The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino

by Birkbeck, Matt

  The businessman looked at me closely.

  “All I can tell you is that I’m open to interviewing anyone who knew Russell Bufalino,” I said.

  “So you’ve spoken to him?”

  “I didn’t say that. All I’m saying is I would be open to speaking to anyone who knew Russell Bufalino.”

  I did speak to a number of people familiar with the life of Russell Bufalino, and they were reliable sources for some of the information contained in the book, such as Bufalino’s relationship with Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista and universal confirmation of Frank Sheeran’s account of the murder of Jimmy Hoffa.

  As we continued our discussion, the businessman said a book on Bufalino would make a few people nervous, people whom he described as “sleepers.” They were men, around his age, he said, who had made their marks as legitimate, successful businessmen or professionals but who remained part of the old Bufalino family.

  “These are people who under no circumstances want to be identified,” he said.

  We ended the meeting shaking hands and agreeing to talk again. The businessman was going to introduce me to several people who knew Bufalino, and I was going to send him a copy of my Sammy Davis Jr. book, Deconstructing Sammy. The businessman, it turned out, was a Sammy fan.

  I’ve often thought about that early conversation.

  Trying to tell the story of Russell Bufalino was a difficult task. There are but a handful of people still alive who can say they knew him, and because of his secretive nature, there wasn’t much in the way of personal documentation. Old news clippings from the local papers reported on his arrests, but they had never taken a hard look at the man or his business dealings.

  Aside from interviews, I relied on information culled from the thousands of pages of documents I obtained, including FBI reports, police records, U.S. government committee findings and a host of other print sources.

  What’s remarkable, aside from the fact that Bufalino was by far one of the most important Mafiosi of his time, was that the corrupt legacy he left behind continues to play a real and important role in the lives of millions of people. The political and legal drama that played out in the casino licensing was just one prime example.

  Like Bufalino before him, Louis DeNaples relied on the support of a bevy of friendly local, state and federal elected officials in his bid for a slots license. Time and time again, people outside Pennsylvania shook their heads in disbelief, each time questioning some new disturbing revelation asking how or why something like that could happen. How could the courts look the other way? Where is law enforcement?

  It reminded many of the old-timers of the days when Russell Bufalino could call on any number of eager politicos or police to fix a ticket or quash an investigation. Or how politicians wouldn’t miss Bufalino’s annual banquets. DeNaples can be seen as a student of Bufalino and merely following a road map drawn by his old friend, a road well traveled that brought riches to a few but one that left an entire region in a virtual state of depression. Blue-collar enclaves in a rural corner of a blue-collar state that has its own set of morals and operates in a sort of vacuum ignorant to nor even caring of outside opinion. A perfect example is Thomas Marino, the former U.S. attorney in Scranton who provided a personal reference for Louis DeNaples’ gaming application but was later forced to resign in 2007 in disgrace. Marino was rewarded by DeNaples with a high-paying job, then later resigned in 2010 to run for Congress. Few outside of Pennsylvania gave Marino, a Republican, much hope, given the bad publicity he received resulting from his resignation. It didn’t matter. Marino won the election by a wide margin. And if anyone thought that was a fluke, Marino was reelected in 2012.

  Just before the election, in October 2012, Billy D’Elia was released from prison and sent to live in a halfway house. Now sixty-five years old, the last and closest link to Russell Bufalino spent Thanksgiving inside Bufalino’s old house in Kingston. D’Elia’s son, whom he named Russell, now lived in the small ranch-style home. It had been left to him by Bufalino’s wife, Carrie, who died in 2006. The couple never had any children of their own, and the younger D’Elia was named a beneficiary.

  Two weeks after Thanksgiving, D’Elia’s former protégé, Frank Pavlico, was found dead inside his home from an apparent suicide. Police said he had hung himself. Pavlico had been in and out of trouble much of his adult life, engaging in one real-estate or investment scam after another. He escaped a lengthy prison sentence for money laundering in 2006 after agreeing to wear a wire and record D’Elia admitting to several offenses, including the planned murder of a drug dealer. Pavlico served less than a year. He and D’Elia were longtime associates and said to be very close, perhaps even cousins. With D’Elia’s encouragement, Pavlico had also testified before the grand jury that investigated Louis DeNaples, offering information on business dealings between D’Elia and DeNaples.

  I knew Frank Pavlico. We had many conversations while I was covering the DeNaples saga for the Morning Call. He had reached out to me after reading a story I had written, and we met several times at out-of-the-way diners throughout the Wyoming Valley. I really didn’t know what to make of him. He was a weightlifter who drove a Land Rover and told stories of growing up with “Uncle Louie” and “Uncle Billy” and how everyone owed their livelihoods to Russell Bufalino. When I asked about his own businesses, he’d talk about these “great investments” he had and try to talk me into plunking down money. The police didn’t like him, convinced he was nothing more than a serial liar.

  I’m sure that at the time of Pavlico’s premature death, D’Elia and DeNaples liked him even less.

  Still, I was surprised to hear about his demise, though I have to admit I was somewhat surprised that he actually took his own life. He had been in court the day before after a warrant was issued for his arrest for skipping out of a hearing in South Carolina relating to another investment scam he was running. It was just another arrest for a man who was familiar with the inside of a jail cell and didn’t seem like something that would lead a man to kill himself. He was only forty-three years old.

  Louis DeNaples remains one of the richest and most influential men in Pennsylvania. His continuing battle with federal regulators over ownership of the First National Community Bank after he was ordered to resign as chairman in April 2012 and divest his bank shares took a fortuitous turn when the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia vacated the ban in January 2013.

