The Hit on Jimmy Hoffa

• Who killed Jimmy Hoffa?

• Why was he killed?

• How was he lured to his death?

• Where was his body buried?

Introduction: Donald Frankos--Federally protected witness #38995066--has spent the past 30 years bouncing in and out of the New York State prison system on a succession of charges: drug running, aggravated assault, grand larceny, contract murder. His criminal caree--on the street and in prison--has brought him into contact with the most notorious Mobsters of our time: Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno, Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo and John Gotti. These Mob ties, along with his career in organized crime, have made Frankos, a.k.a. Tony the Greek, a prized source of information on the underworld. Frankos has stories to tell, and the Government has been eager to listen. His most spectacular revelations deal with the July 30, 1975, disappearance of former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, a crime that remains unsolved. Frankos, who claims to have been part of the hit team assembled to carry out the killing, re-creates Hoffa's death, dismemberment and burial in this exclusive account for Playboy.

Playboy: You claim to have participated in the most notorious crime of the Seventies: the killing of Jimmy Hoffa. Tell us about it.

Frankos: In 1973, I had crap games on two floors of the Hotel Wilson, on Fifty-eighth Street in New York. I was sitting in the lobby around four o'clock in the morning, when John Sullivan--Fat Tony Salerno's main hitter--told me Fat Tony wanted to meet me. I went up the following day to see him with Sally Bugs [Briguglio], a soldier in the Genovese crime family. We got in John Sullivan's Mercedes and we drove up to a Hundred and Fifteenth Street between First and Second Avenue to his social club--it was like an office where he done all of his criminal enterprises.

Fat Tony was sitting in the kitchen there. He was a little squat guy with a cigar sticking out of his mouth; he had a gruffy voice and he vibrated authority. John Sullivan introduced me. Fat Tony got up behind the table he was sitting at and he came and he kissed me. You know, them Mafia kisses. And he says, I heard a lot of good stories about you and too bad you're only half-Italian, because I would like you to stay with my crew.

We sit down and we start talking and he says, I need you and John for a very important hit that's coming up very shortly. This hit concerns a guy that's doing time in the Federal system. He done some bad things and we're looking to kill him. The hit won't be going into effect right away, but Fat Tony just wanted to keep me and John Sullivan on hold.

Playboy: You had already done hits for Salerno?

Frankos: I'd done about four hits that he knew about, but he never gave me the orders. The orders came from one of his captains in his crime family.

Playboy: How long had Salerno known Sullivan?

Frankos: John Sullivan was doing business with Fat Tony Salerno since the Sixties. Fat Tony needed Irish guys to run the West Side, because they were already involved in corruption there. Without these Irish guys, Fat Tony couldn't operate. They were vicious killers. They didn't use no diplomacy.

Playboy: So you guys weren't strangers?

Frankos: They knew we were all right. In this criminal enterprise, everybody knows each other, but you don't necessarily have to meet them. They hear about you. You could become a legend overnight if you do a big hit. Then, when you do meet, it's like you know each other for years.

They knew we were free-lance hitters. We worked for the Israeli Mob, we worked for the Albanians, we worked for the Greeks, we worked for the Italians' organized-crime families and we worked for the Irish. And we done some work with the Puerto Rican Mobsters. We freelanced out to them.

Playboy: What did Fat Tony tell you about the hit?

Frankos: He didn't go into details to me, but he told me that there was going to be a hit on a guy in Lewisburg, the Federal penitentiary. And that he was going to supply the pistols and the silencers, and he knew that we used meat cleavers and buzz saws to chop up the body.

Playboy: Buzz saws?

Frankos: Like you use to cut down trees. You plug them in or you can use them on batteries. That was our forte at the time. I was involved in a couple of them--I chopped up a couple bodies, OK?

Before we left there, Fat Tony says the hit will earn us anywhere from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand; a very important hit. They need two good hitters on this hit, OK? But he's going to keep us on hold because this guy's up for parole soon; he didn't mention the name right there and then. This guy's up for parole very shortly and if he does come out, that's when we're going to go and do the work on him. But until then, stay loose and when this guy comes out, then you do your work. Before I left, he gave me five thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, for coming out of prison, and I thanked him for that. He kissed me and I got back into the Mercedes and we drove back downtown.

