Perhaps bringing an end to a crime mystery that has stumped and fascinated Americans for nearly 50 years, the location containing the remains of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa may soon be revealed, as Fox News reports.
A cadre of cold case crime investigators has just gone public with their belief that a site in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is where the notorious labor leader – who disappeared in 1975 and was legally declared dead in 1982 – was ultimately buried.
The nonprofit group known as the Case Breakers, which is comprised of former law enforcement professionals committed to researching unsolved crimes, issued a statement this week claiming that a “dying police sergeant's scribbled instructions on an ace of spades” playing card was the lynchpin that prompted a probe into the former site of Milwaukee County Stadium.
Former police officer Jim Zimmerman, who has been part of the Case Breakers team for well over a decade, is the individual reportedly responsible for securing the playing card containing the scrawl of an individual thought to have played a role in Hoffa's disappearance.
The organization declared, “Independent sources in three states convinced the volunteer investigators that CSI forensics will reveal Hoffa's remains at a little league field, in the shadow of Milwaukee's MLB stadium, American Family Field.
Supporting that stance, the group added that a trio of witnesses have indicated that six years prior to Milwaukee County Stadium's eventual demolition, Hoffa's body was brought to the area from a different location and buried beneath the old stadium's third base.
Working with those tips, the Case Breakers focused on the site in question, studied aerial photos and GPS data, and even used “ground-penetrating radar” on multiple occasions.
Noting that the radar operator's equipment could not detect anything deeper than 5 feet due to an “unexpected clay layer,” the group believes that fact is indicative of a past dig that was characterized by a suspiciously hasty excavation and subsequent backfill.
Giving the group further confidence that it is on the right track is the fact that a historically successful cadaver dog expert named Carren Corcoran came to the site, and her dog put out detection signals just where the investigators expected it would.
The canine named Moxy “pointed, wagged, barked and nosed her way into four 'hits' at the stadium's old third base location,” according to the Case Breakers.
Thomas Colbert, the group's founder, said that the next phase of investigation will need to involve local law enforcement as well as the FBI, which he says has already expressed a willingness to delve further into the evidence gathered thus far.
Hoffa famously went missing on the afternoon of July 30, 1975, when he ventured to the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan for what he reportedly believed was to be a meeting with Detroit mobster Anthony Giacalone and New Jersey Teamsters leader Tony Provenzano, as Fox News noted.
After realizing he was the only one of the planned attendees to appear for the lunch meeting, Hoffa reportedly placed a call to his wife and was never seen or heard from again. Many have speculated over the years that he was the target of a hit designed to quash his insistence on reclaiming his position as Teamsters president after a stint in federal prison – an outcome to which several top figures in the realm of organized crime were opposed.
Though there have been many other excavations conducted over the decades prompted by tips from supposedly knowledgeable informants, all have come up empty, but whether this latest probe will finally yield a different – and conclusive – result for Hoffa's family and for the millions who have followed the saga for years, only time will tell.
