Anthony Provenzano

Anthony Provenzano, commonly called Tony Pro, was a New Jersey labor leader whose rise through the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was closely tied to Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa gave him union offices, influence, and protection; Provenzano in turn was described as a staunch ally. Their relationship later collapsed into a prison feud, while Provenzano’s alleged role in violence and his place in Frank Sheeran’s account of Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance kept him at the center of the book’s intertwined union and mob histories.

Union Office and Hoffa’s Patronage

In 1957, Provenzano was president of Teamsters Local 560 in Union City, New Jersey, one of the nation’s largest locals. Hoffa promptly expanded his standing by appointing him president of New Jersey’s Joint Council 73, representing one hundred thousand members. The appointments gave Provenzano a second union salary as well as a broader base of influence. The book’s account emphasizes the practical power of these posts: union office was not merely a title but a source of income, votes, and leverage.

The government-installed Board of Monitors, charged with overseeing the union from 1959, ordered Hoffa to remove Provenzano. Hoffa did the opposite. In 1961 he made Provenzano an International vice president, adding a third paycheck and elevating him further in the union hierarchy. At the 1961 convention, Hoffa nominated him to fill a vice-presidential vacancy, and the delegates elected him. That choice extended a patronage relationship even as Hoffa’s authority was under scrutiny and reform-minded critics remained inside the union.

The book links Provenzano’s advancement to lethal coercion. In 1961, popular reform-minded Local 560 member Anthony “Three Fingers” Castellito was strangled and buried on a farm in upstate New York. The account names Provenzano as the person who ordered the killing and identifies Salvatore Briguglio, Salvatore Sinno, and K. O. Konigsberg as participants in disposing of Castellito’s body. The murder gives a violent counterpoint to the language of reconciliation used in union politics: the book recalls Hoffa urging delegates to bury their differences, while presenting Castellito’s death as a literal, concealed act of retaliation.

Labor Conviction and Public Conflict

At the time of Sheeran’s account of a rifle delivery in 1963, Provenzano was appealing a June 13 labor-racketeering conviction. His codefendant and bagman, Michael Communale, a former Hudson County prosecutor, had also been convicted. The conviction eventually sent Provenzano to Lewisburg for four and a half years; because the offense violated labor law, he would also be barred from union activity for five years after his release.

The prosecution was a conspicuous contest with Robert F. Kennedy, then attorney general. The book describes Kennedy as the driving force behind the conviction and records his public praise for it. Provenzano, in turn, condemned investigators’ practice of questioning people around him, especially his children. The New York Times reported that his denunciation of Kennedy was so obscene that television footage could not be used and reporters could not find a printable direct quotation. During the trial, New York Post writer Murray Kempton called Provenzano the “highest-paid labor boss in America.” With three Teamsters posts, Provenzano was earning more in salary than Hoffa and more than the president of the United States.

The narrative also places Provenzano in a separate, unexplained transaction shortly before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Sheeran says that, after receiving directions from Hoffa and Russell Bufalino, he went to Monte’s Restaurant in Brooklyn, where Provenzano handed him a duffel bag and directed him to take it to Campbell’s Cement in Baltimore. Sheeran understood that the bag held three rifles but says he did not know what they were for. At the Baltimore destination, Dave Ferrie and another man took the bag from Sheeran’s car trunk. The passage establishes the handoff and its circumstances; it does not establish what the rifles were intended to do or connect Provenzano to the assassination.

From Hoffa’s Ally to Prison Enemy

Before their rupture, Provenzano was portrayed as a reliable Hoffa supporter. He helped Hoffa raise trading stamps to cover expenses before Hoffa’s jury-tampering trial, reliably supplied his vote on the executive board, and gave speeches praising him. When Provenzano could not hold union office because of a conviction, he appointed one of his brothers, Sam or Nunz, in his place. Sheeran disliked Provenzano personally, but the account distinguishes that dislike from the political usefulness and loyalty Provenzano had shown Hoffa.

