Hoffa Hunt Comes Up Empty

Congressman Questions $$$ Spent Searching For Teamsters Boss

(CBS/AP)  The FBI said Tuesday it found no trace of Jimmy Hoffa after digging up a suburban Detroit horse farm in one of the most intensive searches in decades for the former Teamsters boss.

The two-week search involved dozens of FBI agents, along with anthropologists, archaeologists, cadaver-sniffing dogs and a demolition crew that took apart a barn.

Louis Fischetti, supervisory agent with the FBI in Detroit, said he believed the tip that led agents to the farm was the best federal authorities had received since 1976.

The agency plans to continue the investigation into Hoffa's 1975 disappearance.

"There are still prosecutable defendants who are living, and they know who they are," said Judy Chilen, assistant agent in charge of the Detroit FBI.

The farm was once owned by a Hoffa associate and was said to be a mob meeting place before the union boss' disappearance.

Hoffa vanished after he went to meet two organized crime figures. Investigators have long suspected he was killed by the mob to prevent him from reclaiming the presidency of the Teamsters after he got out of prison for corruption. But no trace of him has ever been found, and no one was ever charged.

The farm was just the latest spot to be dug up in search of clues to Hoffa's fate. In 2003, authorities excavated beneath a backyard pool a few hours north of Detroit. The following year, police ripped up floorboards in a Detroit home to test bloodstains. But the blood was not Hoffa's.

Over the years, some have theorized that Hoffa was buried at Giants Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands; ground up and thrown into a Florida swamp; or obliterated in a mob-owned fat-rendering plant.

The FBI began the excavation on May 17, digging at Hidden Dreams Farm, 30 miles northwest of Detroit. The search started after a tip from Donovan Wells, an ailing federal inmate who once lived on the farm and was acquainted with its former owner, 92-year-old Hoffa associate Rolland McMaster, according to a government investigator.

The Detroit Free Press reports the tip came from 75-year-old federal inmate Donovan Wells, who once lived on the farm in the 1970s when Hoffa disappeared.

Wells told federal authorities that the day after Hoffa disappeared in July 1975, he observed two men dig a large hole on the horse farm property, and next to the hole was what appeared to be a rolled-up carpet.

Wells said as he watched the two men digging the hole from a house on the farm, McMaster told him: "That's Jimmy going down," the Detroit Free Press reports.

McMaster's attorney Mayer Morganroth said he was not surprised that the search was wrapping up with the mystery unsolved.

"We never expected that anything was there," he said, adding that the FBI probably felt pressured to respond to the tip, lest it seem as if it were not trying to solve the case.

The FBI said the search was expected to cost less than $250,000. The government plans to pay for the barn to be rebuilt.

CBS News correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi reports that more than 10,000 agents have been involved in the Hoffa case in the last 30 years, and millions of dollars have been spent. Some call it an obsession; others call it a waste.

On Monday, a Michigan congressman said it was time to set some spending limits on the search for Hoffa's remains.

"The FBI might be better off establishing a budget and some kind of timeline, because what new information do they have now, 31 years later?" asked Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich.

While many veteran investigators and Hoffa experts were skeptical about the search, the little community of Milford Township seemed to relish the attention. A bakery sold cupcakes with a plastic green hand emerging from chocolate frosting meant to resemble dirt. Other businesses sold Hoffa-inspired T-shirts and put up signs with wisecracks such as "Caution FBI Crossing Ahead."

On the day that Hoffa was last seen alive - July 30, 1975 - he had planned eat at a restaurant about 20 miles from the farm. He was also supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain, both of whom are now dead.