Background
James R. "Jimmy" Hoffa was for many years president of the Teamsters, one of America's most powerful unions, and one of the country's best-known labour leaders in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1975 he was 62.
What happened
On Wednesday 30 July 1975 Hoffa went to the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, a Detroit suburb. He expected a meeting at 2:00 p.m. between 2:15 and 2:30 he phoned his wife to complain that he had been stood up. The FBI estimated he left without a struggle at about 2:45 to 2:50 p.m. His unlocked car was found in the lot the next morning.
The FBI's estimate was that Hoffa left the parking lot voluntarily and without a struggle, and his unlocked car was found in the lot the next morning.
Investigation and legal outcome
Investigators broadly believe he was killed by people linked to organised crime, but no conclusive evidence has emerged and no one has been charged. On 9 December 1982 a Michigan court declared him legally dead as of 30 July 1982.
Many searches followed. In 2004 a television programme used ground-penetrating radar at a stadium site in New Jersey and found nothing. In June 2013 the FBI dug for three days at a property in Oakland Township, Michigan, without finding remains. In October 2021 a warrant was obtained to survey a landfill in Jersey City; in July 2022 the FBI reported that nothing of evidentiary value had been found.
The 2013 dig followed claims by a figure linked to organised crime, and the 2021 search rested on a landfill worker's reported deathbed statement. Neither produced remains, and the file has stalled because such accounts could not be verified.
Where it stands today
The case remains open, no one has been charged and his body has never been found. Many experts think it was cremated. Hoffa's disappearance is one of the most famous missing-person cases in the United States and a frequent subject of popular culture.