JOHN MURPHY

John Murphy and Bros. Owners & CEOs of Gateway Transportation

 

The Murphy's were early pioneers in the trucking industry. Their influence began around the beginning of the Twentieth Century.  They literally made the transition of converting from the "horse and buckboard rigs" to modern motorized trucking . They continued to stay in business until they sold out in 1981. John Murphy was the major contributor tied with the company leadership during the Hoffa years and his brother Eugene was equally involved with Gateway trucking until 1973.  Gateway Transportation had become one of the largest companies of it’s kind in 1975.  John Murphy was not only the CEO of Gateway, but also served as an adviser to President Gerald Ford’s Administration as late as May 27, 1976.  He was invited to the White House to address the deregulation of the trucking industry along with a couple of other major trucking executives including a long time associate Walter F. Carey.  Gateway headquarters was located in La Crosse, Wisconsin.  The Murphy family maintained control of Gateway Transportation until the late 70s.  In 1979 the Murphy’s Gateway Transportation Company went under the protection of Chapter 11. John Murphy began negotiations with the Maislin Brothers of Quebec, Canada for a buy out of around 15 million dollars.  At that time Gateway had up to 6,000 employees, 9,000 trucks and 100 terminals across the United States.  One if the terminals was located in Detroit and connected to the early Hoffa investigation.        

 

John Murphy was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin March 30th, 1916.  He pursued his formal education at Marquette, University in Milwaukee. He next joined in with the Murphy's family owned Gateway Transportation Company. He contributed to the  growth and development of the company while also serving on the founding board of directors of the American Trucking Associations as Treasurer and Finance Committee for 15 years. As a recognized leader in the trucking industry Murphy held many national and regional offices among which were Trustee of the huge International Teamsters Union Central States Pension Fund along with the South West and South East Areas Health and Welfare Pension Fund. He greatly contributed to his community as well as being the director of the First National Bank of La Crosse.  He and others were connected to a large establishment  known as the "Gateway Lodge" located in Dresbach Minnesota, North of La Crosse Wisconsin.  This compound, according to historical documents was large enough to accommodate 450 people at a time. Gateway Transportation certainly produced profits for decades giving it's owners an affluent lifestyle. During his retirement years he resided in Palm Beach, Florida. He was president and director of his local cooperative association and active as a trustee of the St. Edward Church.  Findinghoffa.com looked at the activities of John Murphy and his trucking company especially focusing on the events starting in July 1975 through to 1980. Within those five years a number of elements surfaced. For those interested in following the money train leading up to the time of Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance and the events occurring shortly afterward, it certainly appears John Murphy should not have been left out of the narrative.  

 

Gateway Transportation was identified as the trucking company involved with transporting Jimmy Hoffa’s body in a 55 gallon drum to, originally, an “unknown destination or location” for disposal.  Several informants provided this information to the FBI in 1975. An article printed in the New York Times titled Detroit Trucking Terminal Is Focus of Hoffa Inquiry page 61 by Agis Salpuks on December 6th, 1975  outlines the facts concerning the involvement John Murphy and his Gateway Transportation Company became involved with the Hoffa narrative.  In early December a Federal Grand Jury, near Detroit was taking a close look into the Hoffa disappearance. They summoned six Gateway employees to provide details of the activities of Gateway’s Detroit Steel Division. They were looking into the shipping practices and activities of this division. The Grand Jury also wanted to know the whereabouts of Stanton Barr, the division’s CEO and IBT’s Rolland McMaster, (Barr’s brother in law) on July 30, 1975. It was reported in  they had attempted to contact John Murphy, but his secretary in La Crosse, Wisconsin stated he could not be reached because he was “out of town”.  Since Ralph Picardo had provided the involvement of Gateway Transportation into the scenario of the Hoffa case, the Grand Jury supposedly seized shipping papers from the time period before and after the date of the disappearance.  Findinghoffa.com would like to know what became of those papers and to look at more details from the conclusions of that 1975 Detroit (Oakland County) Grand Jury.  We know from other sources that Barr and McMaster used a meeting in Gary, Indiana as an alibi for their whereabouts on that fateful summer day in July. Was John Murphy also attending the same meeting?  Since he could not be reached and the authorities did not follow up with him, he never had to provide an alibi.  If so, it seems a mistake may have been made by not following up to put questions on the man who was running the whole show for the Gateway Transportation Company in 1975.

