From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Gradios How Stuff Works. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name they call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission controlled dec and most importantly, you are you. You are here and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. From the offset, it is important for us to collectively establish that this episode is not an advertisement for the Irishman. The newest Scorsese film that just dropped on Netflix, Uh, to no small amount of acclaim and a little bit of controversy. Al Pacino plays one of the I don't know, maybe secondary is a good word, a secondary character in the film Uh. He plays a character named Jimmy Hoffa, which is based on the real life Jimmy Hoffa. Now, Nol, you and I had talked about this film a little bit off air when we saw it, and and Paul you watched it, so you brought it up to us without spoiling the film for anyone. It's based on a book, right, by this guy named Charles Brant. It's called I Heard You Paint Houses. I Heard You Paint Houses, which is a fantastic title. This book purports to be nonfiction, includes interviews and alleged confessions made to the author, Charles Brandt, by a former mafia hitman named Frank she Wrin like Edge she Wren Uh and yes and this uh. This film inspired our own super producer, Paul deck And to say, Hey, guys, have we ever delved into the story of jim Me Halfa? And I don't know. I I assumed that we had. We had. Not that changes today. So here are the facts. Yeah, let's talk about Jimmy Haffa. Who is this guy? Well, he was born James Riddle. You know, he went by Jimmy Halfa. And he was born on Valentine's Day, that's February fourteenth, nineteen thirteen, in a place called Brazil, Indiana. I did not know there was a Brazil Indiana. It's kind of cool. I've never heard of that place either. Um, assuming the the climate is a bit different in that Brazil. Um, he he was aware of let's say, the American labor force, the American laborer, the person who was using their hands to create something, generally for somebody else. His father was a coal miner and he passed away when Halfa was very very young. Jimmy was young, and his mom had end up joining the workforce to support her family, which which was a fairly common occurrence as you know, um, the heads of households would die off, whether it was through war conflict or a workforce accident or something like that. Um. He had three siblings of four children, including Jimmy, and eventually they moved to a place called Detroit, Michigan, which at the time was a hotbed of industry and growing. You know, this is uh, this is still before the enormous boom of the American auto industry, but still it's very much an industrious place. It's a great place to get a job. And we don't know how much formal education Jimmy Hoffa was able to achieve. Uh, you know, you'll hear's. Historians say they don't know whether he reached high school, much less graduated, but we know that eventually, while he was in school, he had to drop out. He had to help support his family, so he worked on the loading dock for a chain of grocery stores there in Detroit. Wait, and while working there, imagine how young this guy is. While working there, he organizes his very first labor strike and it all hinges on shipments of strawberries. Yeah, and he actually was pretty demonstrating some pretty serious streets smart to this point already because he used a recent shipment of strawberries as leverage to help get his coworkers better deal, better contracts um for their labor. They refused to unload the strawberries until they had secured better, better pay and in the thirties, well, I just have to say right there with the strawberries, like, that's a smart thing because strawberries go bad pretty quickly, and if you don't unload the strawberries, he's like he was coming up the works for everybody basically by doing that. And the it's interesting how it's set a timer, like very clear timer on when you're gonna lose all your money on these strawberries, and you're also losing money because that truck is now stuck there. It was just really smart. Have worked with canps, Honestly, it wouldn't because this CANPS, I don't know. Yeah, hard to say if that was just like a serendipitous thing, or if he very much you know, was being calculated about that. But it was absolutely a smart move and he got what he wanted. Then in the nineteen thirties, um Hafa officially joined the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is what he went on to become the president of at least the union's Detroit chapter. UM. So he kind of laid the groundwork for a career UH in labor um and and it would seem it came. He came by honestly based on his you know, trajectory and his upbringing at that point. Yeah, and we should also stop too for anyone who doesn't know. Doubtless, doubtlessly we have several Teamsters in the audience today, but a lot of people in this country and abroad don't really know what a teamster is. The teamster, the old word atomo logically is like someone who drives a team of horses. Right now, ac cordy to their website teamster dot org. The Teamsters are America's largest, most diverse union. UH. They started in nineteen o three is the merger of two team driver associations t E A M. By the way, not teen in case, my annunciation is off, and today you will you may be most familiar with them as truck drivers, right, because we've replaced to a great degree, we've replaced animal labor with mechanical labor. So at this time he is uh, he is. As you said, Noel joined up with the Teamsters. He starts as the president of the Detroit chapter. For many less ambitious people, that would be the version of making it. You know what I mean, I'm king of the town. And the thing is that halfa is not a guy satisfied with being a big fish in a small