that they can get some juice with
the Feds, maybe get a better deal up to and
including relocation and immunity.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
It makes sense, and that also makes sense for some
of the ones to follow, which seemed to be kind
of variations on a theme. Right, Haffa was murdered and
his remains replaced in an oil drum. Haffa, in one
container or another, was thrown into the Great Lakes, or
was abducted by the FEDS and thrown from an airplane.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
It's a waterproof plan, full proof.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
That's uh. I just think about that.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
When has when has anybody said, you know, the best
way to get rid of this prominent figure is to
take them on an airplane and then, in full view
of anyone who happens to be, you know, looking up,
let's throw them from the plane.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
It doesn't that one, okay? So that one comes from
the FED. One specifically comes from a guy named Joseph Franco.
I have no idea whether he's related to the actor.
He was an old, one time associate of Haffa's, and
Franco said that he'd kept the story to himself for
years because he wanted to use them though as leverage
in negotiating an immunity deal if he were caught for
(27:04):
other unrelated crimes. Spoiler alert. It did not work out
for Franco.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
No, it did not.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
There's one that Paul's a particular fan of as well,
the idea that Haffa became this sort of grisly hidden
landmark for a sports team.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
The idea is that Haffa was dispatched, shot maybe whatever
it was. Then he was his limbs were taken apart,
he was dismembered, then frozen, and then get this guess,
buried inside the cement foundation of Giant Stadium. Now, this
was then located in Rutherford, New Jersey and East Rutherford,
(27:47):
New Jersey.
Speaker 5 (27:47):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
And what's interesting about this, just to interject, is that
there's a nice mythic tie in here because in some
ancient civilizations and cultures, when you were building a place
of great import, you were required to make a blood
sacrifice of some sort.
Speaker 4 (28:07):
This and Cat's in there right right now.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
This doesn't work with that kind of left hand path
stuff because the idea is that he wasn't killed on
the site. If you really want the magic to hit,
it's got to happen, you know, live and direct on
the place where you plan to lay the stones.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Wow.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
Yeah, yeah, I can't remember the movie that I just
watched that talked all about that, but it had the
actor who plays the Queen of Dragons. She was in it,
and it was like a haunting horror movie on Netflix.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Anyway, I'll check it out. It's out there.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
They they mentioned they mentioned burying a cat like and
a live cat in the in.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
The walls jerks.
Speaker 4 (28:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Gross.
Speaker 4 (28:51):
Well anyway, in this case, it was in Giant Stadium.
And this is pretty crazy because it originates from an
interview that a guy named Donald Francos gave in nineteen
eighty nine to Playboy magazine.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
Which I want to say, at the time was doing
great journalism.
Speaker 4 (29:07):
Actually still Playboys get Soldiers on.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I'm not as familiar. I'm not as familiar with modern
Playboy nowadays.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
I mean, there's the old joke that you just read
it for the articles, but apparently, like for a while,
it was absolutely a place where a lot of short
stories writers broke their work and kind of went on
to great things.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
My favorite shel Silverstein poem was published in Playboy, and
I stole a copy as a kid so I could
read the poem.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
Isn't that weird?
Speaker 2 (29:36):
That is quite weird.
Speaker 3 (29:37):
Yeah, it's a good but it's about the Devil. It's
a whole thing.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
Oh, I know the one. Yeah, that one's kind of filthy, Yes,
it is not for all. I remember that one. Yeah,
that's a good one. What's the name of the Oh, gosh,
the Devil and Billy Markham, that's the one. Yeah. And
in that article in Playboy, he claimed that Hoffe was
killed by a New York Irish mafia by the name
(30:00):
of Jimmy Coonan and buried at the home field of
the New York Giants and New York Jets football teams,
so ac Cordy de Franco's. After Coonan shot Hoffe with
a silence twenty two caliber pistol and a house in
Mount Clemmens, Michigan, he and New York Mafia and John
Sullivan bagged up the body parts and stored them in
(30:21):
a freezer for months.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
See that's weird.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Because you would think you would want to get rid
of the body as soon as you can, because every
time anybody else who knows about the freezer, even if
they don't know there's a body in it, could be
an avenue of exposure. But okay, so they've got been
in this freezer for months apparently nobody opens the freezer
at this part of town. What do they do after
(30:46):
those months have passed.
