Jimmy Hoffa murder: Son says Teamsters, mob made him disappear

DETROIT (FOX 2) - The investigation into the disappearance and death of Jimmy Hoffa has long been cold. Sure, there have been tips and digs and searches over the past 50 years – but nothing has ever been found.

For his son, who carries the same first and last name, the lack of closure is a weight that he carries. 

James P. Hoffa is not James Hoffa Jr. but he is the former Teamsters Union president's son – and a former union president as well. 

Jimmy Hoffa mystery: 50 years after his disappearance

In a rare interview, James P. Hoffa met FOX 2's Taryn Asher at his favorite coney island in Troy to discuss his father's fearless approach. Jimmy Hoffa took on the government and the mob as the voice of the working man. That bravery and fearlessness is what his son believes cost him his life.

"I was afraid for his safety. My father was a very fearless person and he was one of these people, you know, he was just a very strong person and that's the way he was," James said. "So, when I knew he didn't come home, I had the worst thoughts. I immediately flew home."

James was 34 when his father vanished. He called police, he filed reports, and he called people who were connected to his dad. But nobody was talking.

Now at the age of 84, the pain of his father's disappearance and death still haunts James.

A lasting legacy

To really learn about Jimmy Hoffa, we have to go back to Clay County, Indiana, where the Hoffa family began.

Jimmy Hoffa's father died young and his family fell on tough times, propelling the family to move to Michigan. Jimmy Hoffa had to get to work.

"He didn't have a choice, he had a 10th grade education, he had to go to work because they didn't have any money," James Hoffa said.

Jimmy Hoffa took a job at Kroger and that's where he took his first stand: refusing to unload a shipment of strawberries due to the treatment of delivery drivers.

That act of defiance was a bold move that got the attention of the Teamsters Union and Jimmy Hoffa would become a labor legend.

"We would go for a ride around town. We'd always end up on a picket line. And at 10 years old, I'm carrying a picket sign with my dad by the fire barrel," James Hoffa said.

Thousands would line up at union halls just to hear his father speak and, in 1957, he was catapulted to the top of the Teamsters Union. As the union president, he traveled cross-country to crusade for workers and go head-to-head with powerful politicians.

Jimmy Hoffa's frustrating disappearance for feds and family

Back home, James remembered his dad for always being present. The Hoffa family lived on Robson in Detroit before moving to Lake Orion, and James remembered his dad pushing him to break new ground and be the first to go to college.

"As busy as he was, he would make sure we spent time together, we'd be vacation together, and we went hunting together, we went fishing together. He spent time with me and time with my sister as a family. And that means a lot right there," James said. "The 60s were the really key area, because that's where he negotiated the first national contract, national freight contract, which covered 400,000 people, which spilled over into other industries and basically raised the standard of living for all Teamsters. It put Teamsters in the middle class. We were the most powerful union."

The working man was a force to be reckoned with as Hoffa set the standard for labor contracts, with better pay, and safer working conditions. One of his biggest moves was to secure pensions for blue-collar workers to retire with dignity.

But Jimmy Hoffa's major successes came with sacrifices and controversy.

After finishing college, James Hoffa passed the bar and became an attorney, but he couldn't sop his dad from going to prison.

In 1967, ten years after being elected president of the union, Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering, fraud and using pension funds to pay off mob members in exchange for kickbacks. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

"(It was) very, very tough. I had to visit my father every week. I had to fly to Lewisburg (Pennsylvania), which is a hard place to get to. It'll take two airplanes at six o’clock in the morning. You're afraid if you miss that flight, you ain't going. It's one of those things. So those are very difficult times," James Hoffa said. "It was hard on me because I'm trying to build my law practice, I just got married, (we were) having kids, (I was) visiting my father, and (had a) sick mother. I had my hands full."

As he visited his dad, the older Hoffa was pushing for James to help get him out of prison.

"He basically was saying, get me out of here. I mean, you know, I'm being held as a political prisoner. I want to be out of there. So we worked very hard at that. And he would also be…talking about the union, because he was still – he had his people in there running the union. And he'd tell me, go tell the guy to do this, do that."

In 1971, four years after his sentence, President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence. But it came with a catch: The labor leader couldn't return to the Teamster – the very union he had built. 

But Jimmy Hoffa didn't give up. He fought to regain his power until he disappeared on July 30, 1975.

"A lot of people didn't want him to come back because he was going to straighten the union out. He had been gone for a while and he wanted the union to be what it should be. And they didn't want him coming back and that was what was behind his disappearance," James Hoffa said.

Who made Jimmy Hoffa disappear?

James P. Hoffa said his dad's disappearance and murder was linked to three things: Power, politics, and the mob.

"He wanted to come back in the union and the people, Frank Fitzsimmons and the people running the union at the time, did not want him coming back. And he told people, I'm coming back, I'm going to take your job. And that was a threat to them. So they got together with people that could kill him and that's what happened to him," James Hoffa said.

On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa told his family he was going to the Machus Red Fox to meet Tony Giacalone (Tony Jack), and his brother Billy, at the Machus Red Fox in Bloomfield Township. He knew and trusted Tony Jack so he agreed to meet him. But Tony Jack didn't show up on time.

At 3 p.m., another car pulled up and Jimmy Hoffa got in.

