The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino (13 page)

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he disastrous outcome of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the loss of Cuba were monumental blows to the gangsters who had profited for years from the island, and their anger toward the Kennedy administration was of such intensity that the only way to make them whole would be the unthinkable.

The conversations began immediately after the failed invasion and were further fueled when Bufalino and others finally returned home. They had, as a group, been disrespected to such a degree that under normal circumstances, the offending party would have been dispatched immediately and with extreme prejudice.

They may have been at their cores violent hoods, but many, including Bufalino and Meyer Lansky, had always been known as men of their word. It was their bond, and no one ever doubted them when they said or promised something. How to deal with the president of the United States and his troublesome brother, who was now attorney general, was a matter that would take some consideration.

As they pondered and spoke secretly of their options, the U.S. Department of Justice began placing more resources and men into its ongoing Top Hoodlum Program. Only now everyone knew they weren’t just hoodlums, but members of a secretive, violent national organization that had a firm grip on several major U.S. industries, from the shipping docks on the East and West Coasts to the garment industry and the Teamsters union, which controlled interstate trucking.

Beginning in 1961, the new efforts by the FBI, under the orders of its new attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy, would be to crush organized crime wherever and whenever it could. To meet that end, Kennedy ordered the FBI to begin daily surveillance of every mob boss in the nation, and that included Russell Bufalino.

Agents began a virtual twenty-four-hour watch on Bufalino, with reports filed to the Philadelphia bureau every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The regular surveillance began in March 1961, and one of the first texts from the Philadelphia bureau to J. Edgar Hoover provided a bombshell piece of information: Russell Bufalino was sending arms to Cuba.

The information came from an informant who knew Paul Winter, an anti-Communist who in 1938 had stolen records from the Wilkes-Barre office of the Communist Party. Winter subsequently copied the documents and distributed them to local organizations and thus identified the Communist Party members to the public. The FBI was amused by Winter, chiefly for his interest in outing Communists, and remained in touch with him.

According to the FBI text, the informant reported that he was with Winter in February 1961, and Winter revealed that Bufalino was working for a secret organization that was manufacturing and shipping arms to Cuba to use against Fidel Castro. Unbeknownst to the FBI, the “secret” organization was the CIA. But the FBI decided against pursuing the matter, saying it was out of their jurisdiction and a matter for the Department of Customs.

The bureau did take an interest in other matters, particularly Bufalino’s hangouts and acquaintances. Among his favorite haunts were Club 82, in Pittston; Preno’s Restaurant and the Sahara Bar, in Scranton; and Medico Industries, formerly Medico Electric Company, now receiving an increasing share of U.S. government contracts.

During Bufalino’s visits to New York, he’d usually stay in his suite at the Forrester Hotel, which was paid for by Monet Fashions Incorporated, a company in which he had an interest. Among those often accompanying Bufalino were the closest members of his Pennsylvania crew. Anthony Guarnieri, a capo régime whose interest was in the drug trades; Casper “Cappy” Giumento, one of Bufalino’s closest confidantes and his Everyman, who served a variety of duties, from chauffeuring Bufalino to meetings to picking up envelopes filled with cash from people in business with Bufalino; Al Baldassari, an associate who ran Bufalino’s gaming operations and was identified as a Scranton hoodlum by the Kefauver Committee; and James Plumeri, another close associate, who went by the name of Jimmy Doyle and got his start working in the 1930s for Lucky Luciano before joining the Bufalino family.

The FBI also watched closely as Bufalino spent hours at the Vesuvio restaurant holding court with New York gangsters, who, in a surprising turn, appeared to be paying their respects to Bufalino.

Back in Pennsylvania, Bufalino had displayed a keen ability to stay out of trouble. And when he was charged with something, he had the clout to quash it. When he arrived at the Luzerne County courthouse to answer to a speeding violation in September 1961, Bufalino shook hands with members of the Forty Fort police department, which gave him the ticket. The county judge even went as far as to visit the spot of the alleged violation before dismissing the charge completely.

