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'70s landowner doubts search will find Hoffa's remains

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 21, 2006

MILFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich. - As the FBI tries to locate the remains of Jimmy Hoffa at a horse farm in suburban Detroit, people whose families have owned the land in the years since the former Teamsters leader disappeared say they believe it is unlikely the body will turn up.

The farm was owned by former Hoffa associate Rolland McMaster when the labor leader disappeared in summer 1975. A government investigator said Friday that Donovan Wells, who lived on the land at the time, was the one who gave the FBI the tip that has sparked an intense effort to solve a legendary mystery.

But Sturges Ducoing, a horse trainer who bought the farm from McMaster, called the search "ludicrous" and said in the years he knew McMaster, he never heard about Hoffa.

"I think it's just a big waste of money," said Ducoing, who now lives in Metairie, La. "Who knows why all of the sudden this came up?"

County records show Ducoing purchased the farm in January 1977.

The FBI said it may have to remove a 30- by 100-foot barn to dig beneath it. The Associated Press reported that an unnamed law enforcement official in Washington said organized-crime members held meetings in a barn at the farm before Hoffa's death.

But Ducoing, who sold the farm in 1980 to John Rakolta Sr., said the land was undisturbed woods when he bought it. He said he built the first structure, a pole barn, and started on a home that was never finished.

Ducoing doubts McMaster would have been willing to sell land with a corpse.

"Would you sell the acreage that the guy was buried on?" Ducoing said.

John Rakolta Jr., whose father bought the farm from Ducoing, said he, too, heard nothing about Hoffa's remains being there when he was growing up.

"This is a shocker to all of us," he said.

Rakolta said his father sold the farm to James and Laura Jackson in 1996.

Donald Shouse worked for the Jacksons, running a bulldozer and helping to build another barn, an indoor arena, paddocks and hundreds of yards of white fence.

At the time, he heard rumors that Hoffa might be buried there.

"I didn't see anything, and I ran a 'dozer over the whole place," said Shouse, who now lives in nearby Highland Township.

The FBI, which has brought in anthropologists, geologists and architects, continued work Saturday. Diggers used shovels and a backhoe. The search began Wednesday and was expected to take a couple of weeks.

[Last modified May 21, 2006, 07:40:34]