November 21, 2019 — A deceased New Jersey mobster’s son says Jimmy Hoffa’s body was viewed as a “trophy” for Genovese crime family capo Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano and he can take authorities to where it is. Philip Moscato, Jr. has gone on-record with Fox News’ Eric Shawn and Dan Moldea, the world’s most-respected authority on Hoffa’s disappearance and murder, telling them his father, former Genovese power Phil (Brother) Moscato, told him that he was responsible for burying Hoffa on Provenzano’s behalf and where his final resting place is. Provenzano’s right-hand man, Salvatore (Sally Bugs) Briguglio, pulled the trigger in the famous mob hit which took place in Detroit on the afternoon of July 30, 1975, according to Brother Moscato’s account relayed to his progeny. Hoffa and Provenzano had gone from close friends to bitter enemies in the years preceding Hoffa’s demise. “Tony Pro put the whole thing together, he wanted the body brought back to New Jersey,” said Moscato, Jr. to Eric Shawn, host of Riddle: The Search For James R. Hoffa. “……It was a Jersey thing. A Jersey guy is in control, he wanted to keep him (the body) close, where he could see him, get to him. I know it sounds sick. But that’s the way it was. It was a control type thing, like a trophy. Having him brought back to Jersey was his trophy. He wanted everybody to understand (he did it).” Provenzano and Moscato were part of the New York-headquartered Genovese clan’s New Jersey faction. Court records from the 1970s name Moscato as one of the biggest loansharks on the east coast, operating out of Bergen and Hudson Counties in New Jersey. Both Provenzano and Moscato pleaded the Fifth Amendment in front of a fall 1975 federal grand jury convened in Detroit to probe the Hoffa kidnapping and murder. Brother Moscato died in 2014. He gave confessions to both his son and Moldea in the weeks before he passed away from a bout with cancer at 79 years old. The elder Moscato admitted to Moldea that Hoffa was transported from Detroit to New Jersey in a Gateway Transportation truck and put to rest at his trash dump, PJP Landfill in Jersey City. He then confided in his son that Hoffa’s body was moved from its first grave and moved to another when Provenzano crew member Ralph (Little Ralphie) Piccardo turned state’s evidence and tipped the feds to Moscato’s landfill as a burial spot. Moscato, Jr. won’t publically provide any more details. Moldea and Fox News speculate the body was relocated to the Meadowlands property in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The Hoffa mystery has blasted back into the headlines this fall with the release of the Martin Scorsese helmed-film The Irishman, unfurling the questionable story of Delaware Teamsters boss Frank (The Irishman) Sheeran and his boast that he was the triggerman in Hoffa’s slaying. The source material for the movie was the 2004 book, I Heard You Paint Houses by Sheeran’s attorney, Charlie Brandt. In the book, Sheeran, who died in the months before it was released, speculates Hoffa’s body was disposed of at a Detroit area incinerator. The 62-year old Hoffa vanished from a Bloomfield Township, Michigan restaurant parking lot en route to a purported sit down with Provenzano and Detroit mafia street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone. His remains have never been found and nobody has ever been charged in the case. Moscato, Jr. says, according to his dad, Detroit mob capo Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone, Tony Jack’s younger brother, drove Hoffa to a nearby private residence where he was slain by Sally Bugs Briguglio. Three years after Hoffa went missing, Sally Bugs was clipped leaving a Manhattan social club amid rumors that he was on the verge of flipping. The FBI considers the Hoffa murder investigation open and active. Back in 2004 at the time Brandt’s book came out, the Oakland County Sheriffs’ Department searched and tested floorboards in a house in Northwest Detroit for Hoffa’s blood and DNA based on Sheeran’s claim in the book of where he was taken and shot to death. Sheeran was aligned closely with Pennsylvania mob dons Russell Bufalino and Angelo Bruno throughout the 1960s and 1970s. At the time of his disappearance, Hoffa was feuding with his one-time benefactors in the American mafia over his desire to reclaim the Teamsters union presidency which he had relinquished in 1970 while serving a prison term for fraud. Hoffa was also in a beef with Provenzano, an ally-turned-rival he butted heads with behind bars over insurance-plan benefit payouts and needed support from if he was going to be successful in his reelection bid. Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982. Provenzano died of a heart attack in prison in 1988 serving a life sentence for a non-Hoffa related labor-union murder.
