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Search for Hoffa based on inmate tip

Unidentified workers dig near a barn at a horse farm Thursday in Milford Township, Mich., where FBI agents acting on a tip are investigating Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa's 1975 disappearance. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)
David Ashenfelter and Joe Swickard Detroit Free Press
Unidentified workers dig near a barn at a horse farm Thursday in Milford Township, Mich., where FBI agents acting on a tip are investigating Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa's 1975 disappearance. (Associated Press / The Spokesman-Review)

DETROIT – A tip from a 75-year-old federal inmate gave FBI agents what they’re calling their latest and best chance yet to crack the 30-year-old mystery of what happened to former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

The clue brought engineers, anthropologists, ground-penetrating radar, backhoes and dozens of federal and local law officials to the pastoral and eerily ironic named Hidden Dreams Farm in Oakland County, Mich.

During a news conference at the farm Thursday, Detroit FBI chief Dan Roberts wouldn’t detail what brought out 40-50 agents, the largest FBI search in at least two decades. But he said the tip is promising.

“Since I’ve been here, this is the best lead I’ve seen come across in the Hoffa investigation,” said Roberts, who has been in Detroit two years.

He said the search would take up to two weeks and will involve removing a 30-by-100-foot barn.

Roberts said Thursday’s search produced nothing of significance, a familiar refrain for law enforcement officials.

The digging began Wednesday when agents swooped down on the horse farm once owned by Hoffa associate Rolland McMaster, a longtime suspect in Hoffa’s disappearance, said people involved with the ongoing case and who declined to be identified because of the active investigation.

The tip that Hoffa was buried on the farm came from Donovan Wells, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison two years ago in a marijuana smuggling scheme involving his Michigan trucking company. Wells, who also was known as Don Wells, is a former associate of McMaster, who was a top Detroit Teamsters official until a reputed falling-out with Hoffa in the late 1960s.

Officials wouldn’t say what Wells told the FBI, but said he passed a polygraph test.

During an interview Thursday, McMaster said that account was worthy of a drug-addled imagination.

One insider said the tip is a long shot because it would have been reckless to hide Hoffa’s remains on McMaster’s farm.

McMaster bought the property in Milford Township in 1952 and sold it in a land-contract deal in 1977, according to Oakland County land records.

Now 93 and living on a farm in Fenton, Mich., McMaster denied any knowledge of Hoffa’s fate. He said an FBI agent came to see him Tuesday and discussed his relations with Hoffa.

Federal agents say they believe that McMaster had a falling out with Hoffa soon after Hoffa went to prison for racketeering and jury tampering in the late 1960s. McMaster denied that claim.

Hoffa vanished on July 30, 1975, after going to a Detroit-area restaurant for a meeting with Detroit Mafia captain Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano, a mobbed-up New Jersey Teamsters official.

Both Giacalone and Provenzano are now dead.

Hoffa expert Dan Moldea, a Washington, D.C., author who wrote “The Hoffa Wars,” said Wells is a key figure in the case.

Both Barr and McMaster were called before a federal grand jury in Detroit after Hoffa vanished. Moldea said he interviewed Wells in 1976 and that Wells denied any knowledge of Hoffa’s disappearance.

The FBI says it believes McMaster may know what happened to Hoffa. Wells is locked up at a federal medical center in Lexington, Ky.