Their relationship turned in prison. Provenzano was serving time for extortion after a trucking-company owner reportedly paid him to stop the owner’s drivers from slowing their work. While both men were incarcerated, Provenzano asked Hoffa for help with his pension. The account explains that the charges mattered: the pension law created additional problems for someone imprisoned for extortion, whereas Hoffa’s offenses did not produce the same obstacle. Hoffa could not resolve the issue for him.

An argument followed. Provenzano reportedly could not understand why Hoffa could obtain his pension while he could not, and Hoffa supposedly spoke of “you people” in a way Provenzano took as condescending. Provenzano threatened to rip Hoffa’s “guts out,” and guards reportedly had to separate them. From then on, the two men hated one another. The dispute reversed their earlier alliance: a shared union structure and a history of mutual support gave way to resentment sharpened by the unequal consequences of their convictions.

The Disappearance and Its Aftermath

The book presents the pension quarrel as a pretext used to draw Hoffa to a meeting on July 30, 1975. A wedding scheduled for August 1—the daughter of Bill Bufalino—would bring members of several crime families to the Detroit area. Sheeran’s account says Hoffa would therefore believe that Provenzano and Russell Bufalino might be nearby and available to meet. It further alleges that Provenzano cared less about his million-dollar pension than the organizers suggested; the grievance was used as a decoy.

Hoffa had an appointment arranged by Tony Giacalone for 2:30 p.m. at Machus Red Fox Restaurant on Telegraph Avenue outside Detroit. Provenzano was supposed to arrive with Tony Jack and help make peace between Hoffa and Provenzano. Hoffa left for the meeting, was seen in the restaurant parking lot, and never returned home. At the wedding, two of Hoffa’s old Teamsters Local 299 associates asked Sheeran whether he thought Provenzano had arranged the killing. Their suspicion is part of the account, not an independent resolution of the case.

Five days after the disappearance, an FBI note recorded a meeting at Vesuvio Restaurant in New York City attended by Provenzano, Russell Bufalino, Frank Sheeran, Anthony Salerno, and Salvatore Briguglio. Sheeran characterizes the gathering as a report to Salerno about how Hoffa’s disappearance had been carried out and whether anything remained to be handled. In his telling, New York had neither sanctioned nor opposed the operation, while Detroit’s approval was necessary because the events took place in Detroit’s territory; Chicago’s proximity and connections also mattered. The passage presents this as Sheeran’s retrospective account, alongside the FBI’s record that the men met.

After that meeting, Provenzano called for a second discussion, this time concerning Sheeran. Provenzano claimed that Sheeran had known Hoffa wanted Provenzano killed and had been asked to kiss both Provenzano and Fitz. He told Sheeran, “If it was up to me, you’d have gone, too.” Sheeran answered, “That works both ways,” and added, “Everybody bleeds.” The exchange brings their conflict into the open: the man once advanced by Hoffa now appears in the same account as a threatened participant in the aftermath of Hoffa’s disappearance.

Castellito Case and Final Years

In 1976, one year after Hoffa disappeared, Provenzano and Salvatore Briguglio were indicted for Castellito’s 1961 murder. The indictment revived the earlier union killing within the larger Hoffa investigation. Sinno came forward, admitted his part, and turned against his accomplices. He said Briguglio had received Castellito’s union job and Konigsberg had been paid $15,000. The investigation thus produced consequences beyond the search for Hoffa: investigators’ efforts to obtain information about the disappearance helped bring a fifteen-year-old murder back into court.

Provenzano was convicted of Castellito’s murder in 1978 and sent to Attica. The book notes that he had been in a Florida wedding chapel marrying his second wife the day after Castellito was killed. Although investigators hoped that pressure on people connected to the Hoffa case would prompt disclosures, Provenzano said nothing. He died in Attica ten years after his conviction, at the age of seventy-two. His career therefore ends in a stark contrast with its beginning: a union official elevated by Hoffa, once praised as loyal and powerful, became Hoffa’s enemy and a convicted participant in the older murder whose investigation had been revived by Hoffa’s disappearance.