My untold relationship with the FBI in the Jimmy Hoffa murder case (Part 10)
The FBI digs in the wrong place
Pictured is the cover of Napco’s confidential report about the company’s two GPR examinations in the alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, searching for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa. (Copyright © Kevin O’Keefe/Napco, June 14, 2022. All rights reserved.)
Introduction to Part 10
This is the tenth in a series of columns about my relationship with the FBI during the murder investigation of Jimmy Hoffa who disappeared from a Detroit suburb on July 30, 1975.
Having specialized in investigations of the Teamsters and the Mafia since December 1974, I hit the ground running and began my research about this case the day after Hoffa vanished eight months later. My first book, The Hoffa Wars, was published in 1978.
Here are the previous installments of this series:
* November 26, 2023: “Working on the FBI’s ‘one-way street” (Part 1)
* December 10, 2023: “Frank Cappola enters the fray” (Part 2)
* January 14, 2024: “The FBI calls six months after Frank Cappola dies” (Part 3)
* January 21, 2024: “My team and our negotiations” (Part 4)
* February 25, 2024: “The first GPR test in November 2020” (Part 5)
* March 3, 2024: “My command performance before a star-studded crowd at the FBI field office in Newark” (Part 6)
* March 10, 2024: “The Mystery Mound” (Part 7)
* March 17, 2024: “The FBI executes a search warrant for the alcove” (Part 8)
* April 7, 2024: “Napco detects a third location in the alcove” (Part 9)
* April 14, 2024: “The FBI digs in the wrong place” (Part 10)
To recap
In November 1975, a federal witness, Ralph Picardo, revealed to FBI agents that Hoffa was: 1) murdered in Detroit, 2) stuffed into a 55-gallon oil drum, 3) loaded onto a Gateway Transportation truck, and 4) shipped to New Jersey.
Based on his experiences with the mobsters who engineered the killing and, at the request of the FBI, Picardo speculated that Hoffa was murdered by Salvatore Briguglio, a top lieutenant of New Jersey labor racketeer Anthony Provenzano, and buried at “Brother Moscato’s Dump,” aka the PJP Landfill, in Jersey City.
During our exclusive interviews between 2007 and his death in 2014, Phillip “Brother” Moscato, a soldier in the Vito Genovese Mafia family, told me that Picardo “basically had it right” and that, indeed, Hoffa was buried in an oil drum at his landfill, which was co-owned by his business partner, Paul Cappola.
Along with saying that Hoffa’s body was brought to Jersey City via a Gateway Transportation truck, Moscato also confirmed that Briguglio did the killing.
In September 2019, Frank Cappola, the oldest son of Paul Cappola, told me during our series of interviews that his father, at the direction of Moscato, had buried Hoffa.
However, in retaliation against Moscato for assigning him the difficult task of committing this criminal act, Frank said that his father secretly buried Hoffa in an oil drum at a location adjacent to the dumpsite—in an alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, adding that he had placed fifteen-to-thirty steel barrels in the grave on top of the Hoffa oil drum.
While my video camera was rolling, Frank gave me a private tour of the area on September 29, 2019. Also, at my request, he executed a sworn declaration on October 7, 2019, attesting to the details of what his father told him shortly before his death in 2008.
After collapsing at a restaurant while we were having dinner in January 2020, Frank was hospitalized and died in March 2020 without ever regaining full consciousness.
Six months later, the FBI contacted me to discuss Frank’s information. And, as Frank had instructed, I cooperated fully with the FBI and the law-enforcement community. I even created a webpage for the FBI, filled with photographs and timelines, as well as links to important documents and videos, among other materials.
Before his death, Frank approved of the team I put together to produce a documentary about my investigation of the Hoffa case, featuring Frank’s groundbreaking information. I selected an old friend of mine, Beaux Carson, the owner of Carson Signature Films in Hollywood, to manage our project. Also, Beaux and I chose the award-winning producer, Ari Mark of Ample Entertainment, to produce our documentary. Richard Lawrence of Rebel Entertainment was the agent who brokered our option agreement.
After Frank died, I met Bob Burke, a successful business executive in New Jersey who had grown up and gone to school with Frank. Shortly after joining our team, Bob learned that the alcove under the bridge was owned and controlled by the New Jersey Department of Transportation and that we needed to qualify for written authorization from the state in order to gain access.
