FBI searched New Jersey for Jimmy Hoffa, lacking Teamsters chief

Is the physique of long-missing Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa actually to be discovered caught within the filth someplace close to the swamps of Jersey?

The FBI confirmed to NBC Information that in October it searched a web site of a former landfill in northern New Jersey for Hoffa’s physique, apparently based mostly on a tip from the son of the landfill enterprise accomplice who claimed to have buried him.

That seek for Hoffa in Jersey Metropolis beneath a heavily-traveled bridge is simply the newest over many years in what has been certainly one of legislation enforcement’s wildest goose chases, with a number of location searches through the years.

Most of these searches occurred in Michigan, the place Hoffa final was seen in 1975, years after he had misplaced management of what had been the biggest union in america, and served a jail stint for jury tampering, mail and wire fraud, and conspiracy.

One infamous tip, which didn’t result in a search, was that Hoffa was buried within the concrete basis of the outdated Giants Stadium in New Jersey’s Meadowlands.

The 2019 Martin Scorsese movie “The Irishman,” itself based mostly on the non-fiction ebook “I Heard You Paint Homes,” particulars the disputed declare by purported Mafia hitman and Teamsters official Frank Sheeran that he killed Hoffa, who was later cremated.

The newest search was first reported Thursday by The New York Occasions. The investigative reporter Dan Moldea initially wrote concerning the tip that led to the search.

“Final month, the FBI obtained a search warrant to conduct a web site survey beneath the Pulaski Skyway, FBI spokesperson Mara Schneider from the Detroit area workplace informed NBC Information.

“On October twenty fifth & twenty sixth, FBI personnel from the Newark and Detroit area places of work accomplished the survey and that knowledge is at present being analyzed,” Schneider stated.

“As a result of the affidavit in help of the search warrant was sealed by the court docket, we’re unable to supply any further data.”

Information of the search got here the identical week because the Worldwide Brotherhood of Teamsters elected Sean O’Brien as its common president, changing Hoffa’s son, James Hoffa, who had served in that function for 22 years. The youthful Hoffa didn’t search re-election.

The tip about his father’s physique’s purported whereabouts got here from Frank Cappola, the son of former landfill enterprise accomplice Paul Cappola.

Paul Cappola, in keeping with Moldea’s account, as he approached demise in 2008 informed Frank that he buried Hoffa’s physique in a 55-gallon metal drum after the labor chief vanished in 1975, amid a fallout with the New Jersey Mafia chieftain Anthony “Tony Professional” Provenzano.

“Unidentified folks introduced Hoffa’s useless physique to” the positioning, Frank later wrote in a abstract of what his father informed him.

Frank Cappola died in 2020.

Moldea informed The Occasions that the FBI contacted him about Frank’s claims later that 12 months, after he wrote about them.

The Occasions report famous that information present that the FBI acquired ideas through the years, together with in 1975, that Hoffa was buried in a Jersey Metropolis landfill. An earlier search based mostly on these ideas uncovered nothing.