The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino (9 page)

“I gotcha,” said D’Elia.

The informant later gave D’Elia a photograph of the bogus Dominican smuggler and $5,000 to pay for the travel expenses of D’Elia’s men. That led investigators to obtain a search warrant of D’Elia’s home as their investigation morphed from money laundering to murder-for-hire.

The search of D’Elia’s home produced a treasure trove of information, including nearly three-dozen assorted guns, bullets and magazines, cell phones, bank records from First National Community Bank and a phone book with the numbers of various associates, among them the home number of Louis DeNaples.

In November 2006, D’Elia was charged in a superseding indictment with conspiring to kill a witness. His bail was revoked and he was sent to a prison in Pike County, which straddled the New Jersey border in northeastern Pennsylvania. D’Elia, now sixty, was facing charges that would keep him in prison for life, and he didn’t waste any time agreeing to cooperate with the government and firing his longtime counsel, Philip Gelso, whose father Charles had for years represented Russell Bufalino.

The deal was such that D’Elia agreed to cooperate with any federal, state or local investigation. To replace Gelso, the court appointed James Swetz, a notable Stroudsburg defense attorney who gained fame in the 1990s for the acquittal of a Stroudsburg police chief accused of looting the town’s parking meters. With D’Elia now cooperating, the first order of business was to have him tell the state police everything he knew about Louis DeNaples.

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THE FBI WIRETAP
and Katrina trucks were open criminal investigations, yet somehow, in the middle of December 2006, the state Gaming Control Board unanimously determined that Louis DeNaples was “suitable” to receive a slots license. The board knew about Katrina and the wiretap from their own BIE investigators yet looked the other way.

The police had also gotten wind that suspected DeNaples had given Ed Rendell large contributions over the past few months, more than $100,000, which the board also ignored.

A week before the board would officially announce the new casino licensees, two of its investigators, Roger Greenback and Jack Meighan, asked the U.S. attorney’s office for permission to interview Billy D’Elia. Greenback, BIE’s eastern regional director, and Meighan, an agent in the office, had worked for months on DeNaples’ background investigative report and thought they had more than enough to convince the board it couldn’t award DeNaples a slots license.

Greenback was a former FBI agent who once investigated organized crime in Pittsburgh, and Meighan was also a retired FBI agent who had worked in Pittsburgh. Tasked with completing DeNaples’ background check, the two investigators spent weeks on the ground interviewing dozens of people, and in their final report, they included a host of damning information—from the 2001 federal affidavit linking DeNaples’ and D’Elia’s business interests, to D’Elia’s regular visits to DeNaples’ office at his auto parts facility, to DeNaples’ attendance at the wedding of D’Elia’s daughter.

But the information did little to convince the board that DeNaples wasn’t “suitable,” so with time running out, Greenback and Meighan contacted the U.S. attorney’s office in Harrisburg and requested to interview D’Elia. But the request was denied. The FBI, in a letter previously sent to the gaming board in February 2006, had reasserted its position that it wouldn’t cooperate with BIE, which was still deemed by law enforcement as a civilian agency and thus not privy to criminal information. The U.S. attorney’s office in turn would not allow investigators with a licensing agency to interview D’Elia.

Shut out from D’Elia, the two former FBI agents could only watch with dismay on December 22, 2006, as the gaming board unanimously awarded Louis DeNaples a slots license.

The decision had come with some drama, as word leaked that one member of the gaming board, Ken McCabe, would vote against the DeNaples application. McCabe was a former FBI agent who had worked in Pittsburgh and was said to have genuine concerns about DeNaples. When the seven-member board voted, McCabe paused before giving his vote to approve DeNaples.

At state police headquarters, Ralph Periandi wasn’t surprised. The DeNaples gaming license was a foregone conclusion, just as he had predicted during his initial meeting with the FBI in April 2005. But the state police now had enough information on DeNaples that during the weeks following the slots decision, Periandi put the machinery in place that would result in a grand jury investigation. The venue would be in Harrisburg. Periandi had his misgivings about the state attorney general’s office and decided early on that any prosecutions that evolved from a state police investigation into gaming would be handled in Dauphin County and by its district attorney Ed Marsico.

Periandi remained deeply disturbed over how the state’s political apparatus mobilized in such a way that even someone with DeNaples’ checkered history could be cleansed and given the stamp of approval. Periandi also remained concerned over other issues relating to gaming, including the hiring of several vendors that were close to the Rendell administration, among them G-Tech, a firm that Periandi had discussed during his initial meeting with the FBI.

