The Mafia Chronicles: Television Special Explores Hoffa Disappearance
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By Larry Henry
A special news program about former labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, whose disappearance in 1975 remains unsolved, is part of the debut lineup on the new Fox Nation streaming service.
The hour-and-a-half special by Eric Shawn, a Fox News anchor and senior correspondent, looks at different theories surrounding Hoffa’s disappearance and calls upon the federal government to release unredacted FBI documents on the case.
In a recent telephone interview, Shawn told me it is time for the FBI to “do the right thing” and release the files.
“Let’s let it all out,” Shawn said.
The broadcast special, “Riddle: The Search for James R. Hoffa,” plays upon the former Teamsters leader’s middle name, Riddle, and the longstanding mystery over his disappearance more than 43 years ago. His body has never been recovered.
The Fox Nation streaming service, which debuted in late November, is available to subscribers at nation.foxnews.com.
Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, outside the Machus Red Fox, a suburban Detroit restaurant, where he was supposed to have met with Mafia leaders to resolve differences. Some underworld figures were unhappy that Hoffa, after serving a prison term on jury tampering and pension fraud convictions, was attempting to regain control of the Teamsters and had threatened to expose the union’s Mob connections.
Next year, a movie directed by Martin Scorsese is set to run on Netflix, asserting that Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a Teamsters official and Mafia hit man, killed his friend Hoffa on orders from the Mob.
Starring Robert De Niro as Sheeran, the movie is centered on the 2004 book “I Heard You Paint Houses” by Charles Brandt, a former Delaware chief deputy attorney general. Painting houses is underworld code for a contract killing.
Some Hoffa experts, including journalist and author Dan E. Moldea, doubt Sheeran’s version of the Hoffa disappearance, saying Sheeran changed his story over the years. In 2003, Sheehan died at age 83.
Moldea has written that the killer was not Sheeran but instead was New Jersey Teamsters business agent Salvatore “Sally Bugs” Briguglio. In 1978, only three years after the Hoffa disappearance, two unknown assassins shot Briguglio to death on Mulberry Street in New York City’s Little Italy.
I recently wrote about the controversy surrounding the upcoming Scorsese movie, “The Irishman,” here.
Shawn told me in late November that the Hoffa story still generates widespread interest and that he plans to continue reporting on the subject.
In an earlier television broadcast, Shawn said, “Jimmy Hoffa left a legacy for the labor movement and a fascination for many that continues to this day.”
Larry Henry’s YouTube channel includes videos he shot of Mob sites in Las Vegas, the apartment building in Santa Monica, California, where Whitey Bulger was arrested, and the remote Arkansas airport where Barry Seal transported drugs into the U.S for the Medellin Cartel. Subscribe HERE.
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