Driver for Jimmy Hoffa, Marvin ‘The Weasel’ Elkind has died

Thug. Boxer. Driver. Informant. Raconteur.

Take your pick because Marvin Elkind would confess to being all of these. And if he didn’t tell you to your face, he certainly bared all in his 2011 autobiography The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob.

Elkind, 89, died Sunday (Jan. 21) of an undisclosed cause. He had lived the last several years in Mississauga.

A presence, it seemed, wherever large groups of people gathered, Elkind turned his life story into a career, a legendary one that constantly evolved. But it was one that associated the criminal underworld with glamour, especially as seen through the lens of hindsight and with no one else left around to say otherwise.

Elkind’s book is entertaining, especially for those interested in Toronto’s underworld in the 1950s and ’60s, and a series of interviews conducted with insauga.com in 2020 covers much of the same ground.

He would explain that far from living up to its reputation as “Toronto the good,” the city’s past was far more crooked than history would lead you to believe.

Born into a family of merchants (they started the Elk’s line of clothing stores), Elkind’s penchant for getting into trouble had him shipped off to a foster home at an early age. As fate would have it, the only thing his new family was fostering was mayhem as the Pasquale clan, well-known west-end Toronto gangsters, was eager to bring the willing young Marvin into the fold of robbing, stealing, cheating and breaking bones.

He adapted well to his new circumstances, learning early that crime could indeed pay, especially when people feared you.

“Back then, when you walked into a shop and demanded money from the owner, they paid up because they knew what would happen if they didn’t,” Elkind explained in one interview. “Extortion is an extremely profitable racket.”

He said in those days he didn’t know any better; he was born a tough guy and then bred to take advantage of his skills.

If Toronto life wasn’t exciting enough, Elkind found his way to New York City, where he hooked up with even more notorious figures and ultimately had an encounter with the famed union boss Jimmy Hoffa.

Soon, Hoffa enlisted Elkind as his personal driver, a career that didn’t last long, but long enough for Elkind to learn where the bodies were buried…including that of Hoffa, he claimed.

Elkind also drove for Muhammad Ali and many other boxers who were kindred spirits as he stepped into the ring himself quite a few times as a young man and could always be found in a gym or at the ringside of a big fight.

But like so many others who have lived outside the rules, Elkind had to reconsider his lifestyle after the law eventually came calling and a new career was laid out for him — that of an informant.

In his book, he claims he worked for the FBI, RCMP, Scotland Yard, OPP and any local police department that would pay him to dish on underworld activities. Elkind’s information put past compatriots behind bars and kept him out of jail and, perhaps surprisingly, alive.

As for the nickname he picked up somewhere along the way, depending on the audience, there are several different versions of the origin of “The Weasel.”

It appears that’s one tale Marvin Elkind has taken with him.

Funeral information can be found here.