 

John Murphy was a co founder of Carriers Insurance with other trucking executives. He was on the board of Trustees of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Central States Pension Fund. It was the control of this pension fund that is thought to be one of the major motives for the Hoffa disappearance. Some of the money from the IBT Pension Fund was used to build the Rancho La Costa Golf Course and Resort North of San Diego, California. Throughout the 1970s this was the location of the Annual Frank Fitzsimmons Golf Tournament.  Frank Fitzsimmons was President of IBT when Hoffa vanished.  John Murphy and Frank Fitzsimmons played golf on the same teams in 1974 at La Costa along with Allen Dorfman and some others involved with the management of the IBT pension fund. Identified suspects and persons of interest in the Hoffa case were also participants. Known Hoffex Memo individuals such as Rolland McMaster and Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano were listed as participants in that tournament. 

 

The following year on October 9, 1975, Frank Fitzsimmons, John Murphy, and ex President of the United States, Richard Nixon played in a ‘fivesome’ at the tournament together with a few others. Secret Service identified some of these folks as having past connections to organized crime. This event was the first public appearance of Nixon after he left the White House because of the Watergate Scandal. It also occurred just months after Hoffa went missing. Even today, we know that a lot of business gets done on golf courses. We wonder if these golfers were discussing the subject of what had happened to Jimmy Hoffa two months and change before this golf tournament.  We will leave the Nixon connection to the ‘hoffaologists’ since there have been a few theories put forth by some of them.  We are simply letting those logging in understand that industrialist and trucking executive John Murphy was someone that seemed to slip between the cracks during the official Hoffa investigation.  We believe there was a “group of men” that had intimate knowledge of the activities of the IBT Union and their association with organized crime. This group of industrialists and CEOs had been connected to officials high up in the U. S. Government for many years. 

 

This elite group included Walter F. Carey. Murphy and Carey were tied together since the inception of the  of the ATA " American Trucking Associations INC".  Murphy served as the executive Secretary Treasurer of the ATA which had an office in Washington DC when Hoffa was working on his famous Master Freight Agreement. He and Walter Carey  regularly involved  themselves with most of the major influences involving the shipping and transportation business. The  IBT Pension Fund and the political aspects of the trucking industry were included.  Early 1976 before Hoffex Memo was written but after the December 1975 Grand Jury convened, the Gateway Transportation Company was noticed by the U.S. Congress when $800K was loaned to them from the IBT Pension Fund.  John Murphy was recognized as being a trustee of the same fund as well as the President of Gateway Transportation simultaneously.  This all took place less than 6 months after Hoffa disappeared.  HR 1046 and HR 16462 of 1970 and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act "ERISA of 1974 were established to prevent such  apparent conflicts of interest.  Murphy and Carey were contacted to go to the White House in May of 1976 together and address trucking deregulation. Murphy served as a trustee along side attorney Albert D. Matheson of Bloomfield Michigan.  Matheson and his brother are connected to Walter F. Carey and Hoffa since the establishment of the arrangements between Commercial Carriers and the Test Fleet Company of the late 1940s. Murphy and Carey can be tied to Hoffa and Allen Dorfman through all these alliances.

 

In 1976, following the Hoffa disappearance, the heat came down on the IBT Central States Pension Fund Trustees and Chairman Allen Dorfman.  John Murphy was the first of them to resign in September of 1976.  Chaos ensued, and in the following month. Eleven more trustees resigned as was covered in the New York Times on October 27, 1976.  Federal Officials said that "no deal had been struck with the resigning trustees to absolve them of civil or criminal liability for past actions".   All of them were still quite influential at the time of Hoffa’s disappearance and one year later most of them had distanced themselves from the motive of the vast amounts of cash suspected to have created the Hoffa missing person case.  It is certainly possible that a couple of these men may have had knowledge of ‘what happened and where’ as to the disposal of Jimmy Hoffa’s remains.

 

It appears at least one Hoffa historian or as we often say ‘hoffaologist’ has mistakenly linked the ownership and control of Gateway Transportation to a New Jersey mobster (See Scott Burnstein, “Gangster Report”, regarding his ideas on “Ralph”, Phillip “Brother” Moscato. And in a more recent article from 2020, implying that Rolland McMaster had ownership of this trucking company). In reality it was John Murphy and the Murphy family who owned and ran the parent company Gateway Transportation and it was Stanton Barr who was CEO of the Gateway Steel Division in Detroit.  Barr was suspect Rolland McMasters brother in law and co owner of the Hidden Dreams horse farm North of the "Motor City".  Both Barr and McMaster are heavily tied to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan owning property with family from Sault Ste. Marie in  Chippewa County. The FBI searched the Wixom farm. They never looked at the other properties and associated locations above the Mackinac Bridge in the Upper Peninsula (except for a cursory look at Hoffa's hunting cabin on Tepee Lake). In fact, they returned to the Wixom horse farm in Lower Michigan twice (the latest in 2006) to look for Hoffa's body.  These actions clearly indicate they still believed there was a body burial involving an actual location and not the popular idea that Hoffa's body was incinerated.  But, no one seems to have bothered looking in a place well known as an historic area for successfully hiding bodies far North of Detroit.

