A DISTURBANCE in the earth beneath the old third base of a now-demolished baseball stadium may mark the spot where whacked union boss Jimmy Hoffa was laid to eternal rest.
Hoffa’s disappearance in the summer of 1975 has continued to perplex investigators for decades, but a crack team of professional sleuths known as The Case Breakers are determined to find conclusive answers once and for all.
The ex-president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters vanished without a trace after being stood up at a meeting at a restaurant in Detroit, Michigan, on July 30, 1975.
He called his wife from a payphone, telling her he’d be home shortly but he failed to uphold his word, and his car was later found abandoned outside the restaurant.
Where Hoffa was taken next is still unknown, though it’s widely suspected he was assassinated by the mob after his attempts to revitalize his political career irked prominent Mafiosos.
He was pronounced legally dead in 1982 and numerous excavations in several different states in the years since have turned up no trace of him.
But The Case Breakers believe they are onto a homerun in their mission to solve the Hoffa case, thanks to some cryptic instructions scribbled on a playing card by a dying crooked cop 27 years ago.
Those instructions point to the third base of the since-demolished Milwaukee County Stadium in Wisconsin as Hoffa’s likely resting place.
The old base plate is now located beneath a parking lot next to the current Milwaukee Brewers stadium, American Family Field.
Case Breakers member and retired Chicago detective Jim Zimmerman told The U.S. Sun he’s 50/50 on whether Hoffa’s remains are still buried there but he’s sure they were there at one stage.
Buoying Zimmerman’s beliefs is a series of tests he conducted at the site with the help of other investigators.
Those tests included surveying the earth beneath the parking lot using ground-penetrating radar.
“And lo and behold, right where third base would be, coincidentally enough, there was a disturbance in the ground in that location,” said Zimmerman.
Zimmerman shared that the radar was only able to detect 5 feet beneath the ground because an unexpected layer of clear was blocking the signal.
He believes that’s a sign that a dig had hastily taken place at the site of the disturbance and was hastily backfilled.
The crack team of sleuths also brought a top cadaver dog expert to the site, Carren Corcoran, whose K-9, Moxy, reportedly gave several positive signals of remains nearby.
and his fellow Case Breakers are urging the FBI or state officials to dig up soil samples from the plot of land in question to test for signs of human decomposition.
They are hoping to drill a hole 20 feet down through the concrete beneath the pavilion.
Zimmerman said the investigation remains at the mercy of the FBI and without the bureau’s blessing, the probe can go forward no further.
As things stand, Zimmerman said he’s around 65% certain the case can be solved, warning mobsters that the truth may soon prevail.
“My 35% of doubt comes from the fact that if they moved the body from under the plate, then we’re likely out of witnesses who could tell us where he was taken next,” said Zimmerman.
“We’d be out of luck until someone came forward at a later date, but this story may spur someone to do that and tell us they know their uncle moved the body for whatever reason, and here’s where he put it.
“But with the excavation, if that gets approved, I feel we’d be really close.
“I would be nervous if I was involved, put it that way.
“I would be getting very nervous.”
It was Zimmerman who first brought the existence of the cryptic Hoffa playing card to the attention of the Case Breakers.
He revealed earlier this year the card belonged to a relative of his ex-girlfriend named Harold Walthers who was a crooked cop believed to have been involved in Hoffa’s disappearance.
Walthers died in 1997, but before his passing Zimmerman says the ailing police sergeant gave the card to his niece, telling her, “If something happens to me, you’ll know what to do.”
Walthers’ niece, Michelle, looked at the card and saw “J. Hoffa” written at the top, along with a reference to infamous Chicago gangster Joey Aiuppa, a rendezvous date of “9-16-95”, and a location of “3rd base Milwaukee Ball Park.”
According to Case Breakers, Walthers had been indicted for jewelry robbery, bribery, extortion, and other charges during his 20-year law enforcement career.
The group believes he became a trusted associate of mafia don Aiuppa, who once reportedly gifted him a home next to his estate some years before Hoffa’s disappearance.
But Walthers’ playing card would stay a secret for three decades.
Michelle, fearful for her life and the lives of her family, made Zimmerman promise to tell nobody about the card, which he agreed to do until Michelle felt comfortable enough to come forward.
“Michelle was very worried in the 90s that the people involved in this were still alive and maybe even active in the mob,” shared Zimmerman.
“Fast forward to 2018, and while Michelle and I are no longer together, I called her when I was working for The Case Breakers and said now might be a good opportunity to investigate that card.
“I told her anyone with ties to Hoffa is either very old or long dead […] she eventually agreed to share it with Case Breakers.”
The Case Breakers believe Hoffa’s remains were moved to Milwaukee County Stadium in 1995, having been stored in an unknown location for 20 years.
According to the group’s research, months before Hoffa vanished in 1975, Walthers suddenly abandoned his home on Aiuppa’s estate to move to Minocqua, Wisconsin.
Zimmerman said Walther bragged to his fishing friends he had “cased” Hoffa before his murder and knew where he was buried.