As we were going downtown, John Sullivan mentioned to me that the hit would be going like this: Tony Provenzano, who was in charge of the Local 560 Truckers' Union in Jersey, was one of the most powerful union delegates at that time. But he was also a captain in the Genovese crime family. Tony Pro was doing time with Jimmy Hoffa in Lewisburg Penitentiary. They had a discussion in the yard. Jimmy Hoffa says, When I come out, I want to go back as a leader of the unions. Tony Pro says, No, we got our man in there right now, so you just step down. You're too hot. They had a big argument, and Jimmy Hoffa told him, I'll go to the grand jury and I'll expose you and Fat Tony Salerno and I'm going to tell them how you were shaking down our unions and taking money from our union funds to open up criminal enterprises and businesses on your own. And Jimmy Hoffa smacks Tony Pro in the eye.

Tony Pro got a visit from his brother Nunzio Provenzano, who was also a captain in the Genovese organized-crime family. Tony Pro told him, Jimmy Hoffa's gonna turn on us, and not only that, he smacked me in the yard in front of a couple inmates. I want this guy hit. But Hoffa has a rabbi [criminal mentor] in Detroit named Tony Giacalone. Tony Pro always referred to Giacalone as that piece of shit. One particular time, he mentioned, This Giacalone is fuckin' everybody's wives.

Playboy: He didn't approve?

Frankos: Tony Pro was an old-time Mustache Pete, and Mustache Petes don't care for that. They have, like, a little honor amongst themselves. I tell you, organized-crime figures are more honorable than the Feds.

Playboy: How so?

Frankos: I've seen two faces of evil. I've seen organized crime on all levels. I've seen Albanian wise guys--a wise guy in criminal terminology is a person in organized crime. I've seen Greek wise guys. I've seen Italian, Colombian, Israeli and Puerto Rican wise guys. And you take all those crews and put them together and in their little pinkie, they got more honor than the entire Justice Department. If I wanted to pick between organized crime and the Feds, as far as honorability and integrity go, I would go with organized crime. You can deal with them better, and they'll tell it like it is.

Playboy: How was the Hoffa hit planned?

Frankos: In the late part of 1973, I was bringing Jimmy Coonan's wife, Edna, up to see him in Sing Sing. And John told me to tell Jimmy about the work he got to do and he can make himself fifty thousand dollars on this hit when he comes out. So I took this message up to Jimmy Coonan and I told him the circumstances and how the hit is going to go down and who was going to get killed...Jimmy Hoffa. OK?

Now, before all this materialized, in January 1974, I got arrested with a concealed .357 Magnum that I used to keep on my possession on the floor of my crap game at the Hotel Wilson, in case anybody tried to take off these business guys that came to gamble. A precinct that we weren't paying off ended up busting me and another guy with the pistols. I had to go to court. Even though John Sullivan had this particular judge in his pocket, the judge says no, I have to do some time. John was trying to get me a light sentence so I could be out there for that hit. But they ended up giving me two and a half to five in January 1974.

Playboy: Where were you doing time?

Frankos: At that time, I was in The Tombs. That's the house of detention in Manhattan, One Hundred Center Street. Now, they told me Jimmy Coonan's coming out very shortly and the hit will be soon as this Coonan comes out and soon as this other guy comes out. We found out he's due to make parole in the summer of 1975.

Playboy: We heard you mention that date on the tapes you gave us. It's a matter of public record that Jimmy Hoffa was paroled by Richard Nixon in December 1971. Your date is off by four years.

Frankos: I would have looked all these dates up if I was bullshitting you, you know? I'm not here to ask Tony Salerno no questions. My job is to do the hit and get the fuck out. I just got the dates wrong. Fat Tony said we want this guy hit very soon. We'll let you know when to hit him.

Playboy: There was talk that Gerald Ford was getting ready to give Hoffa a full pardon in 1975, which would have nullified the conditions Nixon put on him when he was released in 1971. It would have allowed him to run for Teamsters' Union president again.

Frankos: OK. That's got to be it. That's what Salerno was trying to tell me. I'm going back fifteen years now. Everything I'm telling you is by memory. It's not what I have read or what I was told. Everything comes out of my memory. The only thing I'm sure of is the killing. Believe me, I remember.

Playboy: Go ahead with your story.

Frankos: Now, in the meantime, I get sent up to Dannemora. They put me right next to Joe "Mad Dog" Sullivan and I explained the whole situation to him.

