Milford Township, Mich. – The FBI said Tuesday that it found no trace of Jimmy Hoffa after digging up a suburban Detroit horse farm in one of the most intensive searches in decades for the former Teamsters boss.
The two-week search involved dozens of FBI agents, along with anthropologists, archaeologists, cadaver-sniffing dogs and a demolition crew that took apart a barn.
Louis Fischetti, supervisory agent with the Detroit FBI, said the tip that led agents to the farm was the best that federal authorities had received since 1976.
The agency plans to continue the investigation into Hoffa’s 1975 disappearance.
“There are still prosecutable defendants who are living, and they know who they are,” said Judy Chilen, assistant agent in charge of the Detroit FBI.
The farm was once owned by a Hoffa associate and was said to be a mob meeting place before the union boss’ disappearance.
Chilen said she believes Hoffa had been buried on the farm and that she had no evidence that his body had been moved.
Hoffa vanished after he went to meet two organized-crime figures. Investigators have long suspected he was killed by the mob to prevent him from reclaiming the presidency of the Teamsters after he got out of prison for corruption. But no trace of him has ever been found, and no one was ever charged.
The farm was just the latest spot to be torn up in search of clues. In 2003, authorities excavated beneath a backyard pool a few hours north of Detroit. The following year, police ripped up floorboards in a Detroit home to test bloodstains. But the blood was not Hoffa’s.
