Frances and Kenneth Tubman were visibly anxious when they returned home to the Detroit suburbs from a camping trip on August 1, 1975.

Their son, David, was waiting to greet them but they breezed past him and headed straight for the TV to switch on the news.

Frances perched herself on the edge of the couch, while Kenneth remained standing. Both were transfixed on the screen.

At the top of the list of topics was the vanishing of previous President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, James ‘Jimmy’ Riddle Hoffa, who had not been seen for two days.

Hoffa, 62, was scheduled to meet with Anthony Provenzano, a mob-connected New Jersey Teamster, and Anthony Giacalone, a Detroit Mafia captain, at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant, a known mob hangout in Bloomfield Township, on the afternoon of July 30.

Neither Provenzano nor Giacalone showed. An agitated Hoffa called his wife from a payphone behind the restaurant at around 2.15pm., telling her he’d be back by 4pm. to fire up the grill for a steak dinner. But Hoffa never made it home.

A newscaster that afternoon placed Hoffa’s last known whereabouts at the Red Fox.

‘Like Hell!’ Kenneth thundered in response. ‘We saw him at The Raleigh House.’

Confused by his father’s outburst, David, then 24, asked for an explanation.

David told the Daily Mail he will never forget the fear in his parents’ faces when they made a startling confession: they’d witnessed Hoffa’s abduction.

Even more sensationally, the couple claimed they recognized the person driving the car – almost certainly chauffeuring him to his death – as Hoffa’s close aide, Charles ‘Chuckie’ O’Brien.

Secret Sighting

On July 30, Kenneth and Frances were driving from their home in Bloomfield to their daughter’s house in Westland ahead of their lakeside camping trip.

They set off at 2pm, on their usual route, which had them passing Machus Red Fox after a few minutes.

Frances and Kenneth told David that, at approximately 2.30pm, they were driving past the restaurant when a maroon-colored car speedily exited the driveway, veered onto the road and began tailing them closely in the far-left lane.

After a few moments, the car pulled alongside them, where it remained for several miles.

‘I was looking straight at the driver of the other car, and he was really checking us out,’ Frances told her son in 2006 during a phone call he recounts in his book, Jimmy Hoffa Is Missing: The Gap.

‘I looked over, and I noticed that in the back seat there was a lot of commotion going on, and I tried to figure out what was happening back there,’ she said.

In the back of the car, Frances saw two large men with their knees raised to their chests, who appeared to be ‘fighting or struggling’ with something beneath them.

‘I saw something in one of their hands that seemed like a rope or a leash.

‘I thought maybe they were trying to keep some big old dog down on the floor in the back, but it just seemed strange to me, so I kept looking.’

Kenneth eventually noticed the commotion and glanced over for himself.

‘Frances! Quit looking,’ he warned her. ‘That’s the Mafia. Do you want to end up dead in the Detroit River?’

Kenneth told his wife the man driving the car was Chuckie O’Brien, a mobster who was so close with Hoffa he was often referred to as his ‘stepson’. 

He recognized O’Brien from his days working as the manager of the restaurant Darby’s, another mob hangout, which closed after a fire in 1968.

Unperturbed, Frances continued to stare and studied the driver’s face.

‘I noticed he had a round face and head, and he had long sideburns and a high or receding hairline,’ she recounted.

‘He was dressed more casually than the other two men in the back seat. They had suits on and it looked like they may have had hats on.’

The two cars remained side-by-side for several miles before Kenneth eventually slowed his speed to create distance.

They then watched as the maroon car turned off Telegraph Road and pulled in behind another restaurant, The Raleigh House.

She and Kenneth both recalled seeing a large garbage truck, believed to belong to Central Sanitation, a company owned by Motor City mafia lieutenants and longtime Hoffa associates, Peter Vitale and Raffaele Quasarano.

Eventually, the maroon car and The Raleigh House faded from view.

