Former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa disappeared in 1975 and has never been seen since.
On July 30, 1975, Hoffa scheduled a lunch meeting with Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, a Mafia-connected New Jersey Teamster official, and Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone, a Detroit Mafia captain at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant on Telegraph Road . just south of Maple.
Hoffa called his wife from a payphone to say he had stood up during the meeting. He was never heard from again.
The FBI theorized that the mob had Hoffa killed to prevent him from returning to the union presidency.
His disappearance sparked decades of investigation, conspiracy theories and searches.
Here’s a look back at some searches in Michigan.
Andiamo: Italian restaurant in Bloomfield Twp. has a new menu item named after Jimmy Hoffa
June 2013: Field in Oakland Township, Michigan
A tip from the son of a former Detroit mob boss prompted the FBI to search a field in Oakland Township.
Anthony Zerilli, whose father Joe Zerilli led the Detroit Mafia when Hoffa disappeared, told a television interviewer that the former union president was buried on the property, which once belonged to another Detroit Mafia leader, Jack Tocco.
Because Anthony Zerilli came from the inner circle of organized crime in Detroit, former FBI agent John Anthony called the tipster “the most credible I’ve seen in 30 years.”
Zerilli was 85 when he made the tip and tried to sell a manuscript online detailing his theory of the case.
The three-day search brought crowds of onlookers to the site, but ended like the others.
“After a careful search, we found no evidence relevant to the James Hoffa investigation,” said FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Foley III in Detroit.
September 2012: Roseville driveway
A tipster said a man who previously owned the house at 18710 Florida Street, near 12 Mile and Gratiot, had served as a bookmaker for Giacalone and was up all night pouring concrete the day Hoffa disappeared.
The FBI initially dismissed the tip, but Roseville police decided it was worth investigating.
They asked the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to scan the property with ground-penetrating radar. The scan has detected an abnormality.
That was the reason to drill holes two meters deep in the driveway to check for possible human remains. The holes were dug while the police and FBI watched. Gawkers watched as a television news helicopter circled overhead and satellite trucks parked nearby.
“It’s not him,” Roseville Police Chief James Berlin said after an initial investigation of a soil drilling showed no sign of human remains.
May 2006: Hidden Dream Horse Farm, Milford Township, Michigan
Several dozen FBI agents spent two weeks and about $250,000 searching the 87-acre ranch once owned by former Hoffa associate Roland McMaster. The search included demolishing a horse stable.
McMaster was long suspected of being involved in Hoffa’s disappearance. A tip from federal inmate Donovan Wells, who once lived on the farm with McMaster, was used to secure a search warrant.
The FBI would not say what Wells disclosed, but said he did pass a polygraph exam.
McMaster had sold the farm in 1977 and by the time of the search he was 93.
He denied any knowledge of Hoffa’s disappearance and told the Free Press he welcomed the search.
“That’s the worst reporting I’ve ever heard,” he said.
July 2003: A backyard in Hampton Township, Michigan
Acting on a tip from a Michigan inmate serving a life sentence for murder, the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant for the backyard of a home in Hampton Township, outside Bay City.
The tipster, Richard Clarence Powell, told investigators that a suitcase buried there contained evidence of Hoffa’s death, including a syringe used to inject drugs or poison.
In an apparent attempt to boost his credibility, Powell told investigators to search under the home’s crawl space for and found the body of an auto worker who had been missing since the 1970s.
The excavation in the backyard included removing an above-ground swimming pool, but nothing was found there.
At the time, Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca said it would have been “an absolute dereliction of duty” not to pursue the tip.
Then Bay County Sheriff John Miller told the Free Press that Powell had failed a polygraph test twice, including the day before the search.
“This man is a car thief, a liar and a murderer,” Miller said.
May 2004: House in Detroit
A deathbed confession by Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, published in the book “I Heard You Paint Houses,” led to a search of his home in northwest Detroit.
Sheeran, a longtime mob enforcer, claimed in the book that he killed Hoffa with two gunshots at a home in the 17800 block of Beaverland near Grand River and Telegraph.
Sheeran was a friend of Hoffa, but said he killed Hoffa for Pennsylvania mob boss Russell Buffalino. Sheeran said he would have committed suicide if he had not carried out the hit.
A forensic team led by Bloomfield Township Police and the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office spent about two hours in the home, pulling floorboards from the hallway and vestibule of the home, where Sheeran described the shooting as having occurred. Laboratory tests showed that there was blood on the boards, but it was not Hoffa’s blood.
“I feel like we are where we were the day before we got the tip,” Jeffrey Werner, then Bloomfield Township police chief, said when the lab results came back.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jimmy Hoffa: Michigan searches for former Teamsters president
