FBI ends Michigan search for Hoffa's remains
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| Investigators stand at the scene in Oakland Township, Mich., Wednesday, June 19, 2013 where officials attempt to restore the field to its natural condition after the FBI stopped the search for Jimmy Hoffa's remains. The FBI had been digging and searching for three days for the remains of Teamsters union president Hoffa who disappeared from a Detroit-area restaurant in 1975. |
OAKLAND TOWNSHIP,
Mich. (AP) -- Beneath a swimming pool, under a horse farm and now a
weed-grown field north of Detroit. For at least the third time in a
decade, FBI agents grabbed shovels and combed through dirt and mud in
the search for Jimmy Hoffa's remains or clues to the disappearance of
the former Teamsters boss.
Once again, the search was futile.
"Certainly,
we're disappointed," Detroit FBI chief Robert Foley told reporters
Wednesday as federal and local authorities wrapped up another excavation
that failed to turn up anything that could be linked to Hoffa, who has
been missing since 1975.
Many people interested in the mystery assume Hoffa ran afoul of the mob and was whacked.
"Right
now the case remains open," Foley said. "At this point, if we do get
logical leads and enough probable cause that warrant the resources to do
an investigation, then we'll continue to do so."
The
latest search for Hoffa's remains was prompted by a tip from reputed
ex-Mafia captain Tony Zerilli.
About 40 FBI agents searched a small
field surrounded by trees and a gravel road in Oakland Township. With
the aid of a backhoe, they spent about 10 hours in the field Monday and
another 10 Tuesday before calling it quits about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.
"We're
always hopeful that we'll get a lead that will lead us to a position in
which we can conclude this investigation," said Foley, "both for the
process of justice but also for the family."
Hoffa
was last seen on July 30, 1975, when he was to meet with reputed
Detroit mob enforcer Anthony "Tony Jack" Giacalone and alleged New
Jersey mob figure Anthony "Tony Pro" Provenzano at a restaurant in
Bloomfield Township, north of Detroit. The 62-year-old Hoffa never was
seen or heard from again.
His rise in the
Teamsters, his 1964 conviction for jury tampering and his presumed
murder are Detroit's link to a time when organized crime, public
corruption and mob hits held the nation's attention.
In
2003, authorities dug beneath an underground pool at a home in
Michigan's Thumb area for a briefcase an informant said contained a
syringe and possible evidence that Hoffa might have been injected with
drugs or poison.
Three years later, the FBI
spent 13 days searching a horse farm in Oakland County's Milford
Township, northwest of Detroit, for Hoffa's remains.
Two other searches didn't involve any digging.
In
2004, detectives pulled up floorboards at a Detroit house, and last
September, authorities drilled for soil samples in the floor of a shed
in the Detroit suburb of Roseville.
Other
theories have suggested Hoffa was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium
in New Jersey, ground up and thrown in a Florida swamp or obliterated
in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant.
Zerilli,
now 85, was in prison for organized crime when Hoffa disappeared. But he
told New York TV station WNBC in January that he was informed about
Hoffa's whereabouts after his release. David Chasnick, Zerilli's lawyer,
has said Zerilli is "intimately involved" with people who know where
the body is buried.
The makeshift grave,
according to Zerilli, was in a barn beneath a concrete slab in the
Oakland Township field. The barn is gone, but the slab remains.
"At
the end of the day, everything Zerilli said is credible - whether
(Hoffa's remains are) still there and they missed it or not," Chasnick
told The Associated Press Wednesday afternoon. "He knew about the barn.
He knew about the cement."
Chasnick said
Zerilli still is convinced that whatever remains of Hoffa can be found
somewhere among the high grass, thickets and crickets.
"I'd like to put a final nail in the coffin - that they searched the whole field. There is always an open-ended question."
Foley
said agents pored over about an acre in their 2 1/2-day search. The
effort included help from forensic anthropologists at Michigan State
University and Michigan State Police cadaver-sniffing dogs.
"We
did not uncover any evidence relevant to the investigation on James
Hoffa," Foley said. "I am very confident of our result here after
two-days-plus of diligent effort."
Hoffa's
son, James P. Hoffa, is the current Teamsters president, and union
spokeswoman Leigh Strope said family members "do hold out hope that they
will one day learn what happened."
Detroit
FBI spokesman Simon Shaykhet said Wednesday that there was no connection
between the dig for Hoffa's remains and an excavation Tuesday at the
house in New York once occupied by gangster James Burke. Burke, a
Lucchese crime family associate known as "Jimmy the Gent," was the
inspiration for Robert De Niro's character in the 1990 Martin Scorsese
movie "Goodfellas."
