Posted on 07/16/2003 12:38:23 PM PDT by Shermy
Authorities swarmed a Hampton Township neighborhood today in a search for the remains of James R. Hoffa, the Teamsters union boss missing since 1975.
Heavily armed sheriff's deputies escorted a former Bay County man to the back yard of the home at Harding Road and Nebobish Avenue, where he claims he buried the body of Hoffa.
The SWAT team from the Oakland County Sheriff's Department, along with the Oakland sheriff and prosecutor's staff, led Richard Powell to the spot where he says he buried the body in 1975.
Powell, 60, is serving a life sentence for murder. In previous interviews from prison, Powell has claimed to have driven the body of Hoffa north in a motor home after the union leader disappeared from an Oakland County restaurant.
Bay County Sheriff John Miller said he wasn't sure that Powell had anything to do with the disappearance of the former Teamsters leader. Police have speculated for years that Hoffa was abducted and killed by elements of organized crime in Detroit.
"I don't think there's anything back there," Miller said today at the scene. "The search warrant came out of Oakland County; we don't know much of anything about it."
In March, Powell told investigators he buried the body of a missing Bay City man in the crawl space beneath the Harding Street house. Acting on that information, state police investigators found the body of Robert A. Woods, who had been missing for almost 30 years.
Powell said he did not participate in the 1974 shooting death of Woods, but told police he knew who did it.
So far, no one has been charged in Woods' death.
Powell, an inmate in a state prison in Jackson, has said he was working for gangsters in Detroit while involved in an auto theft ring in eastern Michigan.
He said that at the time Hoffa disappeared, he was given an assignment to drive a motor home that contained a body wrapped in a rug to a spot in northern Michigan. He said they left the motor home there, and supposedly someone else came to dispose of the body.
However, authorities say Powell now says he buried the body in his back yard, and that he also buried a briefcase with incriminating hand-written evidence inside it, supposedly written by Chuckie O'Brien, an adopted son of Hoffa.
O'Brien originally was questioned in the disappearance but never was charged.
SWAT officers would not let any of the public near the Harding Road house. Neighbors gathered in small clusters on lawns across the street but declined to say much.
"There have been rumors about things going on there," said one woman who asked not to be identified. "That house has changed hands four or five times since the Powells lived there."
Bay County Prosecutor Joseph K. Sheeran said he was not expecting investigators to find anything in the search.
"We're just standing by to see if there's anything related to the Bay County case," he said.
Miller said Powell told officers that the body was buried on a spot where an above-ground pool now sits.
"You'd think that they would have had to do some digging to put that pool in and would have found whatever was there," Miller said. "It could be that Powell is just jerking their chain to get some attention."
But Miller didn't rule out that evidence of some kind might be buried on the property.
"This is their show," he said of the Oakland County authorities.
He said Oakland authorities obtained search warrants to allow them to search for evidence involving Hoffa's case.
An Oakland County sheriff's helicopter hovered over the search site and the road in front of the house was jammed with television news crews from Detroit stations, along with a producer from the "NBC Dateline" program.
Powell didn't speak to anyone as he was led from the property under heavy guard and placed in the back of an Oakland County sheriff's car. It was not known if he will be brought back to the home later or where they were keeping him in the meantime.
The Oakland prosecutor and staff were driven to Hampton Township by limousine bus.
Powell is serving a sentence in the shooting death of Si Jin Ahn, the wife of a Saginaw doctor who was his landlord in Saginaw in 1982.
After killing her, he tried to extort money from her husband and was followed by FBI agents when he picked up the ransom money in Saginaw. The woman's body was found wrapped in plastic in the garage of the house.
"He has lied in the past and I wouldn't be surprised if he is lying again," Miller said. "He has had a number of versions of this story and Oakland County decided to believe him."
- Tim Younkman covers area police agencies for The Times. He can be contacted at 894-9652.
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I wouldn't know . . . your post is the first I've read on the subject.
Miller said Powell told officers that the body was buried on a spot where an above-ground pool now sits.
"You'd think that they would have had to do some digging to put that pool in and would have found whatever was there,"
Sounds like something that would happen in Kalif. Install an "above ground" pool by doing some digging?
If those guy's chip even one of my shingles with their back hoe bucket, there's going to be hell to pay.
LOL!
No problem.. I have parking arangements.
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