Aside from their routine reports of his associations and business affairs, the FBI agents noted that Bufalino liked to deal in cash and kept little in a checking account he shared with his wife, Carrie, at the First National Community Bank, usually no more than $300. The FBI also noted that Bufalino was a big sports fan, especially when it came to boxing. Bufalino had begun managing boxers and even promoted fights with Al Flora, an ex-boxer from Baltimore.

Perhaps most interesting to the FBI were Bufalino’s paramours. Though married for more than thirty years, Bufalino always maintained liaisons with several girlfriends in different cities. One of his most recent flames was Jane Collins, a wealthy divorcée who lived with a prostitute, Judy McCarthy. The FBI reported that Collins and Bufalino would use McCarthy’s apartment to rendezvous whenever McCarthy was out of town. Bufalino had been seeing Collins for more than a year after he first spotted her at a local textile company. Instead of introducing himself, he had a mutual friend phone Collins with a tip on a horse race. Hearing that it was a sure thing, Collins made a bet and won $100. The following week, she received another tip on another race and won $250. A third tip netted $1,000. Because of the large amount, the money had to be delivered by Bufalino himself.

Bufalino’s interest in Collins didn’t just come from her good looks. He told close associates that the loss of his Cuban interests and the cost of fighting the government over his deportation proceedings decimated his finances, and his friends took up collections to pay his attorney’s fees. Collins, on the other hand, wasn’t hurting for money. In fact, she escaped her marriage as the co-owner of the Wyoming Coal Company. As the FBI described her, she was the type of woman Bufalino needed at this point in his life. Bufalino wasn’t broke by any stretch of the imagination, but he was cunning enough to give the appearance that he was hurting financially.

Once they started seeing each other, Collins began paying Bufalino’s bills. She even bought him a Cadillac for his birthday. Bufalino, in turn, used his Communist-hating friend Paul Winter to spy on Collins’ ex-husband, Frank.

Bufalino’s supposedly poor financial status seemed to improve dramatically whenever he left the Scranton area. On his trips to Philadelphia, the FBI noted he’d visit with friends at the Penn Center Social Club. A choreographer there, Kay Carlton, provided prostitutes for Bufalino, for which he paid the women $600 to $800 each.

Unbeknownst to Collins, Bufalino had another girlfriend, a barmaid named Alberta Stocker. And it was his relationship with Stocker where the FBI believed it had an opening.

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IN THE SIX
years since Apalachin, Russell Bufalino battled the U.S. government relentlessly to stay in the United States.

The deportation saga had been a drain on his finances and his emotions after he was first ordered in 1958 to leave the country for lying about his citizenship, his illegal entrée into the country from the Bahamas in 1956 and his failure to establish he had good moral character. On two occasions, he was certain he’d be forced out of the country, and he went to New York to plan for his departure.

But Bufalino had hired famed immigration attorney Jack Wasserman, who did everything he could to delay the case and keep Bufalino in the country. Wasserman represented Carlos Marcello, the New Orleans crime boss, during his deportation battle with the government, delaying the government more than a decade. Initially probed by the Kefauver Committee, the government began Marcello’s deportation proceedings in 1952, but Wasserman appealed the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled against him. In 1955, Wasserman argued that Marcello was not an Italian citizen and sought an injunction from the Italian courts preventing Marcello from being deported there. Marcello was sent to Guatemala in 1959, but Wasserman fought the order and Marcello was returned to New Orleans, where to the government’s great embarrassment he remained.

Bufalino’s case was somewhat simpler and clear-cut after it was determined that someone inside the Luzerne County Clerks Office had changed the recording of Bufalino’s place of birth in the county ledger. The perpetrator simply erased “Montedoro, Sicily” and replaced it with “Pittston, Pa.”

He was ordered “deportable” in April 1958 but appealed the decision, and the case was remanded until September 1958, when the appeal was dismissed. A petition for review was filed, but that too was dismissed, in April 1959. The U.S. Court of Appeals issued a grant of summary judgment in April 1960 ordering Bufalino to leave the country. Bufalino filed yet another appeal, claiming he was the victim of prejudgment by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and he would remain in the United States awaiting a decision but for how long was anyone’s guess. With the deportation case now on hold, Bufalino could put his attention to other matters at hand, one of which would require his absolute attention.

