Friends of mine: Jimmy Hoffa
The FBI said Tuesday it found no trace of Jimmy Hoffa after digging up a suburban Detroit horse farm in one of the most intensive searches in decades for the former Teamsters boss. The two-week search involved dozens of FBI agents, along with anthropologists, archaeologists, cadaver-sniffing dogs and a demolition crew that took apart a barn.
Louis Fischetti, supervisory agent with the Detroit FBI, said he believed the tip that led agents to the farm was the best federal authorities had received since 1976. The agency planned to continue the investigation into Hoffa's 1975 disappearance. "There are still prosecutable defendants who are living, and they know who they are," said Judy Chilen, assistant agent in charge of the Detroit FBI. The farm was once owned by a Hoffa associate and was said to be a mob meeting place before the union boss' disappearance.
Hoffa vanished after he went to meet two organized crime figures. Investigators have long suspected he was killed by the mob to prevent him from reclaiming the presidency of the Teamsters after he got out of prison for corruption. But no trace of him has ever been found, and no one was ever charged.
The farm was just the latest spot to be dug up in search of clues to Hoffa's fate. In 2003, authorities excavated beneath a backyard pool a few hours north of Detroit. The following year, police ripped up floorboards in a Detroit home to test bloodstains. But the blood was not Hoffa's.
Over the years, some have theorized that Hoffa was buried at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands; ground up and thrown into a Florida swamp; or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant.
The FBI began the excavation on May 17, digging at Hidden Dreams Farm, 30 miles northwest of Detroit. The search started after a tip from Donovan Wells, an ailing federal inmate who once lived on the farm and was acquainted with its former owner, 92-year-old Hoffa associate Rolland McMaster, according to a government investigator.
McMaster's attorney Mayer Morganroth said he was not surprised that the search was wrapping up with the mystery unsolved. "We never expected that anything was there," he said, adding that the FBI probably felt pressured to respond to the tip, lest it seem as if it were not trying to solve the case. The FBI said the search was expected to cost less than $250,000. The government plans to pay for the barn to be rebuilt.
While many veteran investigators and Hoffa experts were skeptical about the search, the little community of Milford Township seemed to relish the attention. A bakery sold cupcakes with a plastic green hand emerging from chocolate frosting meant to resemble dirt. Other businesses sold Hoffa-inspired T-shirts and put up signs with wisecracks such as "Caution FBI Crossing Ahead."
Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975. He was scheduled to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles from the farm. He was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, both of whom are now dead.
Showing posts with label Jimmy Hoffa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jimmy Hoffa. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Monday, May 22, 2006
Overheard: Jimmy Hoffa Dig Site
The pressure's on to find him. President Bush knows from experience that his approval rating goes up ten points every time he finds a tyrant in a hole.
Friday, May 19, 2006
FBI Digs for Clues to Hoffa
Friends of ours: Sam Giancana, Sal "Sally Bugs" Briguglio, Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone
Friends of mine: Jimmy Hoffa, Rolland "Red" McMaster
The digging continued Thursday at a Michigan farm where FBI agents are looking for clues to one of the great mysteries in US history, the disappearance of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.
The digging began Wednesday at the property outside of Detroit. One agent is describing the lead that led them to the farm as one of the best ever. The horse farm outside Detroit now being searched by federal agents is called "Hidden Dreams." The question is: are the remains of Jimmy Hoffa also hidden there? In 1975 when Hoffa seemed to have evaporated from earth, the farm was owned by one of his closest teamsters union allies. Authorities searched the farm at the time and found nothing. But the I-Team has learned that recently a federal prison inmate gave investigators new information that has sent them back to the farm digging for clues.
More than 50 federal agents, soil experts and college archeologists converged on Milford, Michigan to look for what the search warrant calls "the human remains of James Riddle Hoffa."
"I've been the agent in charge and this is the best lead I've seen come across on the Hoffa investigation. You can see from the amount of FBI and police department personnel out here that this is probably a fairly credible lead," said Daniel Roberts, FBI-Detroit.
FBI officials declined to give any details about the new information about why they are searching the farm almost 31 years after the last time they were in Milford right after Hoffa disappeared.
But here's what we know:
This is the third time in three years that federal agents have gone to a location to dig for Jimmy Hoffa clues, the previous operations unearthed nothing...
The federal prison inmate who provided the horse farm tip is said to have passed a lie detector test. FBI agents have paid a visit to the former farm owner, Red McMaster, who worked with Hoffa until the day Hoffa disappeared.
Law enforcement sources say they have long considered McMaster an important piece in the Hoffa puzzle because of his connections to the late Chicago outfit boss Sam Giancana and the fact that the Chicago mob had muscled control of the teamsters pension funds when Hoffa vanished. McMaster once speculated that Hoffa wasn't dead, that he "ran off to brazil with a black go-go dancer".
Chicago FBI agents are helping in the digging operation outside Detroit. In this Intelligence Report: why some investigators take a wait-and-see attitude about this latest chapter in one of the country's biggest mysteries.
The Jimmy Hoffa case is forever intertwined with Chicago, from the top hoodlums who are suspected of having a role in his disappearance to the FBI agents who spent their careers searching to solve the puzzle. Federal investigators who know the case inside out, tell the ABC7 I-Team that they are skeptical of the lead that has led authorities back to that suburban detroit Horse farm.
The James r. Hoffa file at FBI headquarters in Washington is thick. The "R." in Hoffa's name actually stands for "Riddle," his mother's maiden name. But former Chicago FBI agent, now private investigator, Joe Brennan says the riddle of what happened to Jimmy Hoffa was actually solved years ago.
