Jimmy Hoffa experts at each others throats as 'The Irishman' reignites fierce debate

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Eric Shawn: Facts, fiction and 'The Irishman'

The Mob Museum in Las Vegas hosts panel: 'The guy who popped Jimmy Hoffa was Sal Briguglio.'

The controversial new mafia epic "The Irishman" has America's preeminent Jimmy Hoffa experts at each other's throats -- reigniting a decades-old debate over the mysterious disappearance of the notorious Teamsters boss, who may have killed him and where his body may be buried.

Fox News senior correspondent Eric Shawn, who anchors and reports for the ongoing Fox Nation docuseries "Riddle: The Search for James R. Hoffa," was one of three panelists at The Mob Museum in Las Vegas this weekend for a discussion titled "Fact, Fiction and The Irishman: The Hoffa Murder."

Shawn was joined by Vince Wade, a veteran investigative reporter, who broke the story of Hoffa's disappearance on July 30, 1975, and Dan Moldea, also an investigative reporter and the nation's top expert on Hoffa.

"The Irishman," starring Robert De Niro, is based on the 2004 book "I Heard You Paint Houses," which tells the story of self-described mob hitman Frank Sheeran, who claimed that he killed Hoffa. Sheeran, who was a Philadelphia truck driver, said that he befriended Hoffa but ultimately betrayed him when he was hired by Hoffa's mafia rivals to kill him.

The new Fox Nation docuseries "Riddle" examines an alternative theory -- that Hoffa was not killed by Sheeran but by mob hitman Salvatore "Sally Bugs" Briguglio.

"The guy who killed Jimmy Hoffa was Sal Briguglio and not Frank Sheeran," said Wade at the Mob Museum event last week. "If you come away from tonight with nothing else, you've got three guys who have really done a lot of work on this case [saying]... the killer, the guy who popped Jimmy Hoffa was Sal Bruguglio."

Moldea agreed that Sheeran could not have been the killer, and in fact, he told Robert De Niro that he was being "conned" when the two discussed the prospect of making a movie out of the book about Sheeran.

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However, that is about all that these two Hoffa experts agree on. Wade said he believes that Hoffa's corpse was incinerated at an allegedly mob-owned trash company, Central Sanitation, outside of Detroit.

In Fox Nation's "Riddle", Phillip Moscato Jr., son of Hoffa murder suspect Phillip "Brother" Moscato Sr., said his dad confessed to him on his deathbed that "Sally Bugs" was Hoffa's killer and that Hoffa's body was buried in his father dump in northern New Jersey.

Additionally, Frank Cappola, who is the son of the co-owner of the New Jersey dump, told Fox Nation that his father accepted Hoffa's body, which was stuffed in a 55-gallon drum, and he later told his son where it was buried.

"He couldn't fit in the drum feet first, he couldn't get the legs to bend right, so he had to take him out and put him in head first," said Coppola in an interview with Shawn and Moldea. "Don't take this the wrong way, because he had a lot of respect for him, but what he said was 'they couldn't fit the fat little man in feet first.'"

"This is fantasy stuff," said Wade of the theory that Hoffa's body was transported to New Jersey from Detroit. "That you're going to take a famous guy, not just some mope off the street that you just whacked, this is one of the most famous guys in America and you're going to drag in some guys from some trucking company... and you're going to stuff it in a drum and you're going to drive it across all these states to New Jersey?"

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"There is more evidence that Hoffa wound up in New Jersey than there is that he wound up in Central Sanitation, which the FBI dismissed," responded Moldea. "That's on the record that the FBI abandoned that theory years and years and years ago.... They issued a public statement about it."

"You're not making any sense," Moldea later said, turning to Wade. "You're speculating on things that you have absolutely no evidence for."

"And you're got sworn statements from mafioso liars," fired back Wade.

"We have sworn statements from people that are willing to take polygraph tests," replied Moldea, "What do you have? You've got nothing."

"You don't have a body," quipped Wade.

In conclusion, Shawn repeated his calls for the FBI to release its files on the Hoffa investigation.

To watch all of "Riddle: The Search for James R. Hoffa," go to Fox Nation and sign up today.

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