Jimmy Hoffa Body Found? Police To Drill Beneath Michigan Home In Search Of Former Teamsters Boss
In what is considered one of America’s most famous cold cases, authorities believe they have come across a solid tip that could lead to the whereabouts of the body of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.
Police plan to drill Friday beneath a concrete slab at a suburban Detroit residence after a tipster claimed a body was buried there at the same time Hoffa went missing in 1975, FoxNews reported.
While police believe that the tipster is a credible source of information, radar has also detected an anomaly beneath the ground at a home in Roseville, Mich., Police Chief James Berlin told reporters.
Berlin added that as it is unclear what or who exactly may be buried there, crews will take a core sample and test it for human remains.
Hoffa, an organizer turned figurehead for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1932 to 1975, played a major role in the growth and development of the union, which eventually became the largest single union in the U.S., with more than 1.5 million members during his terms as its leader.
Forced out of the organized labor movement when he was sent to prison in 1967, Hoffa was eventually pardoned by President Richard Nixon in 1971 and released on the condition that he not try to get back into the union movement before 1980.
James R. Hoffa vanished in 1975 and nearly 40 years later remains among America's most famous missing persons.
While the tipster didn't claim Hoffa's body was buried in Roseville, reports indicate that he did tell police the burial happened about the time Hoffa vanished, Berlin said. No information has been released about the source of information.
"It took us a while to get the proper equipment to do what we're going to do. If this is a person, they've been down there for 35 years. What's a few more days?" Berlin said.
Results from the soil testing should be available next week, the chief told CNN Wednesday.
"If they are positive, we will then start excavating," Berlin said.
But, he added, "It could be anybody down there, could be nobody. It could be a dog."
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.
On June 16, 2006, the Detroit Free Press published in its entirety the so-called "Hoffex Memo." The 56-page report prepared by the FBI for a January 1976 briefing on the case at FBI headquarters indicates that law enforcement's belief is that Hoffa was murdered at the behest of organized crime figures who deemed his efforts to regain power within the Teamsters to be a threat to their control of the union's pension fund.
Hoffa was last seen in late July 1975, outside the Machus Red Fox, a suburban Detroit restaurant.
His disappearance gave rise to many theories as to what had happened to him and where his body was hidden.
Other search efforts for the body of Hoffa include an unsuccessful 2006 search of a large horse barn in Milford Township, Mich. The barn was torn down, and authorities searched beneath the barn's foundation.
In 2004, authorities from Oakland County removed floorboards from a Detroit home and found blood that they thought might be linked to Hoffa's disappearance. Milford Township is in Oakland County.
Authorities went to the Detroit home in 2004 after a biography of former Teamsters official Frank Sheehan stated that Sheehan shot Hoffa in the home, just beyond the front door.
Investigators ruled that the blood found in the house was not Hoffa's.
Sheehan, considered a confidant of Hoffa, died in December 2003.
Hoffa was declared legally dead in 1982, on the seventh anniversary of his disappearance, when he would have been 69.
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