According to Brennan, the FBI knew what happened to Hoffa en route to his last meal at a suburban Detroit eatery. Shortly after Hoffa called his wife from a payphone near the restaurant -- these were pre-cell phone days -- authorities believe he was from his behind the wheel of his own car in the parking lot. Agents believe he was stuffed into the trunk of a second car and driven away by two outfit hitmen, including a New Jersey hoodlum named Sal "Sally Bugs" Briguglio, who himself was silenced in a gangland hit a few years later.
Jailhouse snitches and mob insiders told the FBI that Hoffa's body was put into a 55 gallon oil drum, put on a truck and driven to New Jersey, where they say mob boss Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano was waiting for proof Hoffa had been taken out. According to an FBI source, Provenzano popped the lid of the drum, saw Hoffa's head under the platter, and sent the packaged remains to the Meadowlands Sports Complex or had it dumped in the Atlantic. That is why Brennan and other FBI agents who worked the case today are wary of the horse farm being Hoffa's final resting place.
The farm, once owned by a close Hoffa's union ally, was also a popular mob meeting spot, a well-secluded retreat for Chicago outfit boss Sam Giancana and Chicago hoodlums who had business to discuss with their Detroit counterparts led by Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone.
The farm is an unlikely location, say some veteran agents, for a body to buried. Nonetheless, dozens of FBI agents with heavy equipment have descended on this farm that was first searched in 1975 to no avail.
"There have been a number of leads out in this area that have been covered over the last 30 years," said Daniel Roberts , FBI-Detroit.
New Jersey mafia capo Tony Provenzano died by heart attack in 1988. Authors and armchair criminologists just assume that Provenzano had Hoffa killed to prevent Hoffa's return to the teamsters. But Joe Brennan and other FBI insiders believe Tony Pro was motivated by a personal grudge, that when he and Hoffa were in the same Pennsylvania prison in the late 60's and 70's, Hoffa disrespected the mob boss and that, on his last July 30, came to regret it.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
Friends of mine: Jimmy Hoffa, Rolland "Red" McMaster
The digging continued Thursday at a Michigan farm where FBI agents are looking for clues to one of the great mysteries in US history, the disappearance of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa.
The digging began Wednesday at the property outside of Detroit. One agent is describing the lead that led them to the farm as one of the best ever. The horse farm outside Detroit now being searched by federal agents is called "Hidden Dreams." The question is: are the remains of Jimmy Hoffa also hidden there? In 1975 when Hoffa seemed to have evaporated from earth, the farm was owned by one of his closest teamsters union allies. Authorities searched the farm at the time and found nothing. But the I-Team has learned that recently a federal prison inmate gave investigators new information that has sent them back to the farm digging for clues.
More than 50 federal agents, soil experts and college archeologists converged on Milford, Michigan to look for what the search warrant calls "the human remains of James Riddle Hoffa."
"I've been the agent in charge and this is the best lead I've seen come across on the Hoffa investigation. You can see from the amount of FBI and police department personnel out here that this is probably a fairly credible lead," said Daniel Roberts, FBI-Detroit.
FBI officials declined to give any details about the new information about why they are searching the farm almost 31 years after the last time they were in Milford right after Hoffa disappeared.
But here's what we know:
It was July of 1975 when Hoffa disappeared after a lunchdate at this suburbanThe federal team working in Michigan includes two FBI evidence experts from the Chicago field office. So far they have found no evidence of Jimmy Hoffa at this location and are being assisted by anthropologists from Michigan State University in analyzing the dirt.
Detroit restaurant.
He had called his wife from a phonebooth at an adjacent shopping center and was never heard from again.
One of Hoffa's closest union confidantes at the time was a man named Rolland "Red" McMaster. Now 93 years old, McMaster used to own this farm where the FBI has returned to begin a two-week excavation.
A former associate of McMaster's-now in federal prison-provided authorities with new leads that prompted them to look for Hoffa's remains on the farm.
This is the third time in three years that federal agents have gone to a location to dig for Jimmy Hoffa clues, the previous operations unearthed nothing...
The federal prison inmate who provided the horse farm tip is said to have passed a lie detector test. FBI agents have paid a visit to the former farm owner, Red McMaster, who worked with Hoffa until the day Hoffa disappeared.
Law enforcement sources say they have long considered McMaster an important piece in the Hoffa puzzle because of his connections to the late Chicago outfit boss Sam Giancana and the fact that the Chicago mob had muscled control of the teamsters pension funds when Hoffa vanished. McMaster once speculated that Hoffa wasn't dead, that he "ran off to brazil with a black go-go dancer".
Chicago FBI agents are helping in the digging operation outside Detroit. In this Intelligence Report: why some investigators take a wait-and-see attitude about this latest chapter in one of the country's biggest mysteries.
The Jimmy Hoffa case is forever intertwined with Chicago, from the top hoodlums who are suspected of having a role in his disappearance to the FBI agents who spent their careers searching to solve the puzzle. Federal investigators who know the case inside out, tell the ABC7 I-Team that they are skeptical of the lead that has led authorities back to that suburban detroit Horse farm.
The James r. Hoffa file at FBI headquarters in Washington is thick. The "R." in Hoffa's name actually stands for "Riddle," his mother's maiden name. But former Chicago FBI agent, now private investigator, Joe Brennan says the riddle of what happened to Jimmy Hoffa was actually solved years ago.
According to Brennan, the FBI knew what happened to Hoffa en route to his last meal at a suburban Detroit eatery. Shortly after Hoffa called his wife from a payphone near the restaurant -- these were pre-cell phone days -- authorities believe he was from his behind the wheel of his own car in the parking lot. Agents believe he was stuffed into the trunk of a second car and driven away by two outfit hitmen, including a New Jersey hoodlum named Sal "Sally Bugs" Briguglio, who himself was silenced in a gangland hit a few years later.
