By the late 1960s, Bufalino’s legitimate business interests included junkyards, garment factories and local hotels, including a Howard Johnson’s, and he took a cut, usually 10 percent, from anyone who sought to set up a business within his geographical home base. Bufalino also had facilitated loans to several resort owners in the Poconos.
Now in his midsixties, Bufalino was still embroiled in his battle with the government over his deportation and was virtually out of gas and on his last appeal. His attorneys were costing him a small fortune, and Bufalino did everything he could to make sure he collected every dime owed to him. At the same time, he had several run-ins with the law. He was indicted in 1969 and accused with two others affiliated with Stefano Magaddino of plotting to transport more than fifty stolen television sets from Buffalo to Pittston. They were color sets and valued at $35,000. The charges, like most other cases against Bufalino, eventually evaporated.
Among his illegitimate interests, which still included gambling, extortion, loan sharking and prostitution, Bufalino counted labor racketeering as his bread and butter, and that included the money he made off the loans made from the Teamsters pension fund. So it was with great interest, and self-preservation, that he kept his good left eye closely on his friend Jimmy Hoffa.
* * *
AFTER FINALLY EXHAUSTING his appeals from his 1964 convictions, Jimmy Hoffa reported to the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1967, and control of the Teamsters union was transferred to Hoffa’s chief lieutenant, Frank Fitzsimmons. Unlike Hoffa, whose sheer will could force even the strongest of men to break and bend to his wishes, Fitzsimmons was a conciliator, a bear of a man who simply sought to make everyone happy.
Fitzsimmons was also far more politically astute than Hoffa, and with his mentor behind bars, Fitzsimmons began the process of decentralizing the Teamster organization. Instead of just one man, which had been Hoffa, calling the shots, Fitzsimmons put many of the union’s major decisions in the hands of regional directors. And that included the Teamsters’ business dealings with organized crime.
Hoffa had been in bed with the mob for thirty years and made himself directly available to the mob’s hierarchy. Fitzsimmons sought to insulate himself and the upper Teamster echelon and laid down a new edict that any organized crime boss seeking favors or money could simply contact his local Teamster representative. Hoffa was furious with Fitzsimmons, but the new organizational setup was fine with the mob hierarchy, including Bufalino. Everyone knew Bufalino was a Hoffa man, but he was a businessman first, and it had quickly become clear that under Fitzsimmons, the financial floodgates would open, given the new, acting Teamster boss was quietly making inroads with President Richard M. Nixon.
The Teamsters had officially endorsed the Democratic ticket led by Hubert Humphrey in the 1968 presidential election. The earlier candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy had sent shivers throughout the underworld, but when the younger Kennedy met his violent demise in Los Angeles in June 1968, the underworld exhaled again.
Nixon wanted the Teamster support and had promised to eventually pardon Hoffa. Only the timing would have to be such where it would be Fitzsimmons, and not Hoffa, who remained in control. Under Fitzsimmons’ new decentralization edict, hundreds of millions were being lent from the Teamster pension funds at an unprecedented scale, with a good portion of the money now supporting mob-controlled casinos in Las Vegas, which was fast becoming the new Havana. Fitzsimmons was also fueling cash to Nixon and his attorney general, John Mitchell. Following Nixon’s election, underworld prosecutions nosedived, while many other FBI probes were simply dropped. The Justice Department under John Mitchell had other priorities, and the mob was allowed to flourish.
* * *
ON OCTOBER 7, 1971, the U.S. Court of Appeals denied Russell Bufalino’s deportation appeal and ordered that he be immediately sent to Italy. The decision wasn’t surprising and almost expected. Bufalino should have been booted from the country long ago, but he had managed to use one unorthodox delaying tactic after another. He had one last appeal, and if that didn’t work, there was yet another option. In the meantime, his immediate attention was diverted to a book that drew the ire of many Mafiosi.
