New search for Hoffa’s remains begins
DETROIT Calling Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance “an open wound” for Detroit, officials say they’re hopeful a dig in northern Oakland County will turn up the body of the former Teamsters boss.
“It’s my fondest hope that we can give … closure not just to the Hoffa family, but also to the community and stop tearing that scab off with every new lead,” Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said in the first official word about the dig in Oakland Township, which began Monday. “It’s long overdue.”
FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Foley of the Detroit office, speaking with Bouchard, said the FBI is executing a search warrant in a grassy field.
A command center is set up in Oakland Township, about 45 miles north of Detroit. Officers ran yellow police tape along the outer edge of the multiacre site. Tents were set up in the middle of the property, 500 feet off a dirt road.
Hoffa was kidnapped on July 30, 1975, from the parking lot of what was then the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township. Hoffa’s body never has been found, and the case is one of the 20th century’s most vexing mysteries.
The FBI has theorized that Hoffa disappeared after going to the restaurant for a reconciliation meeting with Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, a Mob-connected New Jersey Teamster official, and Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone, a Detroit Mafia captain. The FBI thought Provenzano and Giacalone had Hoffa killed to prevent him from regaining the Teamsters presidency. Hof- fa ran the union from 1957 to 1971.
The Oakland Township property came under scrutiny in January after Tony Zerilli, 85, the son of reputed former Detroit Mob boss Joseph Zerilli, told broadcast news media that Hoffa, 62, was buried there.
John Anthony, who worked the case as an FBI agent and later served as an FBI spokesman, said then that Zerilli was in a position to know secrets, including the fate of the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
Dan Moldea, author of the book The Hoffa Wars, who has studied the case closely for decades, agreed.
“This isn’t some screwball,” Moldea said. “He’s the right man at the right time. His father would have had to sign off on this. The question is: Would his father or his father’s associates have confided in him? I find it very possible that they did.”