The Last Living Jimmy Hoffa Suspect Finally Speaks Out After Nearly 40 Years

Gabriel Briguglio is the last living suspect linked to Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance. He is 84 years old and has lived his life for nearly five decades under the shadow of suspicion that he murdered Hoffa.

Briguglio had not talked about Hoffa since 1975.  Until now.

"I have nothing to hide," Briguglio told Fox News in an exclusive interview. 

Hoffa, the legendary labor leader and former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, vanished on July 30, 1975. He was last seen climbing into a car in the parking lot of the Bloomfield Hills, Michigan restaurant, The Machus Red Fox. 

It is believed he was en route to a meeting with Detroit family mob boss Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone and New Jersey Teamsters Union Local President Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano.

Briguglio emerged as a suspect just months after Hoffa's disappearance, described as "a trusted associate of 'Tony Pro' in the 1976 FBI Hoffex report. Frequently, Briguglio is named among the likely killers in many of the shelves of books about Hoffa.

"I was home that night ... and If they don't want to believe me, that's their business," Briguglio said during the interview. 

"I was playing Greek rummy at lunchtime. Then, I had a meeting at one of my companies to discuss a problem with the contract, and then, from there, I had to be at my house that was being sided."

An FBI report confirms that Briguglio was re-siding his house in East Rutherford, New Jersey, that month. Fox News attempted to confirm the transaction with the company, but it went out of business.

Former Teamster leader James Hoffa waves from the back seat of his car as he leaves the St. Louis airport for a family reunion over Christmas.  Hoffa was released from the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, PA, and flew to St. Louis to spend Christmas at the suburban home of his daughter and son-in law Mr. and Mrs. Robert Crancer.  (Photo by Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

He says, to this day, the FBI never asked him what he was doing on the day Hoffa vanished. 

"They never asked me anything about where I was, not even once. Never did.

"When they first came to see me with the warrant to go to Detroit, because they said I was involved in (Hoffa's) disappearance … that's when, forget about it. You know, I got even more aggravated because they don't even ask you, ‘Where were you?’ or ‘What were you doing that day?’ I know what I was doing. I can't forget. I won $600 bucks that day,"  he said, referring to his card playing winnings.

In Briguglio's telling of the story, a lying mob informer impeded the investigation in its early stages, hoodwinking the FBI and federal prosecutors. "A lot of time was wasted," he explains. 

"I wish that they really get it through their mind to 'X' me out of that and say that it's impossible because I have all the proof in the world that I wasn't even involved in anything and what I was doing I was doing, what I said I was doing."

Briguglio states that he later learned that a young mobster named Ralph Picardo was the one who put his name out there as a suspect. Picardo, a former driver for Tony Pro's crew, told the FBI he believed Tony Pro's men had killed Hoffa and that Briguglio was one of them. 

Briguglio claims federal prosecutors and the media were hoodwinked by a lying mob informer who misdirected the investigation in its early stages with self-serving, fabricated claims that only served to damage the investigation. (Fox News)

"The feds then took Picardo's story and used it to empanel a grand jury in Detroit in December 1975, five months after Hoffa vanished," Fox News Digital reports.

"When I heard it was him, I knew right away what he had in mind. He wanted to get out of jail," says Briguglio. "That's the only way that he was going to get out. He's got to look for the best story that he could make up that would be believable, because he's a believable liar. That's exactly what he did."  

Picardo's plan worked.

He was then transferred from prison to the Witness Protection Program and has since died. 

Court documents reviewed by Fox show authorities describing Picardo as "a liar," "a pathological liar," "off-the-wall" and a "little crazy."  He "used relatives without their knowledge to further his criminal schemes, and that he believed self-preservation was ‘the name of the game.’" 

It was also revealed that Picardo had been held in the psychiatric wing of the Trenton State Prison.

A tearful Gabriel Briguglio tells Fox that his kids questioned his decision to finally speak out, but says he doesn't want to pass without setting the record straight.

"I think it hurt my kids more than it hurt me because I know I was not involved. They knew that what they were saying about me wasn't true," he adds.

"I don't know how much longer I have to live. I hope that it's a long time. But for whatever time I have left, I want to get it off my head, I want to let it be known.

Watch the interview with Gabe Briguglio on Fox Nation's new episode of "Riddle, The Search For James R. Hoffa."