Where is Jimmy Hoffa? A look at searches in Michigan

John Wisely, Detroit Free Press
Updated ·5 min read
9

Forty-eight years ago this month, former Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa disappeared and he’s never been seen since.

On July 30, 1975, Hoffa had scheduled a lunch meeting with Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, a mob-connected New Jersey Teamster official, and Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone, a Detroit Mafia captain at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant on Telegraph Road just south of Maple.

Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa's car, a green Pontiac Grand Ville, was found July 31, 1975, in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township.
Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa's car, a green Pontiac Grand Ville, was found July 31, 1975, in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township.

Hoffa called his wife from a pay phone to say he’d been stood up at the meeting. He was never heard from again.

The FBI theorized that the mafia had Hoffa killed to keep him from returning to the union presidency.

His disappearance prompted decades of investigations, conspiracy theories and searches.

A Bloomfield Township police officer stands beside Jimmy Hoffa's car after the labor leader's disappearance.
A Bloomfield Township police officer stands beside Jimmy Hoffa's car after the labor leader's disappearance.

Here’s a look back at some of the searches in Michigan.

Andiamo: Italian restaurant in Bloomfield Twp. has new menu item named for Jimmy Hoffa

June 2013: Field in Oakland Township, Michigan

A tip from the son of a former Detroit mob boss prompted the FBI to search a field in Oakland Township.

Investigators using a backhoe dig through a foundation of what used to be a barn in Oakland Township as they search for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa on June 18, 2013. Acting on a tip, the dig began yesterday afternoon to find the Teamsters boss who went missing 30 years ago from a restaurant parking lot in Bloomfield Township.
Investigators using a backhoe dig through a foundation of what used to be a barn in Oakland Township as they search for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa on June 18, 2013. Acting on a tip, the dig began yesterday afternoon to find the Teamsters boss who went missing 30 years ago from a restaurant parking lot in Bloomfield Township.

Anthony Zerilli, who’s father Joe Zerilli was running the Detroit mafia when Hoffa disappeared, told a television interviewer that the former union president was buried on the property, which once belonged to another Detroit mafia leader, Jack Tocco.

Because Anthony Zerilli came from the inner circle of Detroit organized crime, a former FBI case agent John Anthony called the tipster “the most credible I've seen in 30 years.”

Zerilli was 85 at the time he offered the tip and was attempting to sell a manuscript online that detailed his theory of the case.

FBI and local law enforcement officials walk back to their staging area after holding a press conference where they told the media that they had given up their search for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa at an overgrown farm field in Oakland Township on June 19, 2013.
FBI and local law enforcement officials walk back to their staging area after holding a press conference where they told the media that they had given up their search for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa at an overgrown farm field in Oakland Township on June 19, 2013.

The three-day search brought crowds of onlookers to the site, but it ended as the others had.

“After a diligent search … we did not uncover any evidence relevant to the investigation on James Hoffa,” Detroit FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Foley III said.

September 2012: Roseville Driveway

A tipster said that a man who formerly owned the home at 18710 Florida Street, near 12 Mile and Gratiot, had served as a bookie for Giacalone and was up all night pouring concrete on the day that Hoffa disappeared.

The FBI initially brushed off the tip, but Roseville police decided it was worth checking out.

The home at 18710 Florida in Roseville, Mich. where Jimmy Hoffa could be buried beneath the driveway on Sept. 26, 2012.
The home at 18710 Florida in Roseville, Mich. where Jimmy Hoffa could be buried beneath the driveway on Sept. 26, 2012.

They asked the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to scan the property with ground penetrating radar. The scan detected an anomaly.

That prompted the drilling of holes six feet deep in the driveway to check for possible human remains. The holes were dug as police and the FBI watched. Gawkers looked on as a television news helicopter circled overhead and satellite trucks parked nearby.

"It's not him," Roseville Police Chief James Berlin said after an initial examination of a soil bore failed to show any signs of human remains.

May 2006: Hidden Dream Horse Farm, Milford Township, Michigan

Several dozen FBI agents spent two weeks and about $250,000 searching the 87-acre farm once owned by former Hoffa associate Roland McMaster. The search included pulling down a horse barn.