Meantime, Beaux began planning for a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) examination of the site. Significantly, the international pandemic interfered with Beaux's timing for the search.
Notably, I had a tentative working relationship with Fox News correspondent Eric Shawn. However, I had rejected offers to work for Fox as a paid consultant on the Hoffa case.
As of this writing, I have never accepted any money from Fox or any other media organization for my work on the Frank Cappola project that began in September 2019. My team and I decided that we would make no deals until the FBI recovered and positively identified the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.
Four days after Frank—whom I had interviewed for nearly thirty hours—executed his sworn declaration at my request, I introduced him to Eric who, with me present, conducted a brief filmed interview with him. To be clear, though, the only person Frank revealed the actual location to was me.
Several months later, Beaux and I invited Eric, who had learned the location from my reporting, to our GPR test in an effort to help promote Ari Mark’s documentary.
Grateful for the invitation to my team’s planned GPR test, Eric arranged for Fox to pay all the expenses. Consequently, in a fateful decision, my team yielded control of the GPR test to Fox. Cooperating fully, Beaux supplied the Fox production crew with all the information necessary to obtain a permit for the site.
After obtaining written authorization, the most immediate problem was clearing the alcove of large steel dumpsters parked at that location by Interstate Waste Systems, a trash-disposal concern with its offices adjacent to the alcove. Fox accepted the responsibility for this task.
On November 24, 2020, game day, a Fox producer arranged to clear the dumpsters—but did so from the wrong alcove under the bridge. This horrible mistake nearly destroyed our project. We were unable to scan the entire alcove. And, thus, our one and only chance to survey the entire pristine, uncluttered alcove was lost.
However, after the Fox producer partially redeemed himself by arranging for Interstate to remove a few dumpsters from the right alcove, the GPR technician hired by Fox appeared to detect steel barrels at a specific location.
Desperate for good news, we all celebrated. The discovery appeared to save the project—even though “The Foxhole” later turned out to be much ado about nothing.
On March 11, 2021, the federal agent who contacted me the previous September, aka “FBI SA-1,” arranged for me to present my case to a group of DOJ and FBI officials from Detroit and Newark at the FBI field office in Newark.
Among those present was Marc Silski of Detroit, the special agent in charge of the entire Hoffa investigation.
After the meeting, our group went to the alcove under the Pulaski Skyway where I reconstructed the tour that Frank Cappola had given me in September 2019.
After he first contacted me about the Jimmy Hoffa murder case in September 2020, FBI SA-1, my designated mid-level FBI contact, was the only active FBI agent with whom I communicated. I had decided to remain loyal to the agent who had brought me into the action.
Even though he rarely gave me any information, I introduced him to Beaux Carson who developed his own relationship with him apart from me. Of course, he also rarely gave Beaux any information.
But, seeing how hard he was working, I never went around the federal agent or over his head to speak with anyone else with more influence and power at the FBI.
A month after our meeting in Newark, SA Silski of Detroit, whom I had met in Newark on March 11, called. Among other requests, he wanted me to introduce him to Bob Burke because of his long-time friendship with Frank Cappola—which I did.
On October 25-26, unknown to my team and me, the FBI obtained a court-authorized search warrant, based primarily on the information contained in Frank’s affidavit, to perform scans and even excavations at the site. A federal judge had determined that “probable cause” existed that Hoffa was buried in the alcove.
As of July 1, 2022, nearly nine months after the FBI search, my team and I were still waiting for the FBI laboratory to release the results of the soil and core samples taken at the site.
Napco takes charge
Going into July, my team had two basic problems. . . .
Beaux Carson, our team captain, and Bob Burke, our key man in Jersey City, had both performed with excellence and distinction, even though—like Ari Mark, our documentary producer, and me—neither man had received any compensation for their important work.
And all of us, especially Ari, had spent a considerable amount of personal money on this project.
But, despite their outstanding individual contributions, Beaux and Bob frequently clashed. Consequently, we reached the point where Beaux did not want me to tell Bob what he was doing, and Bob did not want me to tell Beaux anything about his work.
This situation led to our second problem. . . .