 

The LCN conveniently fingered the company owner John Murphy  because of  his reported interference with IBT pension fund.  So Moscato, (Connected to the New Jersey Provenzano group) never owned Gateway Transportation. Instead, he owned a dump along the Hackensack River in New Jersey.  Moscato’s Hackensack dump is one of the ‘supposed’ destinations a Gateway Transportation truck is suspected to have delivered Hoffa’s remains. (See author Dan Moldea, ‘The Hoffa Wars’, regarding this theory. Also see FBI Hoffex Memo and notes from Dec. 1975 Fed. Grand Jury). Our research indicates a Gateway truck most likely picked up  the 55 gal. steel drum containing Hoffa's body near the Hidden Dreams Horse Farm and continued North to the Upper Peninsula where Barr, McMaster and members of his goon squad, were familiar with some very meaningful hiding places.

 

These known locations could compromise another CEO connected to Hoffa.  This man is also linked to John Murphy and Gateway Transportation through the inner circle of the ATA  (American Trucking Association) and TIME DC Trucking.  His name is Walter F. Carey (See his bio sketch on this website).  There was a real motive as to why Hoffa's remains were concealed and shipped North.  The planners could easily have allowed the body to be found but they did not.  And they would not use a dump or an incinerator  under surveillance by law enforcement and already a known place where they had hidden or disposed of other bodies.  The LCN "Commission" or rival IBT leaders had an easy place to use that would not implicate them.  This place, if ever discovered, would instead implicate their competition. (Namely John Murphy of Gateway Transportation and Walter F. Carey of TIME DC).  These two men had power to influence the direction of enormous amounts of money from the Central States Pension Fund and many U. S. Government Department of Defense contracts.  These two men were linked to James R. Hoffa for decades until his mysterious disappearance in 1975.  To insure the location was kept secret, the planners established a red herring disinformation plan.  The plan used a number of common themes with several different spins to distract or deflect any serious searches for Hoffa's remains.

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Findinghoffa.com continues to see the New Jersey ruse in much of the current Hoffa narrative.  We certainly admit the New Jersey Genovese mob was connected to the murder of Jimmy Hoffa. It seems they indeed came and participated with the Detroit Mafia Partnership to murder him. Some of them deny ever coming to Detroit. But some of them were seen by the authorities attended a wedding involving the Bufalino family of Pennsylvania and the Provenzano LCN/IBT group of New Jersey Local 560.  Witnesses also testified seeing some of them then and gave statements to a federal grand jury.  We don’t believe there is any real evidence that Jimmy Hoffa’s body was transported across state lines to a place 600 miles away from Detroit to be thrown into a New Jersey dump. In fact, we have discovered some facts suggesting the contrary. We also do not believe the many ‘cremation theories’ of the modern era; (first reported by Steven Brill in 1978). 

 

Charles Brandt’s book: “I Heard You Paint Houses”,  and the popular Scorsese film: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran seem interesting and perhaps entertaining. But, to us, are no better than all the other old theories presented years ago. We are now revealing a more plausible idea. Hoffex suspect Frank Sheeran admitted he did not dispose of Hoffa’s body.  He reported a couple of hearsay versions of what had happened to Hoffa’s remains years later.  The details of his story changed on that subject and so have Brandt’s. The Scorsese film may have generated a new interest in the Hoffa case. Perhaps those participants involved with the case, who are still living, may come forward with more facts.

 

Having stated these things, we believe the FBI’s suspicions of Gateway Transportation’s involvement with moving the body to a final burial site. John Murphy is connected to the money associated to the IBT Union as well as the finances of the trucking industry.  He worked with the power brokers of those entities including Jimmy Hoffa, Walter F. Carey, Allen Dorfman, and the long list of pension fund trustees associated with many of the loans awarded to the Sicilian La Cosa Nostra. Our research of his related associations are well documented including sources from the U.S. Congressional records.  For reasons yet to be revealed, Murphy seemed to have maneuvered through everything without a second look.  We surmise he was mixed up with details of a tug of war over funds. He was a person who easily supplied information to others with a deep reach into government influences as well as the future of the entire trucking industry.  His company was specifically singled out by the LCN to cast a suspicion on some of their historic competitors. Thus, we have introduced John Murphy as a possible link to some of the related issues concerning the Hoffa mystery.  Murphy passed away on October 25th, 2005.

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Produced by Steve Drummond 2020