by
Tuesday, 10:10 p.m.: As we thought would be the case, the PBS show Tuesday night on Jimmy Hoffa didn't crack the case as the pre-show hype suggested it might. And it certainly didn't leave you feeling as if you knew what really happened to the Teamster boss.
It was entertaining, but a little cheesy, particularly for a PBS production.
Greg Stejskal on the right.
Retired FBI Agent Greg Stejskal, who was interviewed in the show, told Deadline Detroit after the show that he thought it was full of "a lot of speculation" and "I thought pretty far fetched as far as some of the connections they made."
"There's a lot of information there," he said. "But I thought they took a lot of literary license making things fit together that didn't necessarily fit together and basically ignored things that would have argued otherwise."
The show gave a lot of weight to a death bed confession of Frank Sheeran, a friend of Hoffa who was described as a hitman. Sheeran said he killed Hoffa at a home in Detroit.
Stejskal said the FBI investigated and was dismissive of his claims.
It also talked about President Richard Nixon possibly taking mob money, something that had reported in the past.
David Ashenfelter, a former Detroit News and Detroit Free Press reporter, who was interviewed in the show, told Deadline Detroit:
David Ashenfelter
"I think Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance remains a mystery. I found the archival footage very interesting. I enjoyed the program.
"I thought they covered all of the major leads and brought a younger generation up to date on one of the biggest mysteries of the 20th Century," he added. "But as it always turns out in the Hoffa mystery, we don't know much more than we knew when the FBI wrote the Hoffex Memo six months after Jimmy Hoffa vanished."
**********
Original article --Tuesday afternoon:
Another special on the disappearance of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa.
The question is: Can we really expect something fresh after nearly 40 years?
PBS at 9 p.m. tonight airs "Who Killed Jimmy Hoffa?" as part of its "History Detectives Special Investigations" series.
The website for the one-hour segment says:
For decades, investigators have searched for clues about what happened to Hoffa and why. Was he murdered? If so, who wanted him dead? After serving prison time for conspiracy and fraud, Hoffa was pardoned by President Richard Nixon. What interest did the White House have in Jimmy Hoffa?
Recently declassified government files reveal shocking evidence of corruption at the highest levels. Interviews with a former mob lawyer, a murder witness, and an FBI agent are among the sources History Detectives unearth as they track Jimmy Hoffa’s final hours and answer the question: “Who killed Jimmy Hoffa?”
Good hype or something really new? We'll see.
Listen to the WDET interview below with FBI agent Greg Stejskal, who retired in 2006 and was interviewed for the show. Stejskal served as an FBI agent for 31 years and retired as resident agent in charge of the Ann Arbor office. He's also a columnist for the federal law enforcement website ticklethewire.com.
Former Detroit News and Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter was also interviewed for the show. Ashenfelter tells Deadline Detroit that he was interviewed for six hours, and he's curious to see what the show reveals.
Also read Susan Whitall's story on this in the Detroit News.