Jailhouse snitches and mob insiders told the FBI that Hoffa's body was put into a 55 gallon oil drum, put on a truck and driven to New Jersey, where they say mob boss Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano was waiting for proof Hoffa had been taken out. According to an FBI source, Provenzano popped the lid of the drum, saw Hoffa's head under the platter, and sent the packaged remains to the Meadowlands Sports Complex or had it dumped in the Atlantic. That is why Brennan and other FBI agents who worked the case today are wary of the horse farm being Hoffa's final resting place.
The farm, once owned by a close Hoffa's union ally, was also a popular mob meeting spot, a well-secluded retreat for Chicago outfit boss Sam Giancana and Chicago hoodlums who had business to discuss with their Detroit counterparts led by Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone.
The farm is an unlikely location, say some veteran agents, for a body to buried. Nonetheless, dozens of FBI agents with heavy equipment have descended on this farm that was first searched in 1975 to no avail.
"There have been a number of leads out in this area that have been covered over the last 30 years," said Daniel Roberts , FBI-Detroit.
New Jersey mafia capo Tony Provenzano died by heart attack in 1988. Authors and armchair criminologists just assume that Provenzano had Hoffa killed to prevent Hoffa's return to the teamsters. But Joe Brennan and other FBI insiders believe Tony Pro was motivated by a personal grudge, that when he and Hoffa were in the same Pennsylvania prison in the late 60's and 70's, Hoffa disrespected the mob boss and that, on his last July 30, came to regret it.
Thanks to Chuck Goudie
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Michigan Farm Subject of Hoffa Search
Friends of mine: Jimmy Hoffa
In one of the most intensive searches for Jimmy Hoffa in decades, the
FBI summoned archaeologists and anthropologists and brought in heavy equipment to scour a horse farm Thursday for the body of the former Teamsters boss who vanished in 1975.
Daniel Roberts, agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office, would not disclose what led agents to the farm, but said: "This is probably a fairly credible lead. You can gather that from the number of people out here."
No trace of Hoffa has ever been found, and no one has ever been charged in the case. But investigators have long suspected that he was killed by the mob to keep him from reclaiming the Teamsters presidency after he got out of prison for corruption.
The farm, just outside Detroit, used to be owned by a Teamsters official. And mob figures used to meet at a barn there before Hoffa's disappearance, authorities said.
Investigators began combing the area Wednesday, and the search continued Thursday and included the use of heavy construction equipment. Roberts said it would probably involve the removal of a barn. Authorities also led cadaver dogs across the property, and the FBI called in anthropologists and archaeologists from Michigan State University. Roberts said he expects the search to go on for at least a couple of weeks.
Hoffa was last seen on a night he was scheduled to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles from the farm. He was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, both now dead.
Over the years, Hoffa's disappearance spawned endless theories — that he was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands; that he was ground up and thrown to the fishes in a Florida swamp; that he was obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant that has since burned down.
In 2003, authorities searched beneath a backyard pool a few hours north of Detroit but turned up nothing. The following year, they pulled up the floorboards on a Detroit home and found bloodstains, but the blood was not Hoffa's.
A law enforcement official in Washington said the latest search was based on information developed several years ago and verified more recently.
Among other things, there was a high level of suspicious activity on the farm the day Hoffa vanished, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A backhoe appeared that day near the barn organized crime members had used for meetings, and that location was never used again, the official said.
At the time of Hoffa's disappearance, the property was owned by Rolland McMaster, a longtime Teamsters official. It is now under different ownership and is called Hidden Dreams Farm. McMaster's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, said he doubted the FBI would find anything. "That farm was looked at with a fine-toothed comb in the '70s, when Hoffa was missing," Morganroth said. "There's nothing there."
McMaster was convicted in 1963 of accepting payoffs from a trucking company and, according to a 1976 Detroit Free Press account, served five months in prison.
Reporters were not allowed onto the property, which is surrounded by a white wooden fence just off a dirt road. Images from news helicopters showed about a dozen people, some with shovels, standing by an area of newly turned dirt about 10 feet by 15 feet.
Morganroth said McMaster was in Indiana on union business at the time of Hoffa's disappearance. He said that to his knowledge, McMaster was never a suspect. Morganroth said FBI officials visited McMaster, 93, this week at his home in Fenton, where one of several horse-breeding farms he owns is situated.
"They were just asking about the farm itself — did he ever get any inkling?" he said.
In 1967, Hoffa was sentenced to 13 years in prison for jury tampering and fraud, but he refused to give up the Teamsters presidency. After he quit the job in 1971, President Nixon pardoned him.
In one of the most intensive searches for Jimmy Hoffa in decades, the
FBI summoned archaeologists and anthropologists and brought in heavy equipment to scour a horse farm Thursday for the body of the former Teamsters boss who vanished in 1975.
Daniel Roberts, agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office, would not disclose what led agents to the farm, but said: "This is probably a fairly credible lead. You can gather that from the number of people out here."
No trace of Hoffa has ever been found, and no one has ever been charged in the case. But investigators have long suspected that he was killed by the mob to keep him from reclaiming the Teamsters presidency after he got out of prison for corruption.
The farm, just outside Detroit, used to be owned by a Teamsters official. And mob figures used to meet at a barn there before Hoffa's disappearance, authorities said.
Investigators began combing the area Wednesday, and the search continued Thursday and included the use of heavy construction equipment. Roberts said it would probably involve the removal of a barn. Authorities also led cadaver dogs across the property, and the FBI called in anthropologists and archaeologists from Michigan State University. Roberts said he expects the search to go on for at least a couple of weeks.
Hoffa was last seen on a night he was scheduled to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles from the farm. He was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, both now dead.
