TONY PRO

Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano was born in New York, NY on May 7th, 1917. He was considered a caporegime or "Capo" in the New Jersey Genovese Crime Family of the La Cosa Nostra (LCN). For many years he and his "crew" ran Local 560 of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) labor union.  He was also an International Union Vice President covering areas on the East Coast.  Thus, Tony Pro was one of most notorious LCN/IBT "hybrids" emerging as a major influence within the power structure of the trucking industry.  Jimmy Hoffa and Anthony Provenzano worked together as early as the 1950s with the development of the Teamsters Labor causes and advancements of that era. Both were questioned in the McClellan Hearings in the late 1950s as to certain improprieties reported by investigators such as Robert F. Kennedy. It was Tony Pro’s Local 560 seen referenced many times by investigators during the rise of Jimmy Hoffa's power in the 1950s through to the time of Frank Fitzsimmon's International Presidency of the Teamsters Union.  Some of the more popular themes as to what happened to Hoffa's physical remains resonated from this particular Teamsters Union Local based in Union City, New Jersey.

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Provenzano had earlier made it publicly clear to Jimmy Hoffa to “get out of union politics or else”. He had a long history with Hoffa including years spent together doing time in Lewisburg Federal Prison.  While they were incarcerated, Provenzano had a bitter disagreement with Jimmy Hoffa over his demands for a reinstatement of his pension pay off. He believed he was entitled to receive his pension and additional access to benefits and loan money.  Hoffa refused to grant him his request and the two are said to have come to physical blows, trading punches and making threats over the dispute. This disagreement did not go unnoticed by leaders within the LCN mafia.  Findinghoffa.com has discovered that mob boss John Gotti was incarcerated at Lewisburg when the incident took place.  Hoffa and Provenzano certainly became arch enemies over their conflict.  Provenzano, it is said, tried to put a "hit" out on Hoffa twice prior to July of 1975.  One of the proposed contract hits came following a bitter argument they had in Miami after Hoffa was released from prison. Tony Pro was supposedly curtailed from carrying out the hit by the LCN "Commission" crime bosses. There was indeed bad blood between Jimmy Hoffa and Tony Provenzano. These events played a role that led to Hoffa's eventual demise.

 

Shortly afterward, some of the members of the LCN Commission grew uneasy about the security of their investments. They had grown used to having access to the IBT Central States Pension Fund. This access was much easier to acquire through Hoffa's successor IBT President Frank Fitzsimmons. A second source of revenue came from profits through businesses they controlled involving lucrative U.S. Department of Defense contracts. 

 

Prior to these revelations, Jimmy Hoffa made public statements that he planned to expose the LCN mob, along with revealing the illegal activities of Frank Fitzsimmons, to the news media. The LCN was likely concerned he may provide harmful information to Federal Grand Juries and possible Congressional hearings.  Jimmy Hoffa was scheduled to show up for a televised interview on August 11, 1975, with author and journalist Charles Ashman, in California to bring some of the details to light.  Fitzsimmons had been the mob's pipeline into the lucrative IBT pension fund after Hoffa gave up his leadership.  Hoffa did so in order to have his sentence commuted in 1971 by Richard Nixon.  Jimmy Hoffa 's aspirations to reestablish his control of the Teamster's included reshaping it's future without any further interference from the LCN.  Some researchers report efforts made by leaders of the LCN to persuade Hoffa to back off from this course of action.  They wanted him to quietly retire.  Jimmy Hoffa made it clear he had no intention to stop his attempts to regain his control over the IBT by 1976.

 

One of the members of the LCN Commission was long familiar to federal authorities. Russell Bufalino had his fingers in the above-mentioned sources of mob capital.  He had been connected with businesses established in Cuba since the 1950s and was listed as a person working with the CIA to participate in clandestine operations to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. This information was made public by Time Magazine in an article released June 6th, 1975, just a few weeks before Hoffa vanished.  Bufalino was tied to other businesses having raked millions of dollars into the LCN coffers.  This was made public when his associations with "Medico Industries", since the time of the Korean War, were revealed. An FBI investigation was reported in a Time Magazine article published on March 6, 1978, that Bufalino was in a silent partnership with the Medico Brothers and Congressman Dan Flood, involving Department of Defense Contracts.   Because of the very real threat Jimmy Hoffa was capable of bringing against them, the LCN Commission likely agreed with Bufalino to take Hoffa out of the picture permanently. 

