'Mount Everest of cold cases': Why a group of investigators thinks Jimmy Hoffa might be buried under American Family Field
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- The connection linking American Family Field and Jimmy Hoffa, an infamous labor boss who's been missing for nearly 50 years, is a playing card.
A group of independent investigators, calling themselves the 'Case Breakers' says that card, an ace of spades, sparked an investigation that has members wanting to dig up soil samples from the ballpark property.
The group is made up of about 40 former and retired police and military personnel.
Joe Zimmerman, a former Chicago-area police officer who's now a Case Breakers investigator, said in an interview Thursday he found out about the card through a woman he once dated. She was the niece of a former Chicago cop who, like Hoffa, had ties to the mob.
Zimmerman said before Harold Walthers died, he told his niece to make sure that ace of spades didn't get lost.
"He says, 'If anything ever happens to me, make sure you take that card off the bulletin board in the back room,'" Zimmerman recalled.
After Walthers' death, Zimmerman said he went to the man's Northwoods property and recovered that card from the bulletin board. A photo of the card is in the Case Breakers' report; handwriting on the card reads, 'J Hoffa,' 'Joe Ioppa,' which the investigators believe is a reference to Chicago mobster Joey Aiuppa, and '3rd Base Milwaukee Ballpark 9-16-1995.'
This card found in the home of Harold Walthers, a former Chicago cop with mob ties, was the first clue that led investigators to Milwaukee
Investigators then set out to find where third base once sat at Milwaukee County Stadium, which was the Brewers' home until 2000.
There's now a plaque on the concourse at Helfaer Field, the little league diamond outside of American Family Field, that marks the location of home plate at County Stadium.
However, the Case Breakers maintain they created more accurate geotags using old aerial photos from UW-Madison and latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates.
"The plaque where home base is set, that's not the right location," Case Breakers Vice Chair Erik Kleinsmith said. "It was actually 15 feet away, out in the parking lot."
A 90-foot line from the suspected old home plate location led investigators to a left field pavilion, where third base would've been at County Stadium. Next, they scanned the area with ground-penetrating radar.
"There was only one disturbed area, and that was where third base is supposed to be," Jim Christy, another Case Breakers investigator, said.
Investigators then brought in cadaver dogs on October 2 to comb the area. Kleinsmith said no one told the dog handlers where they suspected human remains might be and asked them to instead cover a large chunk of the parking lots surrounding Helfaer Field.
A Case Breakers cadaver dog sniffs the area around Helfaer Field last month.
"The dogs identified the exact same spot," Kleinsmith said. "So, once we had that double verification of the location, especially from the cadaver dogs, that was the point where we felt much more confident."
Yet, the Brewers still played nine home games after September 16, 1995. The team was on the road on the 16th but returned home on the 22nd to begin a season-ending homestand. If someone had torn up the infield to dispose of Hoffa's remains, wouldn't that have been noticeable?
"I was always under the impression that was date that Harold [Walthers] met with these people and was told where Hoffa was buried," Zimmerman said. "Not necessarily the date Hoffa was buried on."
Christy, a former cyber forensics specialist in the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, said after persistently calling and emailing the FBI, he convinced an agent earlier this week to look through a report the group compiled.
Christy said he understands why the FBI would be skeptical given seven previous unsuccessful exhumations in Michigan and New Jersey between Hoffa's disappearance in July 1975 and a search in New Jersey in July 2022.
He added the Case Breakers weren't yet calling for a full excavation at American Family Field. For now, they want investigators to drill a hole beneath the pavilion and collect soil samples.
"For $450, we can drill a hole through that concrete down 20 feet, and in about 20 minutes, take a soil sample out, and let the cadaver dogs sniff that," Christy said. "If they get a hit, then you know you have human remains. And whether it's Jimmy Hoffa or someone else, there should be an exhumation".
Leonard Peace, a spokesperson for the FBI's Milwaukee field office, said Thursday the agency couldn't comment because the Hoffa case remains an open investigation. The Brewers did not return messages Thursday.
Hoffa gained a large following throughout much of the 1950s and '60s as the leader of the Teamsters, but he was also suspected of working closely with the mob until he was convicted of jury tampering in 1967.
By 1975, Hoffa reportedly had a falling out with New Jersey Mafia boss Anthony Provenzano, a New Jersey mafia don. Hoffa disappeared after a meeting with Provenzano at a restaurant outside Detroit on July 30, 1975.
The Case Breakers acknowledged it's possible that if remains are under American Family Field, they might belong to someone else, or Hoffa's remains got moved when County Stadium was demolished.
Still, they believe federal and local investigators should support their push to obtain and test soil samples.
"They might not have identified Jimmy Hoffa, but he may have been buried there in the past and then accidentally dug up and discarded as part of the industrial waste of redoing that ballpark," Kleinsmith said. "But somebody was there, and it could be him, and that's worth looking at."