Playboy: Is he related to John Sullivan?

Frankos: No. No relation. Just the same name. They were close friends. Now, I told Joe, When are you coming out? He says, I'm coming out December 1975. I says, If this hit don't come down, if I get out afterward, I'll tell John to take you on this Jimmy Hoffa hit with them. He says, That sounds good to me. Now, me and Joe Sullivan, we were going to testify for Jerry "The Jew" Rosenberg--the famous jailhouse lawyer--concerning something that happened to him in the county jail.

Playboy: How did you know Rosenberg?

Frankos: In 1963, I was at Sing Sing, taking books and magazines over to the death house. That's when I first met him and his codefendant, Anthony Portelli. I used to go by their cells and shoot the breeze with them.

Playboy: Go on with the Hoffa story.

Frankos: They brought us down to the Federal institution on West Street, and that's when Coonan and John Sullivan came to visit me and Joe Sullivan. And they were telling us how to kill this guy and how much money we got. They were putting money on the books for us and they were bringing us packages and they were giving the correction officers down there money so they could supply us with booze and cocaine and whatever we needed. We lived comfortably down in prison there.

Around the late part of July 1975--I'm not sure of the date--John came up to see me with Jimmy Coonan and his brother Jackie. And they told me on the visit that they were going to go up to Michigan and they were going to take care of Hoffa. They made an agreement for the contract to be for two hundred thousand dollars. And since you're not out, we're going to give you a little percentage of the money. Then they asked me when Joe Sullivan's coming out. I told them in December. They said, Tell him we're going to take care of him with some money and we're going to go ahead with the hit.

Playboy: Let's go back a bit. How did you get your introduction to Salerno?

Frankos: In 1972, I came out of Dannemora prison, in New York, with Crazy Joe Gallo. I met Crazy Joe on the streets originally, 'cause he used to have all the baboot games and he ran all them bust-out joints on Eighth Avenue in the Twenties. I was shaking down a couple Greeks down there that I knew...you know, in a nice way. Ali Baba--he was Joe Gallo's right-hand man--told me, Leave them alone, because I got Joe Gallo with me, and I says, Fuck you and fuck Joe. I was at them stages that I didn't care about who the wise guy was. When he went to Auburn in the late Sixties, Joe Gallo locked by me for about eighteen months. I got very close to him. I taught him how to play bridge. He was flamboyant, a fabulous dresser. Even in prison, he was immaculate. His handkerchief had to match his pants and all that.

So when I came out, him and Carmine Tramunti, the boss of the Lucchese crime family, sent me to work for Vincent (continued on page 163)Jimmy Hoffa(continued from page 80) "Chin" Gigante, the leader of the Genovese crime family. They gave me ten thousand in cash to buy some clothes and get myself situated with an apartment in Manhattan.

Now, at that time, John Sullivan was an Irish boss on the West Side of Manhattan. He ran the docks. He ran all the peep shows and the massage parlors and them smut bookstores on the West Side for three organized-crime partners--Fat Tony Salerno, Matty the Horse Ianniello and Chin Gigante. I knew John Sullivan from years ago--we both grew up on the West Side--and he told me to stay with him, that he'd give me a crap game off Fifty-eighth Street in the Hotel Wilson. I was an enforcer at the dice game, so nobody could take off that dice game and there was no problems like people arguing that they got ripped off. I had a Spanish kid and an Italian kid with sawed-off shotguns in briefcases watching downstairs in the lobby for any guy that looked to stick up them games. We couldn't call the cops. We held justice right in the street.

At that time, we were making ten thousand dollars a night. We worked four nights a week, so we were bringing in forty thousand. Out of the forty thousand, we had to kick back twenty-five thousand to Chin Gigante and Fat Tony. I used to skim off the top, too. I used to take fifteen 6hundred, two thousand a night under the cuff, you know.

Playboy: You weren't a virgin at this time. You'd been around those guys a lot.

Frankos: I made my bones with them guys. I done work with them. I killed guys with them. I went away doing time for them. I was a stand-up guy with them. I was a muscle guy, but I was a low-key type of criminal. Nobody knew my business and everything like that, you know. The ones that did know my business, they never told nobody.

Playboy: How was the Hoffa murder carried out?

