Page 12-Thursday, July 27, 1978-The Michigan Daily
Where' Jimmy Hoffa?
Three years later, investigation still active
DETROIT (AP) - It should take a year or two to
solve the kidnapping, the FBI said when it joined the
search for the vanished labor leader. Today, the
question remains: Where's Jimmy Hoffa?
On July 30, 1975 - it will be three years Sunday -
James R. Hoffa, one-time Teamsters president, one
time federal prisoner, was seen leaving a restaurant in
the Detroit suburbs.
HE HAS NOT been seen since. He is presumed dead
but no body has been found. None of the reputed Mafia
figures under investigation in the case has been indic-
ted. One has been slain. The other five have refused to
answer grand jury questions under the Fifth Amen-
dment.
Government investigators insist they are making
progress, however. Sources say the investigators,
though some deny it, have been putting pressure on
suspects in hopes of developing an informant.
"The Hoffa case is still an active, open in-
vestigation," says Paul Coffey, head of the Justice
Department Organized Crime Strike Force in Detroit.
AND HOFFA'S SON, James P., who a year ago ac-
cused the government of not pressing hard enough to
build a case against his father's killers, now says he is
"encouraged by what's happening."
He does not say what is happening, but one in-
vestigator notes: "We're making headway by getting
these guys in some other cases."
AMONG "GUYS" gotten:
-In March, New Jersey Teamsters boss and reputed
Mafia figure AnthonyProvenzano was convicted in a
kickback conspiracy case. He was sentenced to four
years in prison.
-In April, Teamsters organizer Charles "Chuckie"
O'Brien, Hoffa's self-styled foster son, was convicted
of lying on a bank loan application. It was his second
conviction since Hoffa disappeared.
-In June, Provenzano was sentenced to life im-
prisonment after his conviction for the 1961 murder of
union foe Anthony Castellito.
Hoffa's disappearance also spurred probes of loan
sharking and labor racketeering at Provenzano's union
local. Those investigations involved the Hoffa case
figures, according to Senate testimony by Robert
Stewart, head of the strike force in Newark, N.J.
Hoffa told acquaintances the day he vanished that he
was on his way to see Provenzano and reputed Detroit
Mafia figure Anthony Giacalone.
BOTH MEN DENY they had an appointment with
Hoffa that day.
Investigators believe Hoffa wanted to settle a feud
with Provenzano and enlist his support for a campaign
to oust Teamsters President Frank Fitzsimmons.
Agents have found an unusually large number of calls
between Provenzano's Teamsters Local 560 in Union
City, N.J., and phones used by Giacalone shortly
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On the day of the disappearance, O'Brien, who grew
up in Hoffa's -home and knew Giacalone as "Uncle
Tony" borrowed a car from one of Giacalone's sons and
was driving near where Hoffa was last seen. O'Brien
depies he had any contact with Hoffa that day, but the
FBI says he has not accounted for about one hour that
afternoon.
TWO WITNESSES have said they believe they saw
Hoffa the day he disappeared with a group of men, two
break the Hoffa case when they persuade a participant
in the killing to turn informant and implicate the
higher ups'who planned the crime.
Among things the FBI has learned is that days after
Hoffa disappeared, Stephen Andretta, then a business
agent at Provenzano's local, visited a convicted mur-
derer named Ralph Picardo in prison. Picardo told
FBI agents that Andretta bragged that his brother,
convicted loan shark and counterfeiter Thomas An-
dretta, and brothers Salvatore and Gabriel Briguglio
killed Hoffa.
STEPHAN ANDRETTA SAYS he visited Picardo but
did not discuss Hoffa.
In the 1960s, Picardo had been recruited by Team-
sters business agent Sal Briguglio and frequented
Teamsters Local 84 at Fort Lee, N.J., where Proven-
zano had installed Gabriel Briguglio as vice president.
Stephen Andretta refused to say where he was the
day Hoffa vanished but after being jailed for contempt
of court, said that he was at Local 560 with his brother
and the Briguglios. The local's employees testified
before a grand jury but their testimony remains
secret.
SAL BRIGUGLIO was executed by two gunmen
March 21 on a sidewalk in Manhattan's Little Italy. The
crime has not been solved.
The government had hoped to make Sal Briguglio an
informant, and a U.S. attorney had warned him he
might be killed by underworld rivals. Briguglio
"wasn't terribly concerned," the official said.
Hours after Briguglio was gunned down in New
York, FBI agents offered O'Brien protection in Florida
but he refused the offer.
INVESTIGATORS ALSO ARE interested in Russell
Bufalino of Kingston, Pa., who was in Michigan the day
after the abduction, and' Frank Sheeran, the
Wilmington, Del., Teamsters local president who
drove Bufalino to Michigan. Sheeran had called Hoffa
the day before the disappearance to say he hoped to
visit Hoffa on Aug. 2.
Bufalino has been identified by the U.S. Burean of
Narcotics as "one of the most ruthless and powerful
leaders of the Mafia in the United States." He is close
to Provenzano and was in the Detroit area that weel for
the wedding of a godchild.
"We're interested in him from the point og view of
what he might have known ahead of time about the
Hoffa disappearance," one Justice Department in-
vestigator said of Bufalino.
Investigators believe Hoffa's body was buried
somewhere in Michigan or was destroyed so that it
would never be found. Still, one investigator says of
Hoffa's presumed murder:
"We don't know where he was killed, whether he was
knocked unconscious in the car and taken someplace or
whether he was killed in the car."
of whom may be O'Brien and New Jersey Teamsters
figure Sal Briguglio. Police dogs picked up Hoffa's
scent in a car driven by O'Brien and blood of Hoffa's
type was found on a strnd of hair resembling Hoffa's in
the car.
The government believes Hoffa was the victim of a
contracted murder at the hands of one-time Teamster
allies and some organized crime figures he had once
welcomed into the nation's largest labor union.
Hoffa resigned as Teamsters president in 1971 to
hasten his prison release. He had been convicted of
jury tampering and mail fraud.
HE ACCUSED FITZSIMMONS, whom he had
designated as caretaker president, of plotting with the
Nixon administration to block him from re-entering
union politics. He also accused disloyal union officials
of letting racketeers bilk Teamsters benefit funds.
Officials in Detroit and Washington say they will
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against the Jews while at THE JUDGE SAID he believed atrocities, "there is no dou
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in 1949. Had Roettger ruled otherwise, from political oppression.
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