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Credible Lead in Hoffa Case, FBI Says

By TOM KRISHER, Associated Press Writer 19 minutes ago

For three decades, Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance has spawned endless theories about the former Teamsters boss's demise: He crossed the mob, he was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium, he was fed to the fishes.
Now the FBI is investigating another theory. Federal agents are digging up a horse farm once owned by a Hoffa associate not far from where Hoffa vanished in 1975.
Agents aren't saying exactly what they know, but they plan to spend a couple weeks trying to determine if Hoffa was killed and buried somewhere on Hidden Dreams Farm. They are bringing in cadaver dogs, demolition experts, archaeologists and anthropologists and suggested they might remove a barn.
"This is the best lead I've seen come across in the Hoffa investigation," said FBI agent Daniel Roberts, who has run the Detroit field office for two years. "You can see from the amount of FBI and police department personnel out here that this is probably a fairly credible lead."
Neighbors were skeptical of the search.
"They're not going to find anything," said Mark Weidel, 32, who grew up hearing rumors that Hoffa's remains were buried on the farm.
Investigators began combing the area Wednesday, and the search intensified Thursday with the use of heavy construction equipment.
The farm, about 30 miles northwest of Detroit, has three barns and 43 stalls on 65 acres of fields and woods. As horses galloped in a fenced field and their owners led them in and out of the barns Thursday, a backhoe was at work and about a dozen agents searched the farm's perimeter for clues.
The property was once owned by Hoffa associate Rolland McMaster, now 93, whose attorney said agents had been to visit him.
Roberts wouldn't comment when asked about McMaster but said, "We have heard that name as well."
The Detroit Free Press, citing people involved with the case who declined to be identified because of the active investigation, reported the tip that led to the search came from 75-year-old Donovan Wells, a former associate of McMaster who was sentenced two years ago to 10 years in federal prison in a marijuana smuggling scheme.
McMaster's lawyer, Mayer Morganroth, said he doubted the FBI would find anything. "That farm was looked at with a fine-toothed comb in the '70s, when Hoffa was missing," he said. "There's nothing there."
Morganroth said FBI officials visited McMaster this week at his home in Fenton, where one of several horse-breeding farms he owns is located.
"They were just asking about the farm itself — did he ever get any inkling?" he said.
Morganroth said McMaster was in Indiana on union business at the time of Hoffa's disappearance, and that to his knowledge, his client was never a suspect.
Hoffa was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, both now dead, at a restaurant about 20 miles from the farm on the day he disappeared.
Investigators have long suspected Hoffa was killed by the mob to keep him from reclaiming the Teamsters presidency after he got out of prison for jury tampering and fraud.
Rumors surfaced that he had been entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands; that he was ground up and thrown to the fish in a Florida swamp; that he was obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant that has since burned down.
In 2003, authorities searched beneath a backyard pool a few hours north of Detroit but turned up nothing. The following year, they pulled up the floorboards on a Detroit home and found bloodstains, but the blood was not Hoffa's.
A law enforcement official in Washington said the latest search was based on information developed several years ago and verified more recently.
Among other things, there was a high level of suspicious activity on the farm the day Hoffa vanished, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Organized crime members had used the barn meetings, but the location was never used again after that day, the official said.