The speculation for the past five decades has all come back to organized crime figures like Frank Fitzsimmons, who got comfortable as Jimmy Hoffa's replacement, and the mob, specifically the Provenzanos and the Giacalones. When Jimmy Hoffa threatened to expose their dealings, the mob made their problem go away.

"They didn't want him coming back because he was going to straighten out the union, make the union strong again for the members, to make the union for the members because that's what he believed in," James Hoffa said. "I have theories but you know they're as good as anybody else's theories. Like I said people that took him to you know basically lured him into a meeting and took him to some place and murdered him. A tragic story but the whole idea is why he was trying to come back in the Union and they didn't want him back."

Another theory has swirled around Chuckie O'Brien, Jimmy Hoffa's foster son. He's been accused of luring Jimmy Hoffa to his death. The day Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, O'Brien was driving a 1975 Mercury Marquis, the same kind of car that witnesses said Jimmy Hoffa climbed into. 

James agrees with the speculation.

"I think he was involved somehow and he became very suspicious. He showed up at the cottage the next day and I started asking him, where were you? And he didn't have any answers and he ran away from me, got in his car and drove away. He was involved," James Hoffa said.

Jimmy Hoffa's hair was found in O'Brien's car and James Hoffa said there was no explanation when his dad disappeared.

"I think there was a falling out. There was a falling out right at the end. So I think that's what made him be part of any kind of a plot against my father," James Hoffa said.

James Hoffa and O'Brien would never talk again. The man he once called a brother died in 2020, taking whatever he knew to the grave.

The Machus Red Fox is an Andiamo but James Hoffa said he's never been there since that day.

"I do drive by it, and every time I think about it, every time I drive by on Telegraph, I do think about it," he said. "But I've never gone there probably for that reason that I'll never go there."

As the decades have passed, tips have poured in, at times. But James Hoffa said he's gotten to the point that he can't believe them all.

"After a while, you really don't believe any of this. I mean, obviously, hope is hope. You can't ignore everything. There's been so many things where people say, oh, he's over here, over there. There's the diggings around Michigan. And after a while you get, it's hard to do that, because every time there is an expectation, it gets raised. And that's hard on people, hard on me, hard on my sister. And we call and we talk about it nothing ever comes of it," he said.

Still, he wants to know. 

Jimmy Hoffa: A dead case but never closed

"One of the things we don't have with my father, because of the disappearance and the way it was and it was found, that we don't have closure in our family. And that today is something that is important to my sister and I, that somehow we want to know what happened," James Hoffa said.

He doesn't have expectations that there would be a trace of his father today.

"I don't think so today. I think the answer is, it is what it is. If we ever find out anything, maybe, you know, one of the problems is that, you know, it's been 50 years and so many people that were involved are dead," James Hoffa said. "You had all these sightings. Right around 1975, as the years go on, it gets harder and harder, you know, 50 years. But people would say, well, he's here or he's there. And everybody knew that wasn't true. But somehow your heart jumps and says maybe," James said.

Hope has faded and Hollywood depictions have been entertaining but not accurate. All of these years later, James Hoffa has seen the movies. While they help keep the story alive, they're not the truth.

"I'm sick of it, because there have been so many movies. You know, there have been four movies, if you really think about it, you know, going back to Robert Blake, going back to Sylvester Stallone, and First, and people don't even know that all these movies have been made, I know them all, Hoffa with Jack Nicholson, and The Irishman, so there have so many major movies that keep the whole idea alive, you know, I'm tired of that, because they don't tell the story about what his true contribution was. That he was a great labor leader, that he cared about the members, that I was raised in a union home where we talked about the members around the kitchen table. That's the kind of family I was raising in. And that doesn't come through in those movies and that's what a story I want people to know," James Hoffa said.

Jimmy the dad

"He was a leader. I mean, he was our guy, and he ran the family, and he did a great job, and he wanted to come back in the union because he knew the union needed him to start rebuilding this union for the members so he could deliver for the members, and that's what this was all about," he said.

It was his father's fight who inspired James P. Hoffa to follow in his dad's footsteps. In 1998, he was elected president of the Teamsters Union, 41 years after his dad was elected and 23 years after he disappeared.

"The union was in shambles at that time. We had a guy in there by the name of Ron Carey – he had bankrupted the union, we didn't have any money, we didn't have a strike fund, and it was my job to pull it together. So it was my opportunity and I saw that opportunity. And it was a big thing because when you've been practicing law those years, I had to stop practicing law and go to work and I wanted that because I said, this is an opportunity that will never come again."

He had some shared goals with his father: make the union strong.

"I wanted to make sure the union was what it should be and the times change, the demands change, issues of the 60s are different than the 90s or 2000 and I wanted to make sure that the union delivers for its members and that's what this is all about and we did that," he said.

His own lasting legacy

At the age of 84, James P. Hoffa is working on his own memoir as he reflects back on his time as Teamsters president, a role he held for a decade longer than his father.

"I was there for 5 presidents 5 elections," James said.

As  he reflects back, James P. Hoffa may have followed his father's footsteps, but he never tried to be his father. 

Instead, he carved his own path and modernized the labor movement while restoring integrity to the union once tainted by corruption. He rebuilt the Teamster from the inside out through diplomacy and partnership with the government. 

His actions ensured the Hoffa name stands for for power, purpose, and the enduring strength of the American worker.