Frankos: Tony Giacalone was a boss of the Detroit Mob. He was a rabbi to Jimmy Hoffa. Fat Tony called Giacalone on the phone, and Giacalone said, Why don't you leave Hoffa alone, because he's a scared rabbit and once you've scared somebody, they're going to run to the Feds on you. And that's what you're trying to do--force this guy to run to the Feds. Fat Tony Salerno told Giacalone, He's not running no place, because he's going to be dead. And if you get involved, you're going to be dead also. So step away from him. You gotta take orders from me. I run this show. You get that Chuckie O'Brien, Jimmy Hoffa's stepson, and make him as bait to lure Jimmy Hoffa to a sit-down in Mount Clemens, Michigan. The only guys Hoffa would trust was O'Brien and Giacalone. So you just tell the kid O'Brien to go with Jimmy Hoffa to this meet in Mount Clemens, where we could whack him.

Now, he relayed the message to O'Brien. The kid was reluctant at first, but then he had to go for it, because they were going to kill him if he didn't. They told him, He's not your blood father, even though he grew you up. You gotta do this now. If you don't do it, and you tip your father off, we're going to kill you and your father and your whole family. So the kid says he'll go for it, but what's he going to get out of it? They offered him a million dollars cash and they were going to put him in a position as a union boss, but not on the books. For the rest of his life, he will be taken care of, as far as money goes.

They met at a diner, and Giacalone was there, when O'Brien came with Sally Bugs. He was like a flunky to Tony Provenzano. Tony Provenzano, his brother Nunzio and Giacalone were supposed to meet [with Hoffa] in the house in Mount Clemens, Michigan, for a sit-down to straighten everything out that happened in Lewisburg. And make amends.

So they picked up Jimmy Hoffa and Jimmy Hoffa didn't want to go for it. He says, Where's Giacalone? O'Brien says, Call him up and he'll explain everything to you. Jimmy Hoffa calls up Giacalone, and he says, I'll be at the house. They let the kid take him to the house. O'Brien told his father he checked the house already and it was safe. So they got in the car. In the meantime, Jimmy Coonan--

[Q] Playboy: Who was with Hoffa then?

[A] Frankos: Sally Bugs and O'Brien. Hoffa was in the front seat, Sally Bugs was doing the driving and the kid was in the back, because Hoffa won't trust nobody in the back, only O'Brien. Hoffa knows about getting hit in the back of the head.

In the house, Jimmy Coonan and John Sullivan were waiting. As soon as you walk in the house, on the left is a large living room. Adjacent to the living room is a little kitchenette. They positioned themselves in that area. They had a .22 with a silencer on it and the bullets were dumdum bullets--the type of bullets that explode the head.

When Hoffa walked in, he made a turn to sit down and Coonan and John Sullivan rushed out and Coonan hit him twice in the forehead with the bullets--exploded his brains.

Jimmy Coonan is a bull of a guy, an ex-fighter and everything. He put Hoffa on his back and he carried him down the stairs. They had everything situated in the basement. There was a large table and over the table was a huge light. Jimmy Coonan and John had goggles and rubber gloves that doctors use to operate on patients. They plugged in the bucksaw and they also had a meat cleaver to cut away any tendons. On the table was all these black-plastic bags and cut rope. Coonan was cutting, and Sullivan was bagging 'em up. Coonan severed Hoffa's head and, with a pocket knife, he cut a lock of hair from the side of Hoffa's head and kept it for good luck.

[Q] Playboy: You seem to know about their actions in great detail. Why?

[A] Frankos: John Sullivan and Jimmy Coonan came to visit me and Joe Sullivan in jail--I think it was the Friday after Hoffa got whacked--to tell us that everything was straightened out. Coonan threw Jimmy Hoffa's lock of hair on my table and he told me, This is our friend's lock. It's a goodluck charm for me. And it was a good-luck charm. He was out almost fourteen or fifteen years.

[Q] Playboy: Continue with your story.

[A] Frankos: Coonan handed the head to John Sullivan, and he put it in the bag and tied it up with secure ropes and they threw it on the side. Jimmy Coonan started to sever both arms off. He made four pieces out of the two arms. Then he severed the two legs off and made them in two parts, by the kneecap. He took the torso and they made three bags out of the torso and they put the torso in the bags. Next to the table was a meat freezer, and they stuck the bags in there. It took him about an hour, he told me, to clean up. They washed everything up and they went upstairs.

