Hoffa Case: Closing In

Ever since James R. Hoffa disappeared on July 30, a prime suspect in the case has been Anthony ("Tony Pro") Provenzano, 58, onetime head of Teamster Local 560 in Union City, N.J., who still controls that fief while living in Hallandale, Fla. Provenzano and Hoffa, the domineering president of the Teamsters from 1957 to 1971, were once good friends but became bitter enemies when they were imprisoned together in Lewisburg, Pa., Provenzano for extortion and Hoffa for jury tampering, fraud and conspiracy. Tony Pro wanted Hoffa to use his influence to reinstate the pension that Provenzano had lost when he went to the penitentiary. But Hoffa refused, and Provenzano reportedly threatened to "bury" his old comrade.

Last week federal officials reported that sources within Local 560 had accused three of Provenzano's New Jersey associates of committing the crime. The trio: Salvatore Briguglio, 47, an ex-con described by Government agents as an enforcer for Tony Pro in the rackets and union affairs; Gabriel Briguglio, his brother and a union underling; and Thomas Andretta, 38, a collector for loan sharks who was once imprisoned for threatening borrowers' lives.

The names of the three men were brought out in federal court in Detroit by Robert E. Ozer, head of the Justice Department's Organized Strike Force in that city. He said the three men had been named by an informer who had gone before a grand jury looking into the Hoffa disappearance. The informer's name was not revealed.

Ozer was in court to try to build another part of the case against the three men from New Jersey. Besides the informer, he had a witness who said he had seen part of the abduction from a parking lot outside Detroit. The court ordered the three to appear in a lineup so that the purported eyewitness (also unnamed) could try to identify them.

Federal officials have been told that Hoffa's murderers stuffed his body into a 55-gallon oil drum, carted it across the country and buried it in a dump in Jersey City. This week FBI bulldozers will begin to turn over the trash and garbage in an effort to find the grave of Jimmy Hoffa.

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