Will FBI hunt for Hoffa’s body in Giants Stadium debris?

In the November 1989 issue of Playboy, Donald "Tony the Greek" Frankos said Jimmy Hoffa's body was buried at Giants Stadium.

Cut in pieces. Put in a steel drum.

Emtombed in concrete at Section 107, near the end zone.

Gives new meaning to the term "coffin corner," joked Sports Illustrated.

Twenty years later, a new billion-dollar stadium is rising in the Meadowlands, and the old Giants Stadium will host one last round of pro football - and Bruce Springsteen concerts.

Next year, the walls will come a-tumblin' down.

So, will the authorities check for the remains of the Hoffa, the legendary Teamsters boss, last seen alive in Detroit in July 1975?

Apparently not.

The FBI officially punted that idea back in 1989.

"Never say never, but it is a remote possibility he is buried there," said Special Agent Hal Helterhoff then, after the investigation failed to find "any substantiation."

The teardown changes nothing, said Special Agent Bryan Travers yesterday.

"If there was some credible information, we wouldn't wait until the stadium was being demolished," he said. "We would go in there and aggressively look for it ...

"We would never wait this long. ... We would have no problem digging a giant hole at the 50-yard line if we thought there was reason to act," he said.

"No, there are no plans," said Alice McGillion, spokeswoman for the New Meadowlands Stadium Corp., the company formed to build the privately financed new home of the Giants and the New York Jets, and tear down the old one.

The decision's up to law enforcement, but so far no agencies have spoken up, she said.

"The stadium will taken down next spring, and the area will become a parking lot," she said.

Nationally, the last big buzz about the Hoffa case was in 2006, when the FBI's Detroit office, acting on a tip, brought a bulldozer to the Hidden Dreams horse farm in Milford Township, Mich.

No hidden Hoffa.

In 2004, investigators tested bloodstained floorboards from a Detroit home, because of published allegations that Frank Sheeran, a Philadelphia and Delaware union leader, confessed, just before he died, to shooting Hoffa.

The blood, though, wasn't Hoffa's.

A backyard pool was excavated the year before, again to no avail.

But it can't be said that no hair from his head was ever found.

A strand was recovered from a car that an associate, Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien, drove the night of the disappearance. Testing identified the hair as Hoffa's in 2001.

Other theories: His remains were dumped in a Florida swamp, rendered in a fat-rendering plant, became part of a scrap-metal block shipped to Japan.

No plans have yet been made to sell or auctions parts of the old Giants Stadium, McGillion said.

One wonders if mementos of legendary Section 107 might fetch a nice price with collectors.

As for an old 50-gallon drum showing up, encased in concrete there - well, that might be a case of Jimmy Hoffa rolling over in his grave.

Inquirer wire services contributed to this report.