More Hoffa news this week, this item on the whereabouts of the presumed late great Jimmy R. Hoffa, household name, father of the current IBT president, labor icon, anti-union touchstone and subject of the most enduring missing person’s mystery since Amelia Earhardt.
Legend has it Hoffa was offed by his closest Mob associates immediately after disappearing from a Detroit area restaurant in 1975. A new book by Hoffa’s then driver, self-described “chauffeur and goon for mob bosses” turned informant Marvin Elkind says Hoffa’s body is buried in the foundations of the 73-story Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, now the headquarters of General Motors. The macabre Waldo of the union underworld, Hoffa has been reportedly buried in the Everglades, assorted landfills and the west end zone of Giants Stadium in New Jersey.
In the book, “The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob,” Elkind claims he learned Hoffa was buried under the RenCen during a Teamsters conference in Detroit in 1985. As a group of IBT delegates left the hotel across the street from the Center’s construction site, mob boss Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone, who allegedly called the hit on Hoffa, nodded toward the new building’s foundation and told the group, “Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys.”
