Jimmy Hoffa 1955. IBT staff was also enlarged during this period, with many lawyers hired to assist with contract negotiations. Following his 1952 election as vice-president, Hoffa began spending more of his time away from Detroit, either in Washington or traveling around the country for his expanded responsibilities. Hoffa's personal lawyer was Bill Bufalino. Hoffa took over the presidency of the Teamsters in 1957, at the convention in Miami Beach, Florida. His predecessor, Beck, had appeared before the John Little McClellan-led U.S. Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor or Management Field in March 1957, and took the Fifth Amendment 140
Jimmy Hoffa caused by the 1975 disappearance of her husband, because her health had declined steadily since then. She is entombed in Michigan. In 1989, Kenneth Walton, the head of the FBI's Detroit office, told "The Detroit News" that he knew what happened to Hoffa. "I'm comfortable I know who did it, but it's never going to be prosecuted because ... we would have to divulge informants, confidential sources." In 2001, the FBI matched DNA from Hoffa's hair—taken from a brush—with a strand of hair found in a 1975 Mercury Marquis Brougham driven by longtime friend Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien on July 30,