town. Make no mistake, he is a shark. He expands you in membership. He quickly garners a reputation for getting better contract agreements by any means necessary. Cough cough, corruption, cough cough, mafia cough cough, uh cough. Right, But he started out honest, right, That's the very important thing. By nineteen fifty two, he's vice president of the entire union, so not just Detroit, but the entire international brotherhood of Teamsters, and just five years after that, nineteen fifty seven, he is the president of the entire organization. It's one of these things where, especially in the way he's portrayed in film like, I haven't been a long time since I've seen that Jack Nicholson uh film that believed any de Vito directed, It's called Hafa. But at least in The Irishman, you do get the sense that he felt as though he were still representing the common man and doing something positive, even though he was clearly um heading up what was not a strictly legal enterprise. He he seemed like he maybe could convinced himself that it was all for the greater good. It was all for getting his fellow brothers a better deal, like with the strawberries. But in order to do that, you know, we're swimming with sharks here. We gotta play nice with the sharks, a bigger, bigger shark exactly, because it's all about us versus them mentality, and in this case, us did include some pretty um nefarious characters. Halfa was to be the subject of numerous criminal investigations and and it was a shadow that kind of relentlessly followed him throughout his career, and this is portrayed really really well in the in the s Carsese film. Um wasn't entirely surprising his direct predecessor, Dave Beck, had also been investigated and he was ultimately tried and convicted of corrupt practices within the union. Dave Beck, which was convicted, which gave half of the opportunity to ascend to this position, yet half a persevered Nineteen sixty four was a big year for him in a number of ways, not all of them fantastic. His big win was that he got nearly all of the truck drivers in the entire continent of North America under a single contract. Uncle Sam have been keeping an eye on Jimmy, and they thought there was something rotten in the teamster's something fishy about his rise to fame and his success. Now at this point, he is very, very similar to a well known politician, or maybe even to some degree of celebrity. Right, the FBI and then U S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy are watching Haffa very closely. They are convinced that a lot of his union success is less a result of being a shrewd negotiator and more a result of a close collaboration with organized crime also known as the mob or the mafia. Right, so what else happened in nineteen sixty Well, halfa himself was found guilty of a couple of things, bribery for one, also jury tampering. Jury tampering the good old j T when when something goes wrong and somebody knows it, you gotta tamper a little bit. Yeah, right, like and and that can be really that could be really terrible or just going like here's a hundred dollars, don't don't talk about me, or it could yeah, or it could be something to the level of you know, memories a funny thing, Mr Smith, you know what I mean. Like sometimes you think you remember, so you look back and you realize you don't remember it too good. After all, you know, it could have been anybody there. But you know one thing, one thing you never forget is your children smile. And it's wonderful will be able to see that every day instead of just looking back and and remembering it and wishing you could say hello to him. Oh boy, oh boy, that was really good. That's just the science of memory. I was gonna say, just like casually mentioning his or her daughter's birthday, but like that's like that was on that was on the was on the money. Well, that's cinematic I'm sure it was much more subtle, yes, but but that stuff that that's when he he was found guilty of both of those things in connection with a previous trial that he had that he had gone through in nineteen two years prior. Yeah, he was on trial for conspiracy, which I love you that people could be convicted of conspiracy. And then he was found guilty in sixty four for charges related to, as you said, Matt conspiracy. So that was one bad thing that happened to him that year. Yeah, he's also convicted of misusing funds from the union's pension plan. And that's a big note in the in the film that Scorsese did, and also a note I believe in the book I Heard You Paint Houses, because the union's pension fund was an enormous amount of money and he pretty much had direct control over it, so he could make the money dance to the tunes he chose, and a lot of those tunes were mafia backed projects, like in Las Vegas, for example, um paying for wings to be constructed on you know, casinos, and as we know, a lot of that money came directly from the mob to start you know, Las Vegas. In the first place. So there were those relationships, uh that were ongoing and directly tied to dipping into that money, which would then be invested and get a return. It's not like he was stealing money from the pensioners people who would do that money. But it was still playing fast and loose with the rules. You know, you're telling me that organized crime organizations launder money through things like labor unions. It's true, map money laundry, but it's got a great return. I'm just gonna say, if everything goes well, there's a great return for that stuff. Uh. Yeah, money laundering was it was a big part of it. Also, at what point do this Maybe a story for a different day, but at what point do campaign donations become um illegal? Right? At what point would be interfering with the democratic process? Well, I mean, all you gotta do is make him unlimited and then you're good to go that I should fix all those