 

It appears the Commission's plan to get rid of Hoffa would include using his disappearance as a means to protect their hold on the resources of money and power previously identified.  Anthony Provenzano's crew, or what the Department of Justice later referred to as the   "Provenzano Group", was selected to participate for reasons also already stated.  It appears in addition to Tony Pro's henchmen, Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone of the Detroit LCN Family Partnership and Rolland McMaster (with an IBT "anti-Hoffa squad".) 1 They would be utilized to carry out the some of the specific details and also involved because the hit would take place near Hoffa's summer residence North of the city of Detroit.  The timing coincided with a wedding in the Detroit area involving crime families related to the Buffalinos, Giacalones, and the Provenzanos. Another wedding apparently took place on the same weekend involving the Adell family.  These events made it convenient for other people listed in the Hoffex Memo to be in the Detroit area at that time.  This includes Frank Sheeran and Chuckie O'Brien.  

 

Compartmentalization to accomplish the various steps of the "Master Plan" would involve close family members, (mainly sets of brothers and brothers in law), to prevent anyone from becoming an informant or to become less likely to be used as a means to provide criminal prosecution against any of their own siblings.  The pairs of brothers would then work with a few people Jimmy Hoffa historically trusted.  These trusted individuals would serve as the bait in an elaborate trap set up just for Jimmy Hoffa.  We believe this plan unfolded in the manner outlined next.  To ensure better success, this "master plan" appears to have been orchestrated in five steps:

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1. The Abduction

2. The Murder

3. The Disposal of the Body

4. The Shakedown

5. The Ruse Campaign 

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Findinghoffa.com recognizes the similar scenarios outlined by some well-respected researchers.  We present a similar idea concerning the events pertaining to Hoffa's disappearance but add to the narrative the steps involving a shake down extortion element and a well-orchestrated cover up ruse campaign.  The final step was specifically designed to prevent anyone from discovering enough facts to solve the case.  This step includes what actually became of Jimmy Hoffa's body.  The Hoffa case has been open for so long, many of the things hitting the news in 2020 are remnants of older stories circulated in the 1970s. It worked so well that after the passing of over 45 years and the deaths of most of the suspects believed to have been involved, no one has been prosecuted for Hoffa's demise.  Even when DNA evidence was handed over to prosecutors, no action was taken by any of them.

 

A consensus exists among investigators and researchers that Provenzano was one of the men Hoffa was waiting to meet on July 30, 1975.  The rendezvous point for the meeting was a parking lot at the upscale Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield, Michigan.  This restaurant was situated North of the city of Detroit and near the developing interstate highway systems leading away from areas of dense population. It appears a routine pattern existed for such LCN meetings to first gather at a specific place. Once  

determining that the coast was clear of any law enforcement surveillance, the participants would continue on to the actual site for the meeting. Hoffa was not dressed for a meeting inside the Machus Red Fox that day. Reports confirm he was wearing casual attire and was not dressed in the restaurant's required a coat and tie.   So, it appears Hoffa would probably expect the same measures to be taken. They would initially rendezvous in the parking lot, and from there, travel together to the actual meeting site close by.  Findinghoffa.com noticed an example of this tact used a few years after Hoffa disappeared, with the induction of Giacomo William "Blackjack" Tocco in June of 1979, as the new boss of the Detroit Family Partnership. That meeting also included a pre-arranged rendezvous at a business parking lot in Roseville, Michigan.  The business, Motor City Barber Supply, was allegedly connected to Raffaele "Jimmy" Quasarano a Hoffex Memo suspect.  The FBI had the place under surveillance unknown to the group of men.  When the required LCN personnel arrived at that rendezvous location and did not notice anyone tailing them, they traveled West to their actual meeting site at the mob owned Timberland Game Ranch near Dexter, Michigan.  This example gives us some reasoning as to why Jimmy Hoffa left his own car in the parking lot and got into the familiar car with passengers he recognized and expected to be at the proposed meeting.  He would have been comfortable with the same type of secrecy used for his meeting on the day he disappeared. 

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When we revisit the famous Michigan meeting with Tony Pro, Anthony "Tony Jack "Giacalone, Jimmy Hoffa, and possibly a few others, it starts outside the city.  The event was to take place North of Detroit on a hot summer day beginning in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield, Michigan. The reason for the meeting was to "allegedly" establish resolution and peace between all parties attending.   It is obvious now, that kind of meeting was never meant to happen. Instead, the resulting outcome still remains to be what many people are presently attempting to understand.  Jimmy Hoffa was not seen again since. 

 

The search for him began when he did not show up for dinner that afternoon at his nearby home in Lake Orion Township. It did not take long for some people to retrace Hoffa's steps to gain insight as to what had actually happened to him. The plan was already in motion for the immediate suspects to have their alibis ready. Tony Pro’s alibi came from Stephen Andretta (also listed as a Hoffa suspect, La Cosa Nostra, and with IBT Local 560).  The four steps of the master plan unfolded as determined. We are able to piece together a reasonable scenario and fill in the details with historical and U.S. Government documentation surrounding the case.  We added this information to the corroborating testimony provided by credible individuals not associated with the LCN mob or the Teamsters Union. Following these efforts, we believe Tony Pro is still regarded as a key person who possessed more than one piece of the puzzle.

