Curious flock to possible Jimmy Hoffa burial site

Roseville, Mich. • Police were standing watch over a suburban Detroit driveway on Thursday where authorities have been told the body of former missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa may have been buried.

The curious were walking or driving by the Roseville home where state officials planned to take soil samples Friday in the search for human decomposition.

Roseville Police Chief James Berlin previously said officials were "not claiming it's Jimmy Hoffa, the timeline doesn't add up. We're investigating a body that may be at the location."

Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, outside a suburban Detroit restaurant where he was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain. His body has not been found despite a number of searches over the years.

Innumerable theories about the demise of the union boss have surfaced over time. Among them: He was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in New Jersey, ground up and thrown in a Florida swamp or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant. The search has continued under a backyard pool north of Detroit in 2003, under the floor of a Detroit home in 2004 and at a horse farm northwest of Detroit in 2006.

After Roseville police received the most recent tip, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality used ground-penetrating radar on a 12-foot-by-12-foot patch beneath the driveway, said agency spokesman Brad Wurfel.

It found "that the earth had been disturbed at some point in time," Berlin said.

The environmental quality department will take soil samples Friday that will be sent to a forensic anthropologist at Michigan State University to "have it tested for human decomposition," Berlin said.

Results are not expected until next week.

Cindi Frank snapped cellphone photos Thursday of the backyard cordoned off with yellow police tape. The 57-year-old Roseville resident said her father was a Teamsters driver and Hoffa's disappearance and numerous searches always have interested her family.

Frank said if Hoffa's body is discovered, "it will be a big deal. ... This has just been one of those unsolved mysteries."