In September 1963, the FBI picked up information that Bufalino had been communicating with someone in Mexico. The first calls came from Guadalajara, and then, in November, several other calls originated from Mexico City. It was around the same time, unbeknownst to the FBI, that Frank Sheeran received a call from Jimmy Hoffa, who directed him to visit Bufalino at his Kingston, Pennsylvania, home. When Sheeran arrived, he was told by Bufalino to see their friends in Brooklyn, pick up a package and drive it to Baltimore. The “friends” were members of the Genovese family, including a captain named Tony Provenzano who also ran a New Jersey Teamster local. When Sheeran arrived, Provenzano handed him a duffel bag with directions to meet a pilot in Baltimore. Sheeran didn’t look inside the bag, but, having carried guns before, he quickly deduced he was carrying three rifles. He drove to Baltimore, made his delivery and returned to Pennsylvania. Just a few days later, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Sheeran was convinced that the rifles he delivered were used in the shooting, and he couldn’t help but notice that Bufalino was in good spirits when he met up with him at the Vesuvio restaurant a week after the murder.

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he U.S. Department of Justice had tried for seven years to put away Jimmy Hoffa. Four times he had been charged with various crimes, and each time he walked away. But in March 1964, a federal jury in Chattanooga, Tennessee, convicted Hoffa of jury tampering. Four months later, he was convicted of fraud in another trial, in Chicago, for improperly using the Teamsters pension fund. Combined, he was facing up to thirteen years in prison.

The March trial in Tennessee was, like Hoffa’s other battles with federal prosecutors, a circus and stemmed from his 1962 mistrial on conspiracy charges. In this case, prosecutors were able to convince a fifth jury that Hoffa and others tried to bribe two jurors in the 1962 trial.

Hoffa claimed he had been railroaded and promised to appeal, but it was clear that his imprisonment was only a matter of time. So in December 1964, a meeting was scheduled at the suburban Detroit home of William Bufalino to discuss the future of the Teamsters and, more important, the use of the Central States pension fund. Russell Bufalino flew from Scranton to Detroit under an assumed name and drove to his cousin William’s home. There he would meet with Joseph Barbara Jr., Michael Polizzi and Vincent and Frank Meli. The conversation focused on the Teamsters and Hoffa’s pending prison sentence.

The FBI knew about the meeting. Bufalino was still under their watch, though curiously there were no FBI reports between November 1963 and early January 1964. The telexes resumed in late January 1964. One reported that Bufalino was interested in supporting a county judge, Sydney Hoffman, who was running for superior judge. Another telex reported a meeting between Bufalino and his friend, a businessman named Joseph Sica, and two other men, who had traveled to Pittsburgh to discuss a Teamster loan for a shopping center there.

In October 1964, yet another telex described how Bufalino sought to mend his relationship with Jane Collins with tickets to Yankee Stadium in New York to see the Yankees play the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. They’d had a falling out a year earlier, and Collins took up with another man. Furious, Bufalino sought to end that relationship, but every time he visited with Collins, their conversations would end with Bufalino yelling and stomping away. When he showed up to offer the Yankee tickets, he also complained about a new federal brief in his deportation case. The government was now alleging that he was two years old when he arrived in the United States in 1903 when in fact he was two months old. But Collins didn’t want to hear any more about his lengthy and bitter case, and she didn’t want to go with him to New York or anywhere else for that matter. Bufalino left with the tickets in hand.

Unbeknownst to Bufalino, Collins was talking to the FBI, which was assisting the immigration department in its ongoing battle to deport Bufalino. Five months later, in March 1965, Bufalino’s petition to set aside his original deportation order from 1958 was denied, and he was ordered deported to Brazil. The decision in large part was based on the testimony of Collins, whom the FBI credited with furnishing “considerable information.”

Like he did before, Bufalino appealed the decision, and his deportation was once again deferred pending another court hearing.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Oct. 28, 1969

A Pennsylvania manufacturing firm linked to the Mafia by a Senate subcommittee has won millions of dollars in defense contracts from the Pentagon. Medico Industries Inc. of Pittston, Pa., currently is working on a $4 million contract to produce parts for rocket warheads used extensively in Vietnam. Since 1966, the firm has received about $12 million in Army, Navy, and Air Force contracts. Pentagon records indicate it has performed well on all its defense work.