Over the years, Hoffa's disappearance spawned endless theories — that he was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands; that he was ground up and thrown to the fishes in a Florida swamp; that he was obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant that has since burned down.
In 2003, authorities searched beneath a backyard pool a few hours north of Detroit but turned up nothing. The following year, they pulled up the floorboards on a Detroit home and found bloodstains, but the blood was not Hoffa's.
A law enforcement official in Washington said the latest search was based on information developed several years ago and verified more recently.
Among other things, there was a high level of suspicious activity on the farm the day Hoffa vanished, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. A backhoe appeared that day near the barn organized crime members had used for meetings, and that location was never used again, the official said.
At the time of Hoffa's disappearance, the property was owned by Rolland McMaster, a longtime Teamsters official. It is now under different ownership and is called Hidden Dreams Farm. McMaster's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, said he doubted the FBI would find anything. "That farm was looked at with a fine-toothed comb in the '70s, when Hoffa was missing," Morganroth said. "There's nothing there."
McMaster was convicted in 1963 of accepting payoffs from a trucking company and, according to a 1976 Detroit Free Press account, served five months in prison.
Reporters were not allowed onto the property, which is surrounded by a white wooden fence just off a dirt road. Images from news helicopters showed about a dozen people, some with shovels, standing by an area of newly turned dirt about 10 feet by 15 feet.
Morganroth said McMaster was in Indiana on union business at the time of Hoffa's disappearance. He said that to his knowledge, McMaster was never a suspect. Morganroth said FBI officials visited McMaster, 93, this week at his home in Fenton, where one of several horse-breeding farms he owns is situated.
"They were just asking about the farm itself — did he ever get any inkling?" he said.
In 1967, Hoffa was sentenced to 13 years in prison for jury tampering and fraud, but he refused to give up the Teamsters presidency. After he quit the job in 1971, President Nixon pardoned him.
Friday, March 04, 2005
JFK Connected to Mob DNA?
Solving a Mafia murder case is a tall order. Since the early 1900s, more than 1,100 murders have been linked to Mafia activities in Chicago but only 14 people have been convicted in those killings. Soon though, the FBI may be able to resolve dozens of mob hits, many with links to Las Vegas. It's a case that might even shed light on the assassination of a president.
The FBI calls it Operation Family Secrets, (Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob). The I-Team has reported on it in the past
. It's been underway in Chicago for more than two years and may finally be getting close to the indictment stage. The targets include major figures in the Chicago mob. The victims include tough Tony Spilotro, once the king of the Las Vegas streets. If the FBI hits the jackpot though, this operation could resolve even bigger mysteries.
Lawmen in Las Vegas and elsewhere harbored all kinds of suspicions about Tony The Ant Spilotro. They suspected him in as many as 22 gangland murders. They indicted him for skimming Las Vegas casinos. And regarded him as the Nevada ambassador for the feared Chicago mob. But the law never managed to put Spilotro away. That job was carried out by his Mafia associates.
In 1986, Spilotro returned to Chicago to meet with the family. His body and that of his brother Michael Spilotro were found days later, buried in an Indiana cornfield. Both were savagely beaten. Spilotro's widow Nancy told the I-Team the FBI never tried to solve the murder, but she's convinced that her husband knew the people who did it. "When he went away like that, left all their stuff behind and they go -- you know. That's no good. They leave their watch and their wallet. They had to know somebody to get them to go to the place," said Nancy Spilotro, Tony Spilotro's widow.
Sometime later this year, someone may finally be charged in Tony Spilotro's murder. That someone will likely be Spilotro's former boss, Joey The Clown Lombardo, for decades a reputed top figure in the Chicago mob.
John Flood, former Chicago Police officer, said, "Lombardo in Chicago is the last of the major giants and in the United States few men have his stature in organized crime."
Former Chicago cop John Flood should know. For years, he was part of a Chicago Police team that chased the mob and says Lombardo once tried to kill him. Flood expects the FBI's Operation Family Matters to produce indictments soon.
The two-year probe reportedly has mob informants and is aimed at the top tier of the Chicago outfit, which means Joey The Clown. Tips have already led FBI agents to unearth the bodies of murder victims. DNA evidence has been obtained from crime scenes and is now being analyzed in forensic labs around the country. It is all but certain that the Spilotro murders are among the cases that are being analyzed. But there are many more unsolved cases in the Las Vegas-Chicago nexus and Lombardo, allegedly, was in a position to know about all of them.
John Flood says, "There is not a shadow of doubt that because he was such a young man involved with major mob figures going back to Al Capone, he would know anything that happened regarding assassinations, not only in Chicago but Las Vegas, across the country. He's a top guy and a tough guy."
Flood says Lombardo would have to know about the murder of teamsters pension fund executive Alan Dorfman, who loaned millions to Las Vegas casinos and was indicted with Lombardo for trying to bribe Nevada Senator Howard Cannon.
Former mob ambassador to Las Vegas, Johnny Rosselli was preparing to testify to Congress about mob plots to kill Fidel Castro. His body was found floating in a drum. Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, once the overlord of Las Vegas rackets, was murdered in his home just before he had to testify. Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and is believed to have been murdered by Midwestern mob families. Lawmen think Lombardo knew about all of them, including one of the biggest murders of all time.
John Flood says, "Sam Gianacana, supposedly involved in the building of Las Vegas, his brother said Sam told him before he died it was Chicago organized crime guys that assassinated John Kennedy."
That's a whopper of a story, but there is other testimony hinting at a Chicago connection to the JFK slaying. Jack Ruby was a Chicago mob flunky before moving to Dallas. But Flood says he doubts Lombardo would talk, indictment or not.
Lombardo's Chicago attorney acknowledges that his client is a target of the FBI investigation, but he denies any wrong doing by Lombardo. Lombardo has given a DNA sample to the FBI. So have three other suspected mobsters.
