http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/18/us-usa-crime-hoffa-idUSBRE95G0T420130618FBI digs for Jimmy Hoffa's body in Michigan fieldJune 18, 2013
FBI agents have been digging for Hoffa's remains since Monday when a backhoe was driven onto a field in Oakland County, about 20 miles north of the Machus Red Fox restaurant where Hoffa was last seen alive. The FBI opened the search after a tip from reputed mobster Anthony Zerilli.
They broke for the night and resumed Tuesday morning. FBI officials said the search had been widened but gave no further details.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard told reporters on Tuesday the search of the 40- to 50-square-yard (33- to 40-square meter) area would continue at least another 48 hours. He said police and FBI officials remain optimistic but that nothing had been sent for lab analysis so far.
The FBI brought in forensic anthropologists from Michigan State University and a cadaver-sniffing dog from Michigan state police to help search a half-acre (0.20 hectare) of the site, according to a person close to the investigation who asked not to be identified.
Curious bystanders gathered on Tuesday near the field, which was blocked off by Oakland County sheriff deputies, and peered through wavy grass and trees to see agents digging and the backhoe at work.
The search for Hoffa, who was 62 when he disappeared in 1975, has spawned many theories about his final resting place, ranging from under an end zone in Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, to the General Motors Co headquarters in downtown Detroit and the Everglades in Florida.
In Michigan, law enforcement officials decided to comb the lot after Zerilli, 85, told the FBI that Hoffa was buried there. Zerilli's attorney, David Chasnick, told reporters the FBI spoke to his client over the past seven or eight months and the agency believes "100 percent" Hoffa is buried there.
"This was a guy who was intimately involved with some of the players who would be well informed as to where the body would be placed," Chasnick said.
According to a 21-page manuscript that Zerilli wrote and is selling online, Hoffa was dragged out of a car, bound and gagged, hit with a shovel and buried alive under a cement slab in a barn on the property.
FBI officials had no comment on Zerilli's assertions.
Hoffa, the father of current Teamsters President James Hoffa, led the union from 1957 to 1971 and was imprisoned for fraud and jury tampering in his final years. He was released in late 1971, when President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence.
Authorities have long thought Hoffa was ordered killed by organized crime figures to prevent him from regaining control of the Teamsters.
Investigators have checked thousands of leads over the years. In September 2012, police took a soil sample from behind a private home in Roseville, Michigan, after receiving a tip he might be buried there.
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