 

So, with Hoffa, there must have been other reasons to handle the body differently.  It was done in a clever way to enable the Provenzano Group, the Detroit Partnership and other branches of the LCN Mafia to be able to use this well guarded secret to their advantage. We believe at this point Tony Provenzano and Tony Giacalone became the ultimate "ruse masters".  They and their close associates became involved with an orchestrated plan of deception in order to supply false leads to anyone wishing to discover what really happened that day.  Many of the versions and theories we hear now can be traced back to these two men. In addition, findinghoffa.com has supporting documentation that the LCN could have easily taken some of this knowledge and applied pressure by means of extortion on those having historically stood in the way of their continued access to the Central States Pension Fund and also to lucrative U.S. Government contracts.

 

Getting Hoffa out of the way was not enough to insure keeping a tight grip on such things.  There were other factors threatening their longevity to possess continued access to those revenue sources in 1975.  It appears even Tony Pro's friend, Phillip "Brother" Moscato, had another angle up his sleeve with regards to continued successful opportunities for them in the future.  It appears he knew the days were numbered when it came to preserving easy access to the sources of money the LCN was interested in.  He was already planning to extend the open door to funds coming from government contracts by using his businesses as a means to place another person in a position to guarantee continued access to that as well as revenue from the IBT Central States Pension Fund. Moscato was deeply involved with this aspect of the plan that Tony Provenzano and other LCN/IBT leaders had an interest in.  We will elaborate on this idea later. In the meantime, we keep seeing the same old theories being recycled and revamped every few years. Any progress with the Hoffex case seems to stall out due to this trend.  New names have been added from time to time, but the narrative remains unchanged for the most part.

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In early November 1975 FBI informant Ralph "Little Ralphie" Picardo speculated where the hiding place of Jimmy Hoffa’s body was, he told the FBI it could be buried along the Hackensack River in a New Jersey dump believed to be owned by Phillip “Brother” Moscato and Partners.  This information was later clarified with the discovery of the misplaced "Hoffa Files" discovered in Detroit.  These files were accumulated in conjunction with the first few months of the FBI's investigation of the Hoffa case and compliment the information found within the Hoffex Memo. Some of the material was published by the Detroit Sunday Journal August 3, 1997.  A notation within the "Hoffa Files" states:  "PICARDO only speculates that HOFFA 's body may be in Moscato Dump in New Jersey and has no direct knowledge of the exact location". Cross referencing source information like this is essential to stay on track with such an old unsolved case. As was already noted, many of these ideas have been around and recycled for decades. It is this process that has given rise to what we call modern "Hoffaology".2 

 

The dump mentioned is also known as the "PJP" site.  This location had been under surveillance by law enforcement for several years prior to Little Ralphie's comments. The area was hazardous, and the FBI was not provided with enough details to effectively search for anything without an exact location.  So, shortly after Picardo revealed his dump theory, members of Local 560, at the urging of Anthony Provenzano, were volunteering to assist the FBI with the search.  It was reported in December of 1975 over 400 Teamsters signed up to help search the area, under the supervision of government agents, in order to find Hoffa’s body. Other reports state that a reward was being offered by the "Provenzano Group" leaders that were running Local 560. This alone seemed to have steered the FBI away from the dump site. If Hoffa’s body was in there, it is highly doubtful Provenzano’s own Teamsters would try to uncover evidence leading to Tony Pro's conviction.  It was already known the search warrant for the dump was for another mobster, Armand Faugno, who disappeared in 1972, and not for Jimmy Hoffa.  It was believed by some reports the search was a smoke screen the FBI was using to look for Jimmy Hoffa instead.  This opinion was immediately picked up by the press and it literally took over the direction of the Hoffa narrative.  Since December of 1975, nothing has ever become of it except for some convenient stories mob figures have shared with journalists.  As we have seen, the LCN has been supplying conflicting information for a long time.

 

We surmise the only way to deal with this trend is to recognize it for what it really is.  Even though the research seems to be against the idea of Moscato's PJP Landfill, it is still in line with what a couple informants told the FBI in 1975.  We had hoped a search of the proposed site described by investigative journalist Dan Moldea, would be productive in the search for Hoffa's physical remains. He is one of the researchers who has not given up looking for Hoffa.  In addition, we believe many of his ideas correlate with the historic activities of Tony Provenzano. However, the location he presently suggests, even though plausible, in our opinion, is highly unlikely.  We are presenting a scenario that basically differs with him concerning the actual direction a Gateway Transportation Truck went with Hoffa's body.  We believe the location is a site within in the State of Michigan, which is originally where Hoffa disappeared.  Findinghoffa.com believes the evidence is stronger for a transporting big, rigged semi going North instead of East.  The common denominator includes a Gateway Transportation Truck with both scenarios. We believe regardless of where Hoffa's body is found that specific trucking company, along with CEO John Murphy, seem to be well connected to the Hoffa disappearance.