Ex-cop John Flood says he doubts Lombardo would roll over or spill the beans about any murder, let alone the JFK assassination, but says it depends on who else might be indicted with him.
Stranger things have happened.
Thanks to George Knapp
The FBI calls it Operation Family Secrets, (Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob). The I-Team has reported on it in the past
. It's been underway in Chicago for more than two years and may finally be getting close to the indictment stage. The targets include major figures in the Chicago mob. The victims include tough Tony Spilotro, once the king of the Las Vegas streets. If the FBI hits the jackpot though, this operation could resolve even bigger mysteries.Lawmen in Las Vegas and elsewhere harbored all kinds of suspicions about Tony The Ant Spilotro. They suspected him in as many as 22 gangland murders. They indicted him for skimming Las Vegas casinos. And regarded him as the Nevada ambassador for the feared Chicago mob. But the law never managed to put Spilotro away. That job was carried out by his Mafia associates.
In 1986, Spilotro returned to Chicago to meet with the family. His body and that of his brother Michael Spilotro were found days later, buried in an Indiana cornfield. Both were savagely beaten. Spilotro's widow Nancy told the I-Team the FBI never tried to solve the murder, but she's convinced that her husband knew the people who did it. "When he went away like that, left all their stuff behind and they go -- you know. That's no good. They leave their watch and their wallet. They had to know somebody to get them to go to the place," said Nancy Spilotro, Tony Spilotro's widow.
Sometime later this year, someone may finally be charged in Tony Spilotro's murder. That someone will likely be Spilotro's former boss, Joey The Clown Lombardo, for decades a reputed top figure in the Chicago mob.
John Flood, former Chicago Police officer, said, "Lombardo in Chicago is the last of the major giants and in the United States few men have his stature in organized crime."
Former Chicago cop John Flood should know. For years, he was part of a Chicago Police team that chased the mob and says Lombardo once tried to kill him. Flood expects the FBI's Operation Family Matters to produce indictments soon.
The two-year probe reportedly has mob informants and is aimed at the top tier of the Chicago outfit, which means Joey The Clown. Tips have already led FBI agents to unearth the bodies of murder victims. DNA evidence has been obtained from crime scenes and is now being analyzed in forensic labs around the country. It is all but certain that the Spilotro murders are among the cases that are being analyzed. But there are many more unsolved cases in the Las Vegas-Chicago nexus and Lombardo, allegedly, was in a position to know about all of them.
John Flood says, "There is not a shadow of doubt that because he was such a young man involved with major mob figures going back to Al Capone, he would know anything that happened regarding assassinations, not only in Chicago but Las Vegas, across the country. He's a top guy and a tough guy."
Flood says Lombardo would have to know about the murder of teamsters pension fund executive Alan Dorfman, who loaned millions to Las Vegas casinos and was indicted with Lombardo for trying to bribe Nevada Senator Howard Cannon.
Former mob ambassador to Las Vegas, Johnny Rosselli was preparing to testify to Congress about mob plots to kill Fidel Castro. His body was found floating in a drum. Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, once the overlord of Las Vegas rackets, was murdered in his home just before he had to testify. Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and is believed to have been murdered by Midwestern mob families. Lawmen think Lombardo knew about all of them, including one of the biggest murders of all time.
John Flood says, "Sam Gianacana, supposedly involved in the building of Las Vegas, his brother said Sam told him before he died it was Chicago organized crime guys that assassinated John Kennedy."
That's a whopper of a story, but there is other testimony hinting at a Chicago connection to the JFK slaying. Jack Ruby was a Chicago mob flunky before moving to Dallas. But Flood says he doubts Lombardo would talk, indictment or not.
Lombardo's Chicago attorney acknowledges that his client is a target of the FBI investigation, but he denies any wrong doing by Lombardo. Lombardo has given a DNA sample to the FBI. So have three other suspected mobsters.
Ex-cop John Flood says he doubts Lombardo would roll over or spill the beans about any murder, let alone the JFK assassination, but says it depends on who else might be indicted with him.
Stranger things have happened.
Thanks to George Knapp
Tuesday, December 13, 1988
Obit for Anthony Provenzano, Reputed Organzied Crime Leader and Ex-Teamster Chief #TheIrishman
Anthony Provenzano, a reported organized-crime leader who was ousted a decade ago as the teamsters' boss of northern New Jersey, died of a heart attack yesterday in a hospital near a prison in Lompoc, Calif., where he was serving 20 years for racketeering. He was 71 years old.
Mr. Provenzano, a convicted murderer and extortionist and a key figure in the 1975 disappearance of the teamster president, James R. Hoffa, died at Lompoc District Hospital, near the Federal Penitentiary 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
He had been in the hospital a month with congestive heart failure, the warden's executive assistant, Chuck LaRoe, said. Mr. Provenzano began his term in 1980. Poor health and advanced age had left him unable to perform his work assignments as a janitor for two years, Mr. LaRoe added.
Mr. Provenzano would have been eligible for release in 1992. Although eligible for parole in 1985, he waived consideration. On his release from Federal prison, he would have faced 25 years to life in New York for the murder of a union rival in 1961, and he apparently preferred to spend his last days in California.
Muscle and Maneuvers
A short, stocky and ham-fisted man who bore the scars of his young years as an amateur boxer, Mr. Provenzano - known to friend and foe alike as Tony Pro - joined the teamsters as a Depression-era truck driver and, through muscle and shrewd maneuvers, fought his way into the top ranks of the crime-riddled union.
His way was strewn with violent election campaigns, Federal and state investigations, the disappearances and mysterious deaths of union opponents, free homes and Cadillacs, salaries that dwarfed corporate largesse, the enmity of rackets-busters and the homage of union men.