Medico Industries’ present contracts do not involve classified material. However, a Pentagon spokesman said the firm and its principal officers had a security clearance from Jan. 28, 1968 to June 20, 1968. It was terminated at the company’s request—a request which Pentagon sources said came after security officials asked for additional information about its officers.

The company’s name has cropped up in the organized crime investigations of a Senate subcommittee headed by Sen. John L. McClellan, D Ark. In 1964, McClellan’s subcommittee listed Medico Electric Motor Co., later to become known as Medico Industries, as a principal hangout of Russell Bufalino, whom it described as “one of the most ruthless and powerful leaders of the Mafia in the United States.”

William Medico, former president and now general manager of Medico Industries, was listed in the same report as among the “criminal associates” of Bufalino.

James A. Osticco, the firm’s traffic manager, was present in 1957 when New York State Police broke up the Apalachin Conference—a meeting of top Mafia figures from throughout the United States. The participants also included Bufalino and Vito Genovese, once described as “king of the rackets.”

Bufalino has been battling deportation since 1952. According to the McClellan committee’s 1964 report, the Sicilian-born Mafia leader has been active in narcotics trafficking, labor racketeering, and dealing in stolen jewels and furs. Last year, Bufalino was charged with transporting stolen television sets across state lines.

Investigators say Bufalino and Medico have been friends since Bufalino moved to Pittston from Buffalo, N.Y., in 1938. A confidential report in the files of state and federal law enforcement officials refers to a company listed in the Senate report as being owned by Bufalino and says: “One of the silent partners in this enterprise is said to be William Medico . . . who is believed to have money invested in a number of places where the subject (Bufalino) acts as front man.”

In a telephone interview, Medico said he has no business interests with Bufalino. He said he has known Bufalino all his life.

As for the McClellan committee report that Bufalino frequents the Medico plant, Medico said, “Sure he comes to see us. We’re selling him equipment; he’s a customer. I can’t tell him to get the hell out.”

The firm’s record of getting government contracts goes back to the 1950s. It has produced such items as maintenance platforms for the Air Force and Navy, rebuilt generators for the Signal Corps, rebuilt machine tools and hydraulic wing jacks for the Army, Navy and Air Force. It also has had contracts from the cities of New York and Detroit.

In 1963 it competed with eight other firms to take over management of a government-ammunition plant in Scranton, Pa., but lost out to a lower bidder.

In 1968 Medico Industries was one of the 166 companies from which the Army sought bids to produce parts for 2.75-inch rocket warheads. Ten firms, including Medico, responded and six got contracts. Medico was not among them.

But in the summer of 1968, the Army announced it needed still more warheads to fill Vietnam requirements. The four unsuccessful bidders on the earlier round were invited to bid again. All four, including Medico, got contracts. The Medico contract, awarded September 19, 1968, called for supply of 510,000 parts for $3,090,600.

Then, in December 1968, Medico was among the producers invited to submit proposals for shifting to production of a different and costlier type 2.75-inch warhead. The firm received a contract on Dec. 31 to supply 380,000 parts at a cost of $4,012,800. That contract is still in effect.

Under Defense Department regulations, a company can not be cleared for work on classified projects until its key personnel are given a National Agency check. This includes a search of FBI name and fingerprint files.

If any derogatory information is found, it is up to the Defense Industrial Security Command at Columbus, Ohio, to determine if it is serious enough to warrant further investigation. If such a determination is made the case is referred to a higher level for review. No such reference was made when Medico’s application was processed.

In addition to security checks, all prospective defense contractors also undergo a pre-award review to determine their ability to produce. The personal background of company officials is not a factor in such reviews.

Medico Industries’ success in obtaining government contracts has helped it expand from a small electrical company housed in a former mule barn to a large modern plant on the outskirts of Pittston. With a work force of about 400 during peak contract periods, the firm is one of the largest employers in the coal mining area.