Published in 1969, The Godfather told the fictional story of Vito Corleone, a Sicilian immigrant who wielded great power while leading his criminal family in 1940s New York. Written by an Italian, Mario Puzo, the book was a bestseller that spent sixty-seven weeks on the New York Times book list, and Paramount Pictures was adapting the story into a film starring Hollywood legend Marlon Brando in the title role.
A younger segment of La Cosa Nostra took exception to what it expected would be yet another attempt to show Italians in a most unfavorable light. Joe Colombo, who headed New York’s Colombo family, boldly formed the Italian American Civil Rights League to combat what it perceived as Italian American discrimination by the FBI. During one of its first rallies, in New York in June 1970, more than 100,000 people were in attendance to show their support. The league subsequently grew, and chapters opened in different cities across the country, including Pittston, Pennsylvania.
When word surfaced that Paramount was adapting The Godfather to film, it was Colombo who sent word that his new organization would use its Teamsters contacts to stop the production, and another rally, this one at Madison Square Garden in New York, was held to protest the film. The producers also had to deal with Frank Sinatra, who was mocked in the book through the character of Johnny Fontaine, a womanizing singer whose ties to the Corleone family brought him fame and fortune and was seen as far too close to Sinatra’s relationship with Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana. Sinatra did what he could do to stop the film.
Colombo later had a change of heart and signed off on the movie after reviewing the script and requesting, and receiving, the removal of the lone use in the film of the word Mafia. It seemed too simple a solution, and it was. Unbeknownst to but a few people, the peace came on orders of other high-ranking Mafiosi, specifically Russell Bufalino.
The Godfather wasn’t so much a gangster movie as it was a film about a proud and successful immigrant American family. When Bufalino heard that the young director, Francis Ford Coppola, was turning Puzo’s book into a Shakespearean tragedy, he was intrigued. Every movie based on Italian Americans always showed dimwitted, half crazed and violent thugs terrorizing the public, the police and even their own families.
The Godfather was different and to a certain extent justified the very existence of organized crime as a group that, under Vito Corleone, provided the public with simple pleasures like gambling, alcohol and sex. Politicians were bought, as were police captains, but the Corleones were far more representative of corporate America than your run-of-the-mill mob family.
Bufalino’s fascination with the film was odd, given that throughout his life he had no use for publicity of any kind. Few photos were taken of him, aside from FBI agents peering from some unseen location. But Bufalino’s intellect absorbed the idea of a Sicilian immigrant who made his place in America despite the steepest of odds, and it was Bufalino who signed off on the mob’s support of the film. Colombo was ordered to make peace with the production, which he did after extracting minimal commitments from the producers, several of which were never honored, including a promise to give the proceeds from the New York premiere to Colombo’s group.
Bufalino’s influence also led to several casting decisions. Singer Al Martino had coveted the role of Johnny Fontaine, but Coppola had no interest in giving it to him. Martino had a number-one single, “Here in My Heart,” in 1952 and later played the casinos in Las Vegas, opening for acts including Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. But he was among a second-tier group of singers who had been forced to leave the country in the 1950s after a spat with his managers, who were really mob guys who took over his contract. It was Angelo Bruno, the Philadelphia boss, who brokered his return in 1958, and Martino returned to the club circuit.
When casting began fo
r The Godfather, Martino invited Coppola and other members of the production to Las Vegas, where he spent nearly $25,000 on a party filled with booze and pretty showgirls. Despite the elaborate and costly effort, Coppola had another singer, Vic Damone, penciled in for the role. Desperate, Martino turned to his real godfather, Russell Bufalino, who was the one person he knew who could successfully weigh in on the matter. Within a week, Damone curiously bowed out, and Martino got the coveted role.
Al Lettieri was also looking to be cast in the movie. The New York–born actor sought the role of Virgil “the Turk” Sollozzo, the violent drug dealer who plotted the assassination of Vito Corleone after the don declined to finance Sollozzo’s heroin operation.