Behind his rise and fall lay a shadowy world of associates whose talents lay in beating other men with hammers, in selling labor peace to the trucking industry, in garrotes and guns and the clever use of garbage grinders and incinerators to make enemies disappear.
A reported capo in the Mafia family of Vito Genovese, Mr. Provenzano spent years in courts and prisons. A conviction in 1963 for extortion sent him to prison for seven years. In 1978, he was convicted of murdering Anthony Castellito, a union foe who had vanished 17 years earlier in Ulster County, N.Y. Two racketeering convictions, in New York in 1978 and New Jersey in 1979, sent him to prison for the last time eight years ago.
Tribulations of Local 560
Although he became a vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and a top associate of Mr. Hoffa in the 70's, his longtime base of power was the 13,000-member Local 560, with headquarters in Union City, N.J.
While Mr. Provenzano was barred by his last convictions from any union role, his brothers Nunzio and Salvatore were officers of the local, as was his daughter Josephine. In 1984, the local was found guilty of intimidating its members by murders, threats and economic reprisals, and it was placed under a trustee in 1986.
Last Wednesday, in the first contested election at the local in 25 years, the rank and file voted to return the management to a ticket of Provenzano associates. The leaders denied wrongdoing, and observers noted that marriages of necessity, such as that born in the Depression when the teamsters needed the muscle of the mob, were rarely annulled.
Anthony Provenzano was born May 7, 1917, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one of six sons of immigrant Sicilians, Rosario and Josephine Dispensa Provenzano. He was 17 when he quit school for a $10-a-week job driving a truck out of a terminal in Hackensack, N.J.
Slaying in Kerhonkson
By 1941, Mr. Provenzano was a shop steward, and by 1958 he had taken the reins of Local 560 from the man who had founded it. A year later, he cited the Fifth Amendment 44 times in testimony before a Senate rackets committee for which Robert F. Kennedy was counsel.
In 1961, testimony at his murder trial showed that Mr. Provenzano had paid a mob enforcer, Harold Konigsberg, $15,000 to kill Mr. Castellito. Mr. Konigsberg and three other men had lured the rival to his summer home in Kerhonkson, N.Y., in Ulster County, hit him with a lead truncheon and garroted him with piano wire. The body was never found.
Another rival of Mr. Provenzano, Walter Glockner, was shot to death in 1963 in Hoboken, N.J., just as Mr. Provenzano went on trial for extorting payoffs for labor peace. He was convicted and sent to the Federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., where Mr. Hoffa was also being held. Bad blood between the two former friends was said to have developed there.
On July 30, 1975, Mr. Hoffa vanished from a parking lot in a Detroit suburb and was never seen again. He was on his way that night to what he thought was a meeting with Mr. Provenzano. Mr. Provenzano was not in Detroit then, but he became a key figure in the disappearance, which was never solved.
Series of Sentences
A book by Steven Brill in 1978 quoted a Federal Bureau of Investigation memo as saying that three of Mr. Provenzano's associates had kidnapped Mr. Hoffa, put him in a garbage shredder and cremated the remains in an incinerator.
A month after being sentenced in Kingston, N.Y., to 25 years to life in prison for Mr. Castellito's murder, Mr. Provenzano was sentenced in Federal District Court in Manhattan in 1978 to four years for arranging kickbacks on a $2.3 million pension-fund loan. A year later, a Federal judge in New Jersey imposed a 20-year prison term for labor racketeering.
The Allwood Funeral Home in Clifton, N.J., listed the survivors as his wife, Marie-Paule Migneron Provenzano; four daughters, Josephine, Marie Maita, Doreen Rucinski and Charlotte Polile; three brothers, Louis, Salvatore and Nunzio, and two grandchildren. The funeral will be Saturday at 9:30 A.M. in St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church in Clifton. Burial will be in St. Joseph's Cemetery in Hackensack.
Thanks to Robert D. McFadden.
Mr. Provenzano, a convicted murderer and extortionist and a key figure in the 1975 disappearance of the teamster president, James R. Hoffa, died at Lompoc District Hospital, near the Federal Penitentiary 140 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
He had been in the hospital a month with congestive heart failure, the warden's executive assistant, Chuck LaRoe, said. Mr. Provenzano began his term in 1980. Poor health and advanced age had left him unable to perform his work assignments as a janitor for two years, Mr. LaRoe added.
Mr. Provenzano would have been eligible for release in 1992. Although eligible for parole in 1985, he waived consideration. On his release from Federal prison, he would have faced 25 years to life in New York for the murder of a union rival in 1961, and he apparently preferred to spend his last days in California.
Muscle and Maneuvers
A short, stocky and ham-fisted man who bore the scars of his young years as an amateur boxer, Mr. Provenzano - known to friend and foe alike as Tony Pro - joined the teamsters as a Depression-era truck driver and, through muscle and shrewd maneuvers, fought his way into the top ranks of the crime-riddled union.
His way was strewn with violent election campaigns, Federal and state investigations, the disappearances and mysterious deaths of union opponents, free homes and Cadillacs, salaries that dwarfed corporate largesse, the enmity of rackets-busters and the homage of union men.
Behind his rise and fall lay a shadowy world of associates whose talents lay in beating other men with hammers, in selling labor peace to the trucking industry, in garrotes and guns and the clever use of garbage grinders and incinerators to make enemies disappear.
A reported capo in the Mafia family of Vito Genovese, Mr. Provenzano spent years in courts and prisons. A conviction in 1963 for extortion sent him to prison for seven years. In 1978, he was convicted of murdering Anthony Castellito, a union foe who had vanished 17 years earlier in Ulster County, N.Y. Two racketeering convictions, in New York in 1978 and New Jersey in 1979, sent him to prison for the last time eight years ago.
