Joseph ‘Bum’ Farto, Known as ‘The Jimmy Hoffa of Key West,’ Believed to Be Found 50 Years Later

Fifty years after the legendary disappearance of Joseph “Bum” Farto — the man infamously known as “The Jimmy Hoffa of Key West” — a local investigator claims to have finally solved the mystery!

In a jaw-dropping Globe world exclusive, author David L. Sloan reveals he and filmmaker Quincy Perkins tracked the former Key West, Fla., fire chief and convicted drug runner as far as the gold mines of Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.

Using long-buried FBI files uncovered through a Freedom of Information Act request, the investigators learned the FBI had witnesses who said they saw the famous fugitive in Golfito, a town on the Central America nation’s Pacific coast, after he disappeared in 1976.

In one July 29, 1981, FBI file, a G-man makes note of a local source in Costa Rica who claimed to have seen Farto tooling around town in a white Toyota jeep.

In another file, from Jan. 11, 1979, a witness claimed to have seen Farto in Costa Rica and even had his address!

Still another April 15, 1981, FBI file notes Farto showed up at the U.S. Embassy in the capital city, San José, to renew his passport!

Farto was a larger-than-life figure in Key West, the tiny island city at the farthest reach of the Florida Keys and the southernmost point of the continental U.S, according to Field Ethos. He was known for driving a lime green Ford Galaxie 500 with the words El Jefe — Spanish for “The Chief” — on its license plate and emblazoned across its side. A devotee of Santería, he typically wore red suits and decorated his home with red walls and red carpets to ward off evil spirits, the website said.

Federal agents busted Farto in September 1975 as part of Operation Conch — a DEA sting that ultimately netted 28 drug arrests, including that of the Key West city attorney.

Farto was convicted in February 1976 and was set to be sentenced two months later to up to 31 years in prison. But after his conviction he jumped his $25,000 bail and vanished into lore. Key West shops began selling T-shirts asking, “Where is Bum Farto?”

Singer Jimmy Buffett put forth his own theory of what became of Farto in the song “Landfall,” in which he sings, “Bum’s down in Quepos,” a town in Costa Rica.

“To people in Key West, Bum Farto is our Jimmy Hoffa, our D.B. Cooper — the greatest cold case in the history of the state,” said Sloan, whose new book about the mystery, Who Is Bum Farto?, will be available June 1. “Cracking the case after all these decades finally brings resolution to a question that has loomed over the island for half a century!”