Jimmy Hoffa: Police to search for body of missing Teamsters boss underneath Mich. driveway

(CBS/AP) DETROIT - Investigators will take soil samples from the ground beneath a suburban Detroit driveway after police received a tip that missing Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa was buried there about 35 years ago, police said Wednesday.

Roseville Police Chief James Berlin said his department received a tip from a man who said he saw a body buried approximately 35 years ago and "thinks it may have been Jimmy he saw interred."

"We are not claiming it's Jimmy Hoffa, the timeline doesn't add up," Berlin said. "We're investigating a body that may be at the location."

Hoffa was last seen outside a suburban Detroit restaurant on July 30, 1975. He was supposed to meet with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain. His body has never been found despite a number of searches over the years.

Several theories surfaced over time about the demise of the union boss. 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. Police searched for his body 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 department will take soil samples on 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.

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