Tribulations of Local 560
Although he became a vice president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and a top associate of Mr. Hoffa in the 70's, his longtime base of power was the 13,000-member Local 560, with headquarters in Union City, N.J.
While Mr. Provenzano was barred by his last convictions from any union role, his brothers Nunzio and Salvatore were officers of the local, as was his daughter Josephine. In 1984, the local was found guilty of intimidating its members by murders, threats and economic reprisals, and it was placed under a trustee in 1986.
Last Wednesday, in the first contested election at the local in 25 years, the rank and file voted to return the management to a ticket of Provenzano associates. The leaders denied wrongdoing, and observers noted that marriages of necessity, such as that born in the Depression when the teamsters needed the muscle of the mob, were rarely annulled.
Anthony Provenzano was born May 7, 1917, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one of six sons of immigrant Sicilians, Rosario and Josephine Dispensa Provenzano. He was 17 when he quit school for a $10-a-week job driving a truck out of a terminal in Hackensack, N.J.
Slaying in Kerhonkson
By 1941, Mr. Provenzano was a shop steward, and by 1958 he had taken the reins of Local 560 from the man who had founded it. A year later, he cited the Fifth Amendment 44 times in testimony before a Senate rackets committee for which Robert F. Kennedy was counsel.
In 1961, testimony at his murder trial showed that Mr. Provenzano had paid a mob enforcer, Harold Konigsberg, $15,000 to kill Mr. Castellito. Mr. Konigsberg and three other men had lured the rival to his summer home in Kerhonkson, N.Y., in Ulster County, hit him with a lead truncheon and garroted him with piano wire. The body was never found.
Another rival of Mr. Provenzano, Walter Glockner, was shot to death in 1963 in Hoboken, N.J., just as Mr. Provenzano went on trial for extorting payoffs for labor peace. He was convicted and sent to the Federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa., where Mr. Hoffa was also being held. Bad blood between the two former friends was said to have developed there.
On July 30, 1975, Mr. Hoffa vanished from a parking lot in a Detroit suburb and was never seen again. He was on his way that night to what he thought was a meeting with Mr. Provenzano. Mr. Provenzano was not in Detroit then, but he became a key figure in the disappearance, which was never solved.
Series of Sentences
A book by Steven Brill in 1978 quoted a Federal Bureau of Investigation memo as saying that three of Mr. Provenzano's associates had kidnapped Mr. Hoffa, put him in a garbage shredder and cremated the remains in an incinerator.
A month after being sentenced in Kingston, N.Y., to 25 years to life in prison for Mr. Castellito's murder, Mr. Provenzano was sentenced in Federal District Court in Manhattan in 1978 to four years for arranging kickbacks on a $2.3 million pension-fund loan. A year later, a Federal judge in New Jersey imposed a 20-year prison term for labor racketeering.
The Allwood Funeral Home in Clifton, N.J., listed the survivors as his wife, Marie-Paule Migneron Provenzano; four daughters, Josephine, Marie Maita, Doreen Rucinski and Charlotte Polile; three brothers, Louis, Salvatore and Nunzio, and two grandchildren. The funeral will be Saturday at 9:30 A.M. in St. Andrew's Roman Catholic Church in Clifton. Burial will be in St. Joseph's Cemetery in Hackensack.
Thanks to Robert D. McFadden.
Friday, January 21, 1983
Prior to Mob Hit, Allen Dorfman Built Financial Empire through Teamsters #Solidarity
Allen M. Dorfman, the Chicago insurance executive who was slain yesterday in a hotel parking lot near Chicago, built a huge financial empire through close associations with leaders of the teamster's union that began more than 30 years ago.
Mr. Dorfman, who was 59 years old, went into the insurance business in 1949 to handle the health and welfare funds of one of the major branches of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Over the years he received millions in fees and commissions from the union.
His empire included insurance companies, condominium developments, resorts and other projects, and he had homes in suburban Chicago and Wisconsin, Florida and California.
Mr. Dorfman was convicted last month, along with the president of the teamsters' union, Roy L. Williams, and three others on Federal charges of conspiring to bribe Senator Howard W. Cannon, Democrat of Nevada, to delay or defeat a bill to deregulate rates for trucking freight. The measure eventually passed. Senator Cannon was not indicted in the case.
Mr. Dorfman had been free, pending sentencing, on a $5 million bond. He faced a maximum sentence of 55 years and a fine of $29,000. Forty Federal agents worked on the case for 14 months and recorded more than 2,000 reels of conversations. The operation was described by Federal investigators as the most elaborate in the history of electronic surveillance.
The Federal authorities named the multimillion-dollar effort Operation Pendorf, for Penetrate Dorfman, and said they hoped to prove links between Mr. Dorfman, the teamsters' pension fund and crime figures in Chicago and Las Vegas, Nev.
Mr. Dorfman had been a subject of extensive scrutiny by Federal agencies for at least 10 years. In 1972 he was convicted on a Federal charge of conspiring to facilitate a loan from the teamsters' Central States Pension Fund in return for a kickback of $55,000 and served nine months in jail.
Mr. Dorfman was indicted in three other cases, including one involving organized crime figures and a loan from the pension fund, but he was acquitted in each.
After his conviction in 1972, Mr. Dorfman was forced to relinquish his official relationship with the pension fund. However, through insurance companies that he controlled in Chicago, he continued to insure some of the fund's borrowers and also to process claims for the union's related health and welfare fund.
Mr. Dorfman was introduced in 1949 to James R. Hoffa, who later became the teamster president and subsequently disappeared in 1975. The introduction was made by Mr. Dorfman's stepfather, Paul (Red) Dorfman, a former prizefighter, associate of Al Capone and the head of Waste Handlers Union Local 20467 in Chicago.