He later moved into a trailer in a remote lot in Northwood within two months of Hoffa’s disappearance.
The Case Breakers are exploring whether Walthers may have been hiding Hoffa’s’ body in the Northwood area before the alleged 1995 stadium reburial.
According to Zimmerman, Walthers’ Wisconsin fishing friends told him that each year a group of “well-dressed men in suits” would come up to Northwood and hand him a stuffed envelope.
Zimmerman believes Walthers may have been getting paid by the mob for his silence or potentially a service related to Hoffa.
In search of conclusive answers, Zimmerman and other volunteers from The Case Breakers have visited the old Milwaukee County Stadium site a handful of times since 2020 to conduct various tests.
Today, there is a plaque on the outside American Family field that marks the location of home plate at County Stadium.
However, the Case Breakers say they created more accurate geotags using the old aerial photos collected and found the home base is 15ft from where it should be.
A 90ft line from the suspected old home plate location led investigators to a left-field pavilion, where third base would’ve been at County Stadium.
The following information was shared by The Case Breakers in an 18-page Jimmy Hoffa dossier sent to the FBI to make their case:
March 1963: Harold Walthers is let go by Chicago PD over a bribery scandal and joins Oakbrook PD
August 1964: Walthers and his partner are indicted by a grand jury for a jewelry robbery
1967: Walthers is introduced to Joey Aiuppa by his partner and moves into a home on the mobster’s property
1969: Walthers retires from Oakbrook PD and moves to Northwood Wisconsin
Spring 1975: Walthers is fired from his part-time job with the Prieda County Coroner
July 30, 1975: Jimmy Hoffa vanishes
September 1976: Walthers moves to a remote lot and trailer near Woodruff, in Northwood
September 9, 1995: Hoffa’s remains potentially moved to third base at Milwaukee County Stadium
February 22, 1996: Joey Aiuppa dies
Spring 1996: Walthers shows his niece Michelle an ace of spades card pertaining to Hoffa, telling her “If something happens to me, you’ll know what to do.”
April 4, 1997: Walthers dies
April 2020: Michelle agrees to share the card with The Case Breakers
June 2020: Ground scan performed at the old Milwaukee County Stadium grounds
October 2023: K-9 search conducted, resulting in four alerts to human remains
They deployed the ground radar there and claimed to have discovered one disturbed area almost exactly where the third base would’ve stood.
Additionally, Moxy the cadaver dog alerted to the scene of remaining in an area adjacent to the old base on a grassy patch.
Recounting his conversation with the K-9 handler, Zimmerman said, “We never told her where the third base would be and never told her that we expected to find something beneath the third base, and while the dog was out there doing its thing, it alerted right where third base was, on four different occasions.
“So with that being said, that shows me that our ground-penetrating radar was right and there was or there is a dead body there.
“The dogs are not going to alert on anything other than a dead body.”
At the time of Hoffa’s believed reburial (Sept. 16, 1995), the Brewers were on a road trip with nine games still to play in their season.
They returned home on the 22nd to begin a season-ending homestand.
While it seems unlikely that conspirators could’ve buried a body below third base during the season, Zimmerman believes the date listed on Walthers’ playing card was the date Walthers was “told where Hoffa was buried, not necessarily the date Hoffa was buried on.”
Greg Hoffman – a veteran journalist who authored a book about the history of County Stadium, Down in the Valley – was brought in by The Case Breakers to consult on the matter.
In a statement, Hoffman told The U.S. Sun, “During my years of research for that book, I never heard of any rumors about Hoffa or remains.
“Plus, the site was extensively excavated for taking down County Stadium, building [the nearby] Miller Park and Helfaer Park. [It’s] Difficult to believe any transplanted remains could survive.
“That does not mean I discount the work done by Tom and his research team. I know they used sophisticated detection tech and techniques that could detect such things.
“They struck me with their professionalism and thoroughness.
“Jimmy could indeed be there in some form or the other. But, I have no expertise to offer beyond my history of the stadium.”
The Case Breakers submitted an 18-page report of their findings regarding Hoffa which was acknowledged by the FBI and the state governor’s office earlier this year, the group says.
(The FBI declined to comment on this story, citing the ongoing nature of the Hoffa probe.)
So far, Zimmerman said the bureau has appeared “skeptical” of their findings.
“I believe they weren’t very receptive in the beginning because there have been at least seven others of these tips and leads, like in New Jersey and Michigan, which have turned up nothing,” said Zimmerman.
“And I’ve always paid close attention to those searches, and every time it was a no, I would smile and it made me feel that Jimmy was still under third base in Milwaukee.
“So each time every other search failed, it gave me enough confidence until I finally brought this case to The Case Breakers.”
Zimmerman added, “It’s now in the hands of the FBI, and we’re going to assist them as much as they allow us because they’re their own entity. I worked on an FBI task force for four years and they’re not necessarily good at accepting help or taking advice.
“So we’re at their mercy with how they want to run with this.”
