Hoffa Disappearance
A chronology of events in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, former president of the Teamsters Union:
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Hoffa leaves his Lake Orion home about 1 p.m.and makes a stop to visit a friend in Pontiac. He arrives around 2 p.m. at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Oakland County's Bloomfield Township to meet reputed Detroit mob enforcer Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone and alleged New Jersey mob figure Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano. Hoffa calls his wife, Josephine, about 2:15 p.m. from a pay phone and tells her no one showed up for his meeting. He is never is seen or heard from again.
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Hoffa's green Pontiac Grand Ville is found,unlocked, in the restaurant parking lot. The Hoffa family files a missing person report with the Bloomfield Township police.
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The FBI takes over the investigation.
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The FBI gets a search warrant for the car. Theyfind fingerprints of family friend Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien on a 7-Up bottle under the right front seat and a piece of paper in the glove compartment.
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Police dogs sniff the shorts Hoffa wore the daybefore his disappearance and indicate Hoffa's scent was in the rear of a car O'Brien borrowed from his friend Joe Giacalone, son of Anthony Giacalone.
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A grand jury convenes in Detroit to investigatethe Hoffa disappearance.
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More than 200 FBI agents are assigned to the case inNew Jersey, Detroit and at least four other cities. During the period, more than 70 volumes of files are compiled, containing more than 16,000 pages. Six suspects in the disappearance, including Provenzano and Anthony Giacalone, are convicted on unrelated charges.
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Self-described mafia murderer Charles Allen, who servedprison time with Hoffa and participated in the federalwitness-protection program, tells a U.S. Senate committee that Hoffa was killed at Provenzano's orders. Hoffa's body was "ground up in little pieces, shipped to Florida and thrown into a swamp," Allen said.
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Hoffa is declared legally dead.
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Kenneth Walton, who headed the Detroit FBI from 1985 to 1988, tells The Detroit News that he knows what happened to Hoffa: "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."
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Hoffa's daughter, Barbara Ann Crancer, files a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the FBI, demanding the agency's reports on her father's disappearance.
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Self-described hit man Donald "Tony the Greek" Frankos claims Hoffa is buried under Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. The FBI finds no evidence to support the claim.
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The U.S. Court of Appeals reverses a ruling ordering the FBI to turn over files on the Hoffa investigation to Crancer.
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Current and former FBI agents and federalprosecutors meet in Detroit to discuss prosecutorial strategy and the current state of the Hoffa investigation.
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A second meeting is held after DNA tests find a match between a hair found in the back of the car driven by O'Brien and a hair in Hoffa's hairbrush.
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The head of the FBI's organized-crime unit says in a court document that he believes a decision whether to prosecute anyone could be made in the next two years.
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The FBI says it will refer the case to the OaklandCounty prosecutor's office for possible state charges. John Bell, special agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit bureau, says the federal case was stymied because of the length of time since Hoffa disappeared.
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Oakland County prosecutor says new DNA evidence in Hoffa's disappearance is insufficient to bring criminal charges.
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Oakland County authorities dig beneath anunderground pool at a home in Michigan's Thumb area for a briefcase an informant says contained a syringe and possible evidence that Hoffa might have been injected with drugs or poison. No briefcase is found.
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The FBI crime lab concludes that blood found on thefloor of a Detroit home where one-time Hoffa ally Frank Sheeran claims to have killed him did not belong to Hoffa.
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New Jersey mob hit man Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski, who died in March, claims that he killed Hoffa and put his body in a car that was sold as scrap metal. Kuklinski's book, "The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer," contends he received $40,000 for the slaying.
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The FBI begins searching a property northwest of Detroit for clues in the Hoffa case. Agent Dawn Clenney, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Detroit, says the bureau is executing a search warrant in Milford Township, about 35 miles from Detroit. Investigators are looking for "evidence of criminal activity that may have occurred under previous ownership" on the property, Clenney says.
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The FBI ends its two-week search of a suburban Detroit horse farm after finding no trace of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa's remains, a local prosecutor said. The Detroit Free Press, citing an anonymous federal official, also reported that the search had ended with no trace of Hoffa.
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Credits:
CBS, The Associated Press
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