DETROIT – The most baffling thing about the perpetual “What Really Happened to Jimmy Hoffa” mystery may be not how the corrupt union boss died, but why so many people still care.
Or maybe the mystery is … why Hollywood and the media evidently think they care. Hoffa has been missing for 44 years, longer than most Americans have been alive.
He has been out of power even longer, since he was forced to give up leadership of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters when he went to prison in March, 1967 for a range of offenses from jury tampering to attempted bribery.
Hoffa has been gone a long time. The one thing every expert seems to agree on is that he was murdered by the mob when he disappeared on July 30, 1975. Even if that weren’t true, he surely died long ago; next Valentine’s Day would be his 107th birthday.
But those who sell newspapers and make movies can’t seem to get enough of him. Jack Nicholson starred in Hoffa, a 1992 movie whose conclusion was totally implausible, and which lost money.
Now, the nation’s theater screens (and TV screens, thanks to Netflix) are simultaneously showing The Irishman, a new, big-budget Martin Scorsese/ Robert DeNiro film about a Mafia hit man named Frank Sheeran who died in 2003, and is supposed to have killed, among many others, yes, you guessed it … Jimmy Hoffa.
Unfortunately, the movie almost certainly has no truth to it whatsoever. Bill Tonelli, a longtime editor at Esquire who I have worked with, examined The Irishman’s claims for Slate in a comprehensive and well-researched story published Aug. 7.
His conclusion: The story, like nearly everything Sheeran ever said, is a pack of lies. “Frank Sheeran never killed a fly,” John Carlyle Berkery, an alleged mobster who knew him, told Tonelli. “The only things he ever killed were countless jugs of red wine.”
“Baloney, beyond belief,” said John Tamm, an FBI agent, who knew, investigated and once arrested Sheeran, a criminal to be sure, but no “hit man.” After considerable reporting, Tonelli reported that when it came all the murders in The Irishman, we are asked to believe that Sheeran did them “without ever being arrested, charged, or even suspected of those crimes by any law enforcement agency.”
But if he didn’t kill Hoffa, who did?
Actually, I think I know.
I was told the story in 2005 by the late Vincent Piersante, who at the time of Hoffa’s disappearance was head of the organized-crime division of the Michigan Attorney General’s office. Piersante had spent much of his career on Detroit’s police force.
He spoke fluent Italian, and knew many organized crime members personally (some of whom he had grown up with) and knew who had power in the various gangs and factions and who hated who. He also knew Hoffa, who he met when, as a young cop, he had to wrestle a baseball bat out of his arms during an incident in 1941.
He was well connected – but after Hoffa disappeared, “every one of our informants went underground,” he told me.
Finally, in late August, his best informant resurfaced and, after a little coaxing, told him what happened. Hoffa, everyone knew, was trying to get back control of the Teamsters. The mob wasn’t hot on that idea. They preferred Frank Fitzsimmons, who Hoffa had installed in the job, and who he’d expected would turn it back to him.
But Fitz wanted to keep control, and that suited organized crime just fine. Piersante was told that when Hoffa refused to accept that Fitzsimmons wouldn’t leave, three mob “soldiers” from New Jersey were sent to tell Jimmy Hoffa to stay out of the Teamsters and “enjoy your retirement.” Evidently, that sent Hoffa into a rage.
They weren’t supposed to kill him, but one thing led to another… and Jimmy Hoffa ended up dead on the floor of a house somewhere in the Detroit area.
The killers called home to say “oops. We did an oops.” Their controllers told them to leave the body there. Eventually, someone picked it up and took it to a rendering plant in a nearby suburb, and, well, essentially cooked it down into animal fat.
In other words, James Riddle Hoffa, architect of the famous Master Freight Agreement and enemy of the Kennedys, ended up, that summer of 1975, as something like Crisco.
There are lots of reasons to believe this story. Piersante, who died in 2013, was known for his connections and integrity.
The idea that anyone would risk carting Hoffa’s corpse anywhere far away, such as the former Giants Stadium in New Jersey, also makes no sense. Nevertheless, nearly every summer, some inmate in a Michigan prison claims he knows where Hoffa is.
None of these claims has ever turned out to be true. Late in the summer he disappeared, the Michigan Attorney General’s office got a tip that the body was buried at a site in Oakland County.
The press was told. Meanwhile, Piersante established that the tipster was a phony, and he went to the site and told that to his boss, Michigan’s attorney general. “Thanks, Vince,” said Frank Kelley, who always had one eye on his next election campaign. “But see all those reporters over there? See those helicopters flying up there?”
“We better dig a hole.”
So they did, and found nothing. In coming years, more movies may be made and holes dug looking for Hoffa. But based on what Vince Piersante told me, my money is on the Crisco hypothesis.
(Editor’s Note: A version of this column also appeared in the Toledo Blade.)
