The FBI knows Chuckie O’Brien wasn’t involved in the disappearance and murder of his surrogate father, famed labor union boss Jimmy Hoffa and suspects a deceased Detroit mob button man was the triggerman in the iconic unsolved mystery, per a new book out this week penned by O’Brien’s stepson. Harvard University Law School professor and one-time Department of Justice attorney Jack Goldsmith was raised by O’Brien as a youth and wrote the much-talked about book titled “In Hoffa’s Shadow,” after nearly a decade of research interviewing several of the FBI agents who worked the case and O’Brien himself. Goldsmith’s book, called “riveting” by the Washington Post in a glowing review, further dispels the story being put forth in the upcoming Martin Scorsese-directed movie, The Irishman, starring Al Pacino as Hoffa and Robert DeNiro as Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran, an east coast hit man who claimed he was the shooter in the Hoffa slaying before he died in 2003. According to In Hoffa’s Shadow, the feds are aware of who killed Hoffa and it isn’t Sheeran. Declining to fully identify the assassin, Goldsmith has gone on-record in interviews promoting his book that the shooter was a “low level member of the Detroit crime family in the 1970s who rose to prominence (in the mafia later in the life) and is no longer alive.” Hoffa was kidnapped and killed on the afternoon of July 30, 1975, last seen leaving a Bloomfield Township, Michigan restaurant parking lot in a brand-new maroon-colored Mercury Marquis. At the time of his death, the fiery labor chief was feuding with his former allies in the mafia over his desire to reclaim the presidency of the goliath, mafia-controlled Teamsters union, an organization he led for 14 years before relinquishing the reins while serving a federal prison sentence for fraud, bribery and jury tampering. He was also in a personal beef with O’Brien. Nobody has ever faced charges in his homicide and the investigation is ongoing, despite most, if not all, of the conspirators in the murder being dead. O’Brien has long been tied to the crime because he was in possession of the car Hoffa was last seen traveling. Investigators traced Hoffa’s DNA to the backseat and trunk of the Mercury Marquis belonging to the son of Detroit mafia street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone. Hoffa was on his way to a sit down with Giacalone, his direct contact in organized crime circles for decades, when he went missing. Tony Jack’s youngest son, Joseph (Joey Jack) Giacalone, owned the car, which today remains the only piece of physical evidence ever collected in the case. Goldsmith reveals in his book that FBI agents have dismissed O’Brien as a suspect and in 2013 offered to provide him an official letter clearing him of any wrongdoing in Hoffa’s murder if he agreed to sit for an extensive interview regarding his knowledge of the case and its major players. O’Brien did the interview that year, but the FBI never provided the letter of exoneration. Per FBI records, Chuckie O’Brien was born in Kansas City to Missouri mob figure Sam (The Binger) Scaradino, also known as “Sammy O’Brien,” from his days as a boxer, and aspiring model, singer and actress Sylvia Pagano, who went by the stage-name Sylvia Paris. Scaradino was a driver and bodyguard for the Kansas City mafia’s feared Civella brothers. Pagano moved to Detroit and had romantic relationships with powerful Motown mobsters Frank (Frankie Three Fingers) Coppola and Tony Giacalone. She also had a love affair with Hoffa. Through Pagano, Hoffa cemented his own relationship with organized crime in Michigan and used it to rise through the ranks of the Teamsters until he took the presidency in 1957 with the aid of Detroit’s Tocco-Zerilli crime family. Hoffa moved O’Brien into his home and raised him as a son. Tony Giacalone acted as a father figure to him as well. O’Brien eventually went to work for Hoffa in the Teamsters and became a go-between for the man he called dad and the union’s rank-and-file. Hoffa and O’Brien had a bitter falling out in the year preceding Hoffa vanishing though when Hoffa refused to support O’Brien’s candidacy for vice president of Local 299, Hoffa’s home base in Detroit. Things went south fast and O’Brien allegedly began spreading rumors that Hoffa was an FBI informant and Hoffa reportedly tried to get O’Brien transferred to a Teamsters outpost in Anchorage, Alaska as punishment for his disloyalty. This is what we know for sure about O’Brien’s movements the day Hoffa was slain 44 years go via FBI and Michigan State Police documents: On the morning of Tuesday, July 30, 1975, O’Brien picked up the Mercury Marquis from Joey Giacalone at Joey Jack’s Macomb County office and then drove it west to Oakland County, delivering a giant salmon to Teamsters executive Bobby Holmes at Holmes’ home in Farmington, Michigan – a present sent from the Teamsters in Seattle – and finally bringing the vehicle to Tony Giacalone’s headquarters at the Southfield Athletic Club in Southfield, Michigan, roughly seven miles away from the Red Fox restaurant where Tony Jack was supposed to meet Hoffa at 2:00 p.m. The FBI believes O’Brien gave up possession of the Mercury Marquis at the athletic club to the elder Giacalone between 1:00 and 1:30 p.m. and Giacalone in turn, without O’Brien’s knowledge, provided the car for the hit team he assembled to handle the Hoffa murder contract to use, according to Gangster Report sources. Goldsmith’s new book names Detroit mob capo Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone, Tony Jack’s baby brother and a respected organized crime figure nationwide in his own right with allegedly dozens of gangland murders on his resume, as the driver of the car that scooped Hoffa at the Red Fox and transported him to his slaughter. O’Brien has often been pointed to as the driver of the car in Hoffa’s kidnapping in the narrative that has developed since that fateful day in 1975. Billy Giacalone was unaccounted by the normal FBI and MSP surveillance squads responsible for tracking his movements that afternoon. Tony Giacalone never left the Southfield Athletic Club and staged a number of public sightings throughout the day in order to establish an alibi. Like his younger sibling, Tony Jack was considered a suspect in two dozen mob-related murders, but never indicted on homicide charges in his more-than half century on the streets. If you dissect Goldsmith’s theory related to the actual triggerman in Hoffa’s execution, “a low level member of the Detroit crime family in the 1970s who rose to prominence (in the mafia later in the life) and is no longer alive,” it would appear he’s referencing recently-deceased Motor City mafia consigliere Anthony (Tony Pal) Palazzolo.
The post O’Brien Absolved Of Blame In Hoffa Hit, Detroit Mob’s Tony Pal Possibly Implicated As Shooter In New Book appeared first on The Gangster Report.