Speaker 1: Hey, guys, you know James Haffa. His middle name is Riddle.
Speaker 2: I did not know that.
Speaker 3: I don't think any of us did.
Speaker 1: But it's a bit weird, right Jimmy to his friends.
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hoffa is one of the most well known historical
Speaker 1: figures in these United States, and on July thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five, he disappeared.
Speaker 4: Yes he did, Yes he did. Lot's been said about
Speaker 4: mister Haffa. A lot, A lot of allegations have come
Speaker 4: out about people around Jimmy Hoffa. It's a it's a
Speaker 4: murky story, let's say, and lots has been made about
Speaker 4: his life and his disappearance in movies such as Haffa
Speaker 4: and Well it was contemporary to I guess twenty nineteen
Speaker 4: when we originally made this episode The Irishman.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot about The Irishman. I'm still baffled
Speaker 1: about the depth of investigation and the lack of official
Speaker 1: results in this one. Someone conspired for this guy to disappear,
Speaker 1: and in tonight's classic episode spoiler, folks, we hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy it, but we also hope you contact us directly
Speaker 1: if you happen to know what happened to Jimmy.
Speaker 4: Please do please do listen along and then write to us.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 5: production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 4: Hello, welcome back to the show.
Speaker 2: My name is Matt, my name is Nolan. They call
Speaker 2: me Ben.
Speaker 1: We are joined as always with our super producer Paul,
Speaker 1: Mission control deck, and most importantly are you.
Speaker 5: You are here and that.
Speaker 1: Makes this stuff they don't want you to know. From
Speaker 1: the offset, it is important for us to collectively establish
Speaker 1: that this episode is not an advertisement for the Irishman.
Speaker 1: The newest Scorsese film that just dropped on Netflix to
Speaker 1: no small amount of acclaim and a little bit of controversy.
Speaker 1: Al Pacino plays one of the I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: secondary is a good word, a secondary character in the film.
Speaker 1: He plays a character named Jimmy Hoffa, which is based
Speaker 1: on the real life Jimmy Hoffa. Now, Noel, you and
Speaker 1: I had talked about this film a little bit off
Speaker 1: air when we saw it, and Paul you watched it,
Speaker 1: so you brought it up to us without spoiling the
Speaker 1: film for anyone. It's based on a book right by
Speaker 1: this guy named Charles Brandt.
Speaker 2: Right, it's called What I Say I Heard You Paint Houses?
Speaker 1: I Heard you Paint Houses, which is a fantastic title.
Speaker 1: This book purports to be nonfiction. It includes interviews and
Speaker 1: alleged confessions made to the author, Charles Brandt, by a
Speaker 1: former Mafia hitman named Frank Sheeran like Ed Sheeran and Irishman. Yes,
Speaker 1: and this film inspired our own super producer Paul Deccan
Speaker 1: to say, Hey, guys, have we ever delved into the
Speaker 1: story of Jimmy Hoffa? And I don't know.
Speaker 3: I assumed that we had. We had.
Speaker 1: Not that changes today. So here are the facts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's talk about Jimmy Hoffa. Who is this guy? Well,
Speaker 4: he was born James Riddle. He went by Jimmy Hoffa,
Speaker 4: and he was born on Valentine's Day, that's February fourteenth,
Speaker 4: nineteen thirteen, called Brazil, Indiana.
Speaker 2: I did not know there was a Brazil Indiana.
Speaker 4: It's kind of cool. I'd never heard of that place either.
Speaker 4: Assuming the climate is a bit different in that Brazil
Speaker 4: he was aware of. Let's say the American labor force,
Speaker 4: the American laborer, the person who was using their hands
Speaker 4: to create something, generally for somebody else. His father was
Speaker 4: a coal miner, and he passed away when Hoffa was
Speaker 4: very very young, or Jimmy was young, and his mom
Speaker 4: had to end up joining the workforce to support her family,
Speaker 4: which which was a fairly common occurrence, as you know,
Speaker 4: the heads of households would die off, whether it was
Speaker 4: through war conflict, or a workforce accident or something like that.
Speaker 4: He had three siblings of four children, including Jimmy, and
Speaker 4: eventually they moved to a place called Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Which at the time was a hotbed of of industry
Speaker 1: and growing. You know, this is still before the enormous
Speaker 1: boom of the American auto industry, but still it's very
Speaker 1: much an industry's place.
Speaker 3: It's a great place to get a job.
Speaker 1: And we don't know how much formal education Jimmy Hoffa
Speaker 1: was able to achieve. You know, you'll hear history and
Speaker 1: say they don't know whether he reached high school, much
Speaker 1: less graduated, but we know that eventually while he was
Speaker 1: in school, he had to drop out. He had to
Speaker 1: help support his family, so he worked on the loading
Speaker 1: dock for a chain of grocery stores there in Detroit,
Speaker 1: and while working there, imagine how young this guy is.
Speaker 1: While working there, he organizes his very first labor strike
Speaker 1: and it all hinges on shipments of strawberries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he actually was pretty demonstrating some pretty serious
Speaker 2: streets smart to this point already, because he used a
Speaker 2: recent shipment of strawberries as leverage to help get his
Speaker 2: coworkers better deal, better contracts for their labor. They refused
Speaker 2: to unload the strawberries until they had secured a better
Speaker 2: pay and in the thirties, well, I.
Speaker 4: Just have to say right there with the strawberries, like
Speaker 4: that's a smart thing, because strawberries go bad pretty quickly,
Speaker 4: and if you don't unload the strawberries. He's like he
Speaker 4: was gumming up the works for everybody basically by doing that.
Speaker 4: And it's interesting how it set a timer, like very
Speaker 4: clear timer on when you're gonna lose all your money
Speaker 4: on these strawberries, and you're also losing money because that
Speaker 4: truck is now stuck there. It was just really smart.
Speaker 3: We don't have worked with canned peas.
Speaker 4: Honestly, it wouldn't because this canpeas.
Speaker 2: I don't know, Yeah, hard to say if that was
Speaker 2: just like a serendipitous thing or if he very much,
Speaker 2: you know, was being calculated about that. But it was
Speaker 2: absolutely a smart move and he got what he wanted. Then,
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties, Hoffa officially joined the International Brotherhood
Speaker 2: of Teamsters, which is what he went on to become
Speaker 2: the president of at least the union's Detroit chapter. So
Speaker 2: he kind of laid the groundwork for a career in labor,
Speaker 2: and it would seem it it came by honestly based
Speaker 2: on his trajectory and his upbringing.
