Where is Jimmy Hoffa?

Encyclopedia of Opinion

Question: Where is Jimmy Hoffa?
Position1 of 3›: Jimmy Hoffa was buried
Argument1 of 3›: Jimmy Hoffa was buried on a farm

A common and recent theory is that Jimmy Hoffa was buried in a suburban farm just outside of Detroit, close to the restaurant that Hoffa had disappeared from.

The argument

Among the sites proposed for Jimmy Hoffa's final resting place, the one that has attracted the most persistent attention is a farm just outside of Detroit. What recommends it is not a single piece of evidence but a set of circumstances that line up with the date of the disappearance. The connection begins with ownership. In 1975 the farm was owned by Rolland McMaster, a fellow teamster leader — a property inside the same union world Hoffa belonged to rather than one unconnected to him. Concealing a body requires somewhere that can be used without prompting questions, and land held by an associate satisfies that condition in a way an anonymous location would not. The specific claim came much later. In 2006 the FBI received information from an informant in prison that the farm was possibly where Hoffa was buried. According to the informant, suspicious activity had occurred on the farm during the day of Hoffa's disappearance: there was a backhoe on the property that day. The detail carries weight because a backhoe is the equipment a concealed burial would require, and its presence on that particular day ties the location to the timing rather than merely to the people involved. A second detail concerns what happened afterwards. The barn on the property, which had once been used for organized crime meetings, was never used again. The inference drawn is about behaviour rather than physical evidence: a building abandoned immediately after the date in question, by people who had previously found it useful, is consistent with something having happened there that made further use unwise. None of this has been confirmed, and the account rests on an informant's word. But it is on the strength of that combination — the ownership, the equipment, the day, and the disused barn — that many believe Hoffa was buried there.

Premises

[P1]An FBI informant reported that suspicious activity occurred on Rolland McMaster's farm outside Detroit on the day Hoffa disappeared, including the presence of a backhoe. [P2] McMaster was a fellow teamster leader, and the farm's barn — previously used for organized crime meetings — was never used again after that day. [P3] These circumstances point to the farm as the site where Hoffa's body was disposed of. [C] Therefore, Jimmy Hoffa was buried on a farm outside Detroit.

Counter-arguments

Although it at first seems plausible that Jimmy Hoffa could be buried at a suburban farm, an exhaustive search conducted by the FBI in 2006 found no evidence that Hoffa was ever buried there

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] The inference from the circumstances was tested directly and failed: the counter notes that the FBI conducted an exhaustive search of the property in 2006 and found no evidence that Hoffa had ever been buried there. [Rejecting C] With the site itself excavated and nothing recovered, the circumstantial pattern the premises assemble no longer supports the conclusion drawn from it.