problems. Right, Well, I think it's safe for for the five of us. Uh, Paul Noel met myself and you listening to agree that Jimmy Hoffa probably did not deal with these philosophical quandaries in the same way. It's just cost of doing business. So after three years fighting these charges that his lawyer and and you know again as depicted in the in ther Citi film, it was a union lawyer, UM who was also very aware of what was going on, made the argument that this was all trumped up. Um. He had exhausted his appeals finally and he got thirteen years in prison in the nineteen sixty seven he was incarcerated in the Louisbourg Federal Prison in Pennsylvania. UH. And then came along UH a like minded individual who has sent it to the presidency, a little guy by the name of Richard Nixon who commuted half a sentence in seventy one, essentially giving him a part in a presidential pardon with a year and a half of probation. However, this came with a string attached. Nixon band half of from holding any union leadership position at least until nineteen So bit of a slap on the wrists. It's a weird one too, because it's a string with a time limit. He's not saying stay out of the game, your dirty rat. He's saying, just sit on the bench until the eighties. Let's let the heat die down a little bit. Well, and it's so it's so odd to me that Nixon the president, came through and said, you know what, it's okay, is it odd? You're good? You're good man, You're gonna be okay. It's only been a couple of years. You got thirteen, You'll be all right. Well half a donated heavily. Oh, I know it's campaigned, but just too to be able to get a president to do that, no matter how much money you're donating to them, because in the end, it's you know, the public appearance of something like that. But here's the deal. Jimmy Hoffa and a lot of labor union leaders out there are like hugely beloved no matter what they're doing, no matter what they've been convicted of. Will you know, over the course of time and history, will be beloved because there is this this perception, at least from the outside. And and you know, like we said, Jimmy Hoffa thought that he was doing the right thing, or at least appeared to believe he was doing the right least at the beginning. The ideology outweighed the ego that exactly that ideology it ripples out through the public of people who are assisted in that way. And this is a one to one and some might accuse me of being hyperbolic here, but it's almost the way you hear about, uh, the way folks in my dan treated Pablo Escobar, you know, very clearly bad guy, doing at things, hurting people, probably directly hurting individuals in that community. But there's this perception that he's the best chance they've got, or he's actually looking out for the little people, you know, and he cares in some way, and they call him sant Pablo and all that stuff, even though completely transparent that this guy is is no good. Well, in Haffa, wasn't some mob boss, no exactly, but I don't want to draw one similar exactly, but there's intentions to look out for the the labor class, of the working class. We can imagine, you know, I think that is a good comparison. We can imagine supporters of Escobar and supporters of Haffa, not that they're the same in the same line of business, but we can imagine the supporters saying, hey, this guy is the reason that we have a paycheck. This is the reason that my family can live comfortably or better than they would have otherwise. So we have to remember also that with his enormous power, Jimmy Hoffa could move the vote. He could sway hundreds of thousands of people to vote for or against a given candidate. And for the next few years, half A wages something very like a war. He's fighting that ban on leadership in court. He doesn't want to wait till and he's also working behind the scenes, with mixed success, to reconsolidate his power base within the Union. And then, of course, as even a casual student of history will recall, things don't work out the way half A planned. Or did they. We're going to rejoin him on July after a word from our sponsor, and we're back. J Halfa is in a state of what the streets called deep beef. He has numerous enemies, he hasn't made a ton of friends, and he's alienated many of the friends he had. But he wants to make peace, and he realizes he might have to eat some crow, he might have to swallow his pride, he might have to make some inroads with people he swore he would never work with again. So he leaves his home in Detroit and he meets the two Tony's Anthony Tony Jack and Uh Anthony Tony Prow. Tony Jack is a figure in the Detroit crime scene. Tony pro is a mob affiliated union leader who's based in New Jersey. So they're supposed to meet at this restaurant in Bloomfield Township. Is that the Marcus red Fox? I believe so, yeah, that they're gonna they're gonna squash the beef. They're gonna settle their feud. At least that's what Haffa thinks. So shows up, what we believe, at least, his car shows up, and he appears to be the only one there. You know, he's there. He's gonna meet two people, but half was the only guy there, and he's wondering what's going on. Assume we assume, because really we have no idea. We have no evidence at least that is um, that is concrete as to what occurred after he showed up at that restaurant, or at least when his car showed up, because his car was there. But he was never seen again by anyone except for the people responsible for what happened to him, or himself responsible for whatever happened to him. It's a mystery. It's one of the most longstanding mysteries that has existed in this country, and um, yeah, one of America's most prominent, divisive, important public figures had simply Kay's are associated. He disappeared and we're almost a half a century into the post halfa era? So what happened to Jimmy Hoffa? Here's where it gets