 

We are letting our readers know some historical details of the Moscato Dump Site in order to get an idea why it appears to us to be a place less likely to ever find Hoffa's body.  Several years after Hoffa mysteriously vanished, the EPA conducted a huge clean-up of the entire PJP Moscato Dump. The EPA reported the 87-acre site was accepting chemical and industrial waste between 1970 and 1974.  In October 1975 it was determined that 51 acres of the landfill was owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, and they were attempting to sell the parcel.  It was reported that Moscato and his partner could have been leasing this portion from them to use for their dump operations. The archdiocese officials stated the land was not authorized by them to be used for that purpose. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) ordered modifications to the landfill to prevent and remove waste from the Hackensack River in 1977.  The EPA added the dump to the super fund list in 1983 to be scheduled for clean-up.  A 45-acre portion under the Pulaski Skyway had subsurface fires igniting from buried material as late as 1985. The NJDEP extinguished the fires through major excavation work. In 1995 the area had provisions for removing all buried drum material. The person supervising the "super fund" operation reported to media sources that they had found lots of barrels and drums but no bodies. Deed restrictions were put in place and a portion of the site was purchased for the eventual construction of a warehouse/transfer station by another corporation in 2008 and completed in 2016. A landfill cap was added to the remainder of the property and the construction of a park was underway by 2012 through yet another private business and Waste Management of New Jersey.  A 1.5-acre portion not covered by the modifications including a Truck Stop was not considered to be a part of the landfill and did not contribute to its contamination.  This area was also investigated by the EPA. It has since fallen under the authority of the laws of New Jersey if any further cleanup is deemed necessary.  The entire effort received public awards for the success of the cleanup, but as late as November 26, 2019, the site remains under scrutiny for potential residual chemical hazards leaking into the Hackensack River.

 

Some of this information has led to the current ideas that Hoffa's body was moved to other nearby and less hazardous places.  But we have noted recent attempts to discover exact locations for Hoffa's secret burial site in or around this dump. The area suggested by Dan Moldea may actually be outside of the parameters of the landfill property.  He stated in 2020 he believes he knows the exact location of Hoffa's burial site on property very close to the landfill.  If Hoffa's body was planted where he says, it should have been searched.  So, even though the FBI made a search in the area pointed out to them and found no trace in 2022 no harm was done and hopefully there is satisfaction enough to move on to other leads. However, if the body was placed in the toxic areas of the dump, it is doubtful it will ever be found. Even though we believe it is a long shot idea, we support those who have been relentlessly searching for Jimmy Hoffa's body.  We feel there is consensus among those involved in solving the mystery.  Most agree that finding Hoffa's physical remains may achieve some closure for his living family members. As we have already stated elsewhere, it is not likely Hoffa's body would ever be discovered intact. The location that we suspect the body to be is also in place that would not lend to its preservation for this long.  It involves cement, stone and lots of water.  A "place that is very wet" said former LCN Capo Michael Franzese in 2019.  He may have that part correct. We certainly hope our collected efforts of finding Hoffa eventually produces positive results. 

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Findinghoffa.com recognized this holding pattern and began looking for what may have either been ignored or pushed out of the focus early in the narrative.  We noticed specific events, involving people that appeared to have been deeply connected to the known facts of the case in 1975 but for some reason did not get much attention.  When we began to follow up on this "premise" it became obvious there was more to uncover.  This approach led to a different understanding of "what" had happened and also "who" may have slipped through the cracks.  We were looking at sources, motives, and reasons for why the mystery has remained unsolved. The results of the master plan should show us how they could achieve the goals to capitalize on the future LCN/IBT 's interests.  We confirmed their goal for future access to the IBT Pension Fund and identified the need to continue their alliances with those individuals that gave them access to the U.S. Government contracts awarded to their numerous business enterprises.  After researching some of the findings from the official investigation, combined with information derived from efforts made by other sources, we began to head in a different direction with this quest.  This path has led to conclusions in line with existing official records.  After establishing solid motives and identifying personnel connected to these motives, we looked into whether there were living sources who could verify some of our unanswered questions.  Over the years we found the credible testimony from people who saw things take place the afternoon and evening of July 30th, 1975.  These events occurred in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at a specific location.  This site includes the familiar matching themes of a construction site involving tons of cement, stone, and lots of water.  More importantly it was owned by someone who had historical connections with Jimmy Hoffa and his rise to power.   