  His children continue to control the Mount Airy Casino Resort, which is the lowest-revenue-producing casino in the state. Original plans to build a vast retail outlet never materialized, though construction on a new pool began in March 2013.

  Governor Ed Rendell finally left office in 2010. Aware that he could have been an eventual target of the Dauphin County grand jury, Rendell had remained mostly silent during the casino controversy. He went back to his old Philadelphia law firm, Ballard Spahr, and appears on local television as a commentator on Philadelphia Eagles postgame programs.

  The law enforcement officials who spent years investigating DeNaples, D’Elia, Sica and others had also moved on. Although district attorney Ed Marsico and his lieutenant Fran Chardo continue as prosecutors in Dauphin County, state police trooper Rich Weinstock requested a transfer to a barracks near Scranton, where he drives a police cruiser and hands out speeding tickets on I-81. Dave Swartz remains with the Organized Crime Task Force.

  Former state police commissioner Jeffrey Miller is now a vice president in charge of security for the National Football League in New York, while Ralph Periandi, the former deputy commissioner who initiated the investigation in 2005, is the head of security for Reading Hospital. Despite his thirty-two-year career as a member of the Pennsylvania State Police, Periandi still finds it hard to comprehend the apparent breadth and depth of the gaming conspiracy, and the inability of prosecutors to send even one person to prison.

  Federal authorities continue
to tout their prosecution of Billy D’Elia as a watershed moment that finally put an end to the Bufalino crime family. They may be right. But if you take into account what the elderly businessman told me about the “sleepers”—Bufalino men who live as legitimate businessmen and community leaders—then the Bufalino family is far more alive and powerful than ever before, and the legacy of the Quiet Don continues to live on.

  SOURCES

  This book is the result of six years of reporting that produced dozens of stories on actual events from personal coverage, first-person interviews with dozens of participants and a careful review of countless documents, including but not limited to FBI files, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations reports, Pennsylvania Crime Commission reports, and the original New York State Attorney General’s special investigative 1958 report on Apalachin, New York.

  Other source material included “The Men of Montedoro: Mafia in Northeastern Pennsylvania” (Informer, 2011); I Heard You Paint Houses (Steerforth, 2004); “The Garment Jungle” (Reader’s Digest, 1957); “Meadow Soprano on Line 1!” (Vanity Fair, 2009); and “Pennsylvania Gaming-Panel Chief Faces New Flap” (Philadelphia Daily News, 2004).

  Russell Bufalino, circa 1955. Bufalino claimed ownership of casinos in Havana and clothing manufacturing facilities in New York and Pennsylvania, and he also exerted great influence over the Teamsters union and its rich Central States pension fund. Bufalino was a major target of the FBI’s “Top Hoodlum Program” and, according to a 1964 United States Senate subcommittee, was “one of the most ruthless and powerful leaders of the Mafia in the United States.”

  Unless noted otherwise, photos are courtesy of The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

  Bufalino, Angelo Sciandra and James Osticco (left to right) outside federal court in New York in May 1959 to answer charges relating to the infamous mob meeting in Apalachin, New York. It was Bufalino who organized the November 1957 gathering to help his friend Vito Genovese make peace following the murder of Albert Anastasia and the shooting of Frank Costello.

  U. S. Representative Daniel Flood (D-PA) enjoyed a close relationship with Russell Bufalino from the 1950s until he was forced to resign in 1980.

  Bufalino’s underboss James Osticco, who attended the 1957 Apalachin meeting with Bufalino, was convicted of obstruction of justice in 1983 for tampering with the Louis DeNaples’ jury.

  Rev. Sica (left) once claimed debts of nearly $250,000, with over $100,000 owed to a bank controlled by DeNaples (right).

  PHOTO COURTESY OF THE POCONO RECORD

  Louis DeNaples with the Rev. Joseph Sica (right). A curious sight, Sica was at DeNaples’ side throughout the application process for a casino license. Both men were charged in 2008 with lying to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board about their past ties with Russell Bufalino.

  Pennsylvania State Police commissioner Jeffrey Miller (left) and deputy commissioner Ralph Periandi (right). After the Rendell administration shut the police out of the gaming initiative, Periandi began a secret “Black Ops” investigation that ultimately led to a grand jury and charges against Louis DeNaples and Rev. Sica.

  PHOTO COURTESY OF THE POCONO RECORD

  Former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and members of his administration were the original targets of the state police gaming investigation, but interference by the state Supreme Court in the DeNaples case stymied the probe.

  PHOTO COURTESY OF THE POCONO RECORD

  William D’Elia (above) testifying before the Pennsylvania Crime Commission circa 1982. D’Elia rose from Russell Bufalino’s driver to the head of the crime family following Bufalino’s death in 1994. Following his arrest in 2006 for trying to kill a witness, D’Elia (below) agreed to cooperate with federal and state prosecutors and told the grand jury investigating Louis DeNaples that he and DeNaples had a personal and business relationship that spanned more than thirty years.

  By 1975 Russell Bufalino was at the height of his power. After beating back the government’s attempts to deport him, he took over leadership of Buffalo’s Magaddino family and assumed temporary control over New York’s Genovese family. Combined with his influence within the Teamsters union, Bufalino was arguably one of the most powerful mobsters in the nation. But then came the Time magazine article, which identified Bufalino as one of the mobsters recruited by the CIA in its plots to depose Fidel Castro. Just weeks later, Jimmy Hoffa disappeared.