Federal agents began digging up a field in Northern Oakland Township, Michigan, on Monday, in an attempt to find the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, according to CBS.
The digging is located on a property in northern Oakland County and is the result of extensive F.B.I. interviews with a former mobster. Tony Zerilli gave an exclusive interview to WDIV-TV, where he said that Hoffa was buried in a shallow grave on the property the FBI is now digging through, which is believed to be owned by a family with mafia ties.
Zerilli says he was the second in command of the Detroit mafia. In the interview, he said that a mafia enforcer told him that Hoffa was abducted from a restaurant in Bloomfield Township. He was then brought to Buhl Road in Oakland Township and buried.
The original plan was to bury him there temporarily and then later move his body to northern Michigan and bury him at a hunting lodge, according to Zerilli.
The former mobster, now 85, was convicted of organized crimes as a reputed mafia captain. He was in prison when Hoffa disappeared from the restaurant on July 30, 1975, but says that he was informed about the location of Hoffa's remains after his release.
"I think that the crime itself has taken on an unbelievable amount of legs to...keep the story in the headlines for 35-plus years," Scott Bernstein, a local mob expert and author, told WWJ Newsradio 950, about why authorities continue to search for Hoffa after so much time has passed. He also said he doesn't believe there is a body to find.
"It's a giant black eye for the F.B.I.," Bernstein said. "It's a piece of local folklore that will always...beg the attention that it gets.
"And I think in that regard, you know, it speaks for itself," Bernstein added. He believes the body was disposed of in an incinerator.
"That said, you have to follow this lead because it's probably the most credible lead that the F.B.I.'s ever gotten...on this case," Bernstein said.
Zerilli, who is the son of Detroit mafia founder Joe Zerilli, is the most credible person to have ever come forward with information about the case.
"I've been through this so many times," L. Brooks Patterson, the Oakland County Executive who was a prosecutor at the time of Hoffa's disappearance, said about why he doesn't expect anything to come out of the search. "We've been down this trail, this dead-end street - I can almost think of a dozen separate times.
"We sent out the backhoes and tore up property, tore down barns or what have you, and...I don't care how good the tip is in this instance," Patterson continued. "I am really pretty much a pessimist on this one."
Zerilli is currently promoting a book, "Hoffa Found," which will purportedly reveal details about Hoffa's death, making the timing of the tip questionable.
Hoffa was the president of the Teamsters union until 1971.
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