crazy. The answer really depends on who who you ask. There's no shortage of theories that have popped up over the intervening decades, and the most popular suspects being the mob of course. But in some cases this surprised me. US federal agencies. Interesting, right, did you guys hear about that one? That's a weird one for sure. I mean it makes sense considering that he was such a persona on grata like for you know, Kennedy and the U. S. Government. I mean, they were after him, and he more or less shook the rap and then was able to kind of get back into the game. Well we'll get into it a little bit further, but there's also the idea that a federal agency was involved, but not in disappearing him by killing him or anything, but by putting him into a protection of some sort. Right, Yeah, so at this point in the if we take the high level look at it, at this point in the world of conspiracy and speculation, the fate of Jimmy Hoffa's kind of entered urban legend status, which means that the theories start to obey some of the troops we would associate with folk tales or oral tradition. The general consensus now is that the mob conspired to kill Haffa because they wanted to stop him from becoming the King of the Teamsters again. And that's because while he was locked up, even though he wasn't locked up for the full thirteen year sentence, while he was locked up, his former vice president got pretty cozy with the mob, even more so than Haffa was, and he was much more willing to play some games. When Jimmy Hoffa got out, uh the wise guys, the mafios knew that he would try to rain them in a little bit and they wouldn't be able to play all the reindeer games that they had become so accustomed to. Make no mistake, they were probably make ging more money under that vice president. What was his name meant that was Frank fitz Simmons, Frank Edward I. Believe Frankie Fitz. Yeah, so they were making they're probably making more money under Frankie Fitz. Who on earth would say no to UH to continuing to enhance their profits. They weren't keen to mess with that relationship. So the idea then is that the mob killed him or disappeared him, and we see a lot of common troops. Just like in other forms of folklore, there are tons of variations on this theory. It's kind of like a kind of like a bar joke or something, you know, where it's like X walks into a bar. They followed the same, just a mob hit and then some sort of industrial process to destroy or hide Haffa's body. There are a ton of examples, Yes, there are, indeed. Um One of them is that Haffa was killed, placed in the trunk of a car, then the car was crushed in a mob affiliated scrapyard. Um. That would be a pretty clever way to go about it, wouldn't that leave a lot of physical evidence? Though, Like I don't know, you gotta will get a wonder with it, like seep out the cubed car, like the remains or anything like that. I wonder what that would look like, Yeah, I imagine, so it would have to definitely be a tightly controlled scrap yards. Scrap yards can be really big. But this was also in the days before DNA testings. True, it wouldn't fly today. No, certainly not as much, specially if it was a known kind of mob tied facility or whatever. Another one is that he was hit in the head with a shovel and buried alive. Where are these coming from? Cheeze dramatic? I like it, but that one doesn't make the most sense. Do you have any providence for the for the for the origin of a one. Yeah, that one comes to us from the great rumor mill. That doesn't That one doesn't have a lot of sand to it. A lot of a lot of these examples that we find came out later after because of course this happened before DNA. It also happened before internet, right, So a lot of these come about from statements by former mafia associated individuals, usually when they are attempting to seem as though they have leverage so that they can get some juice with the FEDS, maybe get a better deal up to an including relocation and immunity makes sense, and that also makes sense for some of the ones to follow, uh, which seemed to be kind of variations on a theme. Right. Halfa was murdered and his remains replaced in an oil drum um Halfa and one container or another was thrown into the Great Lakes, or was abducted by the FEDS and thrown from an airplane. It's a waterproof planned full proof. That's uh. I just think about that. When has when has anybody said, you know, the best way to get rid of this prominent figure is to take them on an airplane and then, in full view of anyone who happens to be, you know, looking up, let's throw them from the plane. It doesn't that one, okay, So that one comes from the FED. One specifically comes from a guy named Joseph Franco. I have no idea whether he's related to the actor. He was an old one time associate of Haffa's, and Franco said that he kept the story to himself for years because he wanted to use the info as leverage in negotiating an immunity deal if he were caught for other unrelated crimes. Spoiler alert, It did not work out for Franco. No, it did not. There's one that Paul is a particular fan of as well, The idea that, uh, halfa became this sort of grizzly hidden landmark for a sports team. Oh yeah. The idea is that half was dispatched, shot baby whatever it was. Then he was his limbs were taken apart, he was dismembered, then frozen, and then get this guess, buried inside the cement foundation of Giants Stadium. Now, this was then located in Rutherford, New Jersey and East Rutherford, New Jersey. So what's interesting about this, just to interject, is that there's a nice mythic tie in here because in some ancient civilizations and cultures thought when you were building a place of great import, you were required to make a blood sacrifice of some sort. This and cats in there right right now. This doesn't work with that kind of left hand path stuff because