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Hoffa search dog turns up 'hit' on second day

By GABRIELLE LEVY, UPI.com
The FBI resumed the search on June 18, 2013 for the body of Jimmy Hoffa, pictured here in this 1961 UPI file photo. Hoffa, who ran the Teamsters union and was alleged to have been involved with organized crime, disappeared from a restaurant parking lot about 25 miles northwest of Detroit July 30, 1975. He was 62. Anthony Joseph "Tony" Zerilli, a reputed former underboss of the Detroit Partnership criminal organization, claims Hoffa was buried in a shallow grave in a field 30 miles north of Detroit underneath a concrete slab.
The FBI resumed the search on June 18, 2013 for the body of Jimmy Hoffa, pictured here in this 1961 UPI file photo. Hoffa, who ran the Teamsters union and was alleged to have been involved with organized crime, disappeared from a restaurant parking lot about 25 miles northwest of Detroit July 30, 1975. He was 62. Anthony Joseph "Tony" Zerilli, a reputed former underboss of the Detroit Partnership criminal organization, claims Hoffa was buried in a shallow grave in a field 30 miles north of Detroit underneath a concrete slab.

After nearly two full days of searching, federal investigators are hopeful the signs are pointing to the discovery of the remains of Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamster boss who disappeared almost 40 years ago near Detroit.

A cadaver dog, working with FBI investigators in an abandoned field about a half hour's drive away from where Hoffa was last seen on July 30, 1975, "reacted to some scents" at the dig site Tuesday afternoon. Investigators said they were not sure what -- if anything -- the dog was reacting to.

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Some bones had been found in the field, a former farm, but none were human bones, said Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard.

Earlier in the day, searchers turned up a "suspicious" slab at the dig site, but it is too soon to know if the cement is just the old foundation of a barn -- or Hoffa's concrete coffin.

The FBI were pointed to the field in Oakland Township by an ex-mobster Tony Zerilli, who was in prison at the time of Hoffa's disappearance but said he was told of Hoffa's fate after his release.

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Zerilli said Hoffa, who was last seen at a restaurant in Bloomfield Township, was abducted, hit on the head with a shovel, buried in a shallow grave and covered in concrete on a property once owned by mob boss Jack Tocco.

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