Jimmy Hoffa’s yellow pad

Jimmy Hoffa’s yellow pad is a brief handwritten clue that gives the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa an intimate, unsettling point of entry. Found beside his telephone at a summer cottage by a lake, the pad carried only the penciled words “Russ & Frank.” The notation did not explain itself, but it brought the names of two trusted allies into the center of the mystery.

The Note at the Cottage

The FBI found the pad in a room filled with tearful, anxious members of Jimmy Hoffa’s family. Its ordinary placement beside the phone made the words seem less like a formal record than a private reminder: two names written in pencil, with no explanation or accompanying account of what they meant. The scene around it gave that fragment its force. The family feared that whoever had harmed the cautious, vigilant Hoffa would have needed the trust and proximity of someone close to him.

“Russ & Frank” referred to Russell Bufalino and Frank Sheeran, described as close friends and staunch allies of Hoffa. Sheeran’s loyalty during Hoffa’s ordeals with the law and with Bobby Kennedy had been so strong that he was thought of as family. The pad therefore linked a domestic object and a compressed notation to the possibility of betrayal by someone inside Hoffa’s circle.

A Clue, Not a Verdict

The words became a point of suspicion, not a self-sufficient explanation. The book places Sheeran and Bufalino among the leading suspects in the disappearance, and recounts that serious studies had alleged Sheeran was a conspirator and participant in Hoffa’s killing, with the killing planned and sanctioned by Bufalino. Those are allegations presented in the account; the pad itself supplies no description of a plot and does not establish what either man did.

That gap between the note and the claims attached to it is central to the object’s significance. “Russ & Frank” is legible, but its meaning depends on the relationships and suspicions brought to it by others. The notation can focus attention on trusted associates without resolving whether it records a plan, a thought, or something else. Its power as a clue comes from what it leaves unsaid.

From Handwriting to Testimony

The book sets this small physical trace beside a much longer, more mediated account: interviews with Sheeran, most of them tape-recorded. An initial interview in 1991 ended after Sheeran had admitted more than he was comfortable with. After his daughters arranged for him to meet a monsignor in 1999, and he received absolution, he contacted the interviewer and agreed to resume questioning; the interviews continued for four years. Sheeran read and approved each chapter and later the full manuscript.

Near the end of his life, Sheeran agreed to go on videotape and stand behind the book’s account, including what happened to Hoffa on July 30, 1975. In the recorded exchange, he affirmed that the material about Hoffa came from him and that he stood behind what was written. The pad and the later testimony are different kinds of evidence: one is a two-name inscription found in the family’s immediate aftermath; the other is a claim developed through repeated interviews and finally affirmed on camera. Neither changes the note into a complete explanation, but together they show how the book moves from a fragment of writing toward a contested account of betrayal and responsibility.