Bugs went outside to a pay phone and made a phone call to Giacalone and he told him to bring a bag man over, because they want their money. While they were waiting for the money, Bugs went to a tiny delicatessen over there, and he bought meatball heroes and Pepsis and he went back to the house and they ate the meatball sandwiches.

Now the discussion was where to put the body. Bugs calls Giacalone and says, These guys want to know if they can take the body parts to one of your places where they mash them cars. Giacalone says to Bugs, I'm talking to you, I don't want to talk to them. I don't want to get no conspiracy. I don't know John Sullivan, I don't know Jimmy Coonan, and they can't use the place. They handled the body, let them handle the burial, too, to its final resting ground.

John Sullivan asked Bugs, Is this house safe? And he says, Yeah, you could keep the body parts down there for a couple months until we find someplace where we can bury 'em or burn them up.

[Q] Playboy: It's hard to believe that on an important hit like this, they didn't have a plan beforehand to dispose of the body.

[A] Frankos: They made an arrangement with Tony Giacalone, but he didn't want to be bothered with it. He owns a place where he used to dispose of a lot of bodies.

[Q] Playboy: You're talking about the place run by Raffael Quasarano and Peter Vitale?

[A] Frankos: Yes. They could crush the body and make a fender out of him. But they were too afraid to even have Hoffa be crushed over there. They didn't want no evidence at all. Quasarano and Vitale were scared tremblers. You hear me? They were tremblers. They didn't want to be involved, because they knew the FBI would be on their asses. These guys cannot do no time and they were weak and Giacalone knew they were weak. If they knew anything about anybody being taken someplace to be crushed, it'd be all over town in two seconds. So they left everything up to Fat Tony Salerno. They figured these guys will chop him up and take them pieces back to New York. But Jimmy Coonan said, Fuck them and we'll keep the body here and youse take care of it. They didn't want to be bothered with transporting the body. They didn't know nobody around there. They got the money and got out.

It was a power thing, a rival-gang thing. Detroit don't like New York, 'cause New York is more powerful and more flamboyant than Detroit. Like, if you don't take it, then we're not going to take it. You done the hit, you dispose of the body. Finally, they agreed to take the body when Joe Sullivan came out of prison.

[Q] Playboy: Weren't they afraid that somebody was going to find the body over the course of those five months?

[A] Frankos: No. They weren't worried, because the house was secured. No cop is going to be looking around there.

[Q] Playboy: When was the body finally buried?

[A] Frankos: Joe Sullivan came out of prison five months later and he picked up the body and put it in a big drum. Him and another guy named Augie Manori got a truck that had a lot of oil drums on the back from an organized-crime trucking firm. They put the drum with Hoffa's body in the middle of the truck, so in case the state troopers wanna find out what the hell is in there, they'd have to open every drum.

They transported the body from Michigan to Jersey, where there was a construction site in Meadowlands. They were building some sections of Giants Stadium there, and wise guys ran the cement-mixing business. Joe Sullivan was on the books at that time for John Gotti's Gambino crime family, and he was just checking in, picking up four or five hundred dollars a week to show his parole officer he was working. So he took the body parts and he buried 'em right in the cement. He says, Let me just bury the son of a bitch and get it over with, and that's where they laid him to rest. His final resting place.

[Q] Playboy: And that's where the body is now?

[A] Frankos: Yeah. That's where he is now.

[Q] Playboy: How much were you and Joe Sullivan paid?

[A] Frankos: They ended up giving Joe Sullivan twenty-five thousand dollars for burying the body. I ended up getting fifteen thousand to keep me satisfied in jail, for my conference and everything. Plus, they were giving me anything I wanted. We had four or five correction officers and they used to give them reefer, cocaine, Chivas Regal for me. Plus, they were paying off the female correction officers so I could get laid, too. They was taking care of me.

[Q] Playboy: What happened to Manori?

[A] Frankos: When I came out in 1981, Joe Sullivan said, Listen, we got to kill this Augie Manori, because he was instrumental in burying the body. But he didn't want to kill Augie Manori for that reason; he wanted to marry Augie Manori's wife [laughs]. So we ended up killing Augie Manori. We shot him in the head with a 9mm, cut open his stomach, wrapped him up in a rug and dumped him in the Hudson River. And the body went right down. You know--the body goes right down.