Lettieri’s dark hair and complexion and menacing features gave him the look of a real wise guy. In fact, Lettieri was a real mobster, having worked for the Genovese family as an associate since he was a teen. Lettieri had worked in restaurants owned by his two “uncles,” Tommy and Patsy Eboli, who were the caretakers of the Genovese family while its leader, Vito Genovese, sat out most of the 1960s serving an extended prison term that emanated from his arrest at Apalachin in 1957. Genovese died in prison in 1969, leaving control of his family to the Eboli brothers.
Lettieri ran numbers and did other odd jobs for his uncles before being entrusted with overseeing several Genovese-owned restaurants. After fleeing to England to escape some family-related trouble, Lettieri returned to New York and took up acting and eventually got his first role in a 1964 television movie, The Hanged Man, with Robert Culp and Vera Miles. It was Bufalino who quietly put the word out that Lettieri would make a perfect Sollozzo. During preproduction, Lettieri took some of the actors and crew, including Al Pacino, James Caan and Marlon Brando, to Patsy Eboli’s home in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Patsy would later be on the set as an advisor.
Now carrying the mob’s blessing, other real gangsters were cast in the film, including Lenny Montana, who secured the brief but legendary role of Luca Brasi. Montana was a huge man who got the part inadvertently after showing up on the set one day as a bodyguard to another, younger gangster during filming on Staten Island.
Bufalino visited the set, too. For years, Bufalino had little use for actors or singers, especially Frank Sinatra, who he thought was a wannabe-tough guy who only threatened to raise his fists with a belly full of booze and several bodyguards nearby to step in. But Bufalino bought into The Godfather, and he spent time with Marlon Brando inside his trailer in Lower Manhattan’s Little Italy neighborhood complaining about his deportation case while giving him a few pointers on mob etiquette.
When The Godfather premiered, in 1972, it was a smash hit that later won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Actor for Brando, whose Oscar-winning performance was, for those who knew Russell Bufalino, a wonderful imitation of him.
On July 16, 1972, four months after the film premiered, Tommy Eboli was gunned down on a Brooklyn street, shot five times as he was nearing his car. Leaderless, a vacuum at the top of the Genovese family would yet again be temporarily filled by Bufalino, who took over the family while the Commission considered a permanent solution.
TWELVE
In March 2007, Pennsylvania State Police deputy commissioner Ralph Periandi resigned, calling an end to a thirty-two-year career. The disappointment over the decision by the state Gaming Control Board to give a slots license to Louis DeNaples notwithstanding, Periandi’s dealings with the Rendell administration opened his eyes to the kind of backroom political dealings he only heard whispers about.
Just a month earlier, state senator Vince Fumo was indicted on 137 counts, including mail fraud, wire fraud, obstruction of justice and conspiracy. Fumo allegedly used his position in the Senate to steal taxpayer money and use state workers for his own personal pursuits, including construction on an addition to his Philadelphia home. He also allegedly stole $1 million in state funds and steered $1 million from one of his charities into his own pocket.
The charges were the culmination of a lengthy FBI probe into political corruption, and Periandi could only think back to his meeting in Philadelphia two years earlier. He had guessed the FBI was zeroing on Fumo, but he had never gotten an answer, until now. The supposed task force had been decidedly one-sided as the feds had their priorities and the state police did all the legwork with its investigation. For Periandi, watching as DeNaples was guided through the wall of legitimacy was hard to take for a law-and-order man, and Periandi’s enthusiasm for the job had waned. But there would be some satisfaction, and it would come from knowing that Dauphin County district attorney Ed Marsico would soon empanel an investigative grand jury to probe DeNaples, the gaming board and, hopefully, Ed Rendell and his administration.
The first subpoenas were issued in May 2007, and they directed the Gaming Control Board to provide all information it had relating to the licensing of Louis DeNaples. The board immediately contacted DeNaples and his attorneys to tell them about the investigation.
In July, the grand jury heard from several people, and among them was the prosecution’s star witness, Billy D’Elia.