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It is a fact that Tony Pro was sent to Lewisburg Federal Prison because of the conviction of crimes involving the extortion shake downs of large interstate trucking companies.  Quite often this was done by means of "Hobb's Act" violations including racketeering and extortion of some of the CEOs and business owners.  Findinghoffa.com was looking at Provenzano's specific behavior in the months following the disappearance of Hoffa.  Soon after the event, Tony Pro stepped down from his position of president of Local 560 and his brother Nunzio took over the reins.  By November of 1975 Nunzio and the Provenzano Group began shaking down four more companies.  One company, TIME DC trucking, was ran by Walter F. Carey.  This company had a terminal connected to FBI informant Donavan Wells along with a couple of truck drivers working for Hoffa suspect Rolland McMaster.  The drivers had been working in the Upper Peninsula during the months prior to Hoffa's disappearance.  Walter F. Carey, as previously stated in his own bio sketch, was closely associated with the Test Fleet company.  He was an advisor to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara as well as several U.S. Presidents.  He was linked to another colleague deeply involved with Hoffa.  This colleague happens to be John Murphy, CEO/owner of the Gateway Transportation Company.   Murphy was a veteran trustee on the IBT Central States Pension Fund.  Both of their trucking companies were tied to McMaster and his brother-in-law Stanton Barr.  Barr ran a local Gateway Transportation terminal out of Detroit that routinely shipped steel 55 gal. drums to the mines, quarries, and steel mills in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Northern Ontario, Canada. 

 

We discovered photos of Gateway Transportation trucks using such a delivery route back in the 1970s.  It was not uncommon for trucking companies to use this Northern route as a convenient means to provide needed supplies to all of the businesses with Detroit's steel and auto industry.  Findinghoffa.com recognized the connections between the suspects, their actions, and their direct correlation to the common trucking companies and CEOs historically involved with Jimmy Hoffa's rise to power.  We were able to see the further connections these CEOs had in relationship to the money motives behind the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.  This knowledge continued to supply us with momentum for further research.  All of it eventually produced testimony from credible witnesses and many pages of supporting documentation.

 

The common steel hauling route Gateway Transportation trucks often used, through portions of the Upper Peninsula, was not noticed by the Detroit Federal Grand Jury in December of 1975.  It's plausible that another trucking company could have delivered the same kind of freight. But it was not accidental that Gateway Transportation was held culpable for the deed.  Just a few months later in 1976, CEO John Murphy would end up being part of a huge shakeup of the board of trustees on the IBT's Central States Pension Fund.  The resulting restructure bought the LCN a little more time to keep their controlling mitts on all that revenue. However, their plan was circumvented again by the Department of Justice.  The Provenzano Group and the head of the Bufalino crime family were in the sites of federal prosecutors for related extortion crimes.  Most of them went to prison for other offenses not directly connected to the Hoffex case.

 

These events fueled yet another source of misdirection because media and some of the investigators ran with the New Jersey Dump location many years ago. The Gateway Transportation information was specifically provided to lead investigators away from the LCN/IBT and toward individuals in the trucking industry leadership, but mob sensationalism took over the narrative. We noticed that this kind of tunnel vision also could have been used to skew the investigation.  The end result being that the means used to transport Hoffa's body (Gateway Transportation) was virtually ignored and became a secondary issue. Thus, one ruse leads back to another one. Eventually we have the story of Gateway Transportation being used to ship the body to a New Jersey Dump with the emphasis on the dump and not on the trucking company.

 

Looking at the reports, one can see that the December 1975 authorities and Federal Grand Jury were so focused on the New Jersey location, and the New Jersey Provenzanos, it had become an apparent distraction.  It seems they were no longer interested with the idea of checking out the other regular routine routes often used for shipping steel 55 gal. drums. If they had looked further into it, they may have noticed the different directions used back then to some of the destinations located far North of Detroit, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In December of 1975 we could see the sudden shift the investigation took. Many investigators and researchers had swallowed Ralph Picardo's speculations, hook, line, and sinker. Even so, the end result of the investigation into Gateway Transportation was there were no records of any shipments of steel 55-gallon drums to the State of New Jersey during the time frame of the Hoffa disappearance.  Since then, we have seen no further progress with the case. The investigation into the Gateway Transportation company seemed to have dead ended. The ruse tactics provided by members of the "Provenzano Group" were very effective.  It also appears the Provenzano Group had also taken measures to clean things up when it came to the disposal of Armand Faugno's body. They followed the ruse by taunting the authorities to go ahead and look all they wanted to for Hoffa's body at Moscato's dump site. The real facts behind this development still exist.  Hopefully we will see some motivation to check out our research from those still officially looking into the "Hoffex "case. 