Speaker 3: At that point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we should also stop too for anyone who
Speaker 1: doesn't know. Doubtless, doubtlessly we have several Teamsters in the
Speaker 1: audience today, but a lot of people in this country
Speaker 1: and abroad don't really know what a teamster is. The teamster,
Speaker 1: the old word, atymologically is like someone who drives a
Speaker 1: team of horses right now. According to their website teamster
Speaker 1: dot org, the Teamsters are America's largest, most diverse union.
Speaker 1: They started in nineteen oh three as the merger of
Speaker 1: two team driver associations Team by the way, not team
Speaker 1: in case my annunciation is off. And today you'll you
Speaker 1: may be most familiar with them as truck drivers, right,
Speaker 1: because we've replaced to a great degree, we've replaced animal
Speaker 1: labor with mechanical labor. So at this time he is
Speaker 1: he is, as you said, Noel joined up with the Teamsters.
Speaker 1: He starts as the president of the Detroit chapter. For
Speaker 1: many less ambitious people, that would be the version of
Speaker 1: making it, you know what I mean, I'm king of
Speaker 1: the town. And the thing is that Haffa is not
Speaker 1: a guy satisfied with being a big fish in a
Speaker 1: small town. Make no mistake, he is a shark. He
Speaker 1: expands union membership, He quickly garners a reputation for getting
Speaker 1: better contract agreements by any means necessary. Cough cough, corruption,
Speaker 1: cough cough, mafia cough cough threats cough. Right, But he
Speaker 1: started out honest, right, that's a very important thing. By
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty two, he's vice president of the entire union,
Speaker 1: so not just Detroit, but the entire international brotherhood of Teamsters.
Speaker 1: In just five years after that, nineteen fifty seven, he
Speaker 1: is the president of the entire organization.
Speaker 2: Well, it's one of these things where especially in the
Speaker 2: way he's portrayed in film like I haven't s been
Speaker 2: a long time since I've seen that Jack Nicholson film
Speaker 2: that I believe Danny DeVito directed. It's called Hofa. But
Speaker 2: at least in The Irishman, you do get the sense
Speaker 2: that he felt as though he were still representing the
Speaker 2: common man and doing something positive, even though he was
Speaker 2: clearly heading up what was not a strictly legal enterprise.
Speaker 2: He would he seemed like he maybe could convinced himself
Speaker 2: that it was all for the greater good. It was
Speaker 2: all forgetting his fellow brothers a better deal, like with
Speaker 2: the strawberries. But in order to do that, you know,
Speaker 2: we're swimming with sharks here. We got to play nice
Speaker 2: with the sharks. You got to be a bigger shirt,
Speaker 2: a bigger shark exactly, because it's all about in us
Speaker 2: versus them mentality, and in this case, us did include
Speaker 2: some pretty nefarious characters. Haffa was to be the subject
Speaker 2: of numerous criminal investigations, and it was a shadow that
Speaker 2: kind of relentlessly followed him throughout his career, and this
Speaker 2: is portrayed really, really well in the Scorsese film. Was
Speaker 2: it entirely surprising his direct predecessor, Dave Beck, had also
Speaker 2: been investigated and he was ultimately tried and convicted of
Speaker 2: corrupt practices within the union.
Speaker 1: Dave Beck, which was convicted, which gave Hafa the opportunity
Speaker 1: to ascend to this position. Yet Haffa persevered. Nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four was a big year for him in a number
Speaker 1: of ways, not all of them fantastic. His big win
Speaker 1: was that he got nearly all of the truck drivers
Speaker 1: in the entire continent of North America under a single contract.
Speaker 1: Uncle Sam had been keeping an eye on Jimmy, and
Speaker 1: they thought there was something rotten in the teamsters, something
Speaker 1: fishy about his rise to fame and his success. Now
Speaker 1: at this point, he is very, very similar to a
Speaker 1: well known politician or maybe even to some degree a celebrity. Right,
Speaker 1: the FBI and then US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy
Speaker 1: are watching Hafa very closely. They are convinced that a
Speaker 1: lot of his union success is less a result of
Speaker 1: being a shrewd negotiator and more a result of a
Speaker 1: close collaboration with organized crime also known as the mob
Speaker 1: or the mafia. Right, So what else happened in nineteen sixty.
Speaker 4: Four, Well, Haffa himself was found guilty of a couple
Speaker 4: of things, bribery for one, also jury tampering, ah, jury tampering,
Speaker 4: the good old JT. When something goes wrong and somebody
Speaker 4: knows it, you gotta tamper a little bit. Yeah right,
Speaker 4: And that can be really that can be really terrible
Speaker 4: or just going like here's one hundred dollars, don't don't
Speaker 4: talk about me, or it could yeah, or it could
Speaker 4: be something to the level of you know, memory is
Speaker 4: a funny thing, mister Smith, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes you think you remember, so you look back
Speaker 1: and you realize you don't remember it too good. After all,
Speaker 1: you know, it could have been anybody there. But you
Speaker 1: know one thing, one thing you never forget is your
Speaker 1: children smile. And it's wonderful. We'll be able to see
Speaker 1: that every day instead of just looking back and remembering
Speaker 1: it and wishing you could say hello to him.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, oh boy. Yeah, that was really good science
Speaker 2: and memory.
Speaker 4: I was gonna say, just like casually mentioning his or
Speaker 4: her daughter's birthday, but like that's like that was on
Speaker 4: that was on them, was on the money.
Speaker 1: Well that's cinematic. I'm sure it was much more subtle.
Speaker 4: Yes, but that stuff that that's when he was found
Speaker 4: guilty of both of those things in connection with a
Speaker 4: previous trial that he had that he had gone through
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty two years prior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was on trial for conspiracy, which I love
Speaker 1: you that people could be convicted of conspiracy. And then
Speaker 1: he was found guilty in sixty four for charges related to,
Speaker 1: as you said, Matt conspiracy. So that was one bad
Speaker 1: thing that happened to him that year.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's also convicted of misusing funds from the union's
Speaker 4: pension plan.
Speaker 1: And that's a big note in the in the film
Speaker 1: that Scorsese did, and also a note I believe in
Speaker 1: the book I Heard You Paint Houses, because the union's
Speaker 1: pension fund was an enormous amount of money and he
Speaker 1: pretty much had direct control over it, so he could
Speaker 1: make the money dance to the tunes he chose, and.
Speaker 2: A lot of those tunes were mafia backed projects, like
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas, for example, paying for wings to be
Speaker 2: constructed on you know, casinos, and as we know, a
Speaker 2: lot of that money came directly from the mob to
Speaker 2: start you know, Las Vegas in the first place. So
Speaker 2: there were those relationships that were ongoing and directly tied
Speaker 2: to dipping into that money, which would then be invested
Speaker 2: and get a return. And it's not like he was
Speaker 2: stealing money from the pensioners people who were doe that money.
