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Soil Samples To Be Taken In Hoffa Body Claim

ROSEVILLE (WWJ/AP) - There's plenty of activity outside a metro Detroit home, and a lot of media attention, as crews search for possible human remains.

Soil samples are being taken from beneath a Roseville driveway as police investigate a man's claim he saw a body buried there 35 years ago that might have been that of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa.

The state Department of Environmental Equality is at work Friday outside of a home on Florida Street, near 12 Mile and Gratiot, in Roseville.

The samples will be sent to a forensic anthropologist at Michigan State University and tested for human decomposition. Results are not expected before next week.

The samples were ordered after ground-penetrating radar last week detected an anomaly, or shift, in the soil beneath the driveway.

Local mob expert Scott Burnstein, author of "Motor City Mafia," said the area in and around Roseville was a hotbed for mob activity in Hoffa's era — but he also thinks it's not likely Hoffa's remains were buried.

Many, including Burnstein, believe his body was destroyed. The FBI refused to comment on the dig.

Hoffa was last seen July 30, 1975, outside a restaurant in Oakland County. Previous searches for his remains have been conducted at a Michigan horse farm and beneath a swimming pool. According to inside sources, the government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the decades-long hunt for Hoffa. Read more, here.

Stay with WWJ Newsradio 950 and CBSDetroit.com for the latest.

MORE: Feds Spend Hundreds Of Thousands On Hoffa Search

Does It Make Sense To Continue Searching For Hoffa's Body?

TM and © Copyright 2012 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2012 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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