 

Until someone takes a look at what we discovered, we will probably continue to see more versions of the story that Hoffa's body was shipped:

(A) over 600 miles.

(B) across several state lines.

(C) to a place with a large presence of law enforcement

(D) to a known mob owned property (under surveillance)

(E) in one of the most densely populated regions of the United States  

(F) to be disposed of in an ever-changing location somewhere in the Meadowlands of New Jersey.

 

Fortunately, it appears these kinds of stories will likely go away soon enough.  Even now there are some researchers pushing to once again look back at ideas that have been skimmed over prematurely and need to be examined more thoroughly.  While these ideas seem to continue to grab the headlines. We believe the only way the dump theory would be feasible is by moving the body from a location in Michigan at a much later time.  It would most likely occur at a time when the heat was off the dump in Jersey.  We have already outlined how the PJP Moscato dump theory would be difficult to pull off because of the continuous scrutiny it received over many years. And, coupled with the failed search results it probably has seen enough attention unless something more definitive surfaces.

 

There was a great deal of suspicion by the authorities surrounding Moscato's Dump before Jimmy Hoffa disappeared. It would not have been a good time in July of 1975 to go there with Hoffa's body.  A recent quote from a relative of one of the co-owners of the PJP Moscato Dump said: "My father (Paul Cappola) was upset with Mr. Moscato for pointing to that area at the landfill, because the dump was constantly under police scrutiny.". (emphasis ours).  It would have been a huge risk to go there.  We are not alone in believing that disposing Hoffa's body in this manner would never gain the approval of the Commission members of the LCN.  Even if the present reports are true, that Tony Provenzano wanted Jimmy Hoffa's body as a "Trophy", it is difficult to reconcile without some real problems. To us, the dump is still a long shot.

 

Along with the "Jersey Ruse" consisting of the Meadowlands in New Jersey and Giants Stadium, there were some Detroit versions having been circulated for decades. These ideas for the most part have also led to nothing, but mob owned businesses and real estate. The bosses in Detroit most likely would not have used any of those places to dispose of Hoffa's body in broad daylight.  Every one of the mob places mentioned in the long exhausting 45-plus years of history of searching for Jimmy Hoffa's body would be considered high risk if connected to the real perpetrators of the crime. This idea is supported by a growing number of people. The perpetrators would not take Hoffa's body, on a sunny July afternoon, to a highly observable business or construction site, in a heavily populated area, and risk being caught. Even if they risked hiding the body until after dark it would increase the risk of being discovered.  We know the exact weather conditions in the Detroit area and how much time it would take until the cover of darkness.  When Hoffa did not return to his house after 4 PM, the search for him began. Using this reasoning would also rule out the popular Renaissance Center theories continually coming out of Detroit, Michigan too.  The surveillance in Southeast Michigan had already become intense because of all the widespread violence leading up to that day.

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One has to try to read between the lines as to what some of the LCN people have said over the years.  Usually what they have said contains some truth mixed up with an even bigger lie.  And like with former mob underboss of Detroit, Anthony Zerilli, we have seen the ruses continue.  Zerilli indeed was in possession of some of the facts and filled the rest of the gaps in with what he was told by Hoffa suspect and ruse master Tony Giacalone who had passed away in 2001.  Tony Zerilli had harbored a long-lasting grudge against his cousin Jack Tocco over the leadership of the Detroit Partnership.  Zerilli came out of it on the short end of the stick.  When he was about 85 years old, he decided to share his information with the press. He did so with an air of certainty of where Jimmy Hoffa's body was hidden.  It was the first time someone of that influence and rank within the LCN had come forward.  The ensuing FBI search came up empty in 2013.  We speculate the empty results of the search gave Jack Tocco a chance to get a laugh out of the embarrassment landing on both Zerilli and the FBI. Tocco may have found some humor with the eventual outcome, because Zerilli was unable to make his grudge matchstick.   Plus, this was yet another failed dig by the FBI.  Jack Tocco, the crafty boss of the Detroit LCN may have considered it as payback for when Federal Agents had spied on his initiation of becoming the mafia "Don" of the Detroit Family at the Timberland Game Ranch near Dexter, Michigan in June of 1979.  He got the last laugh because soon after the focus turned away from the attention on Zerilli's erroneous claims, Jack Tocco died in 2014. Tony Zerilli passed away the following year in 2015.  Findinghoffa.com believes from other evidence Zerilli presented, he still had some of the pieces of the puzzle.  He was in the position in 1975 to have known some of the facts, but certainly not all of them.  And with that, we believe he left some important clues behind. This information lines up nicely with what we discovered elsewhere.