William Medico and his four brothers, all officers in the family firm, are often in the news as participants in civic affairs, charity drives and occasionally politics, in the city of 13,000 midway between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.

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THE STORY THAT
ran in newspapers across the country about Medico Industries was a thorough account of its business dealings, dubious and otherwise, but it didn’t mention a key figure without whose support the firm would never have seen dollar one from the U.S. government.

U.S. Representative Daniel J. Flood was a Shakespearean actor who appeared in more than fifty performances before cutting short his stage career for law school. After obtaining his degree, he rose to become a deputy attorney general in Pennsylvania before making his initial run for Congress in 1944. Born in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and a graduate of Syracuse University, Flood’s first term in Washington, D.C., ended in defeat in 1946. He was elected again in 1948 and stayed for two terms before losing again in 1952.

The loss stung Flood, and he promised it wouldn’t happen again. When he was elected again in 1954, Flood would remain in Washington for a quarter of a century, and his longevity was due, in large part, to the friendship he cultivated with Russell Bufalino.

Schooled by Stefano Magaddino during his early years in Buffalo, Bufalino was keenly aware of the profitable relationships and widespread protection that spawned from political power. Nurturing political and law enforcement contacts was a lesson reinforced by Frank Costello, and understanding the value of the right to vote was invaluable for anyone who had designs on growing a business.

Beginning in the 1940s, Bufalino’s handpicked political candidates routinely won local and county elections, many of them often rigged with the votes of dead people while senior citizens were often rousted from their homes to vote for the preferred candidates.

Alliances with law enforcement and local, state and federal politicians were simply considered good business, and it didn’t hurt if you could count among your friends a U.S. congressman or senator.

Daniel Flood was keenly aware of Bufalino’s growing influence throughout the region. The garment industry especially had remained under Bufalino’s thumb, and despite his fearsome reputation, politicians quietly courted Bufalino for his support. Flood was no exception. Following his defeat in 1952, Flood clearly saw the need to have a friend like Russell Bufalino, which set the stage for a long-standing association.

Upon returning to Washington, Flood cemented what was a burgeoning reputation as a showman. He wore a waxed mustache that, combined with his sartorial expertise, gave him the audience he craved during his days as an actor. Known as “Dapper Dan,” Flood’s likability masked a serious side that saw him steer hundreds of millions in grants and contracts to his constituency in Luzerne County. Flood chaired the powerful Subcommittee on Labor, Health, Education and Welfare of the House Appropriations Committee, which put him in the very important and enviable position of overseeing the billions doled out each year to cities and states for development projects.

For Bufalino, that meant virtually having the keys to the taxpayer’s bank.

Flood steered tens of millions in lucrative contracts to his home district, and among those benefitting from Flood’s influence was Medico Industries, which gained millions in assignments for military equipment and armaments that U.S. forces would use in Vietnam against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong. Medico’s offices had long served as a staging area for Bufalino and his crew. Bufalino maintained an office there, while several Bufalino family members claimed legitimate jobs at Medico, among them, James Osticco and associate Angelo Son, who actually held a degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh University.

Bufalino’s alliance with Daniel Flood was but one example of Bufalino’s political prowess. On the state and county level, Bufalino money flowed to an assortment of judges, county officials and local police chiefs, ensuring there would be few interruptions of his myriad of businesses, legitimate and illegitimate.

Among his legitimate businesses, Bufalino expanded into several esoteric areas such as television production. In 1965, he purchased the Washington, D.C., rights to the closed-circuit television broadcast of the Sonny Liston–Cassius Clay fight in Lewiston, Maine. It was a rematch of a bout the previous year, in which a young Clay stunned the heavyweight champion with a sixth-round technical knockout. The second bout, on May 25, 1965, was even shorter, with Liston hitting the canvas in the second round in a controversial ending in which some suggested that Liston took a dive.

Bufalino had, over the years, managed several fighters, including a local Dunmore fighter named Jerry Tomasetti, whom Bufalino took to New York to help get his boxing license. Bufalino’s partner in the boxing business and the closed-circuit television venture was Al Flora, the former boxer from Baltimore who became his driver, bodyguard and business partner.