FBI Chases 'Best Lead' In Hoffa Search
In one of the most intensive searches for Jimmy Hoffa in decades, the FBI summoned archaeologists and anthropologists and brought in heavy equipment to scour a horse farm Thursday for the body of the former Teamsters boss who vanished in 1975.
Executing the search warrant for "the human remains of James Riddle Hoffa" is expected to take a couple weeks and involve extensive digging at a horse farm where organized crime figures used to meet.
Detroit FBI agent Dan Roberts said in a briefing Thursday that agents have found "nothing significant" while searching the Hidden Dreams Farm so far.
The search warrant is based on "one of numerous leads received through the years" since Hoffa was last seen leaving the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Mich., which is about 20 miles from the farm, on July 30, 1975, reports CBS News' Beverley Lumpkin.
Hoffa was to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, and investigators have longed suspected the two had Hoffa killed to prevent him from regaining the union control after he served time in federal prison for jury tampering.
"This is the best lead I've seen come across on the Hoffa investigation," Daniel Roberts, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office, said outside the farm.
Law enforcement officials say several months ago a jailed informant offered detailed information that Hoffa was buried on the farm — near a large barn, in fact, which agents say they will likely dismantle and move, CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart reports. The prisoner's information was checked "several ways" officials said, including polygraph tests.
Hoffa had been aggressively investigated in the 1960s for corruption by then-attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. He was sent to prison in 1967 for looting the pension fund of a long-haul truckers' union and jury-tampering. President Richard M. Nixon commuted his sentence in 1971.
Asked if they were looking for Hoffa's remains, FBI Agent Dawn Clenney said, "Could be," and declined to comment further on the agents' presence.
Learn more about the life and disappearance of legendary teamster leader.
Watch a CBS report including aerial views of the farm.County records indicate that at the time of Hoffa's disappearance, the property now known as Hidden Dreams Farm was owned by Rolland McMaster, a longtime Teamsters official. McMaster's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, said he doubted the FBI would find anything.
"That farm was looked at with a fine-toothed comb in the '70s, when Hoffa was missing," Morganroth said. "There's nothing there."
Morganroth said McMaster was in Indiana on union business at the time of Hoffa's disappearance. He said that to his knowledge he was never a suspect.
But authorities led cadaver dogs across the property, and the FBI also called in anthropologists and archaeologists from Michigan State University to assist.
"We do not leave any lead uncovered," Roberts said, declining to provide details. "This is probably a fairly credible lead. You can gather that from the number of people out here."
For years, there have been rumors in the surrounding neighborhood that Hoffa had been killed and buried there at the order of mobsters and others who didn't want Hoffa to regain power over the Teamsters. Deb Koskovich said she heard the rumor about Hoffa's body two decades ago from a neighbor when she moved next door.
"We laughed and that was the end of that," said Koskovich, 52. "I never thought about it again until today so apparently there have been rumors."
A law enforcement official in Washington said the search was based on information developed several years ago and verified more recently.
The information indicated there was a high level of suspicious activity on the farm the day Hoffa vanished, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. A backhoe appeared near a barn that organized crime members had used for meetings, but that location was never used again after Hoffa disappeared, the official said.
Roberts would not say who owned the property when Hoffa disappeared but said it has been under different ownership for a decade. The current owners have been "very cooperative" with federal agents, Roberts said, and in return the FBI is trying to disturb the horses on the farm as little as possible.
Mark Weidel, who was visiting his parents' home just up the road, said he grew up hearing rumors about Hoffa and didn't expect anything to come of this search.
"It's just another Hoffa story," he said.
The Detroit Free Press reports that over the years, rumors have circulated that Hoffa was buried in the end zone of Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., a landfill there or at a trash facility in Hamtramck, Mich.
Last year, the FBI crime lab concluded that blood found on the floor of a Detroit home where a one-time Hoffa ally claimed to have killed him did not belong to Hoffa.
Bloomfield Township police ripped up the floorboards from the house where Frank Sheeran claimed Hoffa was killed. Sheeran died in 2003 at age 83, and his claim was detailed in a book published months later.
A New Jersey mob hit man who died in March reportedly made a similar deathbed claim. Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski gave author Philip Carlo what he claimed were graphic details of the infamous, unsolved killing of the union boss, The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reported.
Even this time, the FBI says it's prepared to be disappointed by this search because the informant didn't actually see the body go in the ground, but was just told about it, Stewart reports. Still, officials seem cautiously optimistic.
Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said Bloomfield Township police were offering assistance but he knew little about the search. He said he was surprised the FBI acted without speaking to them.
"Three years ago they said, 'The Hoffa case in essence is yours to deal with,"' he said. "I'd have expected the professional courtesy of calling me."