Speaker 4 (30:47):
Well, you find a stadium that is under construction, a
giant concrete monstrosity, and you find a place where concrete
is being poured and you place it sortish underneath there. Right,
that's the whole idea. So so for real, though, Giant
Stadium was under construction and it was going to open
(31:08):
up the next year, or it was planned to at least,
the bags were then mixed into the concrete foundation in
what became a certain section. So if you go, if
you went to Giant Stadium and you looked at section
one oh seven down there deep, that's where Jimmy Hoffe
late at least according to this theory. And this section
was located near the end zone of the stadium's football fields.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
There's one one of the end zones.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Yeah, there's one problem with this, which is that there
is no evidence other than these claims by people speaking
years after the fact. In fact, the FBI, while they
had initially entertained most descriptions or allegations of the fate
of Jimmy Hoffa and they, you know, days and months
following his disappearance. They really cooled on this theory, and
(31:53):
when the stadium was demolished in twenty ten, the FBI
did not even bother to show up and search them site.
Speaker 4 (32:00):
Because they put him there. I'm just kidding, that's that's
not true.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I'm joking, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I just I don't think people really get thrown from
planes as often as fiction would have us believe.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Well, that's the that's the other part of the stories.
He was thrown from a plane and he went right through,
straight through that concrete and just like embedded inside there.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
And oh and the FBI went, yeah, good enough, she.
Speaker 4 (32:22):
Was wet though concrete was still wet, and he just went.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Uh, so, let's get back to shen Shechern is the
source of the claims that are made in the book
I Heard You Paint Houses, Uh and The Irishman. The
film is based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses.
Chern says that he had betrayed Jimmy Hoffa, and he
says multiple times that Jimmy Hoffa was a friend of
(32:46):
his right and he said he pulled the trigger because
it was inevitable that someone was gonna kill Hafa, and
so he thought he felt honor bound that it should
be him, and he thought, also, you know, at least
I'll make it quick. He'll die instantly. So here's what
he said happened. He said that he brought Haffa to
(33:07):
a house in northwestern Detroit. He stood behind Jimmy Hoffa,
and while Jimmy hoff was distracted, Chron shot him twice
in the back of the head the double tap, and
then he said they cremated Haffa's remains an a trastion
cinerator in the suburbs of Detroit. Shechrin actually gave the
address of the house, and we'll get to this. We
(33:30):
gave the address of the house where the murder supposedly
took place. Investigators treated seriously. They searched the site for
evidence of the killing, and they found traces of blood
in the house, but later testing revealed that this blood
did not belong to Haffa, so someone probably died. Maybe
Sherin was just misremembering. This, however, was just one of
(33:53):
several searches conducted. We'll get to a few of those
after award from our sponsor.
Speaker 2 (34:06):
And we're back.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Now let's get into some of the official attempts to
find Jimmy Hoffer to recover his body or even to
locate him if he was still alive. So get let's
jump to nineteen eighty nine to the FBI and Kenneth Walton.
He's the agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office
and he was speaking with the Detroit News in nineteen
(34:29):
eighty nine and he was talking about how he knew
what had happened to Haffa, and we have a quote
from him here.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
I'm comfortable, I know who did it, but it's never
going to be prosecuted because we would have to divulge informants,
confidential sources. Mm hmmm, foremants common confidential sources cis. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (34:48):
Well, now let's just say I can imagine in a
case like this, with somebody like Jimmy Hoffa that has
so many connections to probably multiple organized criminal organizations, that
if you did, let's say, charge somebody that you knew
or you were aware of who did it. But if
(35:10):
by doing that, it's going to compromise like two or
three major let's say vice investigations or you know, investigations
of conspiracy like that would be a hard that would
be a difficult choice to make at least just to
find the killer or to apprehend the killer of another
known criminal or associated So like, why would you give
(35:35):
up on this other thing that is viable right now
just to just to close that case?
Speaker 1 (35:41):
I don't know, Yeah, because if and I don't want
to put words into the mouths of the law enforcement here,
but I think that's a fantastic point, because if you
think that someone is already inherently corrupting kind of a
dirt bag for one reason or another, then do you
feel the same moral obligation to pursue a case, especially
(36:03):
if it means pursuing that case may preclude your ability
to lock up other living criminals?
Speaker 4 (36:11):
Yeah, who are out there still doing things that you
find morally or you know, legally.
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Terrible.
Speaker 4 (36:18):
That's a really good point, man, I don't I mean
it would it would make sense that Walton at.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Least believed, like truly believed he knew.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Yeah, And I would say also, I would say also
to as anyone in the enforcement community listening to the
show today, including our NSA intern Steve knows full well,
I imagine that the vast majority of professionals working in those
fields would say, well, it doesn't matter whether I like
(36:50):
someone who is a victim of a crime. It's my job,
it's my career.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Correct. But it is a cold hard fact that somebody
somewhere would have to make the decision to to you know,
if there was and this is the big if here,
if there was a conflict in that way that we're
speaking of here, somebody would have to make the decision
to either continue searching for Haffa and going down those leads,
(37:15):
or saying, okay, we got to leave this alone.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's true, it's true. The search continues.