G-Tech was a global company that operated lotteries in nearly two-dozen states and a number of foreign countries and had been accused elsewhere of bribing officials to gain lucrative contracts.

Nearly a decade earlier, in 1996, G-Tech’s then national sales director, J. David Smith, was convicted of fraud for taking nearly $170,000 from lobbyists in New Jersey. G-Tech also had problems in Texas, where criminal investigators with the Texas Department of Public Safety alleged in a 2006 report that G-Tech bribed lottery officials there and in several foreign countries, including Poland, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago and the Czech Republic. No criminal charges were filed, but the report said G-Tech was an “aggressive business entity that had a past history . . . of pursuing new contracts with sometimes questionable actions.”

It wasn’t lost on Periandi that Ken Jarin, one of Rendell’s closest confidants, was hired by G-Tech in 2003 to serve as a consultant and successfully brought in the lucrative state gaming contract. Just six days after G-Tech was awarded that contract, the firm made a $50,000 donation to the Democratic Governors Association, for which Jarin served as treasurer. The same group had given Rendell $462,000 for his gubernatorial run in 2002.

Department of Revenue secretary Greg Fajt deflected any criticism of G-Tech’s contract away from Rendell, saying it was his decision and his alone to award the firm the contract. In his press release announcing G-Tech’s hiring, Fajt said the contract was worth less than $7 million. In truth, over the course of the five years, the contract would eventually pay out closer to $40 million, and much more once the contract was renewed.

Even more ominous, under gaming board chairman Tad Decker’s direction, G-Tech was also tasked with working with BIE on background investigations of potential casino employees. To Periandi, all that meant was the administration through G-Tech would get a heads-up on the status of all background investigations. Periandi had wanted to know more about the firm, but Decker prevented the state police from performing a mandatory background check despite a requirement that every vendor had to be vetted, with every principal submitting to a background review. But that wasn’t to be the case with G-Tech.

S
EVEN

J
ames Riddle Hoffa was a fast-rising union organizer for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters union. Born in Indiana in 1913, Hoffa’s father was a coal miner who died in 1920 of black-lung disease. His mother moved the family in 1922 to Detroit where, at fourteen, Hoffa dropped out of school and worked as a manual laborer, but he later showed promise as a union organizer while working at Kroger Grocery and Baking Company unloading fruit and vegetables from trains. Hoffa earned thirty-two cents an hour, much of it in company credit to exchange for groceries. The shifts were twelve hours long and began in the late afternoon, but workers were only paid for the time they actually unloaded goods.

In 1931, in the midst of the Great Depression, with bread lines found on virtually every corner, Hoffa led his first work stoppage after two friends were fired for walking off the premises to eat their dinner. Truckloads of Florida strawberries had just arrived and needed to be placed in refrigerators, but Hoffa resisted and supplied a list of demands, which included a thirteen-cents–per-hour raise, guaranteed pay for half a day, medical insurance and Kroger’s recognition of the workers union, which would soon apply for and receive a charter as Federal Local 19341 of the American Federation of Labor.

Hoffa lost his job a year later after he punched a plant foreman, but his burgeoning reputation earned him a position with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 299. Hoffa didn’t receive a salary. Instead, he earned a percentage of the dues each new member would pay to join the union, which amounted to a $10 initiation fee and $2 per month. Hoffa jumped into his new job with gusto, organizing workers throughout Detroit, visiting warehouses, loading docks and stopping at truck stops to preach the union way. The work was dangerous and often violent, as union organizers often found themselves in confrontations with the police and thugs hired by the very businesses Hoffa sought to unionize. During his first year, by his own account, Hoffa was clubbed, punched or hit with brass knuckles three dozen times.

The number of beatings nearly matched his arrest record. Hoffa would show up on picket lines, where he’d be arrested, brought to the police station, released and then return back to the picket line. During one twenty-four-hour period, Hoffa was arrested eighteen times.

When Hoffa wasn’t picketing, he was driving up and down country highways, approaching long-haul drivers while they slept. He perfected his rat-a-tat introduction of “Hi, I’m Jimmy Hoffa of the Teamsters” and would say it quickly before stepping back to show the driver he wasn’t there to rob him. Of course, sometimes the truckers were really toughs hired by the trucking companies to rough up Hoffa.

