Hoffa Informant Donovan Wells Passed FBI Polygraph

Pete Yost of the Associated Press reports:

Hoffa Informant Said to Pass Polygraph

Informant, a Prison Inmate, Recently Passed a Polygraph in Hoffa Probe, Investigator Says

By PETE YOST

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON – The informant who is spurring the search for Jimmy Hoffa’s remains is an ailing prison inmate who recently passed a polygraph exam in the probe, says a government investigator who is familiar with the FBI operation in Michigan.

The informant, Donovan Wells, 75, remembers “suspicious activity” on what is now called Hidden Dreams Farm in Milford Township, Mich., at the time Hoffa disappeared, the investigator said Friday.

The investigator spoke on condition of anonymity because some of the information he was relating comes from records that have been ordered sealed by a federal judge. Among them is an FBI affidavit detailing the basis for the search warrant used to dig up the ground on the horse farm.

On the day Hoffa vanished, the property was owned by Hoffa associate Rolland McMaster, according to Oakland County, Mich., property records. McMaster’s attorney says FBI agents visited the 93-year-old retired Teamster this week.

Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant about 20 miles from the farm, which McMaster owned throughout the 1970s.

As one example of the account Wells is telling the FBI, the investigator said Wells remembers seeing a number of cars on the property at the time Hoffa vanished, and then a short time later the cars were gone.

The information does not involve an eyewitness to the disappearance or a killing, said the investigator.

Regarding Wells and the recent lie detector test, authorities think he believes the story he’s telling, the investigator added.

Because polygraph “testing” has no scientific basis, being inherently biased against the truthful yet easily manipulated using simple countermeasures that polygraphers have no demonstrated ability to detect, polygraph results should not be relied upon to determine whether a lead is credible.

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