In two thousand and one, you know, we had mentioned
earlier the lack of DNA evidence for testing. Now, forensic
DNA is a thing, forensic DNA investigation. Rather, in two
thousand and one, these hair strands found in a nineteen
seventy five Mercury marquee linked Haffa to a vehicle that
(37:42):
authorities believed was used in this disappearance. This vehicle, this
Mercury was owned by a friend of Haffa's named Charles
Chucky O'Brien, and they were actually they were actually friends.
Police and survivors. Members of Haffa's family had always believed
that O'Brien played some sort of role in the disappearance,
(38:06):
but O'Brien for decades had denied being involved in any shape,
form or fashion. He said, in fact, Haffa had never
even been a passenger in his car. Now, just to
tip here for all the nair dwells in the crowd today,
if you want a stone wall, that's a that's a
pretty good way to do it, you know what I mean.
(38:27):
That's like just under the level of playing so dumb
that you say I own a car.
Speaker 4 (38:32):
Yeah, okay, we found these hairs of Jimmy Hoffa's in
your car. He's never even been in there.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I own a car.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
What's hair?
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Guys? This is a lot for me to take in.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
Gosh, but this lead this search also petered out because
you see authorities linked Hafa or some strands of his
hair to the car, but they were not able to
determine when Hafa would have been in the car. This
also could mean that since he and Chucky hang out
a lot, that maybe the hair just got on some
(39:11):
of Chucky's clothing or something.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
And I think we maybe bury the lead here a
little bit. Chucky was more than just a friend. He
was Halfa's adopted son, right, and the way it's portrayed
in the movie. I was a little confused about it too,
because there's a scene where somebody pulls a gun on
Hafa during one of his trials or like, you know,
one of his corruption trials, and Chucky kicks the crap
(39:33):
out of the guy, and Haffa makes a big scene
by saying, as my boy, you know, like I raised
him or whatever.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
You run for a knife, you charge your gun, you charge.
Speaker 2 (39:40):
A gun, exactly, A point being it wasn't his blood son,
it wasn't his biological son, but essentially was someone he
had taken under his wing and referred to more or
less as his adopted son. So my question is surely
he if they were as close as as as the
record indicates, he would have been in that car before.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
He's never been in my What is a car? I
have a car.
Speaker 4 (40:02):
I don't understand, Charles w Chucky O'Brien.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
So there were more searches they've continued. We mentioned that
twenty twelve search based on the testimony of Sheeran or
the statements of Sherian. Investigators did search that residence based
on a tip twenty twelve. They didn't They didn't find anything.
They found some blood, but it wasn't half as you.
Speaker 2 (40:26):
I think every time I hear the name Shearon, Yes,
ed she no, she ra, Oh you know power, it's
the better version myself here.
Speaker 4 (40:36):
Yeah, that wasn't me.
Speaker 3 (40:37):
No.
Speaker 1 (40:38):
I never understood why it wasn't she woman because there
was this internal consistent man.
Speaker 2 (40:43):
Yeah, and then she rah.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Why couldn't be he Ra?
Speaker 2 (40:47):
That'd be cool. I was actually of a ThunderCats guy.
I was a superior muscly mutant show. In my opinion,
I was ThunderCats.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Oh wow, we're doing the low dubstep.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
That was kind of the the Hank Hill versus.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
I was gonna.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
I thought it's gonna be so much more intense than that.
I was kind of bracing myself and there.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Well, because we were we were reacting to your brace. Yeah,
we held back because you were clearly.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
I think we both thought that you were.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
You were just letting the moment build and you were
going to scream it.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Oh yeah, no, it was great.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
We'll fix it in post. No, I don't need it,
so it's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Unrelated saw rewatched the live action he Man.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Yeah, I liked it you know who plays Skeletor.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
Uh oh uh not Dolph Lunggren.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
Uh frank No, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
And he he's the only person who hasn't disowned the
film because his kids liked it. He played a very
strange Skeletor. Also, you know, some toy lines just don't
have the narrative haft to hold a feature. You know,
they even had man at arms in there.
Speaker 2 (41:59):
Anyway, what else was Franklin going, Oh, yeah, he's.
Speaker 1 (42:04):
In a bunch of stuff, but he was not in
the Haffa investigation.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
No, which should probably return to you to wrap this
one up.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
In June of twenty thirteen, the FBI gets another tip
and they search a field in Oakland Township, Michigan, that's
about twenty miles away from where Halfa was last scene.
