It has been 31 years since Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa disappeared — and the hunt goes on.
Only this time, FBI officials sound quite hopeful as they act on the latest tip in a story where the tidbits known so far sound like a “whack” right out of HBO’s The Sopranos. The Detroit News:
The FBI is mounting one of its biggest searches to date for the remains of former Teamsters boss James R. Hoffa, bringing in dozens of agents for what agents say will be a multi-week dig at an 85-acre property once owned by one of Hoffa’s closest union associates.
Thirty years of myth and legend have placed Hoffa’s remains everywhere from the Giants’ stadium to a Japanese auto factory to swamps of the Florida Everglades to the bottom of Lake Michigan.
But acting on what some investigators say is the best tip in years, authorities now believe the remains of the missing Teamsters boss may yet turn up in the pastoral Hidden Dreams Farm less than 20 miles from the suburban parking lot where he last was seen July 30, 1975.
Detroit FBI chief Dan Roberts said the scope of the search — including geologists, cadaver dogs and heavy earth-moving equipment that may be needed to excavate beneath a barn — indicates that authorities believe they are pursuing one of their best leads yet in a mystery that has frustrated investigators for 31 years.
The lead is called “fairly credible.”
For one thing, the farm’s previous owner makes it intriguing:
The Milford Township farm was once owned by Rolland McMaster, a longtime associate of Hoffa and a former Teamsters official.
McMaster, 93, of Fenton was among the figures summoned to testify in 1975 before a federal grand jury investigating Hoffa’s disappearance. McMaster’s attorney, Mayer Morganroth, said McMaster was out of town at the time Hoffa vanished, and noted that the authorities had searched the farm once before.
“Someone’s pulling the FBI’s chain,” said McMaster’s wife, Marilyn.
Roberts said investigators could use DNA to identify any remains. In 2001, The News reported that the FBI had used a similar technique to match one of Hoffa’s hairs, taken from a brush, to a hair found in a car that authorities suspected was used in his disappearance. The car was owned by Hoffa family friend Charles “Chuckie” O’Brien, who has denied any knowing anything about the case.
Hoffa was considered something of a bulldog (his political nemesis: Robert Kennedy). Over the years there have been various theories about what have happened. But he vanished, Sopranos/Good Fellas style:
No one has ever been charged in Hoffa’s disappearance. Investigators suspect he was killed by the mob to keep him from returning to the head of the Teamsters union after he was released from prison.
Hoffa was last seen in 1975 at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township.
McMaster, who spent 18 months in federal prison for allegedly taking kickbacks from an Ohio trucking company, was never a central figure in the Hoffa case. He was one of Hoffa’s associates in the union, but the two had a falling out in 1971, when Hoffa finished serving a prison sentence for corruption and tried to reclaim leadership of the union.
In recent months, the FBI had increased its interest in McMaster.
McMaster was a former top organizer for Hoffa in the 1950s. According to book, “The Hoffa Wars” by Dan Moldea, McMaster was one of the Teamsters’ top muscle men and an associate of high-level organized-crime figures. He was once subpoenaed to testify before a congressional committee probing labor racketeering.
Meanwhile, there has been a whole industry of books and articles speculating what happened to him:
Theories about what happened to Hoffa — some serious, many bizarre — abound:
Last month, another mob hit man claimed in a new book that Hoffa was buried in New Jersey and later became “part of a car somewhere in Japan.”
Hoffa also inspired a bunch of (sick) jokes, such as: THE JIMMY HOFFA VIRUS: Your programs can never be found again.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.