Investigators wrapped up their search for the remains of labor leader Jimmy Hoffa for the day after digging up a Michigan field and plan to resume Tuesday.
Hoffa's disappearance has baffled authorities for decades.
Mobster Tony Zerilli, 85, said earlier this year that the former Teamsters president was buried in a vacant lot in northern Oakland Township, which is about 20 miles from the restaurant where Hoffa was last seen in July 1975.
Zerilli added that the plan was to move Hoffa’s body at a later date, but it never materialized.
"Once he was buried here, he was buried and they let it go," he said. Zerilli was in prison at the time.
Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said during a press conference Monday says bringing closure to the case is "long overdue."
"This has been one of those open wounds for a long time and actually as this was spinning up and we were chatting earlier last week and especially yesterday I was thinking about what Father's Day means to the family that doesn't have closure on this case, and families like them all across the country that have a missing loved one and didn't know what happened," he said.
Before his disappearance, Hoffa said he was going to meet a suspected member of the Detroit Mafia and a Teamster boss from New Jersey at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
Hoffa was legally declared dead in 1982, , WJBK Fox 2 reports.
In 2004, Frank Sheeran, a close friend of Hoffa and a mob hitman, told Fox News that he killed Hoffa inside a Detroit house in 1975. Testing done by former state police detectives found the presence of blood in the floor of the house, matching Sheeran's story that he shot Hoffa and dragged his body down a hallway.
At the time, Sheeran said Hoffa was cremated in a funeral home.
Click for more from MyFoxDetroit.com.
Fox News' Eric Shawn contributed to this report.
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