Along with the head, facial and body wounds suffered from his duties, Hoffa was the target of several car bombings, and he developed the habit to never close the door when starting his car. He’d leave his left leg hanging out, believing he’d simply get blown out of the car and thus improve his chances for survival if the car exploded. Hoffa’s fearlessness, boundless enthusiasm and belief in the union way endeared him to the men he was recruiting. He also benefited financially from signing the new members.

A decade later, Hoffa was running Detroit Teamsters Local 299, and his rise to power coincided with a partnership that not only provided the muscle to help inflict his will, but one that would follow him through the rest of his days.

And it was through that alliance that Hoffa first met William Bufalino.

William Bufalino first appeared in Detroit during the summer of 1946. The son of a coal miner, Bufalino was born in 1918 and was one of nine children raised in Pittston, Pennsylvania. He studied for two years to become a Catholic priest before deciding on a career as an attorney. After serving in the U.S. Army’s Judge Advocate Corps during World War II, William arrived in Michigan under orders from his older cousin.

Since 1940, Detroit had served as one of the strategic import centers for narcotics arriving from Italy. Detroit’s harbor and central location provided easy distribution throughout the Midwest, and the members of the “Detroit Partnership,” the organized crime group coheaded by Angelo Meli, used their money from the lucrative drug trade to fuel other businesses, including jukeboxes and labor racketeering.

Meli’s narcotic connections linked him closely to New York mobsters, who shared in the lucrative drug trade, and in 1941, the alliance found another source of revenue, thanks to Jimmy Hoffa and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. During Hoffa’s rise from union organizer to president of Detroit Teamsters Local 299, he was locked in a death struggle with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He needed help, and he turned to Santo Perrone, the Detroit crime boss, and Meli.

Raised in Detroit, Meli was a gangster almost by birth, and by the 1930s, he had consolidated his power, eventually serving as consigliere to the Detroit family. He was also among the first organized crime figures to be aligned with Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters Local 299.

When William Bufalino arrived in Detroit, he came with $30,000, with half coming from a Pittston bank and the remainder from his cousin, Russell. The money was used to invest in the Bilvin Distributing Company, which placed jukeboxes throughout the region but also served as a front for Russell, Meli and a host of other underworld associates. Within two years after arriving in Detroit, William had settled in, even marrying Angelo Meli’s niece, Marie Antoinette Meli, and the marriage united the Bufalino and Meli families. It was typically Sicilian yet proved to be a pivotal event, given that the Bufalinos were now firmly cemented in Detroit and focused on a bigger prize—the Teamsters union.

In 1948, William gave up his interests in the jukebox company and was named president of Detroit Teamsters Local 985, which in reality was headed by Hoffa. Sharp-tongued, the younger Bufalino was the perfect choice to lead the Bufalino family’s interests in Detroit, and he would keep his cousin Russell abreast of everything there was to know regarding the Teamsters, and Jimmy Hoffa.

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BY THE TIME
the Kefauver Committee issued its final report, in 1951, Russell Bufalino was fully in charge of the Pittston family.

His rise had been facilitated by a variety of factors. He was smart, organized and maintained the lowest of profiles. He also had the counsel of Santo Volpe and his uncle Charles Bufalino, the two aging leaders who transformed the Wyoming Valley years earlier through bribes and murder. Most important, Bufalino had the support of his old mentor, don Stefano Magaddino of Buffalo.

Following Prohibition, Magaddino remained a force within organized crime circles. He still had a seat on the Commission, and his business interests remained far and wide and included tribute that came from the Scranton region through Bufalino.

As a student of Magaddino, Bufalino never showed any visible signs of wealth. He lived in a modest ranch-style home he purchased for $22,000. He dressed plainly, drove an older car and, because of a cataract problem, he often had someone drive him from one appointment to another. His local business interests, aside from the garment factories, included restaurants, hotels, banks and jewelry shops. The student was also trained to be ruthless, and he dispatched enemies quickly and quietly, relying on a core group of killers.

Yet outside his “family” pursuits, Bufalino treated civilians with kindness and respect. On one occasion, Bufalino spotted an elderly neighbor working on his roof in the middle of a sweltering summer day. Within minutes several brawny men arrived and told the man to get down.

“Mr. Bufalino says you shouldn’t be working up there on such a hot day and we should finish the job for you,” said one of the men.

