Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Hoffa tip fails to solve mystery

Bloodstains found in Detroit house were not union leader's, FBI says in analysis.

By Mike Martindale / The Detroit News

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BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP -- Bloodstains found beneath the floorboards of a Detroit house are human but they don't belong to missing former Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa.

That's the conclusion of the FBI, which analyzed the blood and reported back Monday to police in Bloomfield Township, where Hoffa disappeared nearly 30 years ago.

"From the start, we were skeptical of this," Bloomfield Township Police Chief Jeffrey Werner said. "But you don't have a choice in the leads you follow up."

Werner and Oakland County Prosecutor David Gorcyca spoke Monday at a press conference at the police station, located on Telegraph Road, less than a mile from the former Machus Red Fox restaurant, where Hoffa is believed to have held his last business meeting in July 1975.

Hoffa was to meet Detroit mob enforcer Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and New Jersey mob figure Anthony (Tony Pro) Provenzano.

The union leader called his wife from a pay phone that afternoon and was never seen again.

The new investigation was driven by a Fox News inquiry last year, and Hoffa acquaintance Frank Sheeran's claim that he killed Hoffa in a Detroit house. Sheeran died in 2003 at 83.

In author Charles Brandt's "I Heard You Paint Houses," Sheeran said Hoffa's adopted son Chuckie O'Brien drove Hoffa, Sheeran and another mobster, Sal Briguglio, to a house in Detroit.

Hoffa and Sheeran went into the house and the other two men drove off.

Sheeran says he shot Hoffa twice behind the right ear.

You can reach Mike Martindale at (248) 647-7226 or mmartindale@detnews.com.