The following articles, including most of the more popular speculation, look back at the bizarre and futile search for Jimmy Hoffa's 'supposed dead' body.
On July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa, an American union organizer, vanished from a parking lot outside the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Detroit. After seven years of his disappearance, Hoffa was declared dead, despite his remains never being found. The case has remained unsolved, and nobody has been charged with the disappearance. However, many suspect that Hoffa was murdered by the mob, the Independent reported.
According to The New York Times, Jimmy Hoffa had been losing his grip over the Teamsters’ Union, which he once presided over, even since the summer of 1975. He was found guilty of jury tampering and was sentenced to prison in 1964. Following his release after he served the sentence, he tried to get back into power within the union but was struggling to do so. Nonetheless, his relationship with the New Jersey Mafia boss, Anthony Provenzano, was getting increasingly strained too.
Jimmy Hoffa visited the Machus Red Fox to meet and talk to Anthony Provenzano and another mobster he knew. However, the men reportedly did not arrive at the restaurant. Hoffa disappeared shortly after that, leading to suspicions that the mafia was responsible for his disappearance. ABC 7 reported that millions of dollars and many hours have been spent on investigating Hoffa’s disappearance. They reportedly have been concluding every possible tip relating to the case.
Construction sites and landfills had been dug up. Meat grinders and car crushers had been checked. Several claims made by those even distantly acquainted with him had been cross-checked. But Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance remains unsolved, nearly half a century later. Read more at Jimmy Hoffa: What Happened to the Labor Union Leader?
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Have They Found Jimmy Hoffa's Body...Again?
Police were standing watch over a suburban Detroit driveway on Thursday where authorities have been told the body of former missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa may have been buried.
The curious were walking or driving by the Roseville home where state officials planned to take soil samples Friday in the search for human decomposition.
Roseville Police Chief James Berlin previously said officials were "not claiming it's Jimmy Hoffa, the timeline doesn't add up. We're investigating a body that may be at the location."
Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, outside a suburban Detroit restaurant where he was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain. His body has not been found despite several searches over the years.
Innumerable theories about the demise of the union boss have surfaced over time. Among them: He 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. The search has continued under a backyard pool north of Detroit in 2003, under the floor of a Detroit home in 2004, and at a horse farm northwest of Detroit in 2006.
After Roseville police received the most recent tip, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality used ground-penetrating radar on a 12-foot-by-12-foot patch beneath the driveway, said agency spokesman Brad Wurfel.
It found "that the earth had been disturbed at some point," Berlin said.
The environmental quality department will take soil samples Friday that will be sent to a forensic anthropologist at Michigan State University to "have it tested for human decomposition," Berlin said.
Results are not expected until next week.
Cindi Frank snapped cellphone photos Thursday of the backyard cordoned off with yellow police tape. The 57-year-old Roseville resident said her father was a Teamsters driver and Hoffa's disappearance and numerous searches always have interested her family.
Frank said if Hoffa's body is discovered, "it will be a big deal. ... This has just been one of those unsolved mysteries." - Various Sources
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Giants Stadium Came Down & FBI Didn't Look For Hoffa's Remains
In the November 1989 issue of Playboy, Donald "Tony the Greek" Frankos said Jimmy Hoffa's body was buried at Giants Stadium.
Cut in pieces. Put in a steel drum.
Entombed in concrete at Section 107, near the end zone.
Gives new meaning to the term "coffin corner," joked Sports Illustrated.
Twenty years later, a new billion-dollar stadium is rising in the Meadowlands, and the old Giants Stadium will host one last round of pro football - and Bruce Springsteen concerts.
Next year, the walls will come a-tumblin' down.
So, will the authorities check for the remains of the Hoffa, the legendary Teamsters boss, last seen alive in Detroit in July 1975?
Apparently not.
The FBI officially punted that idea back in 1989.
"Never say never, but it is a remote possibility he is buried there," said Special Agent Hal Helterhoff then, after the investigation failed to find "any substantiation."
The teardown changes nothing, said Special Agent Bryan Travers yesterday.
"If there was some credible information, we wouldn't wait until the stadium was being demolished," he said. "We would go in there and aggressively look for it ...
"We would never wait this long. ... We would have no problem digging a giant hole at the 50-yard line if we thought there was reason to act," he said.
"No, there are no plans," said Alice McGillion, spokeswoman for the New Meadowlands Stadium Corp., the company formed to build the privately financed new home of the Giants and the New York Jets, and tear down the old one.
The decision's up to law enforcement, but no agencies have spoken up so far, she said.
"The stadium will taken down next spring, and the area will become a parking lot," she said.
Nationally, the last big buzz about the Hoffa case was in 2006, when the FBI's Detroit office, acting on a tip, brought a bulldozer to the Hidden Dreams horse farm in Milford Township, Mich.
No hidden Hoffa.
In 2004, investigators tested bloodstained floorboards from a Detroit home, because of published allegations that Frank Sheeran, a Philadelphia and Delaware union leader, confessed, just before he died, to shooting Hoffa.
The blood, though, wasn't Hoffa's.
A backyard pool was excavated the year before, again to no avail.
But it can't be said that no hair from his head was ever found.
A strand was recovered from a car that an associate, Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien, drove the night of the disappearance. Testing identified the hair as Hoffa's in 2001.
Other theories: His remains were dumped in a Florida swamp, rendered in a fat-rendering plant, and became part of a scrap metal block shipped to Japan.