D’Elia’s agreement with the federal government called for him to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge in return for his cooperation in other ongoing investigations, either on the federal or state level. During his interviews with Rich Weinstock and Dave Swartz, he had drawn a road map of his lengthy involvement with DeNaples, and spoke at length about DeNaples’ long relationship with Russell Bufalino.
D’Elia repeated his story before the grand jury, recounting a friendship with DeNaples that dated back to the 1960s, when he was getting his feet wet as an associate of the Bufalino family. D’Elia told the grand jury of the business deals they did together, his protection of DeNaples when confronted with problems posed by other mob families in New York and New Jersey and, of course, their long-standing personal relationship.
Some of D’Elia’s more riveting testimony centered around DeNaples and Bufalino. DeNaples was so important to the family, said D’Elia, that Russell Bufalino approved the plan to fix DeNaples’ 1977 fraud trial, which ended in a hung jury.
Clarence Fowler, aka Shamsud-din Ali, the Philadelphia Imam now serving a seven-year prison term for racketeering and defrauding the city of Philadelphia, testified about several meetings he had with DeNaples, one of which was captured on an FBI phone wiretap where they discussed, among other things, the removal of hazardous material from Philadelphia to one of DeNaples’ landfills.
Another witness, Louis Coviello, had known DeNaples since childhood, babysitting for his daughter Lisa, and was friends with DeNaples’ brother Eugene. Coviello’s father, Louis Sr., was among the men prosecuted with DeNaples in the 1977 fraud probe. Coviello had been a star running back at Dunmore High School in the late 1960s and went to Texas A&M on a football scholarship. But he was homesick and returned home within a month, landing on the streets of Scranton and Dunmore doing odd jobs for his father and DeNaples.
In 1977, Coviello and another man were convicted of shooting a drug dealer. Coviello claimed his innocence, saying he was present but didn’t pull the trigger and had no idea the other man even had a gun. Coviello was convicted and sentenced to life in prison despite assurances, he said, from DeNaples that he would be provided with the legal help and muscle to keep him out of jail.
Coviello had spent thirty years in prison, nearly half the time in solitary confinement for breaking one rule or another. He was now at the state prison at Frackville, which was just off I-81 about an hour northwest of Harrisburg. Of medium height, with the strength of a bull and hampered by a terrible stutter, Coviello had come to the attention of the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, the gaming board’s Bureau of Investigations and Enforcement (BIE) and state police troopers Rich Weinstock and Dave Swartz around the same time.
The Secret Service and FBI visited with Coviello twice in 2007 to talk about a money-laundering probe involving DeNaples. BIE’s interest came a year
earlier during its background check as DeNaples sought a gaming license. Coviello was of such importance to BIE that during DeNaples’ closed-door suitability hearings in December 2006, BIE had Coviello on the phone from prison to help them sort out DeNaples’ vague responses. When confronted about particular details about his past, DeNaples became angry and displayed a side not even his attorneys wanted to see. And he had no idea BIE was getting its information in real time from Coviello.
Weinstock and Swartz also spent time with Coviello, having visited with him several times at the Frackville prison. Troubled since youth and cognizant of his terrible stutter, Coviello spoke slowly, detailing his long relationship with DeNaples and his family and his bitterness over how DeNaples abandoned him after his conviction.
It was clear that after all these years, Coviello’s anger toward DeNaples was still raw.
“He told me and my father he would take care of this. That I wouldn’t go to prison. He knew I didn’t shoot anyone, but at the trial they said I was the one with the gun. They let me sink,” Coviello told the troopers.
Then Coviello became reflective, and he told the troopers that his prison sentence could have been retribution from God for a murder he did commit years earlier. Coviello told how he had walked into Community Medical Center in Scranton and into the room of a man who was recuperating from a heart attack. The man was a witness in an upcoming trial of Bufalino associate Philip “Fibber” Forgione, and when Coviello walked into the room, he closed the door, took a pillow and placed it over his head, smothering him to death.
The papers said the man died of heart failure, and neither Coviello nor Forgione were ever implicated in the murder.
“God has a weird way of settling debts,” said Coviello.
The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino Page 14