Speaker 2: But it was still playing fast and loose with the rules.
Speaker 4: You know, you're telling me that organized crime organizations launder
Speaker 4: money through things like labor unions.
Speaker 1: It's true, Matt, money laundering, but it's got a great return.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna say, if everything goes well, there's a
Speaker 1: great return for that stuff. Yeah, money laundering was a
Speaker 1: big part of it. Also, at what point do this
Speaker 1: may be a story for a different day, but at
Speaker 1: what point do campaign donations become.
Speaker 2: Illegal?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: At what point are they interfering with the democratic process?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, all you gotta do is make them
Speaker 4: unlimited and then you're good to go. I should fix
Speaker 4: all those problems.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I think it's safe for the five of us. Paul, Noel, Matt, myself,
Speaker 1: and you listening to agree that Jimmy Hoffa probably did
Speaker 1: not deal with these philosophical quandaries in the same way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just costed doing business.
Speaker 2: So after three years fighting these charges that his lawyer,
Speaker 2: and you know again, as depicted in the Scorceti film,
Speaker 2: he was a union lawyer who was also very aware
Speaker 2: of what was going on, made the argument that this
Speaker 2: was all trumped up. He had exhausted his appeals finally,
Speaker 2: and he got thirteen years in prison, and in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven he was incarcerated in the Louisbourg Federal Prison
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania. And then came along a like minded individual
Speaker 2: who was sent it to the presidency, the little guy
Speaker 2: by the name of Richard Nixon, who commuted haff A
Speaker 2: sentenced in seventy one, essentially giving him a pard in
Speaker 2: a presidential pardon with a year and a half of probation. However,
Speaker 2: this came with a string attached Nixon and Haffa from
Speaker 2: holding any union leadership position at least until nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: So bit of a slap on the wrists.
Speaker 1: It's a weird one too, because it's a string with
Speaker 1: a time limit. He's not saying stay out of the game,
Speaker 1: you dirty rat. He's saying, just sit on the bench
Speaker 1: until the eighties. Let's let the heat die down a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 4: Well, and it's so so odd to me that Nixon,
Speaker 4: the president came through and said, you know what, it's okay,
Speaker 4: is it odd?
Speaker 2: You're good?
Speaker 4: You're good man, You're gonna be okay. It's only been
Speaker 4: a couple of years. You got thirteen, You'll be all right.
Speaker 1: Well, Haffa donated heavily. Oh I know this campaign too.
Speaker 4: But just to be able to get a president to
Speaker 4: do that, no matter how much money you're donating to them,
Speaker 4: because in the end, it's you know, the public appearance
Speaker 4: of something like that. But here's the deal. Jimmy Hoffa
Speaker 4: and a lot of labor union leaders out there are
Speaker 4: like hugely beloved no matter what they're doing, no matter
Speaker 4: what they've been committed of. Will you know, over the
Speaker 4: course of time and history, will be beloved because there
Speaker 4: is this this perception, at least from the outside. And
Speaker 4: and you know, like we said, Jimmy Hoffa thought that
Speaker 4: he was doing the right thing, or release appeared to
Speaker 4: believe he was doing the right.
Speaker 3: Thing, at least at the beginning.
Speaker 1: The ideology outweighed the ego.
Speaker 4: That exactly that ideology it ripples out through the public
Speaker 4: of people who are assisted in that way.
Speaker 2: And this is a one to one and some might
Speaker 2: accuse me of being hyperbolic here, but it's almost the
Speaker 2: way you hear about the way folks in Mydan treated
Speaker 2: Pablo Escobar. You know, very clearly bad guy, doing bad things,
Speaker 2: hurting people, probably directly hurting individuals in that community. But
Speaker 2: there's this perception that he's the best chance they've got,
Speaker 2: or he's actually looking out for the little people, you know,
Speaker 2: and he cares in some way, and they call him
Speaker 2: Saint Pablo and all that stuff, even though completely transparent
Speaker 2: that this guy is no good.
Speaker 4: Well in Hoffel, wasn't some mob boss, No exactly. I
Speaker 4: don't want to draw one way similar exactly, but there's
Speaker 4: intentions to look out for the labor class or the
Speaker 4: working class.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we can imagine, you know, I think that
Speaker 1: is a good comparison. We can imagine supporters of Escobar
Speaker 1: and supporters of HAFA, not that they're the same in
Speaker 1: the same line of business, but we can imagine the
Speaker 1: supporters saying, hey, this guy is the reason that we
Speaker 1: have a paycheck, is the reason that my family can
Speaker 1: live comfortably or better than they would have otherwise. So
Speaker 1: we have to remember also that with his enormous power,
Speaker 1: Jimmy Hoffa could move the vote, he could sway hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people to vote for or against a
Speaker 1: given candidate. And for the next few years, Haffa wages
Speaker 1: something very like a war. He's fighting that ban on
Speaker 1: leadership in court. He doesn't want to wait till nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: And he's also working behind the scenes, with mixed success,
Speaker 1: to reconsolidate his powerbase within the Union. And then, of course,
Speaker 1: as even a casual student of history will recall, things
Speaker 1: don't work out the way Haffa planned, or did they.
Speaker 1: We're going to rejoin him on July thirtieth, nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five after a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 1: July thirtieth, nineteen seventy five. Haffa is in a state
Speaker 1: of what the streets called deep beef. He has numerous enemies,
Speaker 1: he hasn't made a ton of friends, and he's alienated
Speaker 1: many of the friends he had. But he wants to
Speaker 1: make peace, and he realizes he might have to eat
Speaker 1: some crow, he might have to swallow his pride, He
Speaker 1: might have to make some inroads with people he swore
Speaker 1: he would never work with again. So he leaves his
Speaker 1: home in Detroit and he meets the two Tonys Anthony
Speaker 1: Tony Jack and Uh Anthony Tony Pro. Tony Jack is
Speaker 1: a figure in the Detroit crime scene. Tony Pro is
Speaker 1: a mob affiliated union leader who's based in New Jersey.
Speaker 1: So they're supposed to meet at this restaurant in Bloomfield Township.
Speaker 4: Is at the Macus Red Fox. I believe, so, yes,
Speaker 4: something like that.
Speaker 1: They're going to say, correct, They're gonna squash the beef.
Speaker 1: They're gonna settle their feud. At least that's what Haffa thinks.