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It would be likely by those planning the hit on Hoffa, to hide his remains somewhere that served other purposes.  To do so it would require the burial site to be extremely difficult for anyone to ever locate.  If by chance the location was eventually discovered, it would either implicate some of their past competitors or point to no one at all.  The LCN had the option to treat the scenario just like they did with the unsolved Harvey Leach murder in 1974 Detroit.  Leach was the owner of the popular Joshua Door Furniture Company.  He went missing a year before Hoffa did, and in the same area. The major difference is that shortly afterward, Leach's body was discovered in his car at a place not associated with any suspect.  It looked very much like the work of Tony and Vito Giacalone along with their business associate Leonard Schultz.  They did not hide Leach's body and they did not incinerate it either, but it looks like they got away with it anyway.  It makes perfect sense that Jimmy Hoffa's body was used against individuals standing in the way of the LCNs ambitions and to serve as a means to shift the blame on the same people trying to prevent them from their access to sources of abundant revenue. This kind of scenario could be used as a reason for such individuals to retire early and avoid the consequences of what happened to another man who refused to do so, namely James R. Hoffa.  It appears it was precisely what happened.

 

The integral part suspect Rolland McMaster played is also linked by eyewitness testimony. It is attached to a rendezvous site not far from the abduction or murder locations. The Hidden Dreams Horse Farm in Wixom, Michigan was owned by McMaster and his brother-in-law Stanton Barr.  This place was searched once in the 1970s and again in 2006.  The FBI had obtained good evidence from one of their associates Donovan Wells. It was Wells who passed a polygraph test to confirm activity related to the delivery of Hoffa's body to this location.  Wells was living at the horse farm in 1975.  Barr was running the Gateway Transportation Steel Division Terminal in Detroit and Wells ran a TIME DC trucking terminal in Michigan.  (These are both companies connected to CEOs John Murphy and Walter F. Carey as we indicated earlier in this bio sketch). McMaster, Barr and Wells employed drivers who had participated in McMaster's shakedown crew in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan as mentioned earlier in connection with Dan E. Moldea's efforts to bring out the facts of the intense violence taking place before Hoffa vanished involving at least two of these drivers.  McMaster and Barr were also familiar to property shared in the Upper Peninsula.  Their wives were sisters from Sault Ste. Marie located on the Canadian border between Ontario and, once again, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  This was a shipping destination for many trucks to deliver supplies to business connected to the steel and auto industry.  It was also a place to receive a number of other items including manufactured steel parts fabricated for the Department of Defense Chrysler Tank Plant to be brought back to Detroit on their return trips. 

 

The Hidden Dreams Horse Farm was probably the location where the body of slain Teamster James R. Hoffa was transferred to a Gateway Transportation truck loaded with steel 55 gal. drums.  From there, we believe it headed to the Northern route of the U.S. 23 and the I-75 corridor. This was a definite route used by Gateway Transportation.  McMaster's horse farm was also located in a convenient spot with immediate access to this route.   It would take about four and a half hours to deliver Hoffa's body to men waiting on an access road.  They would transport it to an ongoing construction site, only minutes away, and the body would be disposed of on a slice of remote real estate connected to a highly revered leader of the trucking industry. Tony Provenzano seems to have known about this step to some degree.   Donovan Wells testimony includes Tony Provenzano meeting with Stanton Barr and Rolland McMaster at a local Detroit area "watering hole" the previous evening before Hoffa disappeared. This testimony appears to directly tie Provenzano to one of the key steps included in the master plan.   

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The President's Commission on Organized Crime Record of Hearing VI held in Chicago, Illinois took place under the title: Organized Crime and Labor-Management Racketeering in the United States April 1985. Anthony Provenzano's "Provenzano Group" became an interagency target of that investigation.  On pages 738- 739 of this report it states: " In all, 30 years of felonious conduct involving some dozen principal actors, all of whom were associates of the Provenzano Crime Group and six whom held positions of trust within Local 560 on one or more occasions".  They were involved in a total of 13 predicate racketeering acts including # 9: "the so- called "City-Man" labor-peace pay off scheme related to the operations of four interstate carriers,".  One of the identified carriers was TIME DC Trucking.  The extortion started in November of 1975 and continued until Tony Provenzano and Russell Bufalino were imprisoned for other felonies. This included most of the others involved in the Provenzano Group when they also became targets of investigation.  As was previously stated it was trucking industrialist and former President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Walter F. Carey who was running TIME DC during the dates coinciding with the period of extortion by the Provenzano Group.  His name kept surfacing along with other identified trucking CEOs connected to Jimmy Hoffa, the IBT Pension Fund and the U.S. Department of Defense.  So, Findinghoffa.com discovered a correlation between Gateway Transportation and TIME DC, with the New Jersey based "Provenzano Group".  These facts are further linked to suspect Rolland McMaster's associates and related locations in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  We alone began to follow up on what was the common denominator between these seemly ignored details.  In February 2020 Findinghoffa.com for the first time has made this information public.