[Q] Playboy: Did Joe Sullivan ever show you Hoffa's burial site?

[A] Frankos: In 1981, in September, I came out of prison and Joe Sullivan was waiting for me. We killed two people over in Jersey for the Genovese crime family. I don't want to go into that, because it's being investigated. But after the hit was made, we stopped at Meadowlands and watched a Giants game. We were getting free tickets at that time. We walked into the flats part of the bleacher seats. To the right of us, there's the goal post. And we sat down in the section that Jimmy Hoffa is buried underneath. The Giants made a few touchdowns, and we sat directly up from Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place. And we said, Do you think Jimmy's watching the game? Hey, Jimmy, this touchdown is for you.

[Q] Playboy: What has happened to the hitters since the Hoffa murder?

[A] Frankos: Joe Sullivan blew Sally Bugs's head off on the Lower East Side, on Mulberry Street. Bugs was a stool pigeon. Fat Tony Salerno is doing a hundred years. Tony Provenzano is dead. Jimmy Coonan is doing seventy-five years. Joe Sullivan is doing anywhere from seventy-five to life in state prison. And I'm here with twenty-five to life. They can never get John Sullivan. He's been out since the late Sixties. In fact, he's the only one that's out there today who was an actual killer.

[Q] Playboy: There's one more--Chuckie O'Brien.

[A] Frankos: O'Brien is out. I don't even consider him a criminal.

[Q] Playboy: Why not?

[A] Frankos: It's like me taking a pistol to your head and tellin' you, You're comin' with me. I'm gonna put another pistol in your hand. If you don't shoot that guy, I'm gonna shoot you directly in the head. You're gonna be a dead man. He didn't have no alternatives.

[Q] Playboy: Have you talked to the FBI about all of this?

[A] Frankos: They came to me for the story; I didn't go to them. They brought in an FBI agent out of New York. His name was Arthur Ruffels. I'll never forget that name. They told me they had information from a very high-power authority that I was the actual killer with John Sullivan and Joe Sullivan, OK? I took a lie-detector test with the FBI concerning Jimmy Hoffa and I passed it with flying colors. The only thing they didn't ask me was if I was there. They were afraid to ask me that, because it would make them look like shit--I was in prison at the time Hoffa was hit. They knew I had furloughs, but they didn't want to expose that. It was in their Federal prison system that I was getting these furloughs, and the guy who was giving these furloughs was under surveillance for ten years.

[Q] Playboy: Did they ask you if you had a furlough at the time of the hit on Hoffa?

[A] Frankos: No. They proposed the question, but [former U.S. Attorney] Rudolph Giuliani didn't want to do it, because they had to open up a big investigation and it would make them look like shit.

[Q] Playboy: It's a question that has been on our minds.

[A] Frankos: It's going to make it very, very, very hot for them. They wanted me to testify against this guy who was selling furloughs, but the statute of limitations ran out on them.

[Q] Playboy: Who was getting out on furloughs?

[A] Frankos: Guys like me and high-powered mafiosos. We had all the counselors at that time working for us. We gave the counselors twenty-five hundred to thirty-five hundred, depending on how long you wanted to stay out.

[Q] Playboy: You arranged furloughs because you had jobs you wanted to do outside prison?

[A] Frankos: Yes.

[Q] Playboy: What kind of jobs were they?

[A] Frankos: I committed approximately nine murders on furloughs.

[Q] Playboy: If you knew you had a hit coming up, you would arrange for the furlough in advance?

[A] Frankos: Yes. The money was given to the guy on the streets. Friends of mine would meet him in a night club or one of their own clubs. He'd get a girl, usually, and an envelope, and say, This is for The Greek.

[Q] Playboy: Going back to the house where the Hoffa hit was committed: You seem to know it very well. Have you ever been there?

[A] Frankos: I was there twice. I committed something in '75, you know, while I was in prison, OK? And in 1981. I committed a couple of things in Michigan. But I'm not going to go into the first time I was there, because I don't want no new indictments.

[Q] Playboy: You've handed over to us a box of fourteen tapes detailing your entire life in organized crime and in the Government's witness-protection program. Why did you make them?

[A] Frankos: I made these tapes because I might be here one day and gone tomorrow. The way things were going, I thought I was going to be dead pretty soon. So I might as well tell my story, so you can see what we're dealing with, the Mafia and the Government.

