Unsolved Death

For no apparent reason, former French government minister Joseph Fontanet was gunned down on his doorstep. In the United States, the body of the notoriously corrupt union leader Jimmy Hoffa has never been found. In the United Kingdom, investigators have concluded that publishing magnate Robert Maxwell probably committed suicide. The common thread that connects these cases is that police and investigating authorities still have no clue as to who was responsible.

Joseph Fontanet's last words were, "They fired at me from a car!" On the night of February 1, 1980, just as he was about to step out of his own vehicle, a bullet struck him down in front of his house in central Paris. Fontanet was a politician who had served as a minister in the governments of three French presidents; Charles de Gaulle, Georges Pompidou and Valery Giscard d'Estaing. The fatal shot came from a so-called 11.43, a gun widely used by gangs. Police focused their investigation on one group in particular, and were tipped off that some of the gang members had taken aim at passers-by on the day before Fontanet's murder. However, ballistics evidence cleared the gangsters.

The next lead came on February 2, when Fontanet was scheduled to attend a meeting to discuss a building project in Annecy, a city in the lower Alps. The project aimed to establish a conference centre, a luxury hotel and, in particular, a new casino complex to attract wealthy visitors from neighbouring Switzerland. Participating in the project was a group of campanies that operated casinos in Europe and Lebanon. However, this group was in competition with another company operating a casino on the Cote d'Azur, in the south of France, which was frequented by guests with Swiss bank accounts. Speculation grew that Gontanet's death might have been a contract killing arranged by the rival casino group. When the police looked at this possibility, they found a dead end.

The last lead was a long shot; it was possible that the assassination was a mistake. Early in 1984, followers of Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini shot dead the exiled Iranian general Oveissi, who was widely held responsible for the death of thousands of people under the reign of the deposed Shah of Iran. Oveissi, who narrowly escaped the assassination attempt, lived very close to Fontanet. Is it possible that the gunmen made a mistake and shot the wrong person four years earlier?

Ruthless and Corrupt

On the morning of July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa said goodbye to his wife for the last time. The ex-chairman of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters - the powerful US transport workers' union - was going out for lunch with ' a couple of guys' in a Detroit suburb. He never returned.

Hoffa had made plenty of enemies during his career. The 62-year-old union leader, first elected in 1957, was notorious for criminal dealings. He was suspected of swindling the Teamsters out of about US2 million, and of securing his position through Mafia contacts. He bacame one of the most notorious public figures in the United States.

Robert F. Kennedy (1925-1968), younger brother of President Jon F. Kennedy, called the Teamsters 'a conspiracy of evil'. In his capacity as Attorney General - the top law enforcement official in the United State - Kennedy initiated large-scale legal action against Hoffa in the early 1960s. The accused tried to manipulate the court proceedings by bribing the jury, but this only landed him with another law-suit. On march 7, 1967, Hoffa was sentenced to 13 years in prison.

President Richard Nixon pardoned Hoffa in 1971, but only on condition that he did not accept any union office until 1980. As soon as he was released from prison, Hoffa began to campaign against the ban, and attempted to oust Frank Fitzsimmons, his successor as union head. At the time of his disappearance, Hoffa was deeply involved in new intrigues to recapture his control of the Teamsters.

Hoffa's shady past meant that there were lots of theories on the reason for his disappearance. One said that he was murdered by opponents within the union. Another theory pointed to the Mafia, claiming that the gangsters wanted to suppress details of their links to transport companies. And finally, Hoffa might have staged his own disappearance. When the police found his car, there were no indications of violence or a struggle. But if Hoffa had not been murdered, where did he go? The answer has never been found.

The Strange Death of Captain Bob

No evidence supports the hypothesis of sudden death due to a heart attack. There are also no indications that the could have accidentally fallen overboard. There is just as little evidence for murder ... Rovert Maxwell took his own life.Thus reads the final report compiled by experts for the British insurance companies that were to have paid out 20 million pound (appproximately US34 million) in case of death - suicide excluded.

Search parties found Maxwell's body on November 5, 1991 off the coast of Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. Detectives concluded that he must have fallen overboard from his yacht, Lady Ghislaine, the previous night. But not all the evidence pointed to suicide. This self-made man had attracted the hatred of many, although at that time he was also facing financial ruin.

Maxwell was born Ludvik Hoch, the eldest son of Jewish parents, on June 10, 1923. He spent his childhood and early youth in the Czechoslovakian village of Solotino near the Rumanian border. While most members of his family died in the Nazi Holocaust, the yound Ludvik managed to make his way across the Balkans and France, eventually reaching Great Britain, where he joined the army in October 1940. For his bravery during the invasion of Normandy in 1944, he was awarded the Military Cross.

At the end of the war, he changed his name. In March 1945, Ian Robert Maxwell married Elizabeth Meynard, the daughter of a silk producer from the city of Lyon, in France. He also began his inexorable rise in the business worl; within 10 years, maxwell was the owner of Pergamon Press, an important international scientific publisher. He then moved into newpapers, acquiring Fritain's Mirror Group, publisher of the mass-circulation Daily Mirror. Maxwell also acquired other publications, including the Jerusalem Post and the New York Daily News. His publishing empire expanded further when he bought the established Macmillan book publishing group, and Maxwell made plans to venture into electronic media. But the new acquisitions overloaded his finances. He found himself faced with immense debts, while the price of his company's shares plummeted. Hounded by the bajks and his creditors, Maxwell retreated to his yacht in search of some peace and quiet.

Enormous stress, a weight problem and a lung illness all placed Maxwell at risk of a heart attack. But if that was waht took place, he would have collapsed on the deck rather than fall over the railing into the sea. Because there was no wind that night, the probability of an accident is extremely small.

Suicide and murder remain possibilities. A British pathologist found injuries on the body that were consistent with a leap from a great height, suggesting that Maxwell had killed himself. However, murder cannot be exclude, for Maxwell was said to have worked for Mossad, the Israeli secret service. At the same time, the FBI was interested in him because of his business ties with the former Soviet Union and its satellite states. There were rumours that Maxwell had close ties to the KGB, the Soviet secret service. While it seems that many people had an interest in getting rid of Robert Maxwell, it is unlikely that the full story will ever be told.