 

With or without Gateway Trucking, the FBI already had a search warrant for the Moscato dump along the Hackensack River.  They could have used it as a lever themselves in order to apply pressure on the New Jersey suspects.  The missing and presumed murdered Armand Faugno was part of the Provenzano Group and his body was suspected to have been buried there in the early 70s.  However, it was another missing man once belonging to the Provenzano Group who could be used to bring down Tony Provenzano.  His name was Anthony Castellito.   He disappeared in the early 1960s.  With accumulated knowledge and new leads into both cases, the FBI had some heat they could apply to Provenzano's Group.  They were in a position to use both the Faugno and the Castellito  information to pressure some of the suspects.  It appears those investigating the disappearance of Hoffa did indeed use both cases as a means to motivate the Provenzano Group to cooperate with the Hoffa disappearance.   Stephen Andretta was the first one to feel the heat coming down on them.  He was incarcerated in December 1975 and sent to the Milan Federal Prison in Michigan for his lack of cooperation with the Federal Grand Jury in Detroit.  He was separated from the Provenzano Group and squeezed by the FBI for information while his attorney William Bufalino battled to free him.  It appears he eventually confirmed what he had told the informant Ralph Picardo concerning the "truck and drum" scenario.  Andretta was released later in 1976. 

Tony Provenzano and his Provenzano Group were all eventually prosecuted for other crimes.  Some were killed, and most of them went to prison for shaking down other trucking industrialists.   Some of these interesting details unfolded around the end of the 70s and are covered in our other documents.  However, Tony Pro faced a much heavier problem than the trucking company extortion and shake downs he was implicated with.  Provenzano was under suspicion as a Hoffa suspect and also for the murder of Anthony "3 Fingers" Castellito.  It was the conviction of the Castellito murder conspiracy that later placed Tony Pro in prison.  The previously mentioned Castellito disappearance, from 1961, had resurfaced with evidence enough to prosecute him for it. We point out that Castellito's body was never found!  It was alleged that "Sally Bugs" Brigulglio murdered Castellito in upstate New York and then ran his body threw a woodchipper. Provenzano was said to be in Florida at the time.  Even though the circumstances are similar to the Hoffex case, Tony Provenzano was prosecuted, convicted and sentenced. His accomplice, Salvatore Briguglio, was gunned down in 1978 because it appeared he was going to turn over evidence. Even without Briguglio's testimony Tony Provenzano was convicted for the murder conspiracy of Anthony Castellito.  It looks to us like, the theory "No Body, No Crime", did not apply in this case.  Along with Provenzano's conviction we learned Russell Bufalino was also convicted of another crime in 1978. 

 

The convictions of Provenzano and Bufalino provided a brief window for the aforementioned CEOs, John Murphy and Walter F. Carey, to distance themselves from problems caused by Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance.  Both Murphy and Carey began to make their exit from the trucking industry and go into quiet retirement.  The two companies they had, Gateway Transportation and TIME DC, faced bankruptcy and nationwide strikes.  Gateway filed Chapter 11 and was purchased by the Maislin  brother's out of Canada.  TIME DC trucking went out of business because of orchestrated nationwide IBT strike involving the Teamsters Pension Fund shut them down in the 1980s.

 

Along with the Castellito conviction, Provenzano continues to be regarded by investigators as one of the prime suspects and a likely planner/coconspirator of the Hoffa disappearance.   Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano paid a heavy price for the Castellito murder.   He was incarcerated and died inside prison walls on December 12, 1988, at the Lompoc Federal Penitentiary in California. He was 71 years old.  Ironically, his grave is in a cemetery not far from the many ruse sites alleged as being Hoffa's final resting place in Hackensack, New Jersey. 

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Foot Notes:

(1)   Information in detail of Rolland Mcmaster's anti Hoffa squad and shake down crew can be found in The Hoffa Wars

1978 by author Dan E Moldea 

(2)  Supporting evidence for this includes vehicles from Louis Linteau's Chauffeur and Limousine Service and a car from the Market Vending Company owned by Jimmy Quasarano and Pete Vitale.

(3)  "Hoffaology", Hoffalogist, Hoffology, "Hoffaologists" (spellings vary): a term first noticed by Findinghoffa.com in printed news articles from the 1960s & can be referenced on search engines. For Example: the Public Opinion article, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, page 22, March 3rd, 1967.   or an Article by Victor Riesel concerning Jimmy Hoffa published by the Steubenville Herald Star, page 15, October 3rd,1967.  

Findinghoffa.com alone resurrected it's use on this website in July 2019, since then the term has surfaced in recent articles by other journalists. 

Produced by Steve Drummond 2020 (revised 2023)