Jimmy Hoffa Possibly Buried In Detroit Suburb: Police To Begin Search

By Donovan Jackson | Sep 27, 2012 12:20 PM EDT

TEXT SIZE    

A clue from a dying man could finally be the missing pieces of information that can help police solve the mystery of what happened to Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared 37 years ago.

Police will drill outside a suburban Detroit residence Friday at 10 a.m.in the search for Jimmy Hoffa, the labor strongman whose disappearance is one of the most notorious and mysterious in U.S. history.

Hoffa remains among America's most famous, and in many ways infamous, missing people. His presumed death has vexed investigators for four decades.

A tipster told police that a body was buried at the spot in Roseville, Michigan, at around the same time the Teamsters boss disappeared in 1975.

The tipster did not claim it was Hoffa's body, authorities said.

Police Chief James Berlin told CNN Thursday that while the tipster's information seems credible, he's not convinced the body is Hoffa's because of the timeline. He spoke with the tipster on August 22, and believes the person did see a burial.

The tipster did not come forward sooner out of fear, said Berlin.

It shouldn't take long to get a sample, which will be taken to a forensic anthropologist at the University of Michigan for analysis the police chief said.

Results from the soil testing should be available next week, the chief told CNN Wednesday.

The alleged burial site is under a concrete slab, and the residence is occupied by new homeowners, who've been "cooperative and excellent to police," Berlin said.

Hoffa Information: One of the most powerful union leaders at a time that unions wielded a great deal of sway over elections -- and were notoriously tied to organized crime -- Hoffa was forced out of the organized labor movement when he was sent to prison in 1967.

He served time for jury tampering and fraud at a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, until being pardoned by President Richard Nixon on December 23, 1971 -- on the condition that he not try to get back into the union movement before 1980.

Two weeks before Hoffa's disappearance in 1975, federal investigators discovered that hundreds of millions of dollars had been stolen from the Teamsters' largest pension fund, Time magazine points out in its list of the top 10 most famous disappearances.

Hoffa, then 62, was last seen July 30, 1975, at Machus Red Fox restaurant in suburban Detroit. He was there ostensibly to meet with reputed Detroit Mafia street enforcer Anthony Giacalone and Anthony Provenzano, chief of a Teamsters local in New Jersey, who was later convicted in a murder case. Both men have since died.

Hoffa believed Giacalone had set up the meeting to help settle a feud between Hoffa and Provenzano, but Hoffa was the only one who showed up for the meeting, according to the FBI.

Giacalone and Provenzano later told the FBI that no meeting had been scheduled.

The FBI said at the time that the disappearance could have been linked to Hoffa's efforts to regain power in the Teamsters and to the mob's influence over the union's pension funds.

Police and the FBI have searched for Hoffa intermittently ever since.

pre post  |  next post
More Sections