March 24, 2020 – Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa’s body was possibly buried under one of the Briguglio brothers’ swimming pools, according to FBI records unearthed by Fox News. Slain New Jersey wiseguy Salvatore (Sally Bugs) Briguglio has always been considered one of the top suspects in the labor leader’s famed unsolved disappearance and murder. Many investigators believe Sally Bugs was the triggerman in the iconic mob hit. His brother, 81-year old Gabriel, a retired mob soldier long suspected of playing a role in the killing as well, is still alive and living in the Garden State. The Briguglios and their respective former swimming pools share the focus of the third-part of Fox Nation’s investigative docu-series, Riddle: The Search For James R. Hoffa, hosted by Eric Shawn. The show premiered on the Fox News streaming service last year. Shawn sought access to the pair of swimming pools for the most-recent episode of the series that dropped on the platform last week but came up empty. The pools were never searched by the feds. Hoffa, 62, vanished from a restaurant parking lot in Bloomfield Township, Michigan on the afternoon of July 30, 1975 while feuding with the mafia’s “Commission” over his desire to reclaim the Teamsters union presidency he had given up as a way of a getting out of prison early via a commutation from the White House. He was on his way to a lunch meeting with Detroit mob street boss Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and New Jersey mafia capo Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano to discuss the issue when he went missing. One-time close friends and allies, Provenzano and Hoffa were engaged in an intense personal beef that Hoffa needed to squash in order to take back the goliath Teamsters union he had headed from 1957 until 1970. Tony Jack was Hoffa’s direct contact with the mob, Tony Pro ran labor affairs for New York’s Genovese crime family. The Briguglio brothers worked for Provenzano and were members of his Teamsters powerbase at Local 250 in Union City, New Jersey. Per court testimony, Sally Bugs was the Provenzano mob crew’s top hit man and enforcer. The FBI fielded tips that Hoffa’s body was dumped underneath the pool Sally Bugs was building at his Sherman, Connecticut vacation home in the summer of 1975. Investigators were also told that Hoffa was buried under Gabriel’s pool at his residence in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Neither property has any remaining ties to the Briguglios. Fox Nation put in a request to both current owners to allow a search of their pools with ground-penetrating radar equipment: the owners of the Connecticut cottage didn’t respond to the request and the owners of the East Rutherford residence wanted financial compensation Fox Nation wasn’t willing to pay. Sally Bugs was gunned down gangland style exiting a Manhattan social club in 1978. He was 48 years old. Eric Shawn tried to interview Gabriel Briguglio at his Jersey home back in January, however Briguglio rebuked the attempt. “I know who you are and I have nothing to say to you,” he barked at Shawn from his front door. “Did you drink before coming over or are you just high on something?…Get out of here.” Briguglio, who did five years of federal prison time in the 1980s for labor racketeering, is one of two prime suspects left in the ongoing Hoffa murder probe. The other is fellow retired Goodfella Stevie Andretta, another former Provenzano crew goon and convicted felon. Actor Louis Cancelmi played Sally Bugs in the Oscar-nominated 2019 film The Irishman, director Martin Scorsese’s 200-million dollar Netflix epic about the Hoffa case. Brit Stephen Graham drew rave reviews for his portrayal of Tony Pro in the movie. Provenzano died of a heart attack in 1988 behind bars doing prison time for an unrelated Teamsters mob murder that Sally Bugs allegedly participated in.