At that time Mr. Hoffa was attempting to expand his base from Detroit. He reportedly turned to Paul Dorfman and his crime connections for assistance in Chicago.
In return, Mr. Hoffa saw to it that the teamsters' insurance business that he controlled went to a company that had been newly set up by Allen Dorfman and his mother, Rose.
Mr. Hoffa developed a close relationship with Paul and Allen Dorfman. Eventually, Mr. Hoffa and Allen Dorfman became partners in several businesses, including an oil property in North Dakota, a Wisconsin resort, an Ohio race track and a New York real-estate concern.
In the 1950's alone, according to Robert F. Kennedy, who later became United States Attorney General, Mr. Dorfman's insurance agency handled the premiums on nearly $100 million in teamsters' business. By 1978 Mr. Dorfman was getting $6.1 million a year for handling health and welfare alone.
Over the decade Mr. Hoffa ran the union, ending in 1967, when he went to prison for jury tampering and stealing union funds, Mr. Dorfman was regarded as the second most powerful man associated with the teamsters; he was said to have maintained that position when Frank E. Fitzsimmons took over from Mr. Hoffa in 1967.
When Mr. Hoffa went to prison, he was quoted as saying, ''When Dorfman speaks, he speaks for me.'' Mr. Dorfman graduated from Marshall High School on the West Side of Chicago. He attended the University of Illinois, but dropped out to enlist in the Marines and won a silver star at the battle of Iwo Jima.
Immediately before he started his first insurance company with his mother, he had been teaching physical education at the university. Five years later the teamsters' insurance business had made him a millionaire.
In addition his mother, Mr. Dorfman's survivors include his wife, Lynn;, three sons, James, Michael and David, and a daughter, Kim.
Thanks to Joseph B. Treaster
Mr. Dorfman, who was 59 years old, went into the insurance business in 1949 to handle the health and welfare funds of one of the major branches of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Over the years he received millions in fees and commissions from the union.
His empire included insurance companies, condominium developments, resorts and other projects, and he had homes in suburban Chicago and Wisconsin, Florida and California.
Mr. Dorfman was convicted last month, along with the president of the teamsters' union, Roy L. Williams, and three others on Federal charges of conspiring to bribe Senator Howard W. Cannon, Democrat of Nevada, to delay or defeat a bill to deregulate rates for trucking freight. The measure eventually passed. Senator Cannon was not indicted in the case.
Mr. Dorfman had been free, pending sentencing, on a $5 million bond. He faced a maximum sentence of 55 years and a fine of $29,000. Forty Federal agents worked on the case for 14 months and recorded more than 2,000 reels of conversations. The operation was described by Federal investigators as the most elaborate in the history of electronic surveillance.
The Federal authorities named the multimillion-dollar effort Operation Pendorf, for Penetrate Dorfman, and said they hoped to prove links between Mr. Dorfman, the teamsters' pension fund and crime figures in Chicago and Las Vegas, Nev.
Mr. Dorfman had been a subject of extensive scrutiny by Federal agencies for at least 10 years. In 1972 he was convicted on a Federal charge of conspiring to facilitate a loan from the teamsters' Central States Pension Fund in return for a kickback of $55,000 and served nine months in jail.
Mr. Dorfman was indicted in three other cases, including one involving organized crime figures and a loan from the pension fund, but he was acquitted in each.
After his conviction in 1972, Mr. Dorfman was forced to relinquish his official relationship with the pension fund. However, through insurance companies that he controlled in Chicago, he continued to insure some of the fund's borrowers and also to process claims for the union's related health and welfare fund.
Mr. Dorfman was introduced in 1949 to James R. Hoffa, who later became the teamster president and subsequently disappeared in 1975. The introduction was made by Mr. Dorfman's stepfather, Paul (Red) Dorfman, a former prizefighter, associate of Al Capone and the head of Waste Handlers Union Local 20467 in Chicago.
At that time Mr. Hoffa was attempting to expand his base from Detroit. He reportedly turned to Paul Dorfman and his crime connections for assistance in Chicago.
In return, Mr. Hoffa saw to it that the teamsters' insurance business that he controlled went to a company that had been newly set up by Allen Dorfman and his mother, Rose.
Mr. Hoffa developed a close relationship with Paul and Allen Dorfman. Eventually, Mr. Hoffa and Allen Dorfman became partners in several businesses, including an oil property in North Dakota, a Wisconsin resort, an Ohio race track and a New York real-estate concern.
In the 1950's alone, according to Robert F. Kennedy, who later became United States Attorney General, Mr. Dorfman's insurance agency handled the premiums on nearly $100 million in teamsters' business. By 1978 Mr. Dorfman was getting $6.1 million a year for handling health and welfare alone.
Over the decade Mr. Hoffa ran the union, ending in 1967, when he went to prison for jury tampering and stealing union funds, Mr. Dorfman was regarded as the second most powerful man associated with the teamsters; he was said to have maintained that position when Frank E. Fitzsimmons took over from Mr. Hoffa in 1967.
When Mr. Hoffa went to prison, he was quoted as saying, ''When Dorfman speaks, he speaks for me.'' Mr. Dorfman graduated from Marshall High School on the West Side of Chicago. He attended the University of Illinois, but dropped out to enlist in the Marines and won a silver star at the battle of Iwo Jima.
Immediately before he started his first insurance company with his mother, he had been teaching physical education at the university. Five years later the teamsters' insurance business had made him a millionaire.
In addition his mother, Mr. Dorfman's survivors include his wife, Lynn;, three sons, James, Michael and David, and a daughter, Kim.
Thanks to Joseph B. Treaster
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