Roseville cops seek Hoffa under driveway
Detroit — A Michigan Department of Environmental Quality crew is scheduled to help police take a soil sample to test for human remains under a Roseville driveway Friday after investigators received a tip that missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa may be buried there.
The tip originally was received in March by Dan Moldea, a Washington D.C.-based author of the book “The Hoffa Wars.” Moldea said he told the man, whom Moldea would not identify but stressed is “not a mob guy,” to contact the FBI.
“I was skeptical about it,” said Moldea, who said he knows the story behind the information, but could not disclose it. “He told me the story about why he believed Hoffa was buried at this particular location. He was adamant about it.”
The FBI has led the probe since the union leader’s 1975 disappearance outside an Oakland County restaurant. But the agency is not involved in the latest search. Roseville is proceeding because investigators interviewed the tipster and deemed his information credible, said James Berlin, the city’s police chief.
“He gave us lots of information,” Berlin said. “We independently verified as much of that information as possible to determine if he was a credible source.
“As a result, we thought it was credible enough to do a ground-penetrating radar test. The test showed that there was an anomaly that coincided with the information the source gave us. The next step will be to do a core sample, to test the soil for human remains.”
Another alternative to ground penetrating radar is to rely on utility maps and surveys. The problem here is that if you depend on these resources for accuracy, you might as well be digging blindly. There is no way to analyze the situation without breaking ground… and if you are wrong then it is a very expensive and dangerous mistake.