| |
Police
checking
out
Hoffa
tip in
Detroit
suburb
By COREY
WILLIAMS
Associated
Press
DETROIT
-
Investigators
will
take
soil
samples
from the
ground
beneath
a
suburban
Detroit
driveway
after a
man told
police
he
believes
he
witnessed
the
burial
of
missing
Teamsters
leader
Jimmy
Hoffa
about 35
years
ago,
police
said
Wednesday.
Roseville
Police
Chief
James
Berlin
said his
department
received
a tip
from a
man who
said he
saw a
body
buried
approximately
35 years
ago and
"thinks
it may
have
been
Jimmy he
saw
interred."
"We are
not
claiming
it's
Jimmy
Hoffa,
the
timeline
doesn't
add up,"
Berlin
said.
"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
a number
of
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 in
time,"
Berlin
said.
The
environmental
quality
department
on
Friday
will
take
soil
samples
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.
The FBI
had no
immediate
comment
on the
new
effort
in
Roseville.
Andrew
Arena,
who
recently
retired
as head
of the
FBI in
Michigan,
told
Detroit
TV
station
WDIV
that all
leads
must be
followed,
but he
would be
surprised
if Hoffa
is
buried
there. |