The potential significance of what the Tubmans had witnessed wouldn’t be realized until Hoffa’s disappearance made headlines.

It was later revealed several others had seen Hoffa inside a maroon car outside the Red Fox at around 2.30pm.

One witness saw Hoffa in the backseat of the vehicle talking with three men.

A truck driver also told authorities he pulled up next to the car – a Mercury Marquis Brougham – and immediately recognized Hoffa, who was sitting directly behind the driver.

Additionally, the trucker reported noticing a long object covered with a blanket on the seat between Hoffa and another passenger, which he believed was a shotgun or a rifle.

Vow of Silence

The Tubmans were convinced what they’d seen was important, and that the ‘dog’ Frances had earlier theorized the men were wrestling with in the backseat was actually Hoffa.

But Kenneth didn’t want to go to the police and swore his wife and children to secrecy.

‘That’s the Mafia,’ Kenneth reminded Frances. ‘You’ll end up as minced meat.’

Kenneth had reasons to be paranoid.

Years earlier, when he was working at Darby’s, he had his own close shave with Mob brutality.

In 1967, his boss gave him a Lincoln Continental Mark IV. A week earlier, Kenneth had canceled a contract with one of the restaurant’s juice vendors after getting frustrated with frequent price hikes.

The vendor he’d severed from was The Home Juice Company, owned by mobster brothers Vito and Tony Giacalone – the same Giacalone Hoffa had been due to meet with.

Days later, Kenneth pulled in to get gas when the attendant approached his window and told him: ‘You’re a very lucky man, mister.’

Puzzled as to why, the attendant added, ‘Did you know there was a fuse in your gas tank? If it hadn’t fallen out, you would have blown up when you started this car.’

Kenneth quit Darby’s soon after and swore off working for any other mob-affiliated businesses again.

Interestingly, in 1974, he was offered a job managing The Raleigh House.

He was given a tour of the restaurant’s kitchen, which he described as a butcher’s paradise: stainless-steel worktops, huge band saws for carving up meat and drains in the middle of the floor to catch blood runoff.

Kenneth turned down the job when he learned the eatery was owned by the Jewish Mafia.

But when he saw the maroon car years later, he couldn’t help but remember that kitchen.

And what about the Central Sanitation garbage truck parked out the back of the building. What role may it have played in Hoffa’ disappearance?

Kenneth thought he knew, but didn’t want to be the one to blow the whistle. 

Within days, O’Brien emerged as one of the leading suspects in the case.

Believing the feds were on the right trail without them, Kenneth and Frances opted to stay quiet.

The 90 Minute Gap

In interviews with federal investigators, O’Brien denied seeing Hoffa on July 30 and offered a convoluted alibi rife with conflicting information about his own whereabouts.

O’Brien told cops he was running errands when Hoffa disappeared, delivering a 40-pound fish to the home of Teamsters International VP Robert Holmes.

To make the delivery, O’Brien had borrowed a maroon Mercury Marquis Brougham from Giacalone’s son.

But, O’Brien claimed he stayed to help Holmes’ wife cut up the fish and then took the car to Jax Kar Wash to get the interior cleaned because fish blood leaked all over the back seat.

He then allegedly headed to the Southfield Athletic Club to meet with Giacalone and later returned the car to his son.

FBI records show nobody at the club or the car wash could corroborate O’Brien’s story.

Joseph Spitz, who worked at Jax Kar Wash and disputed O’Brien’s alibi, died unexpectedly two weeks later on August 16.

Records from the car wash also went missing.

Investigators have long suspected O’Brien and two Provenzano underlings picked up Hoffa at the Red Fox and drove off with him in the backseat.

Police seized the car eight days after Hoffa vanished. 

Sniffer dogs detected Hoffa’s scent in the backseat and trunk. Investigators also found a hair they confirmed belonged to Hoffa in 2001.

Hoffa’s family is certain of O’Brien’s involvement, claiming he was one of few people who could have convinced him to get into a car.