Bob was a close friend of Jimmy O’Keefe, who also grew up with Frank Cappola, as well as Jimmy’s brother, Kevin. The O’Keefe brothers owned and operated a construction company, “Napco,” in Lyndhurst, New Jersey, that had a sophisticated ground-penetrating radar division.
In fact, Napco had just completed a complicated forensic review, using its high-tech instruments while collecting building data for the investigation of Miami’s tragic Champlain Towers collapse in June 2021.
Bob spoke with his two friends about his work with us on the Hoffa case. Upon hearing this, they offered to get involved.
On April 19, 2022, Bob Burke called and told me that Napco and the O’Keefe brothers had just performed a GPR examination in the alcove.
Bob added that this was their second GPR test. The first was on November 16, 2021. Because he wanted to give me “plausible deniability,” Bob did not tell me about that effort. He did not want to risk placing me at odds with the FBI.
In Part 9 of this series, I wrote:
On April 19, 2022, Bob Burke called and told me that Napco’s Jimmy and Kevin O’Keefe had performed a second GPR examination earlier that day in the alcove, adding that they had detected what appeared to be twelve randomly placed steel barrels in a fifteen-foot hole. . . .
But the even bigger news was that the two GPR technicians working for Napco had done blind studies, separate independent tests at different times. And, with the second tech man not knowing the location of the detection of steel barrels from the November 2021 search, he came to the same conclusion during his April 2022 search.
To be sure, Napco was not suggesting that its scans had detected Jimmy Hoffa's body. However, those scans appeared to confirm the information that Frank Cappola had given to me exclusively in September 2019 about how his father, Paul Cappola, had buried Hoffa in the alcove.
Bob sent me Napco’s entire seventeen-page report—which included all the underground scans. I spent the evening reading the report and shaking my head in complete awe and with total respect. . . . I think I even had tears in my eyes because I believed that our long journey had finally come to an end.
The following day, April 22, Kevin O’Keefe sent the scans to SA Marc Silski at the FBI’s Detroit field office. . . . The scans were not sent to FBI SA-1 in Newark—and that would later cause some real problems.
To be clear, had I known about Napco’s heroic work from the outset, I would have appealed to Bob, Kevin, and Napco to feed their information to the federal agent that Beaux and I were using in Newark, aka “FBI SA-1.” Since September 2020, we had given him everything we had, allowing him to decide how to distribute our materials to the FBI’s high command.
Knowing that Bob would not allow me to tell Beaux what I knew about Napco and SA Silski, I simply assumed that SA Silski would forward the Napco documents to FBI SA-1 in Newark.
An alarm goes off
On July 1, I received a disturbing call from Stef Kotsonis—a trusted friend in Boston and a senior producer of On Point, a popular public radio program. He told me that he had spoken to a former law-enforcement official, who said the FBI had concluded that Jimmy Hoffa was not in the alcove under the Pulaski Skyway and that the search for his remains in Jersey City had ended.
Shocked and extremely alarmed, I started making inquiries.
Among those I contacted was FBI SA-1, my mid-level source with no decision-making power. During our conversation, he confirmed that the FBI had conducted a major excavation of the entire site and had found nothing—no steel barrels anywhere. He added that the FBI would issue a public statement at a later date.
When I asked him how he explained what Napco had discovered, he replied, “What’s Napco?”
I responded that Napco had conducted a cursory GPR examination in the alcove on November 16, 2021, and then a more sophisticated search on April 19, 2022.
According to my notes:
* [FBI SA-1] wanted to know how Napco was able to do all of this without authorization—or without a problem with the adjacent Interstate Waste Services. I replied that they worked via our then-existing permit that did not expire until March 23. We gave Bob [Burke] a copy for his occasional trips to PJP. (The second Napco GPR on April 19 came nearly after a month after the permit expired.)
* I added that Napco had been working closely and speaking regularly with SA Marc Silski in Detroit.
* From everything I heard, they were in mutual high confidence, and we were expecting good news.
On July 3, Beaux Cason, our team captain, called, saying that he had received a reply to his request for information from FBI SA-1, who suggested that he get a report from me.
But the information I had about Napco was a Bob Burke project. Consequently, I had not told Beaux what I knew.