There was a guy involved in crime named Tony Zarelli,
not the stereotype, but this is this is a Tony
heavy tail and Zarelli gave the gave the authorities info
(42:35):
about where he said Halfa was buried. He also described
how Haffa died. He said, oh, yeah, he's the he's
the person who said that Haffa was hit on the
head with a shovel and buried alive. But he said
this in an ebook that he was selling for profit,
and nothing came of it. So either the authorities were
(42:56):
bad at digging or Zarelli was miss remembering. But at
this point no one has verified any remains. The closest
they've come would be those strands of hair with Haffa's DNA.
But this also leads us to controversies. The Irishman is
based on, as we said, a single book. Both Scorsese
(43:18):
and de Niro, who plays Sherin, described the character Sherian
in the film as a fictional persona based on or
loosely inspired by the real guy. And furthermore, not all
Haffa experts agree with Sheern's story. A couple of them
think it's total malarkey.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Oh yeah. The author Dan Mouldea, he wrote the book
The Hoffa Wars, and he's been researching the disappearance of
this gentleman for god forty years. So he was speaking
with Robert de Niro in twenty fourteen, and he basically
was trying to ward off de Niro, saying that you know,
he's got all these doubts about Sheeran's story. I'm just
(44:00):
telling DeNiro that you're in in Brandt where I, for
let's say, essentially running a con job on de Niro,
saying this is you should not be doing this, like
why would you make this movie? But again, like this
is pretty this is a pretty interesting story. Even if
it's not true. I would say it's it's pretty good storytelling,
(44:24):
and and it makes me want to watch it.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Are we in spoiler territory here for the film? I
feel like we've kind of danced around it, right.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Uh, we can, Yeah, we could go ahead.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Let's do the spoiler countdown because it is a new film, right,
three two and one.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
There's I was I didn't and I didn't hadn't done
my homework. Is that much Before watching this I knew
it was based on a book. I did not realize
that it was meant to be unequivocally like this guy
killed Jimmy Hoffap this is it. And when the moment
in the film where that happens, I wasn't expecting it.
And then I immediately googled Irishmen fiction, you know, And
(45:02):
I think that's sort of the consensus is that it's
a little more fiction or at least you know, conflation
of fact and fiction. It is pure nonfiction storytelling because
it again is based on one book, one man's account,
a deathbed confession. Essentially, you know, this guy did not
live much longer past this interview, and that's that's dramatized
(45:24):
in the film as well. The fact that he's delivering
this story to the perspective camera, which is you know,
supposed to be the journalist of parent you know, which
is you are the stand in for that kind of
as a viewer. Excellent film. But when I saw that,
I was like, WHOA, Okay, I guess we're this is
sort of a hybrid thing I'm seeing here, like Once
upon a time in Hollywood, for example. But if you
(45:47):
were to believe the book, then this this is how
it happened.
Speaker 4 (45:50):
I do want to bring something up. My father in
law talked with me about this pretty extensively. He is
also a tony and he told me that, without getting
into too much detail, if this kind of thing was
gonna go down with somebody like Jimmy Hoffa, the only
way you could pull it off is to get one
(46:11):
of his closest associates or friends to do.
Speaker 2 (46:14):
It himself, because he's so protected uh huh.
Speaker 4 (46:16):
So it would make sense for Scheran's character to actually
be the one who's able to get close enough to
do it.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Because we haven't really talked about this exactly, but I
mean they're basically brothers, yeah, in the film. And there's
another character, the head of the Buffelini crime family, you know, Russell,
who's played by Joe Peshy wonderful performance. The three of
them are kind of inseparable. They're almost like a family.
But Jimmy in particular gets a really close relationship with
(46:45):
his daughter and that's the whole thing. But yeah, he
trusts him like a blood brother.
Speaker 1 (46:52):
Well, one of the other reasons, I mean, think of
the logistics. If you're trying to pull off a job
like this, you have somebody who not only has a
protective close circle, but they also have a established schedule, calendar.
People know where and when they're supposed to be at
the majority of times. It's not like if you're just
(47:14):
doing you know, if you're just landing in a strange
town and finding someone under a bridge that no one
will miss for a few weeks, like this is an
established thing where you have you know, you have at
most probably a few hours to get out of town, right,
So it's it definitely. I think your father in law
(47:36):
is on the money.
