These are the places where authorities have searched for Jimmy Hoffa since he went missing 50 years ago

It is exactly 50 years since James R. “Jimmy” Hoffa, a prominent labor union leader in the United States, disappeared without a trace.

Hoffa, who had been the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1957 to 1971, vanished on July 30, 1975. Then 62, he was last seen in the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, a northern suburb of Detroit, Michigan.

In the five decades since, Hoffa’s case has endured as one of the greatest mysteries in modern U.S. history - sparking law-enforcement search efforts that continue to this day.

What happened to Jimmy Hoffa?

A man purported to have developed close ties with organized crime during his time as Teamsters boss, Hoffa had reportedly arranged to meet mobsters Anthony Giacalone and Anthony Provenzano for lunch at the Machus Red Fox.

Hoffa, who in 1971 had been released from prison, having spent five years behind bars for jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy and fraud, was seeking a return as Teamsters boss. This comeback attempt, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s “Hoffex Memo”, written by the FBI in early 1976, is thought to be at the heart of his disappearance.

Hoffa was seemingly “killed because of his attempts to re-enter Teamster Union politics”, the FBI said. The law-enforcement agency added that mob figures appear to have deemed Hoffa’s successor as Teamsters head, Frank Fitzsimmons, easier to bend to their will.

“Source information indicates that if JRH [Hoffa] re-entered Teamster Union politics and eventually became the head of the International Union again, he would not be as easy to handle as is Frank Fitzsimmons,” the FBI said.

Speaking to Fox News this month, Hoffa’s son, James P. Hoffa, said: “They knew if he did come back, he would win the election and he would take back the union. They knew that, and the only way to stop him was to kill him.”

“We don’t have closure”

Hoffa Jr., who himself served as Teamsters chief between 1998 and 2022, said of his father’s disappearance: “It was just devastating to my family, to my sister. My father was everything, and my mother died five years later of a broken heart. She never got over it.”

He added: “We don’t have closure because we don’t have a grave. And it’s amazing what that means to people. We are left with the love of him, but what else do you have? We have a hole in our heart.”

Hoffa Sr. - whose middle name is, aptly, Riddle - was officially declared dead in 1982, on the seventh anniversary of his disappearance.

Where have investigators searched for Hoffa?

In the years since Hoffa went missing, much of the search activity has, as one might expect, focused on locations in Michigan.

In June 2013, FBI investigators carried out a search in a field in Oakland Township, just to the north of Detroit. The three-day probe was motivated by a tip from Anthony Zerilli, the son of former Detroit mob boss Joe Zerilli.

“After a diligent search […], we did not uncover any evidence relevant to the investigation on James Hoffa,” Detroit FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Foley III said, per the Detroit Free Press.

The Oakland Township search came less than a year after law enforcement had dug without success in the driveway of a home in Roseville, another northern Detroit suburb.

Speaking to the Detroit Free Press, Roseville police chief James Berlin said in September 2012: “We received information from an individual who saw something. The information seemed credible, so we decided to follow up on it.”

However, Berlin later revealed that searchers had found “nothing visible that would indicate evidence of a body”, per USA Today.

In the early to mid-noughties, a number of other searches had taken place, to no avail, in the Wolverine State.

In 2006, the FBI spent an estimated $250,000 looking for Hoffa at a horse farm in Milford Township, a western Detroit suburb. “After a thorough and comprehensive search, no remains of Mr. Hoffa have been located,” said Judy Chilen, an assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit office, per an ABC report.

According to the Detroit Free Press, the Milford Township search followed unsuccessful probes of a backyard in Hampton Township in July 2003, and of a home in northwest Detroit the following May.

Among the Michigan searches that took place in the immediate aftermath of Hoffa’s disappearance, meanwhile, one key investigation centered around a tip that pointed law enforcement to the Raleigh House, a restaurant located around five miles from the Machus Red Fox.

A New York Times report from the time reads: “According to the tip, his body was disposed of in a trash compactor owned by a company incorporated by several major Detroit Mafia figures.”

Elsewhere in the U.S., a notable recent search was conducted in July 2022, when investigators carried out an examination of land under a bridge in Jersey City. “Nothing of evidentiary value was discovered,” the FBI spokesperson Mara Schneider told the Associated Press.

50 years earlier, FBI agents had inspected a 47-acre landfill in Jersey City, some five months after Hoffa went missing.

And New Jersey was also at the center of a long-running rumor that Hoffa had been buried below Giants Stadium, an NFL arena built in East Rutherford the year after the former Teamsters boss disappeared. The speculation was prompted by the mob hitman Donald “Tony the Greek” Frankos, in an interview with Playboy magazine in 1989.

However, no trace of Hoffa was found when Giants Stadium was demolished in 2010, to make way for the current MetLife Stadium.

FBI still “pursuing all credible leads”

In a statement issued to media outlets earlier this month, the FBI spoke of its unwavering determination to solve the now half-century-old mystery of Hoffa’s whereabouts.

“As the 50th anniversary of Mr. Hoffa’s disappearance approaches, the FBI Detroit Field Office remains steadfast in its commitment to pursuing all credible leads," said Special Agent Cheyvoryea Gibson.

“The case remains an active investigation, and we continue to encourage anyone with information to submit a tip at tips.fbi.gov or call 1-800-CALL-FBI.”

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