Jimmy Hoffa was a charismatic American labor union leader who was the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) from the year 1957 to 1971. Hoffa’s interest in politics began at a very young age. By the time he was in his mid-20s, he had already become a prominent figure in the IBT. Furthermore, he was selected to be the national vice president of IBT in the year 1952. Under Jimmy Hoffa’s leadership, the union witnessed immense growth and became America’s biggest union, with over 2.3 million members at its peak.
However, his involvement with organized crime made headlines in the news. He was even convicted in two separate trials for jury tampering, attempted bribery, and mail and wire fraud in 1964. In the year 1967, he received a 13-year in-prison sentence.
In the year 1971, he resigned from his presidential post and was released from prison. However, the state barred him from participating in union activities until 1980. Even though he tried to overturn this order to regain support and leadership position in IBT, he failed to do so.
On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa shockingly disappeared and was never seen again. It is widely assumed that the Mafia terminated him, and for legal purposes, authorities declared him dead in the year 1982.
Ever since his mysterious disappearance, he has been referred to in several films. Most recently, Al Pacino portrayed Hoffa in Martin Scorsese’s 2019 gangster film The Irishman.
In 1989, Kenneth Walton from the FBI’s Detroit office spoke with The Detroit News and revealed that he was aware of what happened to Hoffa. Walton said, “I’m comfortable I know who did it, but it’s never going to be prosecuted because we would have to divulge informants, confidential sources.”
When was Jimmy Hoffa last seen?
According to Click on Detroit, on July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa left his Lake Orion home at 1:00 p.m. and visited a friend in Pontiac. At about 2:00 p.m., he entered the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Oakland County’s Bloomfield Township to meet with Detroit mob enforcer Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone and the alleged New Jersey mobster Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano. About fifteen minutes later, he called his wife, Josephine Poszywak, from a pay phone and informed her that nobody had shown up for his meeting. This was the last time anyone had seen or heard from the former union leader.
The FBI assigned more than 200 agents to the case. They compiled 70 volumes of files with over 16,000 pages but failed to figure out Hoffa’s whereabouts. There were six suspects in his disappearance, including Giacalone and Provenzano. However, the court convicted them of different charges.
In the year 1982, Charles Allen, a self-described mafia murderer, told a U.S. Senate committee that Provenzano ordered Jimmy Hoffa’s murder. Allen stated that Hoffa’s body was “ground up in little pieces, shipped to Florida, and thrown into a swamp.” Michigan Probate Judge Norman R. Barnard declared the former union leader dead in the same year.
Jimmy Hoffa was born to John and Viola (née Riddle) Hoffa in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913. His father was of German origin, while his mother belonged to an Irish background. Hoffa was only seven years old when his father passed away.
Hoffa’s family moved to Detroit in 1924. On September 25, 1937, he married an 18-year-old Detroit laundry worker, Josephine Poszywak, with whom he had two children.