the idea is that he wasn't killed on the site. If you really want the magic to hit, it's got to happen, you know, live and direct on the place where you plan to lay the stones. Yeah. Yeah, I can't remember the movie that I just watched that talked all about that, but it had uh the actor who plays the Queen of Dragons. Uh. She was in it and it was like a haunting horror movie on Netflix. Anyway, I'll check it out. It's out there. They they mentioned they mentioned burying a cat like oh and alive cat in the in the walls jerks. Yeah. Gross. Well anyway, in this case, it was in Giants stadium. Uh. And this is pretty crazy because it originates from an interview that a guy named Donald Francos gave in ninety nine to Playboy magazine, which I want to say, at the time was doing great journalism. Actually still Playboys Soldiers on. I'm not as familiar. I'm not as familiar with modern Playboy nowadays. I mean, there's the old joke that you just read it for the articles, but apparently, like for a while, it was absolutely a place where a lot of short stories writers broke their work and kind of went on to great things. My favorite Shell Silver Steam poem was published in Playboy, and I stole a copy as a kid so I could read the poem. Isn't that weird? That is quite It's good. It's about the devil. It's a whole thing. The one that was kind of filthy, Yes, remember that one. That's a good one. What's the what's the name of that? Oh, gosh, the devil and Billy Markham, that's the one. Yeah. Um. And in that article in Playboy, Um he claimed that Haffa was killed by a New York Irish mafia boss by the name of Jimmy Coonan and buried um at the home field of the New York Giants in New York Jets football teams, so ac Cordy to Franco's after Conan shot halfa with a silence twenty two caliber pistol in a house in Mount Clemens, Michigan, he in New York mafia hitman John Sullivan bagged up the body parts and stored them in a freezer for months. See that's weird because you would think you would want to get rid of the body as soon as you can, because every time anybody else who knows about the freezer, even if they don't know there's a body in it, could be uh an knew of exposure. But okay, so they've gotten in this freezer for months. Apparently nobody opens the freezer in this part of town. What do they do after those months have passed? Well, you find a stadium that is under construction, a giant concrete monstrosity, and you find a place where concrete is being poured and you place it surreptitiously underneath there. Right, that's the whole idea. So so for real, though, Giant Stadium was under construction and it was going to open up the next year, or it was planned to at least, the bags were then mixed into the concrete foundation in what became a certain section. So if you go, if you went to Giant Stadium and you looked at section one oh seven down there deep, that's where Jimmy Hoffa late at least according to this theory. And this section was located near the end zone of the stadium's football field. There's one one of the end zones. Yeah, there's one problem with this, which is that there is no evidence other than these claims by people speaking years after the fact. In fact, the FBI, while they had initially entertained most descriptions or allegations of the fate of Jimmy Hoffa, and they you know, days and months following his disappearance, Uh, they really cooled on this theory. And when the stadium was demolished in the FBI did not even bother to show up and search the site because they put him there. I'm just kidding, that's that's not true. I'm joking, you know. I just I don't think people really get thrown from planes as often as fiction would have us believe. Well, that's the that's the other part of the stories. He was thrown from a plane and he went right through, straight through that concrete and just like embedded inside there. And then oh and the FBI went good enough, he was wet, the concrete was still wet, and he just went, uh, so let's get back to she writ she Wren is the source of the claims that are made in the book I Heard You Paint Houses? Uh and the Irishman. The film is based in the book I Heard You Paint Houses, she Wren says that he had betrayed Jimmy Hoffa, and he says multiple times that Jimmy Hoffa was a friend of his right and he said he pulled the trigger because it was inevitable that someone was gonna kill halfa and so he thought he felt honor bound that it should be him, and he thought, also, you know, at least I'll make it quick he'll die instantly. So here's what he said happened. He said that he brought halfa to a house in northwestern Detroit, and he stood behind Jimmy Hoffa, and while Jimmy hoff was distracted, she Wren shot him twice in the back of the head the double tap, and then he said they cremated Haffa's remains and a traction senerator in the suburbs of Detroit. She Wren actually gave the address of the house, and we'll get to this. Uh, we gave the address of the house where the murders supposedly took place. Investigators treated seriously. They searched this for evidence of the killing, and they found traces of blood in the house, but later testing revealed that this blood did not belong to Haffa, so someone probably died. Maybe she Wrin was just misbearemembering this, however, was just one of several searches conducted. Will get to a few of those after a word from our sponsor, and we're back. Now let's get into some of the official attempts to find Jimmy, offer to recover his body, or even to locate him if he was still alive. Um so let's get let's jump to nineteen nine to the FBI and Kenneth Walton, he's the agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office, and he was speaking with the Detroit News UH in nine and he was talking about how he knew what had happened to Halfa, And we have a quote from him here, I'm comfortable, I know who did