REMEMBER WHEN: Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance
It’s a name that seems to come up every time somebody finds human remains, whether at Lake Mead or anywhere else.
Jimmy Hoffa.
And Saturday marks a very serious milestone in the case that launched a thousand quips.
On July 30, 1975, the former Teamsters president arrived at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, for a meeting with reputed mob leaders. He was never seen again.
By that time, Hoffa had already stepped down as leader of the Teamsters — he had been released from prison in 1971 on the condition that he not participate in union activities for 10 years. But he never left the public consciousness.
Since his disappearance, theories about his final resting place have spread like wildfire. Rumors have claimed that whatever’s left of Hoffa is buried under a swimming pool in Michigan, in a swamp in Florida and even beneath the end zone of the old Giants Stadium in New Jersey.
As of this writing, no remains have been found.
Hoffa’s influence extended all the way to Las Vegas. As Jeff German chronicled during Season 2 of the Review-Journal podcast “Mobbed Up,” the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund bankrolled many of the casinos that put the Las Vegas Strip on the map, including Caesars Palace, the Desert Inn and the Aladdin.
“Everybody seemed to love, you know, Uncle Jimmy, and he was taken care of in the hotels,” Geoff Schumacher, vice president of exhibits and programs for The Mob Museum, told German. “He was in all of the elite circles in the city. And he, you know, he could make or break just about anybody in town, so he was very powerful.”
And Hoffa has been portrayed multiple times in movies, most recently by Al Pacino in the 2019 Netflix film “The Irishman.” Pacino received his most recent Academy Award nomination for playing the labor leader who refuses to disappear from American culture.
Contact Paul Pearson at ppearson@reviewjournal.com. Follow @EditorPaulP on Twitter.