No plans have yet been made to sell or auction parts of the old Giants Stadium, McGillion said.
One wonders if mementos of legendary Section 107 fetch a nice price with collectors.
As for an old 50-gallon drum showing up, encased in concrete there - well, that might be a case of Jimmy Hoffa rolling over in his grave. - Philly.com
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NOTE: I refer to the next encounter as the 'I Am Jimmy Hoffa' report. I heard about this not long after it was reported and just recently came across it again. Please note that union leader Jimmy Hoffa had been missing since July 1975 which makes this report very unusual. Lon
Location: Pelham, Georgia
Date/Time: August 6, 1977 - 10:30 am local time
"I AM JIMMY HOFFA"
Tom Dawson, 63 and retired, was walking with his two dogs from his trailer home to a nearby farm when a "circular-shaped spaceship" with a dome and portholes, 40-50 ft in diameter and 12-14 ft high, hovered several feet off the ground in a field in front of him. He immediately noticed that he was unable to move a muscle as well as his dogs and the cattle in the field seemed likewise to be immobilized.
A hatch in the object opened, a ramp was extended, and 7 strange-looking humanoids 5 ft tall emerged, five men and two women. The first stepped down cautiously as if to test the solidity of the ground; then the rest followed, with two taking up sentry positions at the hatch. They were all hairless, with skin "as white as a flour sack," their noses were sharp and turned up, their ears were pointed, and they had no necks. One of the men and one of the women were completely nude. The clothing of the rest, male and female alike, was very beautiful with silk-like shoes with pointed, turned-up toes.
The humanoids cautiously approached Dawson and gave him a kind of physical examination, placing on his head a skullcap with cords connecting it to a hoop bearing dials. They dropped his trousers and lifted his shirt for the examination, passing the hoop over his body. While the examination was in progress, a loud voice came from the object, shouting three times "I am Jimmy Hoffa" (!) a fourth repetition was cut off, and the voice was not heard again.
After completing the examination, all returned to the craft except two men, who walked about 10 feet away and "went into a conference." They had very shrill voices, and although Dawson was unable to comprehend what it was they said, he thought he heard the word "Jupiter." He had the impression they were debating whether or not to take him on board; at any rate, they did not, and the leader passed his palm across his chest as though to signal goodbye. They re-entered the ship, closed the hatch, and took off. He saw the object rise to 75 feet then, in a wink, it was out of sight. Dawson was then freed of his paralysis; he ran directly to his next-door neighbor, but was so excited he could say nothing more than "spaceship!" He was taken to a hospital and treated for hysteria.
Source: UFO Bureau of Georgia
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Book claims Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa was buried in cement at General Motors' HQ
The disappearance of Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa remains one of America's most enduring mysteries.
But now, nearly four decades after Hoffa vanished, his driver has claimed he knows where he is buried – and how he got there.
Marvin Elkind said Hoffa was killed by a mob enforcer and buried in the foundations of the towering General Motors’ HQ in Detroit, Michigan.
‘It was his own people who did it,’ Mr Elkind said in excerpts of a new book published in the New York Post, adding Mafia member Tony Jack insinuated he was responsible.
The startling claim comes 36 years after Hoffa, who led the labor union for 13 years, vanished while on his way to meet two mobsters he knew well, Anthony Provenzano and Tony Jack – real name Anthony Giacalone.
Mr Elkind explains how, during a Teamsters conference in 1985, he was among a group of men walking from the city’s Omni International when the Center came into view.
Tony Jack nodded toward the tower’s base and said, ‘Say good morning to Jimmy Hoffa, boys’, Mr Elkind alleges in The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob
He also describes the rush to build the Renaissance Center following the disappearance of Hoffa – and claims the body was buried in wet cement.
‘There was a mad rush to get the concrete poured,’ the New York Post quotes the book as saying.
Hoffa was declared legally dead on July 30, 1982, when he would have been 69.
Secrets: Elkind makes the claims in The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob by Canadian journalist Adrian Humphreys
He was a union stalwart, serving as its General President from 1958 to 1971 and playing a key part in its growth and development.
During his term as its leader, membership surged to more than 1.5 million members, becoming the largest single union in the country.
As well as a role as Jimmy Hoffa's driver, Mr Elkind had careers as a loan collector, a boxer - and a police informant.
He was working as a busboy in a Toronto restaurant frequented by Jimmy Hoffa's crew when he was poached as a driver.
Mr Elkind initially said he didn't want the job, but he was told: 'Nobody's asking you.'
He began testifying against the mob when police discovered he'd worked with a con man. They gave him an ultimatum - tell or be charged.
The book, by Canadian reporter Adrian Humphreys, follows his life.
It takes its title from Mr Elkind's nickname, The Weasel, which he claims was his boxing moniker - rather than to do with his snitching. - Daily Mail
The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob
NOTE: I'd like to think Hoffa escaped the venom of the Mafia, but we know that didn't happen. It may possibly be an interesting target for a remote viewing session. He may not be 'with the fishes.' But rest assured, Hoffa 'sleeps' somewhere. Lon
"I Heard You Paint Houses": Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran and the Inside Story of the Mafia, the Teamsters, and the Last Ride of Jimmy Hoffa
The Death of Jimmy Hoffa
Digging for the Truth: The Final Resting Place of Jimmy Hoffa
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