it, but it's never going to be prosecuted because we would have to divulge informants confidential sources. Informants confidential sources. Yeah. Well, now let's just say I can imagine in a case like this, with somebody like Jimmy Hoffa that has so many connections to probably multiple organized criminal organizations. Um that if you did, let's say, charge somebody that you knew or you were aware of who did it. But if by doing that, it's going to compromise like two or three major let's say vice investigations or you know, uh, investigations of conspiracy, like that would be a hard that would be a difficult choice to make, at least just to find the killer or to apprehend the killer of another known criminal or associated criminal. So like, why would why would you give up on this other thing that is viable right now, just to just to close that case. I don't know, yeah, because if and I don't want to put words into the mouths of the law enforcement here, but I think it's a fantastic point, because if you think that someone is already inherently corrupting kind of a dirt bag for one reason or another, then do you feel the same moral obligation to pursue a case, especially if it means pursuing that case may uh preclude your ability to lock up other living criminals who are out there still doing things that you find morally or you know, legally, um terrible. That's a really good point, man, I don't I mean it would it would make sense that that Walton at least believe, like truly believed he knew. Yeah, And I would say also, I would say also to as as anyone in the enforcement community listening to the show today, including our n s A interns, even knows full well, uh, I imagine that the vast majority of professionals working in those fields would say, well, it doesn't matter whether I like someone who is a victim of a crime. It's my job, it's my career. Correct. But it is a cold hard fact that somebody somewhere would have to make the decision to, you know, if if there was and this is the big if here, if there was a conflict in that way that we're speaking of here, somebody would have to make the decision to either continue uh searching for Hafa and going down those leads, or saying, okay, we gotta leave this alone. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's true, it's true. The search continues. In two thousand and one, Uh, you know, we had mentioned earlier the lack of DNA evidence for testing. Now forensic DNA is a thing, forensic DNA investigation. Rather, in two thousand one, these hair strands found in the nineteen seventy five Mercury Marquis linked Haffa to a vehicle that authorities believed was used in this disappearance. This vehicle, this Mercury, was owned by a friend of Haffa's named Charles Chucky O'Brien, and they were actually they were actually friends. Police and uh survivors. Members of Haffa's family had always believed that O'Brien played some sort of role in the disappearance, but O'Brien for decades had denied being involved in any shape, form or fashion. He said, In fact, Halfa had never even been a passenger in his car. Now, just a tip here for all the ne'er do wells in the crowd today. If you want a stone wall, that's a pretty that's a pretty good way to do it, you know what I mean. That's like just under the level of playing so dumb that you say I own a car. Yeah, okay, we found these hairs of Jimmy Hoffas in your car here. He's never even been in there. I don't want a car. What's hair? Guys, this is a lot for me to take in. Gosh. But uh but this lead this search also peter doubt because you see authorities linked Haffa or is Us some strands of his hair to the car, but they were not able to determine when Halfa would have been in the car. This also could mean that since he and Chucky hang out a lot, that maybe the hair just got on some of Chucky's clothing or something. And I think we maybe bury the lead here a little bit. Chucky was uh more than just a friend. He was half A's adopted son. And the way it's portraying the movie. I was a little confused about it too, because there's a scene where somebody pulls a gun on Halfa during one of his trials or like, you know, one of his corruption trials, and Chucky kicks the crap out of the guy, and Haffa makes a big scene about saying, as my boy, you know, like I raised him or whatever. You run from a knife, your charge a gun, You charge a gun exactly, um point being it wasn't his blood sign, it wasn't his uh biological sign, but essentially was someone he had taken under his wing and referred to more or less as his adopted So so my question is surely he if they were as close as as as the record indicates, he would have been in that car before. He's never been in my car. What is a car? I have a car. I don't understand, Charles w Chucky O'Brien. So there were more searches. They've continued. We mentioned that two thousand and twelve search based on the testimony of she Won or the statements of she Wren. Investigators did search that residents based on a tip two thousand twelve. They didn't they didn't find anything, and they found some blood, but it wasn't office. I think every time I hear the name Shearon, she Ra, Oh you know, yeah, that wasn't me. I never understood what wasn't she woman because there was this internal consistent he man, Yeah, and then she Ra. Why couldn't it be he Ra? That'd be cool. Actually, I was more of a ThunderCats guy. I was the superior Muscley mutant show in my opinion. Oh wow, we're doing the low fi dub step. That was kind of the Hank Hill versus I was gonna. I thought it's gonna be so much more intense than that. I was kind of bracing myself, and because we were we were reacting to your brace. It was we held back because you were clearly I think we both thought that you were. You were just letting the moment build and you were going to scream it. Oh yeah, it was great. We'll fix it