OMEN
05-19-2006, 11:06 AM
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Workers dig near a barn at a horse farm in Milford Township, Mich., on Thursday as part of an FBI search for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.
MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - The FBI said Thursday that a search of a horse farm for clues to Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance is expected to take at least a couple weeks and likely will involve the removal of a barn.
Federal agents began digging at Hidden Dreams Farm on Wednesday in a search for “the human remains of James Riddle Hoffa,” according to the search warrant, obtained by The Associated Press.
The former Teamsters leader disappeared in 1975 on a night he was to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles away.Hoffa was to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, and investigators have longed suspected the two had Hoffa killed to prevent him from regaining the union control after he served time in federal prison for jury tampering.
“This is the best lead I’ve seen come across on the Hoffa investigation,” Daniel Roberts, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office, said Thursday outside the farm.
He declined to say where the lead came from but said the search included the use of heavy construction equipment and investigators expected to be there a couple weeks.
Farm the subject of rumors
For years, there has been a rumor in the surrounding neighborhood that Hoffa had been killed and buried there at the order of mobsters and others who didn’t want Hoffa to regain power over the union. Deb Koskovich said she heard the rumor about Hoffa’s body two decades ago from a neighbor when she moved next door.
“We laughed and that was the end of that,” said Koskovich, 52. “I never thought about it again until today so apparently there have been rumors.”
FBI agents investigating Hoffa’s disappearance spent a second day at the farm, about 20 miles from the Oakland County restaurant where the Teamsters leader was to have dinner the night he vanished.
Asked if they were looking for Hoffa’s remains, FBI Agent Dawn Clenney said Wednesday, “Could be,” and declined to comment further on the agents’ presence.Re-examining old leads
A law enforcement official in Washington said the search was based on information developed several years ago and verified more recently.
The information indicated there was a high level of suspicious activity on the farm the day Hoffa vanished, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. A backhoe appeared near a barn that organized crime members had used for meetings, but that location was never used again after Hoffa disappeared, the official said.
Clenney said the bureau receives numerous leads about Hoffa.
“This is one we felt we needed to follow up on,” she said.
The FBI would not say who owned the property when Hoffa disappeared.
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Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa is shown in a June 1974
Reporters were not allowed onto the property, a horse farm surrounded by a white wooden fence just off a dirt road, but images shot from news helicopters showed about a dozen people, some with shovels, standing by an area of newly turned dirt about 10 feet by 15 feet. Neighbors looked on from their yards but said they hadn’t been told anything.
Some of the 85-acre site is now an industrial development, but interest is highest in an area that is now, and was at the time of Hoffa's disappearance, a farm.
FBI agents and evidence specialists were surveying the land and using probes and other equipment to help determine the best place to start digging, but the area is large, and the operation may take several weeks.Just another Hoffa story?
Mark Weidel, who was visiting his parents’ home just up the road, said he grew up hearing rumors about Hoffa and didn’t expect anything to come of this search.
“It’s just another Hoffa story,” he said.
Last year, the FBI crime lab concluded that blood found on the floor of a Detroit home where a one-time Hoffa ally claimed to have killed him did not belong to Hoffa.Bloomfield Township police ripped up the floorboards from the house where Frank Sheeran claimed Hoffa was killed. Sheeran died in 2003 at age 83, and his claim was detailed in a book published months later.
A New Jersey mob hit man who died in March reportedly made a similar deathbed claim. Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski gave author Philip Carlo what he claimed were graphic details of the infamous, unsolved killing of the union boss, The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reported. “The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer” is scheduled for release in July.
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Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said Bloomfield Township police were offering assistance but he knew little about the search. He said he was surprised the FBI acted without speaking to them.
“Three years ago they said, ‘The Hoffa case in essence is yours to deal with,”’ he said. “I’d have expected the professional courtesy of calling me.”
No shortage of theories
The fate of Hoffa has for years been a source of speculation. Hoffa was declared legally dead in July 1982.
A number of theories have been advanced on his whereabouts, including that Hoffa was buried in the end zone at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., under the New Jersey Turnpike or under various plots of land in New York and New Jersey.
Earlier this year, Lynda Milito, author of a tell-all book about her husband's life in the Gambino crime family, said Hoffa was killed by her husband and dumped near the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York City.
NBC News’
Workers dig near a barn at a horse farm in Milford Township, Mich., on Thursday as part of an FBI search for the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.
MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - The FBI said Thursday that a search of a horse farm for clues to Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance is expected to take at least a couple weeks and likely will involve the removal of a barn.
Federal agents began digging at Hidden Dreams Farm on Wednesday in a search for “the human remains of James Riddle Hoffa,” according to the search warrant, obtained by The Associated Press.
The former Teamsters leader disappeared in 1975 on a night he was to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles away.Hoffa was to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, and investigators have longed suspected the two had Hoffa killed to prevent him from regaining the union control after he served time in federal prison for jury tampering.
“This is the best lead I’ve seen come across on the Hoffa investigation,” Daniel Roberts, special agent in charge of the Detroit FBI field office, said Thursday outside the farm.
He declined to say where the lead came from but said the search included the use of heavy construction equipment and investigators expected to be there a couple weeks.
Farm the subject of rumors
For years, there has been a rumor in the surrounding neighborhood that Hoffa had been killed and buried there at the order of mobsters and others who didn’t want Hoffa to regain power over the union. Deb Koskovich said she heard the rumor about Hoffa’s body two decades ago from a neighbor when she moved next door.
“We laughed and that was the end of that,” said Koskovich, 52. “I never thought about it again until today so apparently there have been rumors.”
FBI agents investigating Hoffa’s disappearance spent a second day at the farm, about 20 miles from the Oakland County restaurant where the Teamsters leader was to have dinner the night he vanished.
Asked if they were looking for Hoffa’s remains, FBI Agent Dawn Clenney said Wednesday, “Could be,” and declined to comment further on the agents’ presence.Re-examining old leads
A law enforcement official in Washington said the search was based on information developed several years ago and verified more recently.
The information indicated there was a high level of suspicious activity on the farm the day Hoffa vanished, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing. A backhoe appeared near a barn that organized crime members had used for meetings, but that location was never used again after Hoffa disappeared, the official said.
Clenney said the bureau receives numerous leads about Hoffa.
“This is one we felt we needed to follow up on,” she said.
The FBI would not say who owned the property when Hoffa disappeared.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/060517/060517_hoffa_vsmall_3p.cmug.jpg
Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa is shown in a June 1974
Reporters were not allowed onto the property, a horse farm surrounded by a white wooden fence just off a dirt road, but images shot from news helicopters showed about a dozen people, some with shovels, standing by an area of newly turned dirt about 10 feet by 15 feet. Neighbors looked on from their yards but said they hadn’t been told anything.
Some of the 85-acre site is now an industrial development, but interest is highest in an area that is now, and was at the time of Hoffa's disappearance, a farm.
FBI agents and evidence specialists were surveying the land and using probes and other equipment to help determine the best place to start digging, but the area is large, and the operation may take several weeks.Just another Hoffa story?
Mark Weidel, who was visiting his parents’ home just up the road, said he grew up hearing rumors about Hoffa and didn’t expect anything to come of this search.
“It’s just another Hoffa story,” he said.
Last year, the FBI crime lab concluded that blood found on the floor of a Detroit home where a one-time Hoffa ally claimed to have killed him did not belong to Hoffa.Bloomfield Township police ripped up the floorboards from the house where Frank Sheeran claimed Hoffa was killed. Sheeran died in 2003 at age 83, and his claim was detailed in a book published months later.
A New Jersey mob hit man who died in March reportedly made a similar deathbed claim. Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski gave author Philip Carlo what he claimed were graphic details of the infamous, unsolved killing of the union boss, The Record of Bergen County, N.J., reported. “The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer” is scheduled for release in July.
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/Components/Art/COVER/060518/AP_Mich.gif
Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said Bloomfield Township police were offering assistance but he knew little about the search. He said he was surprised the FBI acted without speaking to them.
“Three years ago they said, ‘The Hoffa case in essence is yours to deal with,”’ he said. “I’d have expected the professional courtesy of calling me.”
No shortage of theories
The fate of Hoffa has for years been a source of speculation. Hoffa was declared legally dead in July 1982.
A number of theories have been advanced on his whereabouts, including that Hoffa was buried in the end zone at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., under the New Jersey Turnpike or under various plots of land in New York and New Jersey.
Earlier this year, Lynda Milito, author of a tell-all book about her husband's life in the Gambino crime family, said Hoffa was killed by her husband and dumped near the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in New York City.
NBC News’