Known as “McGee” by those closest to him, Bufalino cultivated politicians and took care of local police departments, either through cash handouts or favors. Upon arriving home from New York every Wednesday, Bufalino made a point of having dinner with his wife, Carrie, and close friends, but he only visited restaurants that he owned or was sure of the quality of its fare. Bufalino loved food and the artistry of creating a good meal. There was the red wine, which he used to dip his prosciutto bread, a main course of chicken or fish and always the pasta with the “gravy,” or sauce. When he wasn’t eating in a familiar restaurant, Bufalino would entertain by cooking special meals. Food was just more than eating. It was an opportunity to communicate, to talk, to enjoy the company of friends or to discuss issues with associates and underlings relating to his myriad of business interests.

In addition to his hold over the Scranton area and interests in New York, Bufalino also spent time in Philadelphia with his good friend Angelo Bruno, whose father ran the Philly mob until his death, in 1946.

Bruno remained an important member of the family and was in line to become its boss, but he was content developing and nurturing his many business interests and those he shared with Bufalino. The two men had similar personality traits. Both were quiet and operated behind the scenes, though Bruno was more of a conciliator than Bufalino. Later known as “the Gentle Don,” Bruno preferred to negotiate a problem but wouldn’t hesitate to use violence as the means to an end.

Along with his hold over the garment industry, Bufalino’s rising influence within the Teamsters union provided him with a powerful platform. He and Bruno shared a hold over the Teamsters, though Bruno’s interest was the Philadelphia local, while Bufalino had inroads in the national organization through his cousin William and Jimmy Hoffa.

By the mid-1950s, Bufalino was earning 5 percent for every Teamsters loan he’d facilitate for friends and business associates from the Central States pension fund, and as Hoffa rose through the national union, so too did Bufalino’s fortunes. His placement of cousin William in Detroit in 1946 was a genius stroke, and William’s subsequent appointment to lead Jimmy Hoffa’s Detroit Teamsters Local 985 brought Russell Bufalino closer to the bombastic, up-and-coming Hoffa as their relationship grew deeper, and profitable.

Bufalino liked Hoffa. He was tough, had a good business mind and, above all, was a man of his word. But because of the attention brought by the Kefauver Committee, a new U.S. House subcommittee in 1953, chaired by Representative Clare E. Hoffman, began investigating racketeering in Detroit. The Hoffman Committee focused on Hoffa and his local 985 president, William Bufalino. In its report, the committee discovered the true dealings behind the Detroit local.

There existed a gigantic, wicked conspiracy to, through the use of force, threats of force and economic pressure, extort and collect millions of dollars not only from unorganized workers but from members of unions who are in good standing, from independent businessmen, and, on occasion, from the Federal Government itself. . . . The Teamsters union, Local 985, through its president William E. Bufalino, is the principal offender and perpetrator of the racketeering, extortion, and gangsterism.

Despite its report, the committee did little to upset organized crime’s control over the union or its influence with Hoffa and the Teamsters. Still, the FBI had no choice but to quietly acknowledge that the mob did exist, and J. Edgar Hoover ordered the bureau to begin the Top Hoodlum Program.

Agents in cities across America were told to document the activities of the nation’s top organized crime figures, and that included Bufalino, with his first reports filed by agents trailing him in Pittston, New York and Philadelphia. A year later, the bureau had accumulated enough information to produce an initial report for its Philadelphia Top Hoodlum file.

[Russell Bufalino] is the nephew of Charles Bufalino, alleged to be one of the two most powerful men in the Mafia of the Pittston, Pa. area. . . . Russell Bufalino is the active leader of the Mafia, with his uncle Charles and Santo Volpe acting as silent partners. . . . We are advised that during World War II, Bufalino was employed as a mechanic in a bottling plant operated by Joseph Barbara in Binghamton, N.Y. Bufalino is married and resides at 720 Wyoming Street, Exeter, which is near Pittston, Pa. . . . Bufalino, as the alleged head of the Mafia in the Pittston area, has gained control of approximately seven dress factories in that area and apparently has a “hold” on all persons involved in gambling activities in the Pittston area, in that he, Bufalino, gets a “cut” from each of them.

During April of 1953 . . . there were approximately 40 dress factories in and around Pittston, Pa. About half of these factories are operated by individuals from the New York City area, about whom background information was not available to the informant. The remaining half are operated by individuals from the Pittston area and have been infiltrated and dominated by known racketeers and hoodlums headed by [Bufalino]. Informant stated that it was his understanding that anyone who desired to enter this field had to make arrangements through Bufalino, who has contacts in New York City, to obtain contracts for dresses. In return, Bufalino received a certain percentage of each dress manufactured under the contract.