When Beaux called me, he rightly expected a legitimate status report about what FBI SA-1 had told me two days earlier.
Deciding that it was “use it or lose it” time, I told Beaux what I knew.
In response, Beaux got angry with me because I had concealed Bob’s work with Napco and Napco’s discoveries since mid-April.
Defensively, I reminded Beaux about his ongoing feud with Bob, forbidding me to tell Bob what he had learned from his source close to the Newark field office—and what little we learned from FBI SA-1—and that Bob had instructed me not to say anything to Beaux about Napco and its relationship with SA Silski, who was FBI SA-1’s supervisor on the Hoffa case.
I insisted that, like it or not, Bob had saved our investigation because of his friendship with the O’Keefe brothers and their crew at Napco. If not for Napco, we would have been strapped with defending “The Foxhole,” which was debunked.
I argued that, if FBI SA-1 was right, then we were dead in the water. However, because FBI SA-1 told me that he did not know about Napco and their underground scans, it appeared that the FBI had missed the spot during its excavation.
That same day, Bob Burke called, and he said that Napco was 99.99 percent sure that they discovered steel barrels with their two GPR tests.
Also on July 3, I sent a trusted friend a message about a previous FBI error in the Hoffa case:
Notably, after the FBI’s 2006 search in Wixom, Michigan, I learned and revealed in 2009 that the FBI had dug in the wrong place—based on a poorly drawn diagram by their key informant. The FBI should have brought him to the site for the excavation instead of depending on his flawed drawing. It was a huge mistake.
Similarly, the FBI should have invited Napco to the alcove under the Pulaski Skyway for this recent search. . . . I believe in Napco.
In addition, I sent FBI SA-1 an email, writing:
Bob [Burke] and Napco have been working closely with Marc [Silski] in Detroit. He has all of their reports, 3-D photographs, and underground scans. Marc has spoken to Bob and Napco several times on the phone. . . .
I met with Bob and the entire Napco team at their headquarters in Lyndhurst on June 14.
Full disclosure: A reporter and a photographer from the New York Times were also present for the presentation, which was very impressive. . . .
In short, we believe that Napco’s work is “The Ball Game.”
In his response, FBI SA-1 would only say: “Rec’d, thanks.”
On July 18, Bob called after he left the alcove where he took a brief video that he shared with Beaux and me.
After Beaux and I viewed and discussed the film, Beaux saved the day in a beautiful act of solidarity with his nemesis, Bob Burke, sending an email to FBI SA-1, saying:
I wanted to call to your attention that I saw recent video of the entire area where the FBI recently excavated.
It would appear to me, after carefully examining the video of the areas that the FBI team Excavated—that they may have missed the "Napco X marks the spot".
And if my calculations are correct (and they are) the FBI may have missed the spot by about 10 feet.
I want to state for the record the following: Dan and myself remain totally loyal to you . . . and the entire FBI and we are thankful for all the FBI has done.
But what always plays in the back of my mind is . . . What a famous treasure hunter friend of mine said. He said "treasure hunting in very unforgiving, if you miss X marks the spot by one foot, you may as well have missed it by an entire ocean"
The Zoom conference with the Detroit FBI
The day after Beaux sent his email to FBI SA-1, who acknowledged receipt, Beaux and I received emails from Special Agent Mara Schneider, the public affairs officer for the Detroit field office of the FBI, in which she invited us to a Zoom conference with her.
Beaux wrote back, accepting the invitation for both of us.
Two days later, on July 21, during the Zoom conference, SA Schneider revealed to us that the FBI’s search and excavation had taken place over a two-day period during the first week in June—nearly a full month before I learned about it on July 1. She explained that nothing was removed from the location because nothing of importance was found—no barrels, only some scrap metal.
According to my notes of the meeting:
--I questioned her about the Napco GPR exam, saying that we saw a video that showed the ground around the Napco GPR location was not disturbed—despite the fact that I was told that the FBI dug there.
--Mara said that the FBI GPR’d the Napco site but found nothing in the scans. Thus, they decided not to dig at the location.
--I asked Mara if she was familiar with the Napco scans, adding that they were spectacular and that there was no way that a GPR examination of the same ground would yield “nothing.”
--I insisted that the FBI had to finish its job by returning to the Napco site.
The reaction and our defense
Seeing the FBI’s position harden and not wasting any time getting out the bad news—along with our caveat to that news—I immediately notified Mike Wilson at the New York Times, as well as Roger Schneider, Ted Shaffrey, and Ed White at the Associated Press—to whom I wrote:
I just received a briefing from SA Mara Schneider, the PAO of the FBI’s Detroit field office.
The FBI received a second search warrant for the alcove under the Pulaski Skyway which federal agents executed during the first week of June.
During this lengthy excavation, nothing was recovered. As far as the FBI is concerned, this is over. Jimmy Hoffa was not found.
Although I have total respect for the remarkable work that the FBI did, my team and I do not believe this is over yet.
There is a very specific location in the alcove that was not dug or even closely examined. We want that resolved.
I also gave Mike Wilson and the AP reporters SA Schneider’s phone number and email address with her permission.
In his usual fair and accurate reporting in the New York Times, Mike wrote:
Mr. Moldea said on Thursday that he was disappointed by the investigation’s findings, but added a twist of intrigue in a yarn already rich with twists. He said a recent ground-penetrating-radar investigation by a private company found disturbances and apparent objects below the surface of the soil that were near where the F.B.I. searched, but not the same spots. He said that data has recently been forwarded to the F.B.I.
“I’m more than happy to accept this verdict,” he said Thursday, “but there is one lingering issue that I believe remains unresolved. This is a stone left unturned.”[1]
Associated Press reporter Ed White echoed my sentiment about the excavation in his story, reporting:
Dan Moldea, a journalist who has written extensively about the Hoffa saga, said he was personally briefed by the FBI in a video conference call Thursday.
He said the FBI and its contractors did not dig in the exact spot that he had recommended.
“I’m not thrilled with the result,” Moldea told the Associated Press.[2]
On July 22, Bob Burke called and assured me that Napco, which was not named in any of the dozens of published articles, was prepared to defend its work.
On July 28, I arranged to do a video presentation of recent events. And, because I decided to read from a prepared script, I chose to publish the text.
After I placed the 7:54 minute video on YouTube, my friend and colleague, Allan Lengel of Deadline Detroit, agreed to publish my statement that same day.[3]
I reported:
On July 21, the New York Times and the Associated Press broke the news that in early June the FBI conducted a second court-authorized search for Hoffa’s unmarked grave in the alcove under the Pulaski Skyway in Jersey City near the PJP Landfill, aka “Brother Moscato’s Dump.”
To my chagrin, the FBI announced that it had neither recovered nor discovered any evidence that Hoffa was buried at this location.
To be clear, this is the same site that I have been promoting for the past three years since September 2019 when I was shown the location by Frank Cappola who told me that his father had buried Hoffa in that alcove.
But even in the aftermath of this massive disappointment, I still believe:
* That Ralph Picardo told the FBI the truth in November 1975 when he said, among other things, that he believed that Jimmy Hoffa’s body was buried at Brother Moscato’s Dump.
* That Genovese-Mafia soldier Phillip “Brother” Moscato told me the truth during our many exclusive interviews between 2007 to 2014 when he said that “Picardo basically had it right,” adding that Hoffa was, indeed, buried at his dump.
* That Frank Cappola told me the truth during our thirty-plus hours of interviews between September 2019 and his death in March 2020 when he said that his father, Paul Cappola, a co-owner of the landfill, had buried Hoffa on the orders of his partner, Brother Moscato, near PJP. At my request, Cappola executed a sworn declaration on October 7, 2019, detailing what his father told him. Frank also offered to take a polygraph test.
* That the ground-penetrating radar examinations (GPR) conducted by reputable civilian companies arranged separately by members of my team and by Fox News with me present were performed in good faith. These revealing GPR examinations provided what appeared to be corroboration for what Frank Cappola had told me. The GPR results were the principal reasons for our high confidence that Hoffa was still buried in the alcove.
* That the FBI and federal prosecutors, in good faith and upon the strength of this evidence, executed two affidavits in October 2021 and June 2022, detailing that evidence, and then submitted those sworn statements to the federal court in New Jersey. Shortly thereafter, the FBI obtained sealed search warrants from a federal judge, who noted that “probable cause” existed that Hoffa’s remains might be in the alcove under the Pulaski Skyway.
To be clear, I would have been negligent if I had ignored all this evidence. This, by far, was the best lead I have ever seen in my 47 years of investigating this 47-year-old murder case.
Upon receipt of its latest warrant, the FBI, in good faith, conducted an extensive search of the site and based on that evidence, came to its tragic conclusion that Hoffa was not there.
In the recent reports of both the New York Times and the Associated Press, I was quoted, insisting that the FBI might have missed the exact location of Hoffa’s unmarked grave. Specifically, The Times reported: “Mr. Moldea said that . . . a recent ground-penetrating-radar investigation by a private company found disturbances and apparent objects below the surface of the soil that were near where the F.B.I. searched, but not the same spots. He said that data has recently been forwarded to the F.B.I.
“’I’m more than happy to accept this verdict’ [Moldea] said . . . , ‘but there is one lingering issue that I believe remains unresolved. This is a stone left unturned.’”
We are currently trying to resolve this dispute to the satisfaction of everyone involved.
But, regardless of how this plays out, I still believe that Hoffa is or was buried at or near PJP in Jersey City after his 1975 murder in Detroit . . . and that we just can’t find him.
Also, regarding those who are now accusing me of having a blind spot as to the role of the Detroit underworld in the murder conspiracy, I remind everyone that no one, living or dead, has spent more time than I have investigating the Detroit labor racketeer, Rolland McMaster, for his role in the transport of Hoffa’s body via Gateway Transportation, as well as McMaster’s direction of the Local 299 violence that preceded Hoffa’s disappearance.
That aside—as promised if this search by the FBI was unsuccessful—I must say that the failure of this effort will be mine and mine alone. The members of my loyal production team are blameless.
Be assured that none of us requested or accepted any money from any media organizations during the past three years of this investigation. We agreed that we would do nothing until Hoffa’s remains were recovered and positively identified by the FBI.
In short, we have not opened an empty vault at anyone else’s expense.
Thank you for your time and attention during this extraordinary process.
On July 29, Harvard Law Professor Jack Goldsmith, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney General and the author of the 2019 bestselling book, In Hoffa’s Shadow, published an essay in Lawfare about the FBI’s excavation of the alcove under the Pulaski Skyway, writing in part:
Brother Moscato and his noxious dump disappeared from the never-ending but always-changing list of conspiracy theories about Hoffa’s fate for 40 years until Dan Moldea—the leading expert on Hoffa’s disappearance, from whom I have learned a great deal—published some of the fruits of an interview with Moscato on July 30, 2015, the 40th anniversary of Hoffa’s disappearance. . . .
I agree with Scott Burnstein, another learned Hoffa sleuth, and the leading expert on the Detroit mob: “If anyone in this crazy, surreal and quite well-documented near half-century journey of tracking down leads in the Hoffa disappearance deserves to be the man who can finally say he found the holy grail that is Hoffa’s tomb, it’s Dan.”[4]
July 30, 2024, is the 49th anniversary of the murder of Jimmy Hoffa. And my team and I are more determined than ever to find him.
ENDNOTES
[1] Michael Wilson, New York Times, “Search for Hoffa Under Jersey City Bridge Came Up Empty, F.B.I. Says,” July 21, 2022.
[2] Ed White, Associated Press, “FBI: No Sign of Jimmy Hoffa Under New Jersey Bridge,” July 21, 2022.
[3] Dan E. Moldea, Deadline Detroit, “I Still Believe That Jimmy Hoffa Was, Or Is Buried In New Jersey,” July 28, 2022.
[4] Jack Goldsmith, Lawfare, “Forty-Seven Years of Feckless Digging,” July 29, 2022.
Dan’s compelling research and meticulously presented details on the search of Hoffa’s final resting place is beyond a reasonable endeavor and overwhelming. Dan has got it right and will be proven to be correct in this extraordinary mystery. I wish Dan would publish, if able, the website that he built for the FBI as mentioned in this article. On second thought I don’t wish it, because I would never sleep at night. Just stupendous information.
A must read . The FBI should have done a little more. I know is is very costly , but they missed the exact stop that Dan's prominent sources told him where Hoffa was buried.