Speaker 4: So Haffa shows up, or we believe at least his
Speaker 4: car shows up, and he appears to be the only
Speaker 4: one there. You know, he's there. He's going to meet
Speaker 4: two people. But Haffa is the only guy there, and
Speaker 4: he's wondering what's going on.
Speaker 2: Goes assume, We.
Speaker 4: Assume, because really we have no idea. We have no
Speaker 4: evidence at least that is, that is concrete as to
Speaker 4: what occurred after he showed up at that restaurant, or
Speaker 4: at least when his car showed up, because because his
Speaker 4: car was there. But he was never seen again by
Speaker 4: anyone except for the people responsible for what happened to
Speaker 4: him or himself. Responsible for whatever happened to him. That's right,
Speaker 4: it's a mystery. It's one of the most long standing
Speaker 4: mysteries that has existed in this country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of America's most prominent, divisive, important public figures
Speaker 1: had simply Kaiser so siaated, he disappeared, and we're almost
Speaker 1: a half a century into the post Hafa era. So
Speaker 1: what happened to Jimmy Haffa? Here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: The answer really depends on who you ask. There's no
Speaker 1: shortage of theories that have popped up over the intervening decades,
Speaker 1: and the most popular suspects being the mob of course,
Speaker 1: But in some cases this surprised me. US federal agencies interesting, right,
Speaker 1: did you guys hear about that one? That's a weird
Speaker 1: one for sure.
Speaker 2: I mean it makes sense considering that he was such
Speaker 2: a persona no grada like for you know, Kennedy and
Speaker 2: the US government. I mean, they were after him, and
Speaker 2: he more or less shook the rap and then was
Speaker 2: able to kind of get back into the game.
Speaker 4: Well, we'll get into it a little bit further, but
Speaker 4: there's also the idea that a federal agency was involved,
Speaker 4: but not in disappearing him by killing him or anything,
Speaker 4: but by putting him into a protection of some sort.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, at this point in the if we take
Speaker 1: the high level look at it, at this point in
Speaker 1: the world of conspiracy and speculation, the fate of Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hoffe's kind of entered urban legend status, which means that
Speaker 1: the theories start to obey some of the tropes we
Speaker 1: would associate with folk tales or oral tradition. The general
Speaker 1: consensus now is that the mob conspired to kill Hafa.
Speaker 1: They wanted to stop him from becoming the King of
Speaker 1: the Teamsters again. And that's because while he was locked up,
Speaker 1: even though he wasn't locked up for the full thirteen
Speaker 1: year sentence, while he was locked up, his former vice
Speaker 1: president got pretty cozy with the mob, even more so
Speaker 1: than Hoffa was, and he was much more willing to
Speaker 1: play some games. When Jimmy Hoffa got out, the wise guys,
Speaker 1: the mafioso knew that he would try to rain them
Speaker 1: in a little bit and they wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: play all the reindeer games that they had become so
Speaker 1: accustomed to. Make no mistake, they were probably making more
Speaker 1: money under that vice president.
Speaker 3: What was his name.
Speaker 4: Meant that was frank Fitzimmons, Frank Edward, I believe Frankie Fitz.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they were making they were probably making more
Speaker 1: money under Frankie Fitz. Who on earth would say no
Speaker 1: to continuing to enhance their profits. They weren't keen to
Speaker 1: mess with that relationship. So the the idea then is
Speaker 1: that the mob killed him or disappeared him, and we
Speaker 1: see a lot of common troops. Just like in other
Speaker 1: forms of folklore, there are tons of variations on this theory.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a kind of like a bar
Speaker 1: joke or something, you know, where it's like X walks
Speaker 1: into a bar. They follow the same gist a mob
Speaker 1: hit and then some sort of industrial process to destroy
Speaker 1: or hide Haffa's body. There are a ton of examples, yes.
Speaker 2: There are. Indeed. One of them is that Haffa was
Speaker 2: killed placed in the trunk of a car, then the
Speaker 2: car was crushed in a mob affiliated scrapyard. That'd be
Speaker 2: a pretty clever way to go about it, wouldn't that
Speaker 2: leave a lot of physical evidence? Though, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: you gotta we'll get a wonder when it like seep
Speaker 2: out of the cubed car like the remains or anything
Speaker 2: like that. I wonder what that would look like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I imagine, so it would have to definitely be
Speaker 1: a tightly controlled scrapyard. Scrapyards can be really big. But
Speaker 1: this was also in the days before DNA testing. It's
Speaker 1: true it wouldn't fly today.
Speaker 2: No, certainly not as much, specially if it was a
Speaker 2: known kind of mob tide facility or whatever. Another one
Speaker 2: is that he was hit in the head with a
Speaker 2: shovel and buried alive. Where are these coming from?
Speaker 1: Jeez, dramatic? I like it, but that one doesn't make
Speaker 1: the most sense.
Speaker 2: Do you have any providence for the for the origin
Speaker 2: of that one?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one comes to us from the great rumor mill.
Speaker 1: That doesn't That one doesn't have a lot of sand
Speaker 1: to it. A lot of these examples that we find
Speaker 1: came out later after because of course this happened before DNA.
Speaker 1: It also happened before internet, right, So a lot of
Speaker 1: these come about from statements by former mafia associated individuals,
Speaker 1: usually when they are tempting to seem as though they
Speaker 1: have leverage so that they can get some juice with
Speaker 1: the Feds, maybe get a better deal up to and
Speaker 1: including relocation and immunity.
Speaker 2: It makes sense, and that also makes sense for some
Speaker 2: of the ones to follow, which seemed to be kind
Speaker 2: of variations on a theme. Right, Haffa was murdered and
Speaker 2: his remains replaced in an oil drum. Haffa, in one
Speaker 2: container or another, was thrown into the Great Lakes, or
Speaker 2: was abducted by the FEDS and thrown from an airplane.
Speaker 1: It's a waterproof plan, full proof.
Speaker 3: That's uh. I just think about that.
Speaker 1: When has when has anybody said, you know, the best
Speaker 1: way to get rid of this prominent figure is to
Speaker 1: take them on an airplane and then, in full view
Speaker 1: of anyone who happens to be, you know, looking up,
Speaker 1: let's throw them from the plane.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't that one, okay? So that one comes from
Speaker 1: the FED. One specifically comes from a guy named Joseph Franco.
Speaker 1: I have no idea whether he's related to the actor.
Speaker 1: He was an old, one time associate of Haffa's, and
Speaker 1: Franco said that he'd kept the story to himself for
Speaker 1: years because he wanted to use them though as leverage
Speaker 1: in negotiating an immunity deal if he were caught for
Speaker 1: other unrelated crimes. Spoiler alert. It did not work out
Speaker 1: for Franco.
Speaker 2: No, it did not.
Speaker 1: There's one that Paul's a particular fan of as well,
Speaker 1: the idea that Haffa became this sort of grisly hidden
Speaker 1: landmark for a sports team.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 4: The idea is that Haffa was dispatched, shot maybe whatever
Speaker 4: it was. Then he was his limbs were taken apart,
Speaker 4: he was dismembered, then frozen, and then get this guess,
Speaker 4: buried inside the cement foundation of Giant Stadium. Now, this
Speaker 4: was then located in Rutherford, New Jersey and East Rutherford,
Speaker 4: New Jersey.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 1: And what's interesting about this, just to interject, is that
Speaker 1: there's a nice mythic tie in here because in some
Speaker 1: ancient civilizations and cultures, when you were building a place
Speaker 1: of great import, you were required to make a blood
Speaker 1: sacrifice of some sort.
Speaker 4: This and Cat's in there right right now.
Speaker 1: This doesn't work with that kind of left hand path
Speaker 1: stuff because the idea is that he wasn't killed on
Speaker 1: the site. If you really want the magic to hit,
Speaker 1: it's got to happen, you know, live and direct on
Speaker 1: the place where you plan to lay the stones.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I can't remember the movie that I just
Speaker 4: watched that talked all about that, but it had the
Speaker 4: actor who plays the Queen of Dragons. She was in it,
Speaker 4: and it was like a haunting horror movie on Netflix.
Speaker 2: Anyway, I'll check it out. It's out there.
Speaker 4: They they mentioned they mentioned burying a cat like and
Speaker 4: a live cat in the in.
Speaker 2: The walls jerks.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Gross.
Speaker 4: Well anyway, in this case, it was in Giant Stadium.
Speaker 4: And this is pretty crazy because it originates from an
Speaker 4: interview that a guy named Donald Francos gave in nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty nine to Playboy magazine.
Speaker 1: Which I want to say, at the time was doing
Speaker 1: great journalism.
Speaker 4: Actually still Playboys get Soldiers on.
Speaker 1: I'm not as familiar. I'm not as familiar with modern
Speaker 1: Playboy nowadays.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's the old joke that you just read
Speaker 2: it for the articles, but apparently, like for a while,
Speaker 2: it was absolutely a place where a lot of short
Speaker 2: stories writers broke their work and kind of went on
Speaker 2: to great things.
Speaker 1: My favorite shel Silverstein poem was published in Playboy, and
Speaker 1: I stole a copy as a kid so I could
Speaker 1: read the poem.
Speaker 3: Isn't that weird?
Speaker 2: That is quite weird.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good but it's about the Devil. It's
Speaker 3: a whole thing.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know the one. Yeah, that one's kind of filthy, Yes,
Speaker 2: it is not for all. I remember that one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a good one. What's the name of the Oh, gosh,
Speaker 2: the Devil and Billy Markham, that's the one. Yeah. And
Speaker 2: in that article in Playboy, he claimed that Hoffe was
Speaker 2: killed by a New York Irish mafia by the name
Speaker 2: of Jimmy Coonan and buried at the home field of
Speaker 2: the New York Giants and New York Jets football teams,
Speaker 2: so ac Cordy de Franco's. After Coonan shot Hoffe with
Speaker 2: a silence twenty two caliber pistol and a house in
Speaker 2: Mount Clemmens, Michigan, he and New York Mafia and John
Speaker 2: Sullivan bagged up the body parts and stored them in
Speaker 2: a freezer for months.
Speaker 3: See that's weird.
Speaker 1: Because you would think you would want to get rid
Speaker 1: of the body as soon as you can, because every
Speaker 1: time anybody else who knows about the freezer, even if
Speaker 1: they don't know there's a body in it, could be
Speaker 1: an avenue of exposure. But okay, so they've got been
Speaker 1: in this freezer for months apparently nobody opens the freezer
Speaker 1: at this part of town. What do they do after
Speaker 1: those months have passed.
Speaker 4: Well, you find a stadium that is under construction, a
Speaker 4: giant concrete monstrosity, and you find a place where concrete
Speaker 4: is being poured and you place it sortish underneath there. Right,
Speaker 4: that's the whole idea. So so for real, though, Giant
Speaker 4: Stadium was under construction and it was going to open
Speaker 4: up the next year, or it was planned to at least,
Speaker 4: the bags were then mixed into the concrete foundation in
Speaker 4: what became a certain section. So if you go, if
Speaker 4: you went to Giant Stadium and you looked at section
Speaker 4: one oh seven down there deep, that's where Jimmy Hoffe
Speaker 4: late at least according to this theory. And this section
Speaker 4: was located near the end zone of the stadium's football fields.
Speaker 2: There's one one of the end zones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's one problem with this, which is that there
Speaker 1: is no evidence other than these claims by people speaking
Speaker 1: years after the fact. In fact, the FBI, while they
Speaker 1: had initially entertained most descriptions or allegations of the fate
Speaker 1: of Jimmy Hoffa and they, you know, days and months
Speaker 1: following his disappearance. They really cooled on this theory, and
Speaker 1: when the stadium was demolished in twenty ten, the FBI
Speaker 1: did not even bother to show up and search them site.
Speaker 4: Because they put him there. I'm just kidding, that's that's
Speaker 4: not true.
Speaker 2: I'm joking, you know.
Speaker 1: I just I don't think people really get thrown from
Speaker 1: planes as often as fiction would have us believe.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the that's the other part of the stories.
Speaker 4: He was thrown from a plane and he went right through,
Speaker 4: straight through that concrete and just like embedded inside there.
Speaker 3: And oh and the FBI went, yeah, good enough, she.
Speaker 4: Was wet though concrete was still wet, and he just went.
Speaker 1: Uh, so, let's get back to shen Shechern is the
Speaker 1: source of the claims that are made in the book
Speaker 1: I Heard You Paint Houses, Uh and The Irishman. The
Speaker 1: film is based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses.
