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Subscribe to RSSInvestigators are following a lead that suggests the notorious Teamsters boss, Jimmy Hoffa, could be buried in Roseville, Mich. Hoffa was last seen in Oakland County, Mich., in 1975. NBC's John Yang reports.
Police in Roseville, Mich., drilled into the ground Friday and took soil samples in the latest effort to find the remains of notorious Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.
Hank Walker/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
Teamsters' boss Jimmy Hoffa in an undated image.
The decades-long investigation for Hoffa's body has had false leads before, and some experts are already knocking down the idea that Hoffa, who was last seen on July 30, 1975, outside a restaurant in Oakland County, Mich. -- 30 miles west of where police dug Friday -- could be buried in Roseville, a Detroit suburb.
The most recent investigation was launched after police in Roseville received a tip from a man in August who said he saw a body being buried underneath the driveway 35 years ago and "thinks it may have been Jimmy."
Police dug for about an hour and a half on Friday morning. They told NBC News' John Yang they were collecting soil samples around the home because ground-penetrating radar indicated the presence of something about two feet below the surface; officers came out of a shed with two cylindrical soil samples that were two inches in diameter and six feet long.
The soil samples are going to be hand-delivered by Roseville Police Chief James Berlin to a Michigan State University forensic anthropologist, who is expected to have the results of the samples as early as Monday afternoon. If human remains are found, the ground will be dug up.
The shed on the Roseville home's property is not the same one that was there when Hoffa disappeared in 1975, the police chief said.
The tipster who prompted the search spoke with police on Aug. 22 and didn't come forward sooner out of fear, reported WDIV in Detroit.
Feisty and iron-willed in contract talks, Hoffa was an acquaintance of mobsters and adversary of federal officials. He spent time in prison for jury tampering.
The day he disappeared, Hoffa was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit mafia captain. He was declared legally dead in 1982.
Previous tips led police to excavate soil in 2006 at a horse farm more than 100 miles north of Detroit, rip up floorboards at a Detroit home in 2004 and search beneath a backyard pool north of the city in 2003.
There were even rumors that Hoffa's remains were ground up and tossed into a Florida swamp, entombed beneath Giants Stadium in New Jersey or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant.
Roseville is one of several inner-ring communities that grew quickly as unionized auto factory workers left Detroit in search of nicer homes and bigger yards.
Get the latest on the Jimmy Hoffa search from BreakingNews.com
News of the latest search has brought attention to the mostly working- and middle-class suburb from the curious and naysayers. Slowly moving vehicles have clogged the residential street where the home sits as camera-wielding neighbors snapped photos for keepsakes.
Police remove two large soil samples from a Michigan home based on a tip that Jimmy Hoffa's body may have been buried there decades ago. MSNBC's John Yang reports.
"I believe it's him. My sister said it is, and she's a psychic," Mike Smith said after ambling up to the home Thursday and shying a bit from the yellow police tape stretched across the driveway.
One theory that has endured was that the body was beneath the foundation of a downtown Detroit hockey stadium, said 57-year-old Cindi Frank, who snapped photos Thursday of the Roseville driveway.
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The daughter of a unionized driver and salesman for a Detroit bakery, Frank remembers conversations about Hoffa while he was alive and rumors about his fate.
"It was a family thing. Every time we'd go somewhere we'd say, 'Hey, I wonder if Jimmy Hoffa is buried there?'" Frank said. "It's just been one of those unsolved mysteries that's gone on for 30-something years. If he show up in Roseville ..."
Recently retired Detroit FBI chief Andrew Arena is among the doubters that the latest report will check out.
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"You've got to check it out, but this doesn't sound right," he told the AP. "The working theories that have developed over the years, this really doesn't fit any of those. If this was the mob and they killed somebody, I just don't see them burying the body basically at the intersection of a residential neighborhood with this guy standing there."
Some think the least likely spot for him to turn up might just be the place he does.
"Maybe the most inconspicuous spot might be the place to stash a body or something," said 52-year-old Andrew Kacir, who lives across from the taped off driveway.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Bill Pugliano / Getty Images
Police officials prepare to drill through a concrete driveway to obtain a soil sample that will be tested for signs of human decomposition at a site where a tipster reported that the body of former Teamster's union boss Jimmy Hoffa could be buried in Roseville, Mich.
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But if it DOES turn out to be Hoffa, then it could be that both his body and that of Amelia Earhart get found the same year.
But nobody has found D.B. Cooper yet.
Why should I admit I found D. B. Cooper?????
I'd have to give the money back!
Have they determined for sure the airplane found was Earhart's?
I KNOW they didn't find a body, though.
Is this even relevant anymore? The man is dead. His murderers are probably also dead by now. Even if they find evidence of his body, he will still be dead. No way no how will anyone EVER know the whole story, so just LET IT GO! Live by the sword, die by the sword. Mr. Hoffa knew what the risks were. Mafiosa may do some damn stupid things, but they are NOT stupid, trust me. LET. IT. GO.
