Gangland:7/30/15

[Dellacroce]

July 30, 2015 This Week in Gang Land
By Dan E. Moldea

The Disappearance Of Jimmy Hoffa: Forty Years Later

The mystery of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance on July 30, 1975, has confounded the nation for 40 years. Even as the trail has waxed and waned, and the baffling cast of sketchy characters is dying off, the FBI and the media still keep an eye peeled for the one clue or confession that will lead to the final resolution of the mystery, perhaps even the recovery of the remains of the long gone 62-year-old ex-boss of the Teamsters Union.

Based on the evidence, including my own contributions to the case, I believe that what I am presenting here is the most plausible theory to date as to what happened, who did it, and where Hoffa ended up.

The Hoffa murder was a three-act drama with different characters in each act: In Act One, Hoffa went to the Machus Red Fox restaurant in a Detroit suburb in anticipation of a meeting with two Mafia figures, Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone of Detroit and Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano of Union City, New Jersey. Supposedly, neither man showed up.

In Act Two, Hoffa was picked up and taken to the location where he was murdered.

In Act Three, his body was disposed of.

This is a story about Act Three with passing references to Acts One and Two.

The first public break in the case came on December 4, 1975, when Salvatore and Gabriel Briguglio and Stephen and Thomas Andretta, four long-time associates of Tony Provenzano, appeared before a federal grand jury in Detroit and invoked their Fifth Amendment rights rather than answer any questions about the murder of Jimmy Hoffa.

The Briguglio and Andretta brothers had been implicated by Ralph Picardo, who had placed them on the FBI's radar screen. At the time, Picardo was serving 20 years for manslaughter in Trenton State Penitentiary. According to Picardo, Steve and Tom Andretta, along with an accountant used by all three, had visited him at the prison a few days after Hoffa disappeared. While Steve and Ralph were alone, Steve allegedly gave him some specific details about how the Hoffa murder had been executed.

Picardo quickly made his way to the law-enforcement community and cut himself a deal. When he told his story, he suggested that Sal Briguglio had actually killed Hoffa, adding that Hoffa's body was placed in a 55-gallon drum and shipped via a Gateway Transportation truck to an unknown destination in New Jersey.

When pressed by the FBI to speculate on the actual location of Hoffa's body, Picardo suggested "Brother Moscato's dump," which was the PJP Landfill in Jersey City, where other victims of the Provenzano group had allegedly been laid to rest. But this lead about Phillip (Brother) Moscato's landfill was nothing more than Picardo's educated guess, so the FBI stated that it was looking for the remains of a missing loan shark named Armand Faugno when they searched the landfill.

Later, during my exclusive face-to-face interview on October 25, 1976, with the Briguglio brothers and Steve Andretta, as well as with Tom Andretta by telephone, all of them denied any role in Hoffa's murder. No real surprise there, but I couldn't help but notice the extent to which they tried to dispel Picardo's account of Hoffa's murder and where his body was most likely buried.

Sally Bugs Briguglio, Hoffa's alleged killer, scoffed to me during our recorded interview, "They said we took Hoffa from Detroit, put him on a truck, brought him all the way down here in a fifty-five gallon drum, and we put him in Brother Moscato's dump."

Other potential suspects who invoked the Fifth Amendment before the grand jury in December 1975 were Rolland McMaster, and his brother-in-law, Stanton Barr. McMaster was a powerful Teamsters organizer and former Hoffa ally who had a falling out with Hoffa after the Teamsters president went to prison for jury tampering and pension fraud in March 1967. Charles (Chuckie) O'Brien, a Hoffa stepson who was labeled a suspect by the FBI when agents learned he had borrowed a car from Tony Jack Giacalone's son Joseph on the day Hoffa disappeared, also took the Fifth before the grand jury in September of 1975.

In 1976, I disclosed in a Detroit Free Press story that McMaster had used a 32-member goon squad to shake down trucking companies and solicit payoffs in return for labor peace. In a follow-up piece, I revealed that this same unit was also behind numerous acts of violence aimed at pro-Hoffa supporters in Detroit's Local 299, Hoffa's home local. One of McMaster's crew was Jim Shaw, a driver for Gateway Transportation.

Notably, Stan Barr, who was McMaster's alibi for the afternoon that Hoffa vanished, was the head of the steel division of Gateway Transportation.

McMaster and Stan Barr both acknowledged to me that they were together on the afternoon Hoffa disappeared, but they insisted they were out of town for much of the day. McMaster had owned a private home just five minutes from the Red Fox restaurant where Hoffa was last seen, as well as a farm about twenty minutes away in nearby Milford Township in Wixom, Michigan.

In May 2006, FBI agents raided the farm looking for Hoffa's remains based on information provided by Donovan Wells, a former business partner of both McMaster and Barr. At the time, Wells was in a federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky. He and his family lived on McMaster's farm at the time Hoffa disappeared.

The FBI's search warrant for McMaster's farm has never been released. But Wells told me in 2009 that he informed the FBI that a large hole had been dug on the north end of the property several weeks before Hoffa's murder. In addition, his wife, Monica, claimed that on the afternoon of Hoffa's disappearance, she saw two or three dark-colored cars speeding onto the property, roaring past the farmhouse on an adjacent dirt road, and heading towards the pre-dug hole.

But what had really piqued the FBI's interest was what Wells had seen and heard the night before Hoffa's murder. At a local restaurant, as Wells, McMaster, and Barr were having dinner, Tony Pro — in the flesh — suddenly appeared, slapped his hand on their table, and said: "It's going to be a great day tomorrow! A great day tomorrow! Right, Mac?" And he slapped McMaster on the back.

Provenzano then asked McMaster to accompany him to the bar for a private conversation.

While they were gone, Wells asked Barr what was going on. Barr replied that Provenzano and Hoffa were meeting the following day to settle their differences — and that Tony Giacalone was making the arrangements for the sitdown.

When Provenzano and McMaster returned to the table, Provenzano pointed to McMaster and Barr and asked, "Do you guys know where you're going to be tomorrow?"

McMaster responded, "Yeah, we're all straight on that."

The FBI never unearthed Hoffa's remains, or any evidence that he had been killed on McMaster's farm, but Don Wells — who passed an FBI polygraph test — provided the Bureau with important new information about Hoffa's disappearance in 2006: Rolland McMaster and Tony Pro were together at a restaurant in Detroit on July 29, 1975, the night before Hoffa disappeared. Wells also heard a portion of their conversation which was clearly about Provenzano's scheduled 2:00 P.M. meeting with Hoffa on July 30, as well as the need for McMaster and Barr to have established alibis for the afternoon when Hoffa was last seen.

After my interview with Wells, I visited my best underworld-connected source who was in a position to know the specific details about the Hoffa murder — but who disclosed information with the same frequency as a kosher butcher sells pork chops. To my surprise, he confirmed Wells's claim that Tony Pro was in Detroit the night before Hoffa vanished — something that Provenzano had always denied. However, he refused to say whether Provenzano was present at the scene of the murder the following day.

My source insisted that Ralph Picardo "basically had it right" but added that he had much more insight about the Hoffa murder. For instance, he told me that Vito Giacalone, Tony Giacalone's younger brother, had played an important role in the conspiracy, which had not been previously reported.

Nearly seven years later, on February 14, 2014, my best East Coast underworld-connected source died, taking many of the secrets of Hoffa's murder to his grave. However, as per our agreement, I am now free to reveal what he did tell me about the Hoffa case.

His words validate one of the FBI's earliest and best leads about the case, those provided by Ralph Picardo.

My source was Phillip Moscato, aka "Brother Moscato," the same man who owned the landfill on the Hackensack River in Jersey City that informer Ralph Picardo first mentioned as a likely site where Hoffa had been laid to rest following a stealthy 600-mile ride to New Jersey in a 55-gallon drum aboard a Gateway Transportation truck.

I first spoke to Moscato in a telephone call to his New Jersey home on April 28, 2007. He was very cordial and agreed to an interview.

I told Moscato that the first time I had heard his name was in early December 1975 after the Briguglio and Andretta brothers, along with McMaster and Barr, had appeared before a federal grand jury in Detroit.

Saying he had also been subpoenaed by that grand jury, Moscato told me he had known Salvatore Briguglio and Steve Andretta "since we were kids," adding, "Sally, as far as I was concerned, was one of the greatest guys. We hung out together. We had a little business together. Super guy."