[Q] Playboy: Why did you think you might be dead soon?

[A] Frankos: Because I'm in a position where it don't look too good at all. I'm locked up four years in a cell. I'm controlled by various correction officers. They might one day take me outside and say I was tryin' to escape and shoot me in the head. I've seen it done before. I've seen a lot of my friends die in jail--I'm not talking only mafioso but a lot of power criminals in jail. All of a sudden, everybody that I knew around me that got arrested, six months to a year later, they die from stomach cancer. I don't know what the hell they might be feeding me, you know? And I killed guys in jail; we just doctored up the books so it don't look bad. If they want you, they're going to get you. I'm not being paranoid. I'm just being cautious.

[Q] Playboy: So you wanted to leave a record of your life, in case anything happens?

[A] Frankos: I was through with the Government. I'm not going to get nothing from the Government. I just said, One night, let me make these tapes up. Send them to my cousin, in case something does happen to me, in case I do die in jail. When I'm dead and gone, I'll be like Van Gogh, maybe. You know, Van Gogh wasn't popular when he was alive, OK? I figured that would be my destiny. I die, then comes word about the tapes. But one day, I was a little bored in the cell and I had the tapes completed and I said, Let me call Playboy.

[Q] Playboy: And the rest is history, right?

[A] Frankos: The rest is history. Everything I told you, to my knowledge, is the truth. If you had a lie detector over there, I would take it for you right now.

Phone Call from a Hitter

tracking down a killer story

Playboy receives more than its share of crank phone calls--everything from transvestites who claim to have slept with Mike Tyson to pot-smoking pals of Dan Quayle. Nearly all can be dismissed as liars or lunatics after a few minutes' questioning. So when a husky-voiced man identifying himself only as "D.F." telephoned our offices last February and offered us the true story of the death and burial of Teamsters boss James R. Hoffa, we were skeptical. Others had been down that path before us.

In 1975, Michigan's attorney general, trailed by a cohort of police and press, took a backhoe to a 40-acre field near Detroit after a Senate-subcommittee witness designated that as the burial spot. CBS news paid $10,000 to a would-be Hoffa tipster who turned out to have nothing to sell, but he did try to make off with the cash. Ten years after Hoffa's disappearance in 1975, the FBI still was receiving calls about once a month, usually from inmates hoping to broker their information for reduced prison sentences. None of the leads ever panned out. Where Hoffa informants (especially the incarcerated variety) are concerned, extra caution is clearly warranted.

From the start, however, D.F.'s command of a vast array of names, dates and details set him apart from the average caller. Our first step toward verification of his story was a phone call to private investigator Lake Headley of Wysocki & Associates in Las Vegas, Nevada. Headley has been called in on many celebrated cases, including the 1987 "sex for secrets" trial of Marine Sergeant Clayton Lonetree, who was accused of giving the Soviets access to the U.S. embassy in Moscow. Headley, who also has knowledge of Mob enterprises, agreed to probe further.

The story that emerged was this: D.F.--Donald "Tony the Greek" Frankos--was a Federally protected witness who had turned state's evidence in 1985 when he tipped off Federal officials that contract killings were being planned against Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Cohen, DEA agent John Delmore and U.S. District Court Judge Vincent Broderick. The killings were to be carried out by Jimmy Coonan, a longtime criminal associate of Frankos and the head of the Westies, a notorious band of Irish Mobsters that operates on New York's West Side. Frankos said he was recorded in prison discussing the hits with Albanian drug lord Xhevedet Lika--the target of investigations by Cohen and Delmore. Confronted with the tape recording, Frankos was coerced into providing information; in return, the Justice Department promised to reduce his prison sentence, which is 25 years to life for the killing of Clarence Jones, a Bronx drug dealer.

Frankos says that once he "rolled over," other Government informants told Federal agents that he had been involved in the Hoffa murder, and a long series of debriefings and lie-detector tests ensued. Throughout this process, Frankos was guarded in the information he handed over, for fear that the Government would renege on its promises to him. His fears were well founded: The promised sentence reduction failed to come through, and at one point, he was returned to Attica Prison in Upstate New York, where he sustained a near-fatal attack by associates of criminals he was turning over to law-enforcement agencies. Frankos decided to seek redress for these wrongs in the press, dangling Hoffa stories as bait.

