Jimmy Hoffa Dig Results: No Human Remains

Last week Roseville police received a tip from an anonymous Michigan man about a body buried in the driveway of a suburban Michigan home.

No trace of human remains was found in soil taken from beneath the suburban Detroit shed where a tipster believed Jimmy Hoffa may have been buried, Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV reported.

That finding by a forensic anthropologist Tuesday marked yet another dead end after decades of false leads in locating the missing Teamsters boss' final resting place.

Investigators had dug up the Roseville, Mich., driveway last Friday, after police received a tip from a man who claimed the prior homeowner had been up all night the day Hoffa disappeared in 1975, pouring concrete over the driveway, The Associated Press reported.

According to the unidentified tipster, the previous homeowner was a bookmaker for Detroit Mafia captain Anthony Giacalone, who was a suspect in Hoffa’s disappearance 37 years ago.

Police had initially been skeptical of the tipster's claim. They believed that even if a body had been buried under the shed of the one-story home, it would likely not be Hoffa's, The Detroit Free Press reported.

Roseville Police Chief James Berlin had said the timeline of events didn’t coincide with Hoffa’s disappearance, as the homeowner who the tipster referenced didn’t own the property until three years after the union boss disappeared, according to the Free Press.

"Unless he was a renter, he wasn’t there to do this at the time Mr. Hoffa disappeared," Berlin said.

Had human remains been detected in the soil samples, investigators would have returned for another excavation in order to obtain some form of DNA, Berlin said. But Tuesday's negative test result mooted that possibility.

"That’s it, we’re done," Berlin said prior to the finding, in anticipation of a negative test result. "(We) seal the holes up and get on with our lives."

Hoffa was last seen in July 1975 outside an Oakland County restaurant where he was said to be meeting with a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia member, according to the AP.

Despite numerous searches over the years, Hoffa’s body has not yet been found. The searches included Giants Stadium in New Jersey and a Michigan horse farm that feds demolished in 2006. Other rumors of where his body could be found were said to be a Florida swamp or beneath General Motors' headquarters in Detroit. 

Portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1992 film "Hoffa," the real James Riddle "Jimmy" Hoffa began serving in 1967 a 13-year sentence behind bars after being found guilty three years earlier of bribery and jury tampering. He was also convicted of misusing union pension funds.

President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence in 1971, though Hoffa was banned from a union leadership role until 1980, according to Biography.com.

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