O’Brien protested his innocence, but, in all of his interactions, failed to account for his whereabouts between 2.30pm and 4pm, the window in which Hoffa disappeared.

The Tubmans’ eyewitness account helps fill that gap, though it was 30 years before the FBI heard it.

Kenneth died in 1987, taking the secret to his grave.

In 2006, Frances finally agreed to speak with the FBI under the urging of her son.

In the years after Hoffa’s disappearance, the family rarely spoke about what they believed they saw.

But on May 19, 2006, David saw authorities were conducting a dig for Hoffa’s remains on a farm in Milford, Michigan – and he believed it was the perfect time for his mom to come forward.

She met with the FBI on June 27, 2006. David shared a copy of the report with the Daily Mail.

In 2009, he captured his mom’s account on video.

David told the Mail that in the 36 years that had passed, her story never changed.

He believes her testimony is crucial to unlocking the Hoffa mystery 50 years later. 

Compelling Theory

David began researching Hoffa’s disappearance after his mother’s death in 2011.

In 2020, he self-published his book chronicling his parents’ story.

David believes Hoffa was killed at Raleigh House and his remains transported to Central Sanitation via the garbage truck parked out back.

The FBI descended on Raleigh House on September 22, 1975, after receiving what they called their ‘most reliable tip so far.’

Agents searched the eatery and examined a large trash compactor at the back of the building, but David believes they were too late.

According to David’s research, Raleigh House had trash pickups every Friday – there had been several by the time authorities arrived and any evidence was likely gone.

David notes the restaurant’s designated collection day makes the truck’s presence on the Wednesday Hoffa vanished all the more curious.

‘It makes perfect sense that the sole purpose of the… truck was to collect the lifeless body of Jimmy Hoffa and remove that evidence from the premises to avoid detection,’ David writes in his book.

It was rumored that Central Sanitation had an incinerator on premises, which may have been used to cremate Hoffa’s remains.

Alan Kaplan, a Central Sanitation employee in 1975, told David there was no incinerator, but there was an industrial-sized trash compactor.

According to Kaplan, Giacalone came to inspect the compactor a week before Hoffa disappeared.

‘He’s never seen him there before,’ said David, relaying his conversation with Kaplan. ‘Giacalone was hanging around the compactor for 35 minutes to an hour, just circling it.

‘He didn’t speak to anyone, but [Kaplan] knew it was unusual that he was there.

‘And [Kaplan] said if you’re trying to get rid of a body, the garbage truck would’ve mulched Hoffa alone, even if they didn’t cut him up inside the kitchen… That compactor may have finished the job.’

The Hunt Goes On

Central Sanitation’s involvement in Hoffa’s death was never determined.

The plant was burned to the ground eight months later in March 1976.

David believes the plant was torched to destroy any Hoffa-related evidence.

Kaplan said he was told it was burned for insurance as the company faced bankruptcy.

The key to finally figuring out what happened to Hoffa rests on speaking with former plant employees who are still alive, David believes.  

Theories and conspiracies about Hoffa’s fate have proliferated over the last 50 years, inspiring movies, TV shows and video games.

During that time, the FBI has carried out several digs all over the country to find his remains, including five in Michigan and two in New Jersey.

So far, the searches have been fruitless.

Chuckie O’Brien died on February 1, 2020 – a day before Hoffa’s birthday.

He maintained his innocence until his death, despite refusing a lie detector test in 2001.

Hoffa served as Teamsters president between 1957 and 1971.

For years, he was suspected of colluding with the Mob and in 1967 was charged and convicted of jury tampering, landing him four years in prison.

After his release, Hoffa was determined to regain the union presidency.

The FBI believes he was killed by the Mob to prevent his reinstatement, believing it would impair their influence over Teamsters’ pension fund.

The search for Hoffa continues, but David is hopeful we will have answers soon.