Land claimed to be Jimmy Hoffa burial site owned by Jack Tocco in 1970s

At least one part of a former mobster’s tale about the Jimmy Hoffa case checks out.

Tony Zerilli, 85, who was indicted in 1996 as a key figure in Detroit’s underworld, said that former Detroit mob boss Jack Tocco owned property in Oakland Township, where Zerilli claims Hoffa was buried in 1975.

But Oakland County deed records show the property on Buell Road just west of Adams was owned by Belaire Diversified Inc. until 1982, when the title was transferred to Tocco.

“He bought it on a land contract,” Michael Glime, who ran Belaire and now is retired, said Tuesday. “The checks came from Melrose Linen Supply. He always paid promptly.”

Melrose was Tocco’s company.

Glime couldn’t remember exactly when he sold the property to Tocco, but remembered the land contract took 10 years and four months to pay off before the 1982 title transfer, a timeline that would have meant Tocco owned it from at least 1972, three years before Hoffa’s disappearance.

“He owned it,” Glime said.

Zerilli made the claim in an interview with reporter Marc Santia of New York’s WNBC, formerly of WDIV in Detroit.

The property has been sold several times since.

A man at a home at 2940 Buell, next door to the vacant field at the corner of Buell and Adams, was angry when approached Monday night about the Hoffa allegations.

“Get the hell out of here!” he yelled toward the circular driveway outside the cedar-and-stone home waving a LED flashlight as his dogs ran around the yard.

Enzo Cerqua, president of Futura Construction, was busy running netting along Buell Road to keep the Hoffa-curious away from a house he’s rehabbing next door, 2660 Buell Road.

He said the homeowner bought the place in the summer, not knowing the possible Hoffa connection. On Monday, Cerqua watched as helicopters flew overhead, and he spoke to a woman writing a book about Hoffa.

“The Hoffa thing -- you know it’s going to draw traffic here,” said Cerqua, 47, of Oxford, who hunted on the property in the early 2000s and never saw any signs of a grave. “My wife wants to come look. I’m like, ‘Look, you’ve been there a hundred times.’ It’s a sexy topic to talk about. At this point here, it’s like ‘Alright, is (the body) going to come out?’ It’s something everybody wants to know.”

The property sits at a nearly deserted corner at Buell, just north of where Orion Road crosses Adams, connecting Rochester to Lake Orion. To the north is the Paint Creek subdivision, with large swaths of property in between.

Contact John Wisely: 313-222-6825 or jwisely@freepress.com