FBI obtains warrant to excavate site in search for remains of Jimmy Hoffa

Former Teamsters boss's disappearance has remained unsolved for more than 45 years

Jimmy Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, when he was to meet reported gangsters in suburban Detroit, Michigan. AP

The decades-long odyssey to find the remains of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa has apparently turned to a former US landfill that sits below an elevated road.

The FBI obtained a search warrant to “conduct a site survey underneath the Pulaski Skyway”, said Mara Schneider, a spokeswoman for the Detroit, Michigan, field office.

“On October 25 and 26, FBI personnel from the Newark and Detroit field offices completed the survey and that data is currently being analysed,” Ms Schneider said.

She did not indicate whether anything was removed from the site in New Jersey.

“Because the affidavit in support of the search warrant was sealed by the court, we are unable to provide any additional information,” Ms Schneider explained.

Hoffa’s disappearance has been unsolved for more than 45 years.

He was last seen on July 30, 1975, when he was to meet reputed Detroit gangster Anthony “Tony Jack” Giacalone and reported New Jersey gang figure Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano at a restaurant in suburban Detroit.

The latest effort appears to be tied to interviews given by a man named Frank Cappola, who was a teenager in the 1970s and worked at the old PJP Landfill in Jersey City with his father, Paul Cappola.

Mr Cappola said his dying father explained in 2008 how Hoffa’s body was delivered to the landfill in 1975, placed in a steel drum and buried with other barrels, bricks and dirt, The New York Times and Fox News reported.

The younger Mr Cappola spoke to Fox Nation and journalist Dan Moldea before he died in 2020 and signed a document with his father’s detailed story.

Moldea has written extensively about the search for Hoffa.

The search over the years has included various digs in rural Michigan and even the removal of floorboards at a Detroit house.