In this May 24, 2006, file photo, workers, including Federal Bureau of Investigation evidence response team members, probe the ground near a demolished barn at a horse farm in Milford Township, Mich., where FBI agents investigating Jimmy Hoffa's 1975 disappearance. The FBI's recent confirmation that it was looking at a spot near a New Jersey landfill as the possible burial site of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa is the latest development in a search that began when he disappeared.

McMaster was long suspected of being involved in Hoffa’s disappearance. A tip from federal prisoner Donovan Wells, who once lived on the farm with McMaster, was used to secure a search warrant.

The FBI wouldn’t say what Wells divulged but said that he did pass a polygraph examination.

McMaster had sold the farm in 1977 and by the time of the search, he was 93.

An unidentified worker and a Federal Bureau of Investigation evidence response team member, left, examine a dig site where a barn once stood at a horse farm in Milford Township, Mich., where FBI agents investigating Jimmy Hoffa's 1975 disappearance were working on May 26, 2006. The Teamsters leader had vanished from a restaurant in Oakland County's Bloomfield Township, about 20 miles away.

He denied any knowledge of Hoffa’s disappearance and told the Free Press that he welcomed the search.

"That's the poorest reporting I've ever heard," he said.

July 2003: A backyard in Hampton Township, Michigan

Acting on a tip from a Michigan prisoner serving a life sentence for murder, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant for the backyard of a home in Hampton Township, outside Bay City.

The tipster, Richard Clarence Powell, told investigators that a briefcase buried there contained evidence of Hoffa’s death including a syringe used to inject drugs or poison.

In this July 16, 2003 file photo, authorities search under a backyard pool in Hampton Township, Mich., for evidence linked to the disappearance of ex-teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. The search turned up nothing. The FBI has seen enough merit in a reputed Mafia captain's tip to once again break out the digging equipment to search for the remains of Hoffa, last seen alive before a lunch meeting with two mobsters nearly 40 years ago. Tony Zerilli told his lawyer that Hoffa was buried beneath a concrete slab in a barn in a field in suburban Detroit in 1975.

In an apparent move to bolster his credibility, Powell told investigators to search under the crawl space of the house for the body of an autoworker missing since the 1970s, which they found.

The backyard dig included removing an above ground pool but nothing was found there.

Then Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said it would have been “an absolute dereliction of our duty,” to not pursue the tip.

Then Bay County Sheriff John Miller told the Free Press Powell had twice failed a polygraph test, including the day before the search.

"This guy is a car thief and a liar and a murderer," Miller said.

May 2004: Detroit house

A deathbed confession from Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, published in the book “I Heard You Paint Houses” prompted a search of a home in northwest Detroit.

Sheeran, a longtime mob enforcer, claimed in the book that he killed Hoffa with two gunshots inside a home in the 17800 block of Beaverland near Grand River and Telegraph.

In this Friday, May 28, 2004 file photo, television crews set up camp outside a house in northwest Detroit, where investigators looking into the 1975 disappearance of Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa ripped up floor boards. The FBI has seen enough merit in a reputed Mafia captain's tip to once again break out the digging equipment to search for the remains of Hoffa, last seen alive before a lunch meeting with two mobsters nearly 40 years ago. Tony Zerilli told his lawyer that Hoffa was buried beneath a concrete slab in a barn in a field in suburban Detroit in 1975.

Sheeran was a friend of Hoffa but said he killed Hoffa for Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Buffalino. Sheeran said he would have been killed himself if he didn’t carry out the hit.

A forensic team led by Bloomfield Township Police and the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office spent about two hours in the house, pulling floor boards from the hallway and vestibule of the house, where Sheeran described the shooting as happening. Lab tests found evidence of blood in the boards, but it wasn’t Hoffa’s blood.

"I feel like we're where we were the day before we got the tip," then-Bloomfield Township Police Chief Jeffrey Werner said when the lab results came back.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jimmy Hoffa: Searches in Michigan for former Teamsters president