Judging the reliability of information from such a source is fraught with difficulties. Frankos' long and grisly list of convictions--he was described as "a violent fuck" by a New York City police sergeant--includes such crimes as robbery, perjury, grand larceny, menacing, possession of a dangerous weapon, forcible theft with a deadly weapon, murder, assault and manslaughter. Supplement that résumé with Frankos' own vivid descriptions of his participation in various beheadings, disembowelments, point-blank shootings and clandestine burials, and you have a disturbing contradiction on your hands: Frankos is a credible witness on Hoffa's death precisely because he has lived his life amid a treacherous band of killers.

Early on in our association with Frankos, we submitted key portions of our interview with him to C. R. McQuiston, the acknowledged dean of voice-stress analysis. McQuiston uses a computer to break down voice patterns to determine the truth or falsity of a person's statements. Although he claims a 70 percent accuracy rate, his test is still considered inadmissible evidence in court. In any case, he found Frankos' confessions to be "free of mendacious stress" on the whole, indicating that Frankos believed the story he was telling. While that was far from positive proof, it was, at least, a start.

The Government's protectiveness of Frankos is another sign of his importance as a witness; the Justice Department is going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that he survives his term in prison, and with good (concluded on page 162)Phone Call(continued from page 77) reason--Frankos has described the ease and frequency with which "rats" are killed in prison, and he personally has dispatched at least one. In order to interview him face to face, Lake Headley had to arrange to be taken on by Frankos' lawyer, Julia Heit, as an investigator; as a reporter, he wouldn't have made it to the prison door. Even as a member of Frankos' legal team, Headley had to apply for visitation rights through several echelons of the Justice Department, including Assistant U.S. Attorney Alan Cohen himself.

After receiving permission to visit Frankos in prison (witness-protection considerations prevent us from revealing the location), Headley found him isolated in maximum security; Frankos was the only prisoner in his cell block. He spends his days under the protection and supervision of United States Correctional Officers, and they test his food before he eats. His only visitors, aside from Headley, are a stream of FBI agents and prosecutors, all hoping to build their cases on information only Frankos can supply. Most recently, he has talked to Jeffrey Schlanger, senior trial counsel of the New York county district attorney's office and one of the prosecutors in charge of the upcoming trial of John Gotti.

Frankos' story hinges on his professed associations with two of the most notorious underworld figures of the Eighties: Jimmy Coonan and Joe Sullivan. Coonan made his mark as head of the Westies, a violent band of Irish thugs best known for their tendency to dismember murder victims before disposing of them. Sullivan, the only man ever to escape from Attica prison, is a notorious free-lance hit man whom Frankos identifies as the killer of Salvatore "Sally Bugs" Briguglio, long a suspect in the Hoffa killing. Sources ranging from former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark to T. J. English, author of a forthcoming history of the Westies, have confirmed various relationships central to Frankos' story. We also have confirmed Frankos' ties to such underworld figures as John Gotti and Jerry "The Jew" Rosenberg.

Other confirming information on Frankos and his associates was obtained in the course of dozens of interviews, including conversations with Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Lee Warren, prosecutor of Jimmy Coonan, with FBI agent Arthur Ruffels, and with Andrew Rubin and William Korwatch, the prosecutor and the detective, respectively, who secured Frankos' murder conviction for the killing of Clarence Jones. We have also confirmed that the prime conspirators were out of prison at the time of the murder, and that the burial site was under construction, as Frankos says it was.

Does that mean that Frankos is telling the true story of the death and burial of Jimmy Hoffa? We know one way to find out: Take core samples on the field level at the northwest end of Giants Stadium.

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Four years ago, Paul Coffey, deputy chief of the Organized Crime Section of the Justice Department, told a Los Angeles Times reporter, "I believe we are going to solve this case by accident. Someday, when the people are real old and in prison, and there is no real fear anymore, someone will tell us what happened. There is a lot of institutional memory in the Mob, so we could still solve this case ten or fifteen years from now."

Or perhaps even sooner.

Hoffa Goes Deep according to frankos, the body lies under the meadowlands

"Fat Tony Salerno told Giacalone, Hoffa's not running no place, because he's going to be dead."

"Frankos' only visitors are a stream of FBI agents and prosecutors, all hoping to build cases."