Nearly two weeks of digging at a Michigan horse farm have ended with no solution to the Jimmy Hoffa mystery and the start of a new one: what prompted the FBI to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on what critics said was a dubious 30-year-old tip, asks the Detroit News? Acting on a lead called “fairly credible,” the FBI probed the farm with long metal rods, demolished a horse barn, and dug a massive hole before admitting that agents found no trace of the former Teamsters president who disappeared from a restaurant July 30, 1975. One FBI agent expected the search cost, including the replacement of the horse barn, would be “under $250,000,” although some have speculated it will top $500,000.
“It was astonishingly bad information that they acted on,” said Charles Brandt, who wrote “I Heard You Paint Houses,” a 2004 book about Hoffa’s disappearance. “I’ve been saying they will find nothing,” said Brandt, who believes Hoffa’s killers cremated his body. “This was a silly dig.” Lawyer Mayer Morganroth, who represents the now-92-year-old former farm owner,, said, “We told them from the beginning there’s nothing there and the whole thing is a bunch of baloney.” Said FBI agent Judith Chilen: “We do not put a price tag on kidnapping/murder investigations, as we treat all human life on an equal basis.”
Link: http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060531/METRO/605310378