in post No, I don't need it, so it was great. Yeah, unrelated. Rewatched the live action he man, I liked it. You know who plays Skeletor uh not Dolph Loren uh Frank, No, Yeah, that's it. And he he's the only person who hasn't disowned the film because his kids liked it. He played a very strange skeletor. Also, you know, some toy lines just don't have the narrative heft to hold a feature. You know, they even had man at arms in there. Anyway, what else was Franklin go in? Oh yeah, he's in a bunch of stuff, but he was not in the Halfa investigation. Probably to wrap this one up. In uh June, the FBI gets another tip and they search of field in Oakland Township, Michigan. That's about twenty miles away from where Halfa was last scene. There was a guy involved in crime named Tony Zarelli. Not the stereotype, but this is there's a Tony heavy tail and Zarelli gave the gave the authorities info about where he said Halfa was buried. He also described how Halfa died. He said, Oh yeah, he's the he's the person who said that Halfa was hit on the head with a shovel and buried alive. But he said this in an e book that he was selling for profit. Uh And nothing came of it. So either the authorities were bad at digging or Zarelli was miss from remembering. But at this point, no one no one has verified any remains. The closest they've come would be those strands of hair with Halfa's DNA. But this also leads us to controversies. The Irishman is based on, as we said, a single book. Both Scorsese and de Niro, who plays she Wren, described the character she Wren in the film as a fictional persona based on or loosely inspired by the real guy. And furthermore, not all Halfa experts agree with she Wren's story. A couple of them think it's total millar. Oh. Yeah. The author, Dan Moldea, he wrote the book The Halfa Wars and he's been researching the disappearance of this gentleman for God for years. So he was speaking with Robert de Niro and he basically was trying to ward off de Niro, saying that he, you know, he's got all these doubts about sheering story, and he's telling DeNiro that sheer and Brandt were I for, let's say, essentially running a con job on DeNiro saying this is you should not be doing this, so like why would you make this movie? Um? But again like this is pretty this is a pretty interesting story. Even if it's not true, I would say it's it's pretty good storytelling and and it makes me want to watch it. Are we in spoiler territory here for the film? I feel like we've kind of danced around it, right, Uh we can, Yeah, we could go ahead. Let's do the spoiler countdown because it is a new film. Three you and one there's I was. I didn't, I didn't haven't done my homework. Is that much Before watching this I knew it was based on a book. I did not realize that it was meant to be unequivocally like this guy killed Jimmy Hoffa, And when the moment in the film where that happens, I wasn't expecting it. And then I immediately googled Irish men fiction, you know, And I think that's sort of the consensus is that it's a little more fiction or at least, you know, conflation of fact and fiction and is pure uh nonfiction storytelling, because it again is based on one book, one man's account, a deathbed confession. Essentially, you know, this guy did not live much longer past this interview, and that's that's got dramatized in the film as well, the fact that he's delivering this story to the perspective camera, which is you know, supposed to be the journalist of you know, which is you are the stand in for that kind of as a viewer. Excellent film. But when I saw that, I was like, WHOA, Okay, I guess we're this is sort of a hybrid thing I'm seeing here, like Once upon a Time in Hollywood for example. Um, but if you are to believe the book, then this this is how it happened. I do want to bring something up my my father in law talked with me about this pretty extensively. His he is also a Tony and he told me that, without getting into too much detail, if this kind of thing was going to go down with somebody like Jimmy Hoffa, the only way you could pull it off is to get one of his closest associates or friends to do it himself. Because so it would make sense for Sharon's character to actually be the one who's able to get close enough to do it. Because we haven't really talked about this exactly, but I mean they're basically brothers in the film. And there's another character the has the Buffaloni crime family you know, it was Russell's played by Joe Pesci, wonderful performance. Um. The three of them are kind of inseparable. They're they're almost like a family. But Jimmy in particular gets a really close relationship with his daughter and that's the whole thing. Um. But yeah, he has trusts him like a like a blood brother. Well, one of the other reasons, I mean, think of the logistics. If you're trying to pull off a job like this, you have somebody who not only has a protective close circle, but they also have a established schedule, calendar. People know where and when they're supposed to be at the majority of times. It's not like if you're just doing you know, uh, if you're just landing in a strange town and finding someone under a bridge that no one will miss for a few weeks, Like this is an established thing where you have you know, you have at most probably a few hours to get out of town, right, So it's it definitely I think your father in law is on the money. Yeah, and it's kind of scary, but yes, let's let's continue. So Dan Muldeya has his own theory. He believes half as disappearance was in his mind, a New Jersey operation. He said he's interviewed all the suspected killers in his decades long search for the truth of the matter, and he he thinks that it's most likely that it was a production of New Jersey operators. Paul Mission Control Decade raised a great point off air earlier when we were talking, and he