Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 4

PAGE 4 THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS FRIDAY, JANUARY 13, 1995 The oldest living suspect in the disappearance of the legendary Teamster, frank sheer an, draws a line not necessarily a straight one from mob chief russell bufalino of Pennsylvania and the genovese family to Hoffa successor frank fitzsimmons and the dirty tricks of richard nixon fov Kitty Caparella Daily News Staff Writer Jimmy Hoffa was shot, but not by organized-crime figures. He is not buried under Giants Stadium in the North Jersey Meadowlands, or in a 55-gallon drum, or in any landfill. The perpetrators were contract killers linked to Richard Nixon's White House, even though the Watergate investigation had forced the president to leave office in disgrace. And we'll never find the body. That is the contention of former Teamsters Union business agent Frank Sheeran, who told the Daily News he has the key to the disappearance of Teamsters boss James Riddle Hoffa on ft nM" .1 whiu, Jimmy Hoffa: Missing since '75 Survivors' ranks growing thin by Kitty Caparella 1 Daily News Staff Writer At least six suspects were identified by the FBI in the Hoffa disappearance and presumed murder in 1975.

Besides Frank Sheeran, the other suspects included: Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, capo in the Genovese crime family and ex-business agent of FILE PHOTOS Sheeran in '81 (left), Bufalino in '82 (top right) and Nixon in '89 July 30, 1975, one of the most fascinating and notorious unsolved crimes in American history. Sheeran, 74, a former Teamsters business agent in Philadelphia and Wilmington, has long been linked to the case and perhaps is the last person alive to know what really happened. Sheeran, who served six years of an 18-year sentence on federal labor racketeering charges, last month was ordered back to prison for nine months, the result of parole violations meeting with mobsters. He is to surrender today to authorities. For 20 years, Sheeran wouldn't talk.

Not in response to subpoenas, grand juries, politicians, the FBI and other authorities who interrogated him. Not even for a $3 million reward offered by the Hoffa family and the union Hoffa headed for years, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He kept mum because of a promise to his best friend, who died last year. Sheeran says he's now ready to tell all to his biographer, John Zeitts. "I did not kill Hoffa.

I had nothing to do with it," Sheeran said. "But I never had the answer until 1988. "With time and the death of the others, I am the only one who knows for sure," he said. "Now, I am able to answer some of the questions concerning the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa." Will the body ever be found? "No way, dear," Sheeran said. Sheeran said his story linking the Hoffa disappearance to the White House will be detailed in his autobiography.

Sheeran is negotiating a multimillion-dollar deal with a clause not to disclose certain facts beforehand to publish the book and do a movie. He expects it to be announced soon. He made a promise not to talk before this' to "the? best friend I ever Penn- 1 sylvania crime boss Russell Bufalino, Teamsters Local 560 in Union City, N.J. He died of a heart attack Dec. 12, 1988, in Lom-poc (Calif.) federal prison, where he was serving 20 years for labor racketeering.

Hoffa was going to meet Provenzano the day he disappeared. Stephen Andretta, a Tony Pro associate, told informant Ralph mAl Provenzano When Hoffa was picked up, eyewitnesses said, two other men were in the car with O'Brien. They were Tony Pro's men Salvatore Briguglio and either his brother, Gabriel Briguglio, or Thomas Andretta, according to published accounts. Investigators believe Hoffa was knocked out with the butt of a gun soon after getting into the car and later strangled on Provenzano's orders with Bufa-lino's permission. The disposal of Hoffa 's body was left to Sheeran, who was in Detroit for a wedding at the time.

Not so, says Sheeran. This is his account: Five days after Hoffa's disappearance, Sheeran said, he was called to meet at a New York City restaurant with Bufalino, Provenzano and Salvatore Briguglio, a Local 560 business agent all suspects in the disappearance, according to an FBI memo at the time. At the Aug. 4, 1975, meeting over lunch at rthe Vesuvius, Restaurant, 6Sheeran, See HOFFA Page 32 whom he met in an auto body shop in the 1950s. Bufalino, who died last year at age 91, headed the upstate crime family that has long had strong ties to the trucking industry, according to law enforcement sources.

Authorities have long speculated that Bufalino ordered Hoffa murdered, on behalf of rival Teamsters linked to the mob, but Sheeran discounts that theory. On the hot July afternoon of his disappearance, Hoffa was waiting for his foster son, Chuckie O'Brien, in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, outside Detroit. According to published accounts of the FBI's investigation, Hoffa and O'Brien were to go to a meeting to resolve Hoffa 's differences with Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano, a reputed capo in New York City's Genovese crime family and head of Teamsters Local 560 in North Jersey, who had fcad availing, eral prison in Lewisburg, Pa. Picardo that he did not participate in the Hoffa hit, but was left in Newark to provide an alibi for Tony Pro. Still alive, he won't talk about Hoffa.

Thomas Andretta, brother of Stephen and Tony Pro associate is still alive with nothing to say. Believed to be in the car when Hoffa was picked up. Salvatore "Sal" Briguglio, a Tony Pro associate, was killed in a shower of bullets outside a restuarant in New York's Little Italy on Mar. 21, 1978. Believed to -51 i See SURVIVORS.