Speaker 4 (47:37):
Yeah, and it's kind of scary, but yes, let's continue.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
So Dan Moldea has his own theory. He believes Hoffa's
disappearance was, in his mind, a New Jersey operation. He
said he's interviewed all the suspected killers in his decades
long search for the truth of the matter, and he
he thinks it's most likely that it was a production
(48:00):
of New Jersey operators. Paul Mission Control Decat raised a
great point off air earlier when we were talking, and
he said one thing that he found, one thing that
he found compelling was that the story she Run's account
felt kind of understated, like the way Noel depicted it.
(48:21):
This death is you know, there's not a lot of
gravitas build up. It feels abrupt and brutal. If that
is this last one was the last one, promise, If
that is Jimmy Hoffe killed himself.
Speaker 3 (48:36):
We didn't talk about this.
Speaker 1 (48:37):
We're not going to talk too much about it because
there's not a ton of evidence to lean on here.
But what if he committed pseudo side, which as we
all know, is the fancy pants cravat wearing word for
faking one's death. It is very very difficult to do
successfully if you want to make any money. It is
not impossible to do if you want to just dis
(49:00):
appear and lived by her wits.
Speaker 4 (49:02):
Or if you have access to someone who makes some
very accurate id of some sort.
Speaker 2 (49:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Could he have gone with the Federal Witness Protection program?
Could he have gone with you or with the UH?
Could he have gone with the institution that is sometimes
called witless protection? And if so, what happened to him? Well,
we know that Jimmy Hoffa died for legal purposes on
(49:30):
July thirtieth, nineteen eighty two. He was declared legally dead
as we record today's episode. His disappearance and his likely
death have yet to be confirmed. Let's do a little math.
If he were alive in twenty nineteen as we record this,
he would be one hundred and six years old. That
means even if somehow he actually went off the grid,
(49:51):
you know, changed his name to himI Jaffa or whatever,
and lived in a small town in Saskatchewan or something,
he probably all already passed away. But that hasn't stopped
the investigation. As a matter of fact, this is one
of the things we can leave you with. The film
and the book that we've mentioned today may have inspired
(50:15):
US investigators to get back on the case.
Speaker 4 (50:18):
So this was December twenty nineteen. This is right now
as we're recording this, as The Irishman has come out.
There's an interview with US attorney Matthew Schneider, and this
guy was asked by you know, a reporter, by someone there,
what do you you know? What do you think about
the Irishman? What are your thoughts? Well, his statement was
(50:38):
certainly intriguing.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
I will talk about this, but not now. I have
a lot of thoughts about it. It's unresolved. I have
my own theories. There will be more to come on this.
WHOA yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't mean to
dismiss this whole thing as being like some sort of fantasy. Obviously,
there's information in this film, in this book that is meaningful.
(51:02):
But you can draw your conclusions. But anybody like this
who's actually really close to the story, surely there's gonna
be some stuff that there's a ring of truth to,
or that he knows unequivocally is true. And I'd be
interested to hear this perspective. I think that it's the
people that are still alive that I think that can
really shed some light on which parts of this are real.
And that's yet to be determined.
Speaker 3 (51:20):
And this is also a.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Situation because many of the people who would have been
in their prime and directly involved have passed on. That's
just how, you know, That's just how the body crumbles, right, And.
Speaker 4 (51:37):
Yeah, it makes me, it makes me wonder if a
deathbed confession has already occurred. It just kind of went
unnoticed because the family and the surrounding people were just like, okay, whatever, whatever, Grandpa,
you're crazy, or even grandpa, what are you saying? No, no, no,
(51:58):
no, no no.
Speaker 2 (51:58):
We don't talk about their grandpa Rampo.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
It's supposed to be Omeerica.
Speaker 3 (52:01):
You know the rules, get the pillow.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
I'm just you know, that was dark.
Speaker 1 (52:05):
I apologize.
Speaker 4 (52:08):
We're gonna take it. Hey, Grandpa, We're gonna take a
quick trip over to the Giants stadium. It's gonna be fine, Grandpa,
just come with us.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
The best view is from outside the player.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
Oh, this is terrible.
Speaker 2 (52:18):
Just that field of dreams, right.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2 (52:26):
It's right let us know what you think. You can
reach to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
Facebook X and YouTube on Instagram and TikTok work Conspiracy
Stuff Show.
Speaker 4 (52:35):
If you want to call us dial one eight three
three std WYTK that's our voicemail system. You've got three minutes.
Give yourself a cool nickname and let us know if
we can use your name and message on the air.
If you got more to say than can fit in
that voicemail, why not instead send us a good old
fashioned email.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
We are the entities to read every single piece of
correspondence we receive. Be aware, yet not afraid. Sometimes the
void writes back conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 4 (53:23):
Stuff they Don't want you to Know is a production
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Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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