said, one thing that he found, um, one thing that he found compelling was that the story she runs account felt kind of understated, like the way Nol depicted it. This this death is you know, there's not a lot of gravitas build up. It feels abrupt and brutal. If that is, and the last one was the last one, promise, If that is Jimmy Hoffa killed himself. We didn't talk about this. We're not gonna talk too much about it because there's not a ton of evidence to lean on here. But what if he committed pseudo side, which, as we all know, is the fancy pants cravat wearing word for faking one's death. Uh, it is very very difficult to do successfully if you want to make any money. Um, it is not impossible to do if you want to just disappear and live by your wits or if you have access to someone who makes some very accurate idea of some sort. Right. Could he have gone uh with the federal witness Protection program? Could he have gone with your with the uh? Could he have gone with the institution that is sometimes called witless protection UH? And and if so, what happened to him? Well, we know that Jimmy Hoffa died for legal purposes on July. He was declared legally dead as we record today's episode. His disappearance and his likely death have yet to be confirmed. Let's do a little math. If he were alive in nineteen as we record this, he would be a hundred and six years old. That means even if somehow he actually went off the grid, you know, changed his name to Himmy Jaffa or whatever and lived in a small town in Saskatchewan or something, he probably already passed away. But that hasn't stopped the investigation. As a matter of fact, this is this is one of the things we can leave you with. The film and the book that we've mentioned today may have inspired US investigators to get back on the case. So this was December. This is right now as we're recording this. As the Irishman has come out. Uh. There's an interview with U S attorney Matthew Schneider, and this guy was asked by you know, a reporter by someone there, what do you you know? What do you think about the Irishman? What are your thoughts? Well, his statement was, uh, certainly intriguing. I will talk about this, but not now. I have a lot of thoughts about it. It's unresolved. I have my own theories. There will be more to come on this. Yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't mean to dismiss this whole thing as being like some sort of fantasy. Obviously there's information in this film and in this book that is meaningful. Um, but you can draw your inclusions. But anybody like this is actually really close to the story. Surely there's gonna be some stuff that there's a ring of truth to, or that he knows unequivocally is true. And I'd be interested to hear uh this perspective. I think that it's the people that are still alive that I think that can really shed some light on which parts of this are real, and that's yet to be determined. And this is also uh TikTok situation because many of the people who would have been in their prime and directly involved have passed on. That's just how, you know, That's just how the body crumbles, right, And yeah, it makes me. It makes me wonder if a deathbed confession has already occurred. It just kind of went unnoticed because the family and the surrounding people were just like, okay, whatever, whatever, Grandpa, you're crazy or or even um, Grandpa, what are you think? Mmmmmmm no, no, no, no, no no no. We don't talk about their grandpa. Grandpa. It's supposed to be America. You know the rules. Get the pillow. I'm just you know, that was dark. I apologize. We're gonna take it. Hey, Grandpa, We're gonna take a quick trip over to the Giants Stadium. It's gonna be fine, Grandpa, just come with us. The best view is from outside the player. This is terrible, that field of dreams, right, So we at this point past the torch to you, fellow listeners, what do you think has this been solved unofficially the way that the former region in charge of the investigation believes it has. Will The answer to Jimmy Hoffa's disappear Urrance UH is widely suspected death ever come to light, why or why not? We want to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook. You can find us on Instagram. You can find us on Twitter. Special shout out to our Facebook community page. Here's where it gets crazy. We can't wait to swing by there and see what you think about Jimmy Hoffa. Also, Hey, you know, we're just gonna shoot our shot. If you have information about the disappearance of hafa Um, send it, send it to us. We won't wrat you out, we promise. Yeah, ed cheering if you know what you're you know, relatives did like let us know. Yeah, that guy's got a Shrek tattoo. I did not know that he has a couple. Actually, I think it's a Donkey and the Shrek. He's really into Shrek? Is he the one who did I'm in love with your body? Is that about Jimmy Hoffa? That's good, that's good, Ben. I would prefer to believe it. But the line I believe is now his bedsheets smell like you. Yeah, Jimmy. I'm gonna look up the lyrics for this after we wrapped. In the meantime, Hey, what do you do if you hate the social meats, but you still want to tell us what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. You give us a call. You call one eight three three s T d W y t K. Just give us a call. You'll hear Ben's voice. There will be a beep and then just say I'm in love with the obody and I will be like, whoa, it was about the Jimmy Hoffa episode, and then leave your message. We'll get it um. If you don't want to do any of that stuff, but you still want to contact us, you have an idea for an episode, you want to tell us anything at all, you can send us a good old fashioned email. We are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff I Don't want you to know, as a production of i heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows