Jimmy Hoffa Jr. told me that his father knew Jack Ruby
Then he denied it during an interview with the staff of the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations
It is unlikely that the information in this column will be included in the upcoming release of the JFK-MLK-RFK files, which I am currently referencing on Mobology.
Today is the second installment. . . . Here was my first.
* February 2, 2025: How an article I wrote in 1987 triggered the release of the LAPD's entire file on the RFK assassination: In anticipation of the disclosure of the JFK-MLK-RFK records, note that the key files in the RFK case have already been released.
A visit to Detroit
During a final research trip to Detroit in November 1977—while doing last-minute follow-up interviews for my upcoming book, The Hoffa Wars—I spent several hours in Pontiac, Michigan, with Louis Linteau, the last known person to speak with Jimmy Hoffa. While I was at his office, Linteau introduced me to the employees at his airport limousine service who had talked to Hoffa on the afternoon he vanished. At that moment, Linteau was out of the office.
The ex-Teamsters boss had stopped by on his way to the Red Fox in Bloomfield Hills, near Detroit.
After he left Linteau’s office, Hoffa drove to the restaurant and parked in the adjacent lot—where he was last seen. He used a nearby pay phone to call Linteau who had returned to work, telling him that the two Mafia guys he expected to meet, Tony Giacalone and Tony Provenzano, were late.
Hoffa did not enter the Red Fox that day. And, except for his killers, he was never seen or heard from again.
In addition, I completed my interviews with the victims of the violence in Hoffa’s Local 299 before Hoffa’s murder—Jimmy Clift, Dave Johnson, Jim Leavitt, Gene Page, George Roxburgh, and Red Anderson, along with Ralph Proctor and Dick Fitzsimmons. And I wrapped up my discussions with several leaders of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union and their previous incarnations in the heroic rank‑and‑file reform movements.
Also, in mid-November, for the third time, I interviewed Hoffa loyalist Otto Wendell, Local 299's secretary-treasurer, whose barn at his farm was earlier torched by persons unknown.
During our discussion, Wendell was clearly concerned about the consequences of his ongoing conflict with Teamsters general organizer Rolland McMaster, whom I had publicly accused of being behind the Local 299 violence. In fact, by the end of the first week after Hoffa’s disappearance on July 30, 1975—while I was a freelancer for NBC News exclusively working on the Hoffa case—McMaster was already my top suspect.
On December 12, 1977, Wendell was found shot twice in his car. He never regained consciousness and died twelve days later on Christmas Eve. He was killed with his own gun. At that time, the police, who ruled out suicide, did not know whether Wendell had shot himself accidentally or whether he had been murdered.
Later, the law-enforcement community concluded that Wendell—slated to testify against a major Detroit Mafia figure close to McMaster—was murdered.
Hoffa and the JFK murder
In mid-1977, my investigation of Hoffa’s rise and fall took an unexpected detour after Howard Bray, the executive director of the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington, D.C., introduced me to a brilliant researcher, Michael Ewing, a former U.S. Senate staffer, who wanted to probe Hoffa’s possible connection to the 1963 murder of President John Kennedy.
After I arranged for Mike to receive a grant from the fund to work with me, he suggested that I resurrect my association with Edward Partin, the top officer of Teamsters Local 5 in Baton Rouge.
I had first met Partin in the spring of 1975 before Hoffa disappeared via my mentor, Walter Sheridan, the former head of Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s “Get Hoffa Squad.”
It was Sheridan who flipped Ed Partin in September 1962.
At that time, Partin was Hoffa’s trusted doorkeeper at his hotel during the Teamster boss’s extortion trial in Nashville. And it was Partin who would later reveal that Hoffa had arranged for the fixing of one of the jurors in that case.
The main reason that Partin decided to turn state’s evidence was that Hoffa had approached him with an assignment to kill Robert Kennedy and his entire family by blowing up their Hickory Hill home in northern Virginia with plastic explosives. Partin, who had a houseful of children himself, vehemently objected to Hoffa’s plot to murder Kennedy’s wife and children.
After Sheridan arranged for Partin to take a polygraph test, which he passed, the Kennedy Justice Department used him as their key government witness at Hoffa’s 1964 jury-tampering trial in Chattanooga.
In the end, it was Ed Partin’s testimony that sent Jimmy Hoffa to jail.
During my renewed interviews with Partin in 1977, he said that Hoffa’s determination to kill AG Kennedy was derailed in favor of a conspiracy to kill his brother, The President.
Partin highlighted the likely roles of two Mafia bosses close to Hoffa: Carlos Marcello of New Orleans and Santo Trafficante of Tampa.
In addition, Partin alleged that Hoffa was involved in the CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro, and Mike and I produced a considerable amount of evidence supporting that, too. Partin believed that the CIA-Mafia plots against Castro evolved into a Mafia plot to kill President Kennedy.
But through all of this, Mike and I could not find any direct connection between those two Mafia guys and the President’s alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
However, Mike and I were able to discover clear evidence linking Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby, to people closely associated with Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante.
Long story short, those in direct contact with Jack Ruby during the days prior to the JFK assassination included, among others, longtime Hoffa aides Barney Baker, Irwin Weiner, and Murray Miller. Mike and I interviewed all three of them.
And years earlier, while Ruby was working in Chicago, his boss was Paul Dorfman, then head of the Chicago Waste Handlers Union where Ruby had worked as an organizer.
Dorfman’s stepson was Allen Dorfman, hand-picked by Jimmy Hoffa as the fiduciary manager of the corrupted Teamsters Central States Pension Fund. Before Hoffa disappeared, I had two brief interviews with Dorfman, one of which was in person.
My visit with Jimmy Hoffa Jr.
When the Hoffa investigation went cold in September 1975, I left NBC News—even though my bosses asked me to stay to work on matters unrelated to the Hoffa case. Shortly after my return to freelanceland—to work exclusively on the Hoffa case—Steve Riddle, Hoffa’s uncle, introduced me to Hoffa’s attorney/son, James P. Hoffa, aka Jimmy Hoffa Jr.
From the outset, I liked and respected young Hoffa. He was a good lawyer and a decent guy. Even though I was no fan of his father, I viewed Hoffa Jr. as a grieving son who desperately needed to know what happened to his dad. And I wanted to help him.
Hoffa was fascinated by my investigation of Rolland McMaster, especially my claim that he was behind the Local 299 violence. Hoffa arranged a meeting for us with two of the lead FBI special agents in the case—both of whom declared that my work on McMaster was important and possibly game-changing.
Hoffa was so impressed that during the fall of 1975 he gave me $2,100 from the Hoffa Reward Fund.
Two days after Christmas 1977, I visited Hoffa Jr. at his law office. Murray Chodak, Hoffa's law partner, was also present. I had not seen Hoffa and Chodak since I left the Detroit Free Press in June 1976 after I published my freelanced story in collaboration with two respected staff reporters, Jo Thomas and Ralph Orr, about Rolland McMaster’s goon squad.
"How's your book going, Dan?" Hoffa asked.
"Pretty good, pretty good. . . ," I replied. "I should probably tell you something, though."
"What's that?"
"I've collected a lot of evidence, and I'm going to claim that your father, Carlos Marcello, and Santo Trafficante arranged and executed President Kennedy's murder in 1963."
Clearly agitated, Hoffa shot back, "That's such bullshit, Dan. I think my dad knew Jack Ruby, but from what I understand, he [Ruby] was the kind of guy everybody knew. So what?"
Seeing me react to his statement, Hoffa started to backpedal, saying he couldn't recall any specific information upon which he based his opinion. However, he did add, "It doesn't make any sense." Pausing for a moment, he continued, "If my dad had decided to kill Kennedy, he would have gotten a gun, walked right up to him, and blew his brains out."
I was stunned by Hoffa's statement that he believed his father "knew Jack Ruby." No one—not even among the hard‑core conspiracy theorists—had ever made that allegation.
Seeing me pull out my notepad to jot down the quotes, Hoffa insisted, "That's off the record!"
"Bullshit, Jimmy!" I replied. "You know the rules. When you want something off the record, you say so. And then you make your statement. You don't wait to see my reaction and then try to take it off the record. That statement is on the record."
Turning quickly to Chodak, Hoffa said, "What did I just say, Murray?"
"I didn't hear you say anything, Jim," Chodak responded.
Turning back to me, Hoffa concluded, "See, Dan? It's our word against yours! What do you have? You have nothing!"
As the conversation quickly deteriorated, I left Hoffa’s office but finished writing down Hoffa's quotes in my notepad as I walked to the elevator.
My story in Playboy
On June 29, 1978, the literary editor of the New York Times wrote an outstanding pre-publication story about my book. After this spectacular article, Playboy purchased a long excerpt while The Times bought the U.S. syndication rights, and The Observer of London bought worldwide rights. Also, The Hoffa Wars was a Book of the Month Club selection.
A month later, on July 24, I took the train from Washington to New York to work on my excerpt for Playboy. The story concentrated on the violence in Local 299 and the politics behind the Hoffa murder, as well as the possible Hoffa-Marcello‑Trafficante scenario in the murder of President Kennedy.
During an early-morning breakfast at an all-night diner with Barry Golson, Playboy's executive editor, on Saturday, July 29, we were exhausted after our week's work on the excerpt. It was 2:30 A.M., and we had just put the story to bed.
Golson—who had edited the article along with his top lieutenant, Tom Passavant—offhandedly remarked, "It's too bad that we don't have anyone saying that Hoffa personally knew Jack Ruby."
"Yeah," I replied. "The only thing I ever heard was . . ." and I told Barry about my meeting with Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. the previous December—during which he said his father knew Ruby.
Astonished, Golson exclaimed, "Why isn't that in the story?"
"Barry, it's my word against both Hoffa and Murray Chodak."
"Did he say it?"
"Yeah, of course, he said it."
"Did you write it down?"
"Yeah, as I left Hoffa's office."
Golson paid the check and said we were going back to the office to add Hoffa's quote to the Playboy article. He assured me, "Our attorneys will back you up if Hoffa comes after us."[1]
Emboldened by Golson's confidence, I also added the Hoffa quote as an eleventh-hour endnote to my book’s near-finished galleys, writing:
Perhaps the strongest implication of a relationship between Hoffa and Ruby came in a personal conversation I had with Hoffa’s son, James P. Hoffa, in Detroit on December 27, 1977. His law partner, Murray Chodak, was also present. “I think my dad knew Jack Ruby, but from what I understand, he [Ruby] was the kind of guy everybody knew. So what?” Young Hoffa could not recall any specific information on which he based his opinion. In briefly discussing the possibility that his father might have been involved in President Kennedy’s assassination, Hoffa said, “It doesn’t make any sense. . . . If my dad had decided to kill Kennedy, he would have gotten a gun, walked right up to him, and blew his brains out.”
Hoffa Jr’s call to my home
On September 14, 1978, Hoffa called me at my apartment in Georgetown. The last time we spoke was during our contentious meeting in his law office on December 27, 1977. During this phone call, Hoffa was very upset after reading either my book or the excerpt in Playboy. I didn’t know which. He complained about, among other things, my claim that his father was involved with Marcello and Trafficante in the killing of President Kennedy.
During our conversation, I reminded him that he was the one who told me that his father knew Jack Ruby.
Hoffa admitted on the phone to making that statement and never denied the accuracy of the quotes I attributed to him—although he amended his story to say that his father and Ruby knew each other in 1939.
Ralph Orr’s book review
Sadly, my former colleague at the Detroit Free Press, labor editor Ralph Orr, a close friend of Hoffa Jr. and a huge fan of the late Hoffa Sr., harshly reviewed my anti-Hoffa book for the newspaper on October 15, 1978. In a sidebar to the review, Orr specifically criticized me for my Hoffa-Marcello‑Trafficante theory about the JFK murder.
Then, Orr quoted Jimmy Hoffa Jr., denying that he had ever told me that his father had known Jack Ruby. Hoffa told Orr, "That is a complete fabrication. I categorically deny that any such conversation ever took place."
Orr, who did not call and ask for my defense, continued: "Said [Hoffa's] law partner, Murray Chodak, whom Moldea said was present for the interview: 'Jimmy never, never said that. I was stunned when I read it. We would sue, but we don't want to help hustle the damned book.'"[2]
The HSCA interviews Hoffa Jr.
The following month on November 28, an investigator for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations—which had started holding public hearings about the JFK murder and the Mafia in late September—called and told me that Hoffa Jr., during his interview with the committee’s staff, had tagged me as "a liar," denying, once again, that he ever told me that his father knew Jack Ruby.
Specifically, the investigator’s report stated:
Speaking of the recent book, The Hoffa Wars, Hoffa stated that “it is completely inaccurate. It is a scandalous and malicious book. An outrage. It's the worst fabrication and worst book since The Enemy Within, [Robert Kennedy's 1960 book about Hoffa and the Mafia]. . . .
In response to the question of whether the book accurately quotes him as having stated that he believes his father knew Jack Ruby, Hoffa stated, “That's a total lie. I never said my father knew Jack Ruby or anything like that. He made that up for the book. I asked if he even suspected that his father may have once had contact with Ruby, and he again said that he knew of no such contact, saying, “It’s just not true. There’s nothing to it.”[3]
After the interview with Hoffa, the investigator called and asked if I had any corroboration—anything at all—for my claim that Hoffa had told me that his father knew Jack Ruby.
"Come over to my place," I told him.
When the investigator arrived, I gave him a cassette tape.
"What's on this?" He asked.
"Hoffa called me on September 14," I replied. "During our discussion, he confirmed the quote. . . . To protect myself, I taped the call. This is the tape of my conversation with Hoffa." (Emphasis added)
In short, Hoffa, Jr.—after seeing either my book or the article in Playboy—had called my home and criticized me for alleging that his father had been involved in President Kennedy's murder.
After I reminded Hoffa what he had told me on December 27, 1977, in his law office with Murray Chodak present, Hoffa confirmed his statement to me—that his father had personally known Jack Ruby.[4]
This corroborated what Mike Ewing and I had learned about the relationships between Ruby and several of Hoffa’s top associates, along with their telephone calls to Ruby during the days before the President’s murder.
I assured the congressional investigator that the cassette contained a legal wiretap, recorded in Washington, D.C., where only one-party consent is required.
“The mob did it”
Notably, upon the release of its final report on July 17, 1979—nearly a year after the release of my prophetic book, The Hoffa Wars—the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that, indeed, Jimmy Hoffa, Carlos Marcello, and Santo Trafficante had the "motive, means, and opportunity" to have President Kennedy killed.
Then, placing an exclamation point on all of this at the end of the committee's investigation, Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey, arguably America’s greatest expert on the Mafia, declared, "The mob did it. It's a historical fact."
The story above was an updated compilation of published excerpts from my body of work.
ENDNOTES
[1] I gave Barry Golson of Playboy a written statement about the circumstances revolving around my acceptance of $2,100 during the fall of 1975 from the Hoffa Reward Fund, administered by Jimmy Hoffa, Jr., who lauded and rewarded my seminal work on Rolland McMaster and the violence in Local 299 before Hoffa’s father vanished.
[2] Ralph Orr, Detroit Free Press, “Moldea’s book draws fire from several quarters,” October 15, 1978.
[3] When asked by committee investigators what his father thought about the JFK assassination, Hoffa Jr. replied that his father believed that “the CIA may have been involved in some way.”
[4] From 1998 to 2022, James P. Hoffa followed in his father’s footsteps and served as general president of the Teamsters Union.
Whew! I look forward to Sunday mornings and efforts never disappoint.
Excellent. Great insight.