MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Michigan (May 18) - The FBI said it was searching property northwest of Detroit for clues to the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, a powerful union leader who was last seen more than 30 years ago. TV newscasts showed people with shovels and freshly turned dirt at the site.
Agent Dawn Clenney, an FBI spokeswoman, said the bureau executed a search warrant Wednesday in Milford Township, about 35 miles from Detroit.
Investigators are looking for "evidence of criminal activity that may have occurred under previous ownership" on the property, Clenney said.
Asked if they were looking for Hoffa's remains, she said, "Could be," but declined to comment further.
A law enforcement source in Washington, D.C., said Wednesday's search was based on information developed several years ago and verified more recently.
There was suspicious activity on the farm the day Hoffa vanished, with a backhoe appearing near a barn, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
Organized crime figures had used the area for meetings, but the location was never used again after Hoffa disappeared, the source said.
The Teamsters leader was last seen in July 1975 at a Michigan restaurant.
Reporters were not allowed on the property, described by local media as a horse farm. Images shot from news helicopters showed about a dozen people, some with shovels, standing by an area of newly turned dirt.
Deb Koskovich, 52, said one of her neighbors told her after she moved next door to the farm in 1985 that Hoffa was buried there.
"He laughed and we laughed and that was the end of that," said Koskovich, adding that she would be surprised if Hoffa's remains were found. "I never thought about it again until today."
Clenney said the bureau receives numerous leads about Hoffa and "this was one we felt we needed to follow up on."
In May 2004, authorities ripped up the floorboards of a Detroit home where Frank Sheeran, a one-time Hoffa ally, had claimed he shot Hoffa to death. But no evidence related to the infamous, unsolved killing was found.
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To talk without thinking is to shoot without aiming.
On the one hand, I agree that they should let it go or at least quit making such a big deal out of every time they follow up on a new lead. But if it were my dad, even if I knew he was dead I'd still want him found.
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oh yes, you must always satisfy the monkey. Strong and Beautiful smells like a monkey
HACKENSACK (AP) -- The notorious mob hitman who lived out the end of his life in a cell in a Trenton prison made a stunning claim before he died last month.
The convicted killer known as "The Iceman" contends in an upcoming biography that he killed Jimmy Hoffa.
Advertisement P&G Soaps Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski gave author Philip Carlo what he claimed were graphic details of the infamous, unsolved killing of the union boss, along with other stories from his life of crime, The Record of Bergen County reported in Monday’s newspapers.
"The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer," which is scheduled for release in July by St. Martin’s Press, contains Kuklinski’s first public claim of responsibility for Hoffa’s slaying.
Kuklinski said during 240 hours of interviews he gave Carlo that he and four other men drove from New Jersey to a restaurant in suburban Detroit to kill Hoffa.
Kuklinski, who said he got $40,000 for the killing, claimed he was the one who knocked the Teamsters president unconscious with a blackjack, then thrust a hunting knife into the back of his head.
The other men returned to New Jersey on a bus while he drove Hoffa’s body to a Kearny junkyard, where he sealed it in a 50-gallon drum and set it on fire. Later, he claimed, he dug up the body, and placed it in the trunk of a car that was sold as scrap metal.
"He’s part of a car somewhere in Japan right now," Kuklinski says in the book.
The men Kuklinski claims helped him with the killing -- he gives only their first names and initials -- are believed to be among a group questioned by a grand jury about Hoffa. All have denied taking part in the slaying and none has been charged.
Bob Buccino, the former chief of organized crime investigations for the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice, told The Record he doubts the claim.
"They took a body from Detroit, where they have one of the biggest lakes in the world, and drove it all the way back to New Jersey? Come on," Buccino said.
In all, Kuklinski claims to have killed more than 200 people, a number some law enforcement experts doubt. The book contains other claims, including that Kuklinski watched his father fatally beat his brother, practiced killing techniques on homeless people in New York in the 1950s, got ideas on killing by watching "Roadrunner" cartoons and tried to get cyanide to kill a state trooper who pursued him.
Kuklinski, who earned the nickname "The Iceman" because he kept some victims’ that guys in a North Bergen freezer, died in a Trenton hospital while he was serving life prison sentences at New Jersey State Prison for two murders.
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To talk without thinking is to shoot without aiming.
oh yes, you must always satisfy the monkey. 
