News / Nation & World

FBI: No sign of Jimmy Hoffa under New Jersey bridge

By ED WHITE, Associated Press

Published: July 21, 2022, 2:57pm

DETROIT — The FBI found no evidence of missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa during a search of land under a New Jersey bridge, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The Pulaski Skyway now becomes another dead end in the decadeslong mystery that has stretched from a Michigan horse farm to the East Coast: Where are the remains of one of America’s most powerful labor leaders?

The 47-year riddle turned last year to land next to a former landfill under the bridge in Jersey City. The FBI conducted a search there in early June.

“Nothing of evidentiary value was discovered during that search,” said Mara Schneider, an FBI spokeswoman in Detroit.

A chronology of events in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, former president of the Teamsters union:

July 30, 1975: Hoffa leaves his Lake Orion home about 1 p.m. and makes a stop to visit a friend in Pontiac. He arrives around 2 p.m. at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Oakland County’s Bloomfield Township to meet reputed Detroit mob enforcer Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone and alleged New Jersey mob figure Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano. Hoffa calls his wife, Josephine, about 2:15 p.m. from a pay phone and tells her no one showed up for his meeting. The 62-year-old Hoffa never is seen or heard from again.

Aug. 8, 1975: The FBI gets a search warrant for Hoffa’s car, which was found in the restaurant parking lot. They find fingerprints of family friend Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien on a 7-Up bottle under the right front seat.

Sept. 2, 1975: A grand jury convenes in Detroit to investigate the Hoffa disappearance.

1975-1985:

More than 200 FBI agents are assigned to the case in New Jersey, Detroit and at least four other cities. During the period, more than 70 volumes of files are compiled, containing more than 16,000 pages. Six suspects in the disappearance, including Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone, are convicted on unrelated charges.
1982: Self-described mafia murderer Charles Allen, who served prison time with Hoffa and participated in the federal witness-protection program, tells a U.S. Senate committee that Hoffa was killed at Provenzano’s orders. Hoffa’s body was “ground up in little pieces, shipped to Florida and thrown into a swamp,” Allen said.

1982: Hoffa is declared legally dead.

1989: Self-described hit man Donald “Tony the Greek” Frankos claims Hoffa is buried under Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The FBI finds no evidence to support the claim.

June 2001: The head of the FBI’s organized-crime unit says in a court document that he believes a decision whether to prosecute anyone could be made in the next two years.

March 2002: The FBI says it will refer the case to the Oakland County prosecutor’s office for possible state charges. John Bell, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit bureau, says the federal case was stymied because of the length of time since Hoffa disappeared.

Aug. 29, 2002: Oakland County prosecutor says new DNA evidence in Hoffa’s disappearance is insufficient to bring criminal charges.

May 2004: Bloomfield Township police rip up the floorboards from a Detroit house where one-time Hoffa ally Frank Sheeran claims to have killed him. The FBI crime lab would conclude that the blood found on the floorboards was not Hoffa’s.

April 2006: New Jersey mob hit man Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski, who died in March, claims that he killed Hoffa and put his body in a car that was sold as scrap metal. Kuklinski’s book, “The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer,” contends he received $40,000 for the slaying.

May 17, 2006: The FBI begins searching a horse farm in Oakland County’s Milford Township, northwest of Detroit for Hoffa’s remains, but ends the search after finding nothing.

June 17, 2013: The FBI sees enough merit in a reputed Mafia captain’s tip to once again break out the digging equipment to search for Hoffa’s remains in an Oakland Township field, about 25 miles north of Detroit. No remains of Hoffa are found

Nov. 19, 2021: FBI says it obtained a search warrant for a “site survey underneath the Pulaski Skyway” in New Jersey.

July 21, 2022: The FBI says it found no evidence of Hoffa during a search of land under a New Jersey bridge.

“While we do not currently anticipate any additional activity at the site, the FBI will continue to pursue any viable lead in our efforts to locate Mr. Hoffa,” she said.

Schneider declined to comment further when asked for details about the excavation.

Authorities believe Hoffa disappeared in suburban Detroit in 1975 while meeting with reputed mobsters.

Dan Moldea, a journalist who has written extensively about the Hoffa saga, said he was personally briefed by the FBI in a video conference call Thursday.

He said the FBI and its contractors did not dig in the exact spot that he had recommended.

“I’m not thrilled with the result. … My impression today was them breaking the bad news to me: Thanks for the tip but this is over. That’s my interpretation,” Moldea told The Associated Press.

“They dug holes very, very deep,” he said.

The FBI reached out to Moldea last year after he published a detailed account from Frank Cappola, who was a teenager in the 1970s when he worked at the old PJP Landfill near the bridge.

Cappola said his father, Paul Cappola, who also worked at the landfill, explained how Hoffa’s body was delivered there in 1975, placed in a steel drum and buried with other barrels, bricks and dirt.

Paul Cappola, worried that police might be watching, dug a hole on New Jersey state property, about 100 yards from the landfill, and subsequently moved the unmarked barrel there, according to Moldea.

Frank Cappola spoke to Fox Nation and Moldea before he died in 2020 and signed a document attesting to his late father’s story.

Moldea said the FBI told him it did not dig in the exact spot that he had recommended because radar showed nothing suspicious below ground.

“I do think they missed this one spot,” he said. “I think the body’s there. We just can’t find it.”

Hoffa was president of the 2.1 million-member Teamsters union from 1957-71, even keeping the title while in prison for trying to bribe jurors during a previous trial. He was released from prison in 1971 when President Richard Nixon shortened his sentence.

It has been long speculated that Hoffa, who was 62, was killed by enemies because he was planning a Teamsters comeback. He was declared legally dead in 1982.

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