Jimmy Hoffa 'Buried In Detroit' Says Mob Boss

Missing Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa is buried in suburban Detroit, a man convicted of crimes as a reputed Mafia captain has claimed.

Tony Zerilli was in prison when Hoffa disappeared from a Detroit-area restaurant in 1975.

He told WNBC he had been told the whereabouts of Hoffa's remains following his release.

Former Detroit FBI head Andrew Arena said the 85-year-old's claims deserved serious consideration.

He said: "Anthony Zerilli was reputed to be the underboss of the Detroit organised crime family, so he would have been in the know."

Zerilli took a Detroit TV reporter to a field in Rochester, north of Detroit, but the location of the body was not disclosed.

He told WDIV: "The master plan was ... they were going to put him in a shallow grave here.

"Then they were going to take him from here to Rogers City upstate. There was a hunting lodge and they were going to bury (him) in a shallow grave, then take him up there for final burial.

"Then, I understand, that it just fell through."

He added: "I would have done anything in the world to protect Jim Hoffa.

"Jim Hoffa to me was a gentleman, and what happened to him was as wrong as anything could be as far as I'm concerned."

Hoffa, who was the Teamsters union president from 1957-1971, was an acquaintance of mobsters.

On the day he disappeared, he was supposed to meet a New Jersey Teamsters boss and a Detroit Mafia captain.

In September, police removed soil from a home in Roseville after a tip suggested he had been buried there.

It was the latest in a string of unsuccessful searches. Previous tips led police to a horse farm northwest of Detroit in 2006, a home in the city in 2004 and a pool north of the city in 2003.

Zerilli was convicted of conspiracy and extortion in 2002 and sentenced to six years in prison.