A deathbed statement by a man who claimed to have buried Hoffa’s body, repeated years later by his son, sent the F.B.I. to Jersey City for a “site survey.”
It’s Monday. We’ll look at a new search for Jimmy Hoffa, the once-invincible president of the Teamsters who disappeared in 1975. We’ll also look at the case involving Brendan Hunt, who said in an online video to “kill your senators.” His lawyers say he has struck up a jailhouse friendship with the disgraced R-and-B superstar R. Kelly.
What happened to Jimmy Hoffa? First it was a mystery, then an urban myth, even a punchline for comedians. He was the once-invincible president of the Teamsters who disappeared in 1975.
Now the F.B.I. has opened an investigation that centers on a former landfill in Jersey City. A man who worked there as a teenager said before his own death last year that his father had buried Hoffa’s body in a steel drum. Special Agent Mara Schneider, a spokeswoman, said in a statement last week that agents had conducted a “site survey.” The statement did not mention Hoffa by name.
My colleague Michael Wilson writes that past investigations have failed to find Hoffa’s body in Michigan, where Hoffa was last seen at a restaurant in suburban Detroit. I asked Mike to explain the developments that led to Jersey City.
A black limo pulls up and someone says, “They’re here.” Fill us in.
So Frank Cappola remembers this summer day at this landfill in Jersey City where he worked, when this black limo arrived, and his father, Paul, who was a partner at the landfill, went over to speak to the men inside. Years later, Paul would tell his son that the men were passing down orders to bury Jimmy Hoffa at the landfill. Frank, the son, knew nothing of this at the time. Only that it was not normal to see a limo.
He might have been saying “limo” in that New York way, referring generically to a black sedan. We don’t know. It seems unlikely that mobsters seeking discretion would roll up in an actual stretch limousine, but who knows.
So the father buried the body?
He was annoyed that his partner and the limo people had pointed out where in the landfill they wanted the body buried. Paul feared that the landfill, which had Mob ties, was constantly being watched by the police.
So Paul, late that night and alone, buried the body in a different location, off the landfill property, under the Pulaski Skyway, this major highway overhead.
He never told anyone about the new location, until, on his deathbed in 2008, he told his son. So in this version of events, for a span of 33 years or so, only one man knew where Hoffa was buried. And then he told one man, and died.
That’s how you keep a secret.
Which the son did, until his own health took a turn. He told the whole story to Dan Moldea, an expert on all things Hoffa, a few months before he died in March 2020. Frank took Moldea out there to show him. I think he felt the time was right and there would be no recrimination because all the players are dead.
By the time Hoffa disappeared in 1975, as you wrote, it had been an open secret that his days were numbered. He was trying to regain control of the Teamsters, but that wasn’t happening. What about Anthony Provenzano, the New Jersey mobster known as “Tony Pro.” How does he fit into the picture?
Did you see “The Irishman?” I think the situation was similar to what’s in the movie. Hoffa was having issues on two fronts. The Teamsters did not want him back in charge. And Tony Pro had gone from friend to enemy over some fight they had when they were in prison together, as shown in the film.
Back in Jersey City, it sounds like it wasn’t an easy burial.
In Paul’s telling to his son, Hoffa’s body was stiff and wouldn’t fit in the barrel unless he was facing headfirst, not feet first. Then, Frank thinks his father loaded the barrel on a front-end loader and put it in a large hole he had dug. Then he covered that with smaller barrels on top, along with bricks and dirt. Then he covered the whole thing with a bulldozer.
What did Dan Moldea find when he went to the dump site with Fox Nation? And what happens now?
The Fox Nation reporter hired a ground-penetrating radar technician to meet them and Moldea at the site. The technician said he discovered shapes below the earth that appeared curved, like barrels. This is not a high-quality X-ray image we’re talking about. It’s pretty vague, and you need an expert to interpret it.
We think the F.B.I. did its own ground-penetrating radar search in October and is analyzing the results. Maybe they decide there’s nothing down there. Maybe they dig up whatever is there. Stay tuned.
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A man who threatened Democratic lawmakers could face years in prison
Two days after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Brendan Hunt posted a video titled “Kill Your Senators.” Prosecutors said that in it, he declared that “we need to go back when all of the senators and a lot of the representatives are back there” and “slaughter these people.”
That was a month after he had posted a message on Facebook saying that supporters of Donald Trump “want actual revenge on democrats.” He said Trump should execute House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader; and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
Hunt, a 37-year-old aspiring actor who had a clerical job in the New York State court system, was convicted three months later of making a threat to kill members of Congress. (He has since been fired.) He is to be sentenced today.
He said at the trial that his videos and social media posts had been jokes. “I was letting off steam,” he testified, “and it was more online blathering than anything.” He also said he had come to see that he needed to “readjust what I think is humorous.”
His lawyers say he has changed for the better since then — and has struck up a friendship with another prisoner while awaiting sentencing: The disgraced R-and-B superstar R. Kelly, who was convicted in September of federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.
The Disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa
A powerful man. James Riddle Hoffa was the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the country’s most powerful union, and one with ties to major Mafia families and bosses. His disappearance in 1975 has never been solved.
Hunt’s conviction, on a charge of threatening to assault and murder a U.S. official, carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
His lawyers, who say he has wide-ranging opinions and talents, included in their sentencing memorandum sections of comic strips that he had drawn in jail.
One showed him palling around with Kelly, a cellmate for a few weeks during the summer. As my colleague Rebecca Davis O’Brien writes, the image appeared to be aimed at rebutting prosecutors’ description of Hunt as a violent white supremacist and showing that he has a more sensitive side.
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Lilacs and tulips
Dear Diary:
While visiting my daughter in New York, I picked up some lilacs from a stand.
When I got to her apartment, I decided that they looked pretty slight. So I put $20 in my pocket and went out in search of a few more flowers to augment the lilacs.
I stopped at a store with various things for sale, including a few flowers. I found some special-looking tulips and asked the price.
The proprietor asked how many I wanted.
“About four,” I said.
He handed me four tulips.
“Have a happy Mother’s Day,” he said.
— Donna Thompson
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P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero, Jeffrey Furticella, Rick Martinez and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
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