Contrary to what had been previously reported, Moscato insisted that FBI agents were not looking for the remains of Faugno, a loan shark whom Sally Bugs was said to have murdered, during their search. "No, they were looking for Hoffa," Moscato insisted.

"What was the story with that?" I asked.
"Well, they said that me and Sally Briguglio buried Hoffa in my dump."
"They thought you were part of this?" I laughed.
"Yeah. Well, I was close with all them guys. And there was a rat by the name of Ralphie Picardo . . ."
"Ralph Picardo. He was in Trenton State Penitentiary."

Moscato laughed, "You've been doing your homework, huh?" He then continued, "Ralphie, I knew for years. I helped him out in business, in the trucking business. I helped him. Faugno helped him. Sally [Briguglio] helped him to get him started in his trucking business. He was around us a lot. And after he shot this guy, he wanted to get out of jail. So he goes and tells the FBI that he knows where Hoffa's buried. That he was with me and Sally when we buried Hoffa in my dump."

"Picardo said that he was with you and Sally?"
"Yeah. So he took them [the FBI] down there. They dug the dump up for three months."
"I thought they were looking for Faugno," I said.
"No," Moscato replied.
"In a fifty-five-gallon drum? They were looking for Hoffa himself?"

Moscato continued: "That was Hoffa in the fifty-five-gallon drum. [Picardo] said a pick-up truck brought . . . . the truck in and Hoffa was in it, and we buried him."
"I never heard that story that you were part of it. I never heard that one before," I replied.
"That's what it was all about," he said.

Although Moscato seemed cool, I was completely stunned.

This was new. Picardo never told that to the FBI. The hairs on the back of my neck stood at attention while my stomach churned as I tried to digest this new information as we continued talking.

One obvious problem with Moscato's story was that Picardo had been jailed in May 1975 and was in prison at the time Hoffa disappeared two months later. Consequently, there was no way that he could have made a claim to have been present when Moscato and Briguglio buried Hoffa at the landfill.

So what was Moscato telling me, wittingly or unwittingly, in our first conversation, during a telephone chat? Was he actually admitting that he and Sal Briguglio, the likely killer of Jimmy Hoffa, had buried Hoffa's body at Moscato's dump?

Ten days later, I pressed Moscato about that when I met him for the first time at his home on May 8, 2007, and we continued our tape-recorded conversation about the Hoffa case. A tall, handsome man who was suffering from myriad health issues, Moscato had been a U.S. Army paratrooper and demolition expert during the Korean War. He owned more than 40 restaurants during his life, as well as an auto-repair shop and a stable of racehorses. And at one time, he was a scratch golfer.

I must admit that I liked and even respected this man, Phillip Moscato.

"Let me ask you," I said, "when I interviewed you over the phone — again this is in my notes — did you say that Picardo said he was with you and Sal when you guys buried the body at the dump?"
"Yeah."
"So he wasn't in jail then — in July '75?"
"The government took him out."
"No, no. In July '75. Was he in jail for manslaughter then?"
"I don't know. I don't know. But he took them down there. 'Oh, here's where [Hoffa] is.' And they dug and dug. 'No, it was over there. . . . No, it was over here.'"
I then asked, "He said he knew?"
"Yeah."

Clearly, Moscato was confused about the timing, but not about the facts. Picardo had to have accompanied federal agents to Moscato's dump to search for Hoffa's body after he flipped and turned state's evidence in November 1975.

I told Moscato: "We never thought that Hoffa was any place but Detroit. I mean, why would you move him? I mean, Detroit's capable. There are plenty of places in Detroit to take care of a body for heaven's sake."

Regarding the FBI's May 2006 dig for Hoffa's remains at McMaster's farm in Wixom, Michigan, Moscato replied with absolute certainty and unquestionable authority in his voice, "Put that to rest."

"So you don't think he's at the farm?" I asked him twice.

Moscato shook his head, No, both times.

"Do you think he was taken care of right there in Detroit? I mean, why not, right?"

Yet again, Moscato shook his head.

As I completely lost whatever poker face I had maintained during the interview, I replied somewhat sheepishly, "What are you telling me? He was at Moscato's dump?"

Moscato barked, "I ain't telling you nothing. But I'm telling you that he ain't [at McMaster's farm]."

On June 18, 2013, in the midst of a much-publicized "new" FBI search for Hoffa's body, I called Moscato and asked him how seriously I should be taking this latest effort.

