Former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in July 1975, sparking numerous rumors and conspiracy theories in the 46 years since. It may surprise many, but the FBI is still looking into his disappearance, and the latest clue has taken them to a landfill in New Jersey.
CBS News reported that Mara Schneider, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Detroit field office, said in a written statement the bureau had obtained a search warrant to “conduct a site survey underneath the Pulaski Skyway,” which is in New Jersey.
“On October 25th & 26th, FBI personnel from the Newark and Detroit field offices completed the survey and that data is currently being analyzed,” Schneider added.
“Because the affidavit in support of the search warrant was sealed by the court, we are unable to provide any additional information,” she wrote.
Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, when he was supposed to meet with “reputed Detroit mob enforcer Anthony ‘Tony Jack’ Giacalone and alleged New Jersey mob figure Anthony ‘Tony Pro’ Provenzano at a restaurant in suburban Detroit,” CBS reported.
CNN added:
One of the most powerful union leaders at a time that unions wielded a great deal of sway over elections — and were notoriously tied to organized crime — Hoffa was forced out of the organized labor movement when he went to federal prison in 1967 for jury tampering and fraud.
President Richard Nixon pardoned him in 1971 on the condition that he not try to get back into the union movement before 1980. But Hoffa tried to regain control of the union, angering his rivals.
Hoffa has been presumed dead, but no one has ever been able to find his body. Former Teamsters official Frank Sheeran claimed in his book, “I Heard You Paint Houses” that he shot and killed Hoffa, thought that has not been confirmed and has been discounted by what The New York Times described as “Hoffa scholars.”
The Times reported that the latest lead came from interviews from Frank Cappola, who was a teenager when Hoffa disappeared and who worked with his father, Paul, at the PJP Landfill that once occupied the space where the FBI searched last month.
Cappola said his father made deathbed statements about Hoffa, which led to the FBI’s current search, the Times reported:
“While I was talking to my dad, a black limousine drove into our lot in the mud,” Frank Cappola recalled many years later, in 2019, at age 62, in a sworn written statement before a notary public. His father turned to a partner at the landfill and said, “They’re here.”
The boy watched from a distance as the men approached the vehicle, where they spoke to the visitors and seemed to point to a remote corner of the landfill. He would later learn what was being planned.
Cappola’s father reportedly explained to him that Hoffa’s body was placed in a steel drum that was then buried with other items at the landfill.