FBI Razes Barn In Search For Hoffa

Agents Could Spend Weeks Searching Michigan Farm For Teamsters Leader's Remains

(CBS/AP)  An excavating machine on Wednesday began ripping chunks out of a barn on a horse farm where dozens of FBI agents and others have been searching since last week for the remains of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

The farm was once owned by a Hoffa associate and is located not far from where the former Teamsters chief vanished in 1975. No trace of Hoffa has ever been found, and no one has ever been charged in the case.

Agents plan to spend a couple weeks trying to determine if Hoffa is buried somewhere on the farm about 30 miles northwest of Detroit. Officials have said the search would involve cadaver dogs, demolition experts, archaeologists and anthropologists.

A government investigator said last week that Donovan Wells, who lived on the land at the time, was the one who gave the FBI the tip that has sparked the intense effort to solve a legendary mystery.

Wells' lawyer, Joseph J. Fabrizio, said that his client told the FBI about the location in 1976.

The investigator said that Wells wasn't that forthcoming 30 years ago and that he recently passed a polygraph exam. The investigator is familiar with the current dig and spoke on condition of anonymity because some of his information comes from records that have been ordered sealed by a federal judge.

Hoffa was last seen on a night he was scheduled to have dinner at a restaurant about 20 miles from the farm. He was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, both now dead. Investigators have long suspected the two had Hoffa killed to prevent him from regaining control of the union after he served time in federal prison for jury tampering.

Over the years, Hoffa's disappearance spawned endless theories — that he was entombed in concrete at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands; that he was ground up and thrown to the fishes in a Florida swamp; that he was obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant that has since burned down.

The search warrant was based on "one of numerous leads received through the years" since Hoffa was last seen leaving the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Mich., which is about 20 miles from the farm, on July 30, 1975, reports CBS News' Beverley Lumpkin.