Jimmy Hoffa Disappearance Solved? Ex-Mobster Claims to Know Teamster Leaders Resting Place

An aging mobster claims to know the resting place of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, who mysteriously vanished decades ago.

Tony Zerilli, a former high-ranking member of Detroit's La Cosa Nostra organized crime family, told NBC News that Hoffa was buried in a field in suburban Detroit.

The 85-year-old mobster said that Hoffa was taken to a spot about 20 miles north of the restaurant where he was last seen in July 1975, according to an NBC 4 News report published Monday.

Zerilli claims that Hoffa was buried in a shallow grave and it was planned that his body would be moved at a later time, but apparently the body was never removed from the original spot.

"Once he was buried here he was buried and they let it go," said Zerilli.

The former mobster currently has poor health and is in severe financial troubles. He is currently writing a book on Hoffa and states that while he may know what happened to the union leader, he did not have a hand in his disappearance.

"I'd like to just prove to everybody that I'm not crazy," Zerilli told NBC. "And it means a lot to me. What happened, happened while I was in jail. And I feel very, very bad about it and it should never have happened to Jim Hoffa. He didn't deserve what happened to him."

Authorities confirmed that Zerilli has mob ties and would likely know detailed information as to where Hoffa might be buried. 

"He actually had risen up at one point to the underboss - or second in command," Andy Arena, former head of the FBI for New York and Detroit, told NBC.

The former head of the Teamsters was last seen in 1975 before disappearing without a trace - making him one of the most famous missing people in America at the age of 62.

Hoffa had made a name for himself as a powerful union leader. He was sent to prison in 1967 and subsequently pardoned by then President Nixon four years later on the term that he didn't try and return to the union until at least 1980. He was last seen in Bloomfield Township, Mich., at the Machus Red Fox restaurant where he supposedly met with a Detroit mobster and a Teamster official.

The FBI has long thought the disappearance could have had something to do with Hoffa trying to return to power as head of the Teamsters.