Jimmy Hoffa: A dead case but never closed

DETROIT (FOX 2) - Editor's note: this is part FOUR of our specials on the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. In part two, we dissected the frustrating case and why nobody has ever been charged. Tuesday night at 10 p.m., we'll wrap up our five special pieces with an exclusive interview of James P. Hoffa, Jimmy Hoffa's son.

Five decades since Jimmy Hoffa got into that car in the parking lot of Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield and not a single trace of the once-powerful man has ever been found.

One of many questions that has lingered for decades is how does someone so famous and powerful just vanish? Jimmy Hoffa has been dead for years but the case is still much alive.

Empty tips in the search for Hoffa

"Obviously some people were not forthcoming at the time, they were not being honest with law enforcement as they should've been," Andy Arena said.

Over the past 50 years, tips have poured in across the country.

There were theories far and wide – but also here at home in Detroit.

"Another local theory is that Jimmy Hoffa ended up in the foundation of the Renaissance Center. The Renaissance Center was being built at that time, and they were pouring footings a few weeks after July 30th," Historian Rebecca Salminen Witt said. "After those theories you get a little farther afield."

Another tip said that Hoffa was shipped to New Jersey in a barrel and then buried in a dump under a New Jersey bridge. There was also an urban legend that Hoffa's body was buried under the end zone of Giants Stadium as it was also being built at that time.

"Maybe he became a protective witness. Maybe the CIA took him out. Maybe the mob took him closer to home back to Jersey where they could laugh about where he was buried all that time," Witt said about the long list of theories.

On the 19th anniversary, in 2004, mob hitman Frank Sheeran, the focal point of the book 'I Heard You Paint Houses'  and the movie ‘The Irishman’, said he murdered Hofffa in a Detroit home on the west side.

The FBI and investigators searched and found blood – but it didn't belong to Hoffa.

The Detroit search was one of many done in the search for Hoffa's body.

"We're in Metropolitan Detroit. Everybody has a story of someone's farm field getting dug up, looking for Jimmy Hoffa," Witt said.

In 2006, the feds spent two weeks digging up a farm in Milford. They found a lot of dirt but no Hoffa.

Six years later, they dug up a driveway in Roseville. Then again in Oakland Township the next year.

A New Jersey dig may have been the hottest tip as a mobster's son said his dad claimed to put Hoffa in a barrel and then buried him.

That tip, like everything else, led to nothing.

Digging deeper and finding nothing

Another theory is that Hoffa's body was moved in the late 1990s and moved to Milwaukee.

Arena said the FBI has to search out every single lead.

"If you get that, you've gotta do what you can. As I said, the family, they deserve the closure," he said.

The truth of it all is buried and former TV 2 reporter Nancy McCauley said she doesn't think that will ever change.

"I don't think he'll ever be found. I think whoever did it was professional," she said.

The truth about Hoffa

The reality is Hoffa's body is likely gone. The mob had a number of funeral home snot far from the Machus Red Fox and he could have just as easily been taken to one of those and cremated – or driven to Hamtramck.

"He also may have been stuffed in that trunk, driven down to Hamtramck, a 20-minute drive from the Machus Red Fox in Bloomfield Township and incinerated," Witt said. "There was an incinerator there that was owned by a couple of brothers who were known to be organized criminals. That incinerator had been used to incinerate people before. This was a known fact." 

Even if police could have searched that facility, they would had to do it immediately after he disappeared.

"A couple weeks after July 30th that place was burned down," Witt said. "The police say the incinerator was burned down-- arson. I think it's fairly like that those things could've been connected."

Instead of uncovering the truth, each dig and shovelful only made the truth murky.

The truth of what happened to Hoffa is all behind the sealed lips of the mob. And the story gets to be retold by those who investigated, study, and report.

"He was this old rough-and-tumble bare-knuckle union guy," Arena said. "He almost to us had become almost a cartoon character. He fought for the rights of his union workers. He may have gotten too closely involved with some organized crime guys. But he was a colorful guy."

"I wish somehow we could find out what happened to Jimmy Hoffa," McCauley said.

"People forget the real humanity that was involved here. Jimmy Hoffa had a family. He had children. They miss him still," Witt said. "Jimmy Hoffa was both loved and revered and understood to be willing to do illegal things. So I think it really seems the popular opinion was split between horrified that we've lost this champion of the people-- what are we going to do now? To – looks like he finally got what was coming to him."