Moscato laughed and told me that this latest excavation of a field just north of Detroit would also amount to nothing. "I think I've already told you what happened," he said.

Dan E. Moldea is the author of eight non-fiction books, including The Hoffa Wars. Portions of this article were excerpted from Moldea's memoir, Confessions of a Guerrilla Writer, Second Edition, which was released today on Amazon.com. His research was aided by generous grants from The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund and The Charlotte von Stein Charitable Trust.

Frank Sheeran Did Not Paint Jimmy Hoffa's House

It would probably make a great movie, but with all due respect to author Charles Brandt, Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran did not whack Jimmy Hoffa 40 years ago today. As I politely told Robert De Niro last December, who still may play Sheeran in a movie adaption of Brandt's book, I Heard You Paint Houses, Sheeran has successfully conned a lot of people despite his conflicting versions of events.

Phillip (Brother) Moscato, who owned the landfill where Hoffa's remains were most likely disposed of, took many secrets about the killing to his grave. But he told me emphatically: "I can assure you that Sheeran had no role in the actual killing of Jimmy Hoffa." No ifs, ands, or buts about it from a guy who rarely spoke in declarative sentences.

As I wrote in my 1978 book, The Hoffa Wars, Sheeran was involved in the murder plot. But his main role was to convince Hoffa — who trusted his longtime Teamsters Union partner in crime with his life — that it was safe for him to get into a car at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in a Detroit suburb where Hoffa was waiting for what he thought would be a sitdown with Tony Provenzano and Tony Giacalone. Chuckie O'Brien was most likely in another car, and his actions, perhaps unwitting, were another ploy to lull Hoffa into a false sense of safety.

Sheeran threatened in a letter from his attorney to sue me for libel because I had accused him of participating in the murder conspiracy. But in 2003, when he was dying of cancer, rather than die virtually penniless, he gave himself a much bigger role in the famed murder so he could sell his life story, one that had been repeatedly rejected. I Heard You Paint Houses was published in 2004, a year after he died.

Indeed, as I alleged in my book 37 years ago and Brandt claimed in his book 26 years later, Mafia Boss Russell Bufalino — who was based in Pittstown, Pennsylvania, and had business dealings with Hoffa and Sheeran for years — authorized the murder. But Provenzano, a New Jersey-based Genovese crime family captain worked out the details. Tony Pro chose the hit team, and Sheeran wasn't on it.

The best evidence, based on what all the key sources have told law-enforcement authorities and/or me, is that Hoffa was driven to McMaster's farm where he was murdered by Sally Bugs Briguglio, and then stuffed into a 55-gallon drum, and shipped via a Gateway Transportation truck to his final resting place at Brother Moscato's landfill on the Hackensack River in Jersey City.

[AustraliaSteve]

Thanks Dell. I myself had put some credence in Sheeran's claims, as Capeci himself once did in his book Idiots Guide. So Sally Bugs wasn't just there, he actually did the deed, according to Moldea. Interesting.

[Pogo The Clown]

Thanks for posting this weeks column Dellacroce.


Pogo

[Rocco]

Sally Bugs was clipped on Mulberry street little Italy in 1978 as he was walking to dinner with Matty the horse to prevent him from testifying against TonyPro in an old murder. The shooter was identified as Joe Scarborough who today is Larry Dentico's top guy based out of Hoboken. If you remember he was busted with Dentico a few yrs ago.

[Bontade]

I have a question about Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano .We all know that Tony Pro was the captain.But I can't find his crew.If Tony was the captain who led his crew after the death of Tony Pro.As the crew is called "Tony Pro" in the Chart?Or Tony Provenzano was a soldier?

[Pogo The Clown]

He was a Soldier.


Pogo

[AG777]

^^^And- A very powerful man.


Is there a photo of Ralph Picardo? I'd like to see if he is who I think he is. Thnx.

[AG777]

He was a Soldier.


Pogo

Did you see in the last gangland how Capeci refers to Pro as a capo? There's so much confusion regarding his rank.

[willychichi]

Nice disguise

[Pogo The Clown]

Did you see in the last gangland how Capeci refers to Pro as a capo? There's so much confusion regarding his rank.

I think it is just one of those mob myths that just keep getting repeated and repeated until it becomes fact.


Pogo