Speaker 1: Chern says that he had betrayed Jimmy Hoffa, and he
Speaker 1: says multiple times that Jimmy Hoffa was a friend of
Speaker 1: his right and he said he pulled the trigger because
Speaker 1: it was inevitable that someone was gonna kill Hafa, and
Speaker 1: so he thought he felt honor bound that it should
Speaker 1: be him, and he thought, also, you know, at least
Speaker 1: I'll make it quick. He'll die instantly. So here's what
Speaker 1: he said happened. He said that he brought Haffa to
Speaker 1: a house in northwestern Detroit. He stood behind Jimmy Hoffa,
Speaker 1: and while Jimmy hoff was distracted, Chron shot him twice
Speaker 1: in the back of the head the double tap, and
Speaker 1: then he said they cremated Haffa's remains an a trastion
Speaker 1: cinerator in the suburbs of Detroit. Shechrin actually gave the
Speaker 1: address of the house, and we'll get to this. We
Speaker 1: gave the address of the house where the murder supposedly
Speaker 1: took place. Investigators treated seriously. They searched the site for
Speaker 1: evidence of the killing, and they found traces of blood
Speaker 1: in the house, but later testing revealed that this blood
Speaker 1: did not belong to Haffa, so someone probably died. Maybe
Speaker 1: Sherin was just misremembering. This, however, was just one of
Speaker 1: several searches conducted. We'll get to a few of those
Speaker 1: after award from our sponsor.
Speaker 2: And we're back.
Speaker 4: Now let's get into some of the official attempts to
Speaker 4: find Jimmy Hoffer to recover his body or even to
Speaker 4: locate him if he was still alive. So get let's
Speaker 4: jump to nineteen eighty nine to the FBI and Kenneth Walton.
Speaker 4: He's the agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office
Speaker 4: and he was speaking with the Detroit News in nineteen
Speaker 4: eighty nine and he was talking about how he knew
Speaker 4: what had happened to Haffa, and we have a quote
Speaker 4: from him here.
Speaker 2: I'm comfortable, I know who did it, but it's never
Speaker 2: going to be prosecuted because we would have to divulge informants,
Speaker 2: confidential sources. Mm hmmm, foremants common confidential sources cis. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, now let's just say I can imagine in a
Speaker 4: case like this, with somebody like Jimmy Hoffa that has
Speaker 4: so many connections to probably multiple organized criminal organizations, that
Speaker 4: if you did, let's say, charge somebody that you knew
Speaker 4: or you were aware of who did it. But if
Speaker 4: by doing that, it's going to compromise like two or
Speaker 4: three major let's say vice investigations or you know, investigations
Speaker 4: of conspiracy like that would be a hard that would
Speaker 4: be a difficult choice to make at least just to
Speaker 4: find the killer or to apprehend the killer of another
Speaker 4: known criminal or associated So like, why would you give
Speaker 4: up on this other thing that is viable right now
Speaker 4: just to just to close that case?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Yeah, because if and I don't want
Speaker 1: to put words into the mouths of the law enforcement here,
Speaker 1: but I think that's a fantastic point, because if you
Speaker 1: think that someone is already inherently corrupting kind of a
Speaker 1: dirt bag for one reason or another, then do you
Speaker 1: feel the same moral obligation to pursue a case, especially
Speaker 1: if it means pursuing that case may preclude your ability
Speaker 1: to lock up other living criminals?
Speaker 4: Yeah, who are out there still doing things that you
Speaker 4: find morally or you know, legally.
Speaker 2: Terrible.
Speaker 4: That's a really good point, man, I don't I mean
Speaker 4: it would it would make sense that Walton at.
Speaker 2: Least believed, like truly believed he knew.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I would say also, I would say also
Speaker 1: to as anyone in the enforcement community listening to the
Speaker 1: show today, including our NSA intern Steve knows full well,
Speaker 1: I imagine that the vast majority of professionals working in those
Speaker 1: fields would say, well, it doesn't matter whether I like
Speaker 1: someone who is a victim of a crime. It's my job,
Speaker 1: it's my career.
Speaker 4: Correct. But it is a cold hard fact that somebody
Speaker 4: somewhere would have to make the decision to to you know,
Speaker 4: if there was and this is the big if here,
Speaker 4: if there was a conflict in that way that we're
Speaker 4: speaking of here, somebody would have to make the decision
Speaker 4: to either continue searching for Haffa and going down those leads,
Speaker 4: or saying, okay, we got to leave this alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's true, it's true. The search continues.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and one, you know, we had mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier the lack of DNA evidence for testing. Now, forensic
Speaker 1: DNA is a thing, forensic DNA investigation. Rather, in two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, these hair strands found in a nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy five Mercury marquee linked Haffa to a vehicle that
Speaker 1: authorities believed was used in this disappearance. This vehicle, this
Speaker 1: Mercury was owned by a friend of Haffa's named Charles
Speaker 1: Chucky O'Brien, and they were actually they were actually friends.
Speaker 1: Police and survivors. Members of Haffa's family had always believed
Speaker 1: that O'Brien played some sort of role in the disappearance,
Speaker 1: but O'Brien for decades had denied being involved in any shape,
Speaker 1: form or fashion. He said, in fact, Haffa had never
Speaker 1: even been a passenger in his car. Now, just to
Speaker 1: tip here for all the nair dwells in the crowd today,
Speaker 1: if you want a stone wall, that's a that's a
Speaker 1: pretty good way to do it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: That's like just under the level of playing so dumb
Speaker 1: that you say I own a car.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, we found these hairs of Jimmy Hoffa's in
Speaker 4: your car. He's never even been in there.
Speaker 3: I own a car.
Speaker 2: What's hair?
Speaker 3: Guys? This is a lot for me to take in.
Speaker 1: Gosh, but this lead this search also petered out because
Speaker 1: you see authorities linked Hafa or some strands of his
Speaker 1: hair to the car, but they were not able to
Speaker 1: determine when Hafa would have been in the car. This
Speaker 1: also could mean that since he and Chucky hang out
Speaker 1: a lot, that maybe the hair just got on some
Speaker 1: of Chucky's clothing or something.
Speaker 2: And I think we maybe bury the lead here a
Speaker 2: little bit. Chucky was more than just a friend. He
Speaker 2: was Halfa's adopted son, right, and the way it's portrayed
Speaker 2: in the movie. I was a little confused about it too,
Speaker 2: because there's a scene where somebody pulls a gun on
Speaker 2: Hafa during one of his trials or like, you know,
Speaker 2: one of his corruption trials, and Chucky kicks the crap
Speaker 2: out of the guy, and Haffa makes a big scene
Speaker 2: by saying, as my boy, you know, like I raised
Speaker 2: him or whatever.
Speaker 3: You run for a knife, you charge your gun, you charge.
Speaker 2: A gun, exactly, A point being it wasn't his blood son,
Speaker 2: it wasn't his biological son, but essentially was someone he
Speaker 2: had taken under his wing and referred to more or
Speaker 2: less as his adopted son. So my question is surely
Speaker 2: he if they were as close as as as the
Speaker 2: record indicates, he would have been in that car before.
