Some of their homes are referred to as "Hoffa houses," reports CNN. Some hear questions like "Aren't you the Hoffa lady?"
Jessica Ravitz of CNN reports on the people over the decades who have been mpacted by tips on Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa's whereabouts and had law enforcement digging up their property. The report comes at the heels of the 39-year anniversary of Hoffa's disappearance on June 30, 1975.
Ravitz reports that the people are part of "an exclusive club that none of its members asked to join: those innocent Michigan residents whose lives have been upended in the search for Hoffa's body."
One of the people she interviews is Pat Szpunar, a 74-year-old widow whose Roseville property was dug up by law enforcement in a search for Hoffa's body in 2012.
In September 2012, she recalled two local police detectives came to her door and said they suspected a body might be buried in her backyard, according to CNN. She laughed.
"What?" she asked. "You think Jimmy Hoffa's buried back there?"
Pat Szpunar and Rickey Wilson Sr. had their properties searched.
She said the detectives looked stunned but wouldn’t say who was buried there. Then a reporter came and started asking questions about Hoffa.
Soon, Szpunar says, things got very crazy. Law enforcement was digging up the property, helicopters hovered above and gawkers gathered along with the media. She called it a “five-ring circus.” Authorities drilled two holes into the concrete under the shed on the driveway.
She said people crowded around the house, some taking pictures. She came out at some point and started taking pictures of them, according to the CNN report.
"They got angry at me," she says with a smile. "But they got angry enough to go home."
Authorities found nothing.
Spunzar thought the whole thing was absurd, telling CNN:
"What'd they think? Hoffa was gonna jump up out of that ground and wave at them and say, 'Hi! Here I am!' Here I am!" "I mean, how ridiculous can you get?"
Ravitz writes:
But one thing is for sure: Each time a search proves fruitless, investigators and media walk away, leaving shell-shocked property owners in their wake.
CNN also talks to others including Rickey Wilson Sr., 56, whose home in northwest Detroit was searched with the thought that Hoffa may have been killed there.
The tip came from an end-of-life confession of Frank Sheeran, a Teamster leader who was close to Hoffa and reportedly had mob ties.
Wilson tells CNN that he had dreams when he and his family moved in to the home that two or three men were fighting in the front hallway.
Then in spring of 2004, a Fox News team from New York came knocking on the door and said someone famous had been killed in the home. He asked if it was Hoffa, according to CNN. The crew turned white.
CNN reports that Sheeran had told told Fox correspondent Eric Shawn and author Charles Brandt that he'd killed Hoffa in the house years before Wilson bought it in 1989.
Wilson allowed Fox News to bring in a forensic team, peeled up the tile and test the hardwood for blood.
CNN writes:
When Brandt's book came out, the rest of the media swarmed. Wilson, his wife and four children avoided the brunt of the chaos. He says Fox News, set on having the exclusive, sent them off with a credit card to a five-star hotel, where they stayed for four days.
They slept undisturbed by calls or bright lights. The kids enjoyed the pool. Sometimes the family would drive near the house to get a quick glimpse of the commotion before scooting away.
The FBI and State Police got involved but concluded that blood found in the house was not that of Hoffa's.
That doesn't change Wilson's thoughts on the matter.
"I believe he was killed there," Wilson tells CNN. "They may find his body somewhere, but like I said, he was killed there. I'm sure of that."
Wilson sold the house in 2010.
