FINDING JIMMY HOFFA HOME/BLOG/FINDING JIMMY HOFFA FINDING JIMMY HOFFA AFTER 45-YEAR ODYSSEY, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER BELIEVES HE KNOWS WHERE THE LEGENDARY TEAMSTERS BOSS IS BURIED Published: July 8th, 2020 - By Dan E. Moldea, Contributing Writer Last Updated On: July 13th, 2020 In this 1972 ABC television interview, former Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa said President Richard Nixon was the most qualified candidate in the presidential race. Hoffa disappeared three years later. CSU Archives/Everett Collection/Alamy Stock Photo Editor’s note: After investigating the Jimmy Hoffa murder case since Hoffa’s disappearance forty-five years ago this month, investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea – the author of ten books, including The Hoffa Wars in 1978 — prepares “to go all-in” with his search for Hoffa’s remains. Below is an essay about his career-long journey, excerpted from the just-released third edition of his memoir, Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer: Adventures in the Jungles of Crime, Politics, and Journalism. Also, in May, Moldea released his tenth book: Money, Politics, and Corruption in U.S. Higher Education: The Stories of Whistleblowers. * * * I began my investigation of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union in December 1974 while I was a twenty-four-year-old graduate student at Kent State University and writing a column for The Reporter, a small Akron-based newspaper that served the African-American community in northeastern Ohio. During the late winter and early spring of 1975, I published an eight-part series, “The Teamsters, Their Pension Fund, and the Mafia.” Shortly after I completed that work, I received a phone call from Jonathan Kwitny, a veteran investigative journalist for the Wall Street Journal. He said he was doing his own three-part series about the corruption of the union’s pension fund and asked for my help, which I was happy to provide. Kwitny’s series, with my assistance, ran in the Journal from July 22-24, 1975. The following week, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975. Shortly after the news broke, Kwitny called, and we concocted a wild theory that Hoffa was alive and hiding at a Mob-owned lodge in Eagle River, Wisconsin. We met in Chicago and flew to Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where we rented a car and drove to Eagle River. Although we had an amazing adventure — which included me getting bitten by a German shepherd while trespassing on the grounds of the lodge — our search for Hoffa was nothing more than a wild goose chase. After Kwitny returned to New York, I flew to Detroit and immediately went to the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, a northern suburb, where Hoffa was last seen. While I was at the restaurant, I met the legendary NBC News correspondent Irving R. Levine, who was covering the Hoffa case for the network. He immediately hired me as a researcher after he called Kwitny, who enthusiastically vouched for me. THE HOFFA CASE IN THREE ACTS The murder of Jimmy Hoffa was a three-act drama with different characters in each act. In Act One, Hoffa went to the Red Fox restaurant, expecting to meet two Mafia figures: labor racketeer Anthony Provenzano of New Jersey, a capo in the Vito Genovese crime family, and Anthony Giacalone, a top mobster in the Detroit Mafia who was related, by marriage, to Provenzano. In addition, Hoffa might have been expecting to meet with a Giacalone-connected businessman, Lenny Schultz. Within days of Hoffa’s disappearance, dozens of theories surfaced as to who was in the car that picked up Hoffa and drove him into Act Two, where he was murdered. And there were just as many theories as to the location of the scene of the crime and who actually executed the killing. In Act Three, the co-conspirators disposed of Hoffa’s body, launching hundreds of theories as to what happened to Hoffa’s remains. ROLLAND MCMASTER On August 5, my first full day on the job with NBC News, I received an introduction to an associate of Rolland McMaster, a Teamsters official who had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Hoffa since their earliest days in the union. However, in recent years, Hoffa and McMaster had a huge falling out over control of Teamsters Local 299 in Detroit, Hoffa’s home local. Consequently, they became mortal enemies. In fact, my new source alleged that McMaster had played a key role in the disposal of Hoffa’s body six days earlier — but he could not prove it. NBC authorized me to pursue the McMaster lead but put me on a short leash, giving me a limited amount of time to get results. With the help of my friends and sources in the rank-and-file reform movement within the Teamsters, I received introductions to several key players in the Hoffa drama. I quickly learned that since 1971, McMaster, an international organizer, had directed a 32-member Teamsters organizing unit that was traveling around the country, shaking down trucking companies in return for labor peace. In addition, I obtained interviews and documents showing that McMaster and his goo...