Speaker 3: He's never been in my What is a car? I
Speaker 3: have a car.
Speaker 4: I don't understand, Charles w Chucky O'Brien.
Speaker 1: So there were more searches they've continued. We mentioned that
Speaker 1: twenty twelve search based on the testimony of Sheeran or
Speaker 1: the statements of Sherian. Investigators did search that residence based
Speaker 1: on a tip twenty twelve. They didn't They didn't find anything.
Speaker 1: They found some blood, but it wasn't half as you.
Speaker 2: I think every time I hear the name Shearon, Yes,
Speaker 2: ed she no, she ra, Oh you know power, it's
Speaker 2: the better version myself here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that wasn't me.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I never understood why it wasn't she woman because there
Speaker 1: was this internal consistent man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then she rah.
Speaker 3: Why couldn't be he Ra?
Speaker 2: That'd be cool. I was actually of a ThunderCats guy.
Speaker 2: I was a superior muscly mutant show. In my opinion,
Speaker 2: I was ThunderCats.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, we're doing the low dubstep.
Speaker 2: That was kind of the the Hank Hill versus.
Speaker 3: I was gonna.
Speaker 4: I thought it's gonna be so much more intense than that.
Speaker 4: I was kind of bracing myself and there.
Speaker 2: Well, because we were we were reacting to your brace. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we held back because you were clearly.
Speaker 3: I think we both thought that you were.
Speaker 1: You were just letting the moment build and you were
Speaker 1: going to scream it.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no, it was great.
Speaker 3: We'll fix it in post. No, I don't need it,
Speaker 3: so it's great. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unrelated saw rewatched the live action he Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I liked it you know who plays Skeletor.
Speaker 1: Uh oh uh not Dolph Lunggren.
Speaker 3: Uh frank No, yeah, that's it.
Speaker 1: And he he's the only person who hasn't disowned the
Speaker 1: film because his kids liked it. He played a very
Speaker 1: strange Skeletor. Also, you know, some toy lines just don't
Speaker 1: have the narrative haft to hold a feature. You know,
Speaker 1: they even had man at arms in there.
Speaker 2: Anyway, what else was Franklin going, Oh, yeah, he's.
Speaker 1: In a bunch of stuff, but he was not in
Speaker 1: the Haffa investigation.
Speaker 2: No, which should probably return to you to wrap this
Speaker 2: one up.
Speaker 1: In June of twenty thirteen, the FBI gets another tip
Speaker 1: and they search a field in Oakland Township, Michigan, that's
Speaker 1: about twenty miles away from where Halfa was last scene.
Speaker 1: There was a guy involved in crime named Tony Zarelli,
Speaker 1: not the stereotype, but this is this is a Tony
Speaker 1: heavy tail and Zarelli gave the gave the authorities info
Speaker 1: about where he said Halfa was buried. He also described
Speaker 1: how Haffa died. He said, oh, yeah, he's the he's
Speaker 1: the person who said that Haffa was hit on the
Speaker 1: head with a shovel and buried alive. But he said
Speaker 1: this in an ebook that he was selling for profit,
Speaker 1: and nothing came of it. So either the authorities were
Speaker 1: bad at digging or Zarelli was miss remembering. But at
Speaker 1: this point no one has verified any remains. The closest
Speaker 1: they've come would be those strands of hair with Haffa's DNA.
Speaker 1: But this also leads us to controversies. The Irishman is
Speaker 1: based on, as we said, a single book. Both Scorsese
Speaker 1: and de Niro, who plays Sherin, described the character Sherian
Speaker 1: in the film as a fictional persona based on or
Speaker 1: loosely inspired by the real guy. And furthermore, not all
Speaker 1: Haffa experts agree with Sheern's story. A couple of them
Speaker 1: think it's total malarkey.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah. The author Dan Mouldea, he wrote the book
Speaker 4: The Hoffa Wars, and he's been researching the disappearance of
Speaker 4: this gentleman for god forty years. So he was speaking
Speaker 4: with Robert de Niro in twenty fourteen, and he basically
Speaker 4: was trying to ward off de Niro, saying that you know,
Speaker 4: he's got all these doubts about Sheeran's story. I'm just
Speaker 4: telling DeNiro that you're in in Brandt where I, for
Speaker 4: let's say, essentially running a con job on de Niro,
Speaker 4: saying this is you should not be doing this, like
Speaker 4: why would you make this movie? But again, like this
Speaker 4: is pretty this is a pretty interesting story. Even if
Speaker 4: it's not true. I would say it's it's pretty good storytelling,
Speaker 4: and and it makes me want to watch it.
Speaker 2: Are we in spoiler territory here for the film? I
Speaker 2: feel like we've kind of danced around it, right.
Speaker 3: Uh, we can, Yeah, we could go ahead.
Speaker 1: Let's do the spoiler countdown because it is a new film, right,
Speaker 1: three two and one.
Speaker 2: There's I was I didn't and I didn't hadn't done
Speaker 2: my homework. Is that much Before watching this I knew
Speaker 2: it was based on a book. I did not realize
Speaker 2: that it was meant to be unequivocally like this guy
Speaker 2: killed Jimmy Hoffap this is it. And when the moment
Speaker 2: in the film where that happens, I wasn't expecting it.
Speaker 2: And then I immediately googled Irishmen fiction, you know, And
Speaker 2: I think that's sort of the consensus is that it's
Speaker 2: a little more fiction or at least you know, conflation
Speaker 2: of fact and fiction. It is pure nonfiction storytelling because
Speaker 2: it again is based on one book, one man's account,
Speaker 2: a deathbed confession. Essentially, you know, this guy did not
Speaker 2: live much longer past this interview, and that's that's dramatized
Speaker 2: in the film as well. The fact that he's delivering
Speaker 2: this story to the perspective camera, which is you know,
Speaker 2: supposed to be the journalist of parent you know, which
Speaker 2: is you are the stand in for that kind of
Speaker 2: as a viewer. Excellent film. But when I saw that,
Speaker 2: I was like, WHOA, Okay, I guess we're this is
Speaker 2: sort of a hybrid thing I'm seeing here, like Once
Speaker 2: upon a time in Hollywood, for example. But if you
Speaker 2: were to believe the book, then this this is how
Speaker 2: it happened.
Speaker 4: I do want to bring something up. My father in
Speaker 4: law talked with me about this pretty extensively. He is
Speaker 4: also a tony and he told me that, without getting
Speaker 4: into too much detail, if this kind of thing was
Speaker 4: gonna go down with somebody like Jimmy Hoffa, the only
Speaker 4: way you could pull it off is to get one
Speaker 4: of his closest associates or friends to do.