I just watched the movie where Jack Nicholson played Hoffa, and I think that was Jack's best acting job. His mannerisms were so like him it was uncanny and he even looked like Hoffa! Good movie!
There could've been a dozen things happened like stuffing him in a barrel of sulfuric acid and dumped into the middle of the ocean. We'll see.
Whata conicidence....sitting here listening to the news in San Diego. 2 street gang members just now got their sentence for murder.....
They were members of a street gang allied with the Felix Arrellano drug cartel.
They murdered 2 men and dissolved them in murriatic acid. They got caught kidnapping a third...rich businessman for ransom. Police found more acid they would have used on him after ransom received.
Oh yeah, 5 life sentences....no parole.
JWeilen: Yeah! and actually knowing NOW instead of next week sometime. Having something real to report instead of atta boys from psychics, or more likely not having any report since there most likely is nothing there. OBAMA - get Congress to pass a law that no reports of investigations of missing mobsters can be published until something has been discovered germaine to the story. "Another false alarm" does not qualify, and violators should be fined $50k (used to pay down the debt). What a freaking crock.
Another example of a waste of time and taxpayers money for what and who cares.
Whoa now hold the presses.......forget Hoffa I just read that beer will survive a nuclear war! Off to WalMart to load up!
I didn't know the Chinese made beer!
They do tzing-tao I think it's spelled. I drink it when I'm at a chinese restaraunt,not too bad with mooshoo pork.
they have a better chance of finding jimmy hoffa than obamas original birth certificate. a better chance of finding hoffa than the unaccounted for millions from obama's stimulus. a better chance of finding bigfoot than ever seeing obama's college records, a better chance of curing cancer than having the msm hold obama accountable for anything. nbc guiding the sheep to slaughter. obama/ biden = four more years of accomplishing little while making excuses and blaming the gop for the first four.
a better chance of finding Hoffa than Romney becoming president...
Obama sucks. His snaggle tooth wife is disgusting.
Good luck.
-DB Cooper
All the best,
John Wheeler
For those of you who don't comprehend why they are still investigating a murder that happened that long ago here in Maine a man was convicted yesterday for a murder he comitted 32 years ago. The police never give up on murders (or possible murder in this case) If I had a family member killed I dont care how long it takes to put the killer away.
His killers are both dead. You want we should pay to dig them up too and prosecute them?
then what you ask !!!! what else.....we put him back in the ground!!!
Does that make sense? About as much sense as the Feds borrowing money from China so they can send aid to some mideast sh##hole that hates us regardless we try to do for them
So up from the ground came a bubbling crude. Hoffa that is. Red Gold... Detroit Tea... Union Money!!!!
Seriously, who really cares?? How much did this cost the taxpayers for the media to cover it for a few hours on TV? It makes me wonder how many currently missing people never receive the same attention because they lack celebrity or wealth.
I think it's real funny how everyone is bashing Jimmy Hoffa and the unions but ALL of the idiots last night on the NFL network and ALL the fans in Baltimore was cheering on the a$$hole refs that are way over paid and are just as bad at calling a game as the replacements! If you don't like the story don't click on it!
Detroit area. Lots of Democrats buried all over the place.
Nobody's found Obama's college transcripts either.
Hoffa?? Just another WORTHLESS UNION SCUM... who History has proven was of NO value to anyone but himself...
The saddest part of one dead union leader is that HUNDREDS MORE "union scum" aren't as dead as him.
Wow... croc15 (as in crock of S$#t) is going to piss his silk panties over this comment.
Your are absolutely right, the Teamsters have and always will be crooks. If they did so much for the auto industry why did Obama need to bale their dumb asses out.
Come on croc of s#$t put your beer down and make a comment, we that are educated need to laugh at your stupidity.
Let's do a live Geraldo special.
LOL, yeah like when he brought us Big Al Capone's vault,,,LOL
Geraldo always had a nose for the Enquirer type of news.
waste of time hoffa isnt buried there, last time i saw him? him and emilia earhart were running a starbucks in seattle, they looked just fine,
Exactly! I dont understand the point in still looking.
Hoffa is with Elvis at the Burger King in Helena Montana.
If they find Hoffa,,then what? they gonna dig up the people that killed him?
Pretty sure most if not all of them are dead now.
If he is buried there...the tests will come back Scum!
Okay lets get real. If this guy saw someone being buried around the same time Hoffa went missing, why does he necessarily think it is Hoffa? It could be any one of many people that may have gone missing around the same time. Also why did he have so much fear, did he think that the police and FBI was going to plaster his face and name all over the place. Did he ever hear of the words anonymous phone call? Something other than a body smells bad here.
The soil sample refused to excavated until it got a 4 year contract and more vacation time. Go figger.