How Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa vanished in 1975 remains one of America’s most enduring mysteries.
After 36 years since Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, his driver Marvin Elkind has claimed he knows where the former Teamsters boss is buried and how he got there, and all it was revealed a new book, “The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob”, by Adrian Humphreys.
Marvin Elkind claimed Jimmy Hoffa was killed by a mob enforcer and buried in the foundations of the towering General Motors’ HQ in Detroit, Michigan.
“It was his own people who did it,” Marvin Elkind said in excerpts of a new book published in the New York Post, adding Mafia member Tony Jack insinuated he was responsible.
The startling claim comes 36 years after Jimmy Hoffa, who led the labor union for 13 years, vanished while on his way to meet two mobsters he knew well, Anthony Giacalone and Tony Jack – real name Anthony Provenzano.
The Renaissance Center was under construction when Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.
Marvin Elkind explains how, during a Teamsters conference in 1985, he was among a group of men walking from the city’s Omni International when the Center came into view.
Tony Jack nodded toward the tower’s base and said: “Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys”, Marvin Elkind alleges in “The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob” by Adrian Humphreys.
He also describes the rush to build the Renaissance Center following the disappearance of Hoffa – and claims the body was buried in wet cement.
“There was a mad rush to get the concrete poured,” the New York Post quotes the book as saying.
Jimmy Hoffa was declared legally dead July 30, 1982, when he would have been 69.
He was a union stalwart, serving as its General President from 1958 to 1971 and playing a key part in its growth and development.
During his term as its leader, membership surged to more than 1.5 million members, becoming the largest single union in the country.
As well as a role as Jimmy Hoffa’s driver, Marvin Elkind had careers as a loan collector, a boxer – and a police informant.
Marvin Elkind was working as a busboy in a Toronto restaurant frequented by Jimmy Hoffa’s crew when he was poached as a driver.
Marvin Elkind initially said he didn’t want the job, but he was told: “Nobody’s asking you.”
He began testifying against the mob when police discovered he’d worked with a con man. They gave him an ultimatum – tell or be charged.
The book, by Canadian reporter Adrian Humphreys, follows his life.
It takes its title from Marvin Elkind’s nickname, The Weasel, which he claims was his boxing moniker – rather than to do with his snitching.
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