Speaker 2: It himself, because he's so protected uh huh.
Speaker 4: So it would make sense for Scheran's character to actually
Speaker 4: be the one who's able to get close enough to
Speaker 4: do it.
Speaker 2: Because we haven't really talked about this exactly, but I
Speaker 2: mean they're basically brothers, yeah, in the film. And there's
Speaker 2: another character, the head of the Buffelini crime family, you know, Russell,
Speaker 2: who's played by Joe Peshy wonderful performance. The three of
Speaker 2: them are kind of inseparable. They're almost like a family.
Speaker 2: But Jimmy in particular gets a really close relationship with
Speaker 2: his daughter and that's the whole thing. But yeah, he
Speaker 2: trusts him like a blood brother.
Speaker 1: Well, one of the other reasons, I mean, think of
Speaker 1: the logistics. If you're trying to pull off a job
Speaker 1: like this, you have somebody who not only has a
Speaker 1: protective close circle, but they also have a established schedule, calendar.
Speaker 1: People know where and when they're supposed to be at
Speaker 1: the majority of times. It's not like if you're just
Speaker 1: doing you know, if you're just landing in a strange
Speaker 1: town and finding someone under a bridge that no one
Speaker 1: will miss for a few weeks, like this is an
Speaker 1: established thing where you have you know, you have at
Speaker 1: most probably a few hours to get out of town, right,
Speaker 1: So it's it definitely. I think your father in law
Speaker 1: is on the money.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's kind of scary, but yes, let's continue.
Speaker 1: So Dan Moldea has his own theory. He believes Hoffa's
Speaker 1: disappearance was, in his mind, a New Jersey operation. He
Speaker 1: said he's interviewed all the suspected killers in his decades
Speaker 1: long search for the truth of the matter, and he
Speaker 1: he thinks it's most likely that it was a production
Speaker 1: of New Jersey operators. Paul Mission Control Decat raised a
Speaker 1: great point off air earlier when we were talking, and
Speaker 1: he said one thing that he found, one thing that
Speaker 1: he found compelling was that the story she Run's account
Speaker 1: felt kind of understated, like the way Noel depicted it.
Speaker 1: This death is you know, there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: gravitas build up. It feels abrupt and brutal. If that
Speaker 1: is this last one was the last one, promise, If
Speaker 1: that is Jimmy Hoffe killed himself.
Speaker 3: We didn't talk about this.
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk too much about it because
Speaker 1: there's not a ton of evidence to lean on here.
Speaker 1: But what if he committed pseudo side, which as we
Speaker 1: all know, is the fancy pants cravat wearing word for
Speaker 1: faking one's death. It is very very difficult to do
Speaker 1: successfully if you want to make any money. It is
Speaker 1: not impossible to do if you want to just dis
Speaker 1: appear and lived by her wits.
Speaker 4: Or if you have access to someone who makes some
Speaker 4: very accurate id of some sort.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Could he have gone with the Federal Witness Protection program?
Speaker 1: Could he have gone with you or with the UH?
Speaker 1: Could he have gone with the institution that is sometimes
Speaker 1: called witless protection? And if so, what happened to him? Well,
Speaker 1: we know that Jimmy Hoffa died for legal purposes on
Speaker 1: July thirtieth, nineteen eighty two. He was declared legally dead
Speaker 1: as we record today's episode. His disappearance and his likely
Speaker 1: death have yet to be confirmed. Let's do a little math.
Speaker 1: If he were alive in twenty nineteen as we record this,
Speaker 1: he would be one hundred and six years old. That
Speaker 1: means even if somehow he actually went off the grid,
Speaker 1: you know, changed his name to himI Jaffa or whatever,
Speaker 1: and lived in a small town in Saskatchewan or something,
Speaker 1: he probably all already passed away. But that hasn't stopped
Speaker 1: the investigation. As a matter of fact, this is one
Speaker 1: of the things we can leave you with. The film
Speaker 1: and the book that we've mentioned today may have inspired
Speaker 1: US investigators to get back on the case.
Speaker 4: So this was December twenty nineteen. This is right now
Speaker 4: as we're recording this, as The Irishman has come out.
Speaker 4: There's an interview with US attorney Matthew Schneider, and this
Speaker 4: guy was asked by you know, a reporter, by someone there,
Speaker 4: what do you you know? What do you think about
Speaker 4: the Irishman? What are your thoughts? Well, his statement was
Speaker 4: certainly intriguing.
Speaker 2: I will talk about this, but not now. I have
Speaker 2: a lot of thoughts about it. It's unresolved. I have
Speaker 2: my own theories. There will be more to come on this.
Speaker 2: WHOA yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't mean to
Speaker 2: dismiss this whole thing as being like some sort of fantasy. Obviously,
Speaker 2: there's information in this film, in this book that is meaningful.
Speaker 2: But you can draw your conclusions. But anybody like this
Speaker 2: who's actually really close to the story, surely there's gonna
Speaker 2: be some stuff that there's a ring of truth to,
Speaker 2: or that he knows unequivocally is true. And I'd be
Speaker 2: interested to hear this perspective. I think that it's the
Speaker 2: people that are still alive that I think that can
Speaker 2: really shed some light on which parts of this are real.
Speaker 2: And that's yet to be determined.
Speaker 3: And this is also a.
Speaker 1: Situation because many of the people who would have been
Speaker 1: in their prime and directly involved have passed on. That's
Speaker 1: just how, you know, That's just how the body crumbles, right, And.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it makes me, it makes me wonder if a
Speaker 4: deathbed confession has already occurred. It just kind of went
Speaker 4: unnoticed because the family and the surrounding people were just like, okay, whatever, whatever, Grandpa,
Speaker 4: you're crazy, or even grandpa, what are you saying? No, no, no,
Speaker 4: no, no no.
Speaker 2: We don't talk about their grandpa Rampo.
Speaker 1: It's supposed to be Omeerica.
Speaker 3: You know the rules, get the pillow.
Speaker 4: I'm just you know, that was dark.
Speaker 1: I apologize.
Speaker 4: We're gonna take it. Hey, Grandpa, We're gonna take a
Speaker 4: quick trip over to the Giants stadium. It's gonna be fine, Grandpa,
Speaker 4: just come with us.
Speaker 1: The best view is from outside the player.
Speaker 3: Oh, this is terrible.
Speaker 2: Just that field of dreams, right.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 2: It's right let us know what you think. You can
Speaker 2: reach to the handle Conspiracy Stuff where we exist on
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