Jimmy Hoffa: The unsolved mystery of the disappearance of the U.S. ruthless trade unionist

‘ I have so much money I could live without working until I died. I am a millionaire” said in an interview Jimmy Hoffa who was the most powerful possible in their history. He became famous through his action in the US truck union “Teamsters” from 1957 to 1971 even though he had never driven himself. But his action as a trade unionist was overshadowed by his alleged relations with his and his long sentence to prison for corruption. Jimmy Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, and his disappearance is considered an unsolved mystery since his body was never found. Born Valentine’s Day on 14 February 1913 in Brazil, Indiana State, to a father miner, Dutch descent, and mother washer, he was left by a small fatherless orphan. At the age of 7 he was forced to contribute to family income doing footwork. Hoffa left school at 14 to work in the food wholesale company, Kruger, where he soon began protesting about the insufficient wages he was receiving, employment conditions and inequality. He saw everywhere around him, which would only worsen in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street crash and the coming of the Great Depression. Young Jimmy showed from the first moment his leadership skills. Within two years he managed to rally his colleagues and one day in 1931 to declare a white strike while the fresh and juicy strawberries from Florida arrived. With a nod his unloading stopped and a little panic prevailed in the operation. He immediately began negotiations with employer and managed not only to give increases and insurance rights to workers, but he achieved the recognition of their union. Having learned to defend himself against injustice at the workplace, Hoffa leaves in 1932 from Kruger to take over the local branch of the truck drivers’ union, known as Teamsters, representing both drivers and Detroit warehouse agents. His reputation quickly crossed Detroit’s line. His dynamic character, his organizational skills, his total devotion to workers’ rights and his inspired reasons brought him to the forefront of the U.S. trade union movement. Hoffa met Polish Josephine Poszywak, during a strike in 1937. They were married in September of the same year. Hoffa from a militant contender of labor rights becomes a permanent worker. He takes over as chairman of the Teamsters in 1957, at the Miami conference Florida Beach and Teamsters are expelled by 5-1 votes from the American union of trade unions. He stayed in union leadership for 10 years, with union members eventually reaching 1.5 million. IBT headquarters are moving to Washington. Hoffa had no problem establishing relationships with Buffalo family mobsters (Bill Buffalo is his lawyer) to embezzle money from the syndicate fund for mafia projects, blackmail targeted companies, bribe, embezzle. The powerful syndicate had been targeted by Congress and its great battle with the Kennedys will arise. The President and the United States Attorney General. Young lawyer Robert Kennedy, brother of later president John Kennedy and attorney general from January 1961, will become Hoffa’s persecutor and their confrontation between them will not be long before he takes the form of a… feud. As Attorney General since 1961, Kennedy launched a strong attack on organised crime and continued with a group of prosecutors and researchers known under the name “Get Hoffa”. Robert Kennedy believed Hoffa was directly linked to organized crime. So in 1964 Robert Kennedy, Minister of Justice now, accused him of bribing the federal jury and achieved his conviction to eight years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Another five years were added to the sentence, following additional charges of involvement in financial scandals. Hoffa served five years of his sentence and was released on December 23, 1971, when he was granted amnesty by President Nixon with her restraining clause not to interfere with unionism until 1980, a term with which he was vertically opposed and fought in court in hopes of being able to fight back the presidency of Teamster. Hoffa claimed that he had never agreed to this condition and accused senior Nixon government officials of depriving him of his rights by imposing this condition. Who killed Jimmy Hoffa? The dynamic unionist is now out of action and spends their hours at home with his wife, with whom he had two children. In one of his rare interviews he had admitted his relations with organized crime “for the sake of the union”. At noon on July 30, 1975, he was last seen on the outskirts of Detroit. As he had told his wife he had a date with two mobsters, Tony Provenzanos (who was also vice president of Teamsters) and Tony Giakalone, which they both refused, presenting a firm alibi. Hoffa arrived around 2 pm in the parking lot, 30 minutes earlier and called his wife and told her he would wait a few more minutes. Also a truck driver saw Hoffa in the parking lot, in a car along with another passenger. Hoffa’s wife reported that the disappearance occurred that afternoon. Police found the car in the parking lot unlocked and without any indication of what happened to Hoffa. From that day on, no one will see him again. Despite the extensive investigations that followed, both by the police and by the FBI, they didn’t come up with anything about what happened to Hoffa. On July 30, 1982, Jimmy Hoffa was officially considered dead. A lot of theories and rumors have developed since then, but he has not accepted anything, with his “chiment” prevailing from the mafia. Within the years, the file of this unsolved case has been opened and closed many times. A gangster operating in the area revealed some dark secrets to the police, promising to show them where Hoffa’s body is buried. His effort was unsuccessful. In 2004, one of the lawyers who worked on clarifying Hoffa’s murder released the book entitled “I Heard You Paint Houses”. In 2006, some FBI agents claimed some of their very well-informed sources pointed to a barn in Oklahoma as Hoffa’s burial site. Despite a thorough investigation by the FBI, there was no trace of him. This was the last time the US authorities got so close to solving the mystery. The police and the FBI have speculated from the start that he was murdered in a reckoning. Since 1976 in a 56-page FBI report, Hoffa’s murder has been attributed to the mafia, which considered his attempt to resume the union presidency a threat. The body, however, is not found, so no one can safely tell the facts. What was Jimmy Hoffa after all? Even the two basic Hollywood films dealing with Jimmy Hoffa’s myth have two different perspectives on who he was: a labor rights advocate or someone who saw the union as a business that was involved with the mafia for the purpose of his personal enrichment? In the 1992 “Hoffa”, Danny De Vito’s film where Hoffa “lives” by Jack Nicholson, he is mainly presented as a working class fighter and may sometimes ally with the mafia to facilitate his work. In “The Irishman ” on the other hand, Scorsese’s film, Hoffa poom is “animated” by Al Pacino, presented as a regular mobster, as a businessman who perceives the union as his personal shop. Most likely, however, no one will be able to answer one of the biggest questions in the US post-war history: what happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Information From