by Mike Stanton
Cianci was a fabulous promoter who had served Providence well in some respects, Murray believed. But beneath the façade was a bullying quality that held back the Good Buddy. Cianci embodied the story The Picture of Dorian Gray, about a man who continues to look young and fit as his portrait decays and grows ugly: at City Hall, the mayor’s handlers unveiled a portrait of a young, svelte Cianci. “It’s like somewhere he sold his soul and made a pact with the devil to be mayor for the rest of his life,” said Murray. “Buddy has more retainers than Rudy Giuliani. But after a while, the whole routine with the limousine gets old. What excites him when he gets up in the morning?” One day, Murray was standing in line at a wake when the mayor cut in line to join him and proceeded to describe, in graphic sexual detail, how he was exhausted because he’d just spent the past forty-eight hours “shacked up” at the Congress Inn, a motel off Interstate 95 in rural West Greenwich.
Michael Rich, a political-science professor at Brown University, received a firsthand lesson in how Cianci operated when the mayor drafted him to run the Providence Plan, a public-private consortium to help revitalize the city. Rich found the mayor eloquent in painting a vision of what cities should be, but heavy-handed in implementing his ideas. He functioned like an old-fashioned machine boss, bullying executives and trying to control everything.
One morning Rich and a Fleet Bank executive organized a breakfast meeting at the Turks Head Club of about fifteen top business leaders. Rich gave his spiel about the importance of getting the business community involved, but the response was lukewarm. “A dozen or more people at major institutions told me that they were very supportive of our goals, but that as long as Buddy Cianci was the mayor, they wouldn’t give a nickel,” said Rich. “It was a question of trust, and of whether the money would go to support a ‘special friend’ or company on his political donor list.”
At one of Cianci’s infamous directors’ meetings, Rich was a few minutes into a presentation on strategic planning when Frank Corrente cut him off, saying, “Okay, Professor, I’m sure we could talk about this all day, but we’ve got more important things.” Then the discussion shifted to jobs in the Fire Department.
Rich remembered Cianci ending a directors’ meeting by asking for a rundown of “who’s been good to us, who can we help, and who’s been bad, who can we stick it to.” For instance, if someone the mayor had a problem with had applied for a zoning variance or a building permit, he might say, “There’s no way this is going through,” or “Find a way to slap a code violation on them.”
Rich, who had more autonomy, resisted efforts at political meddling. Someone from the mayor’s office would point out that Rich hadn’t hung the mayor’s picture on the wall in his office; he stuck it in a file cabinet. Corrente would grumble at Rich’s refusal to hire unqualified people, saying that he had “all these people” he needed to help out. Art Coloian asked him to use a particular printer for his next newsletter who had been “good to the mayor.” Rich refused.
One day Rich made a comment, possibly to a Brown student writing a term paper, that the only way for the Providence Plan to succeed would be with a new mayor. The remark got back to Cianci, who had Rich pulled out of a meeting and brought to the mayor’s office. For the next two and a half hours, Rich said, Cianci screamed at him, got in his face, swearing, and jabbed his finger at him. The mayor shouted that he wasn’t going to let some “chicken-shit professor” run him down. Rich replied that he wasn’t being disloyal—“I’m just not into this old-style form of governing.” That further enraged Cianci. Rich sat there as the mayor ranted, the fireplace-log episode with Raymond DeLeo going through his mind.
Rich finally resigned and left Providence to become a professor at Emory University in Atlanta. Looking back, he said, “As far as Providence has come, imagine where it could be if you had a mayor who was a real partner-maker. You’d be blowing other cities off the map.”
IN 1998 BUDDY CIANCI ran unopposed for mayor and was reelected to a record sixth term. He started the race with just one opponent, a downtown businessman named Pat Cortellessa, who claimed that he had been shaken down by Frank Corrente. Cortellessa was just a minor irritant, but the mayor didn’t need to hear his accusations of corruption in the Renaissance City.
One summer day Art Coloian rounded up some of the mayor’s aides at City Hall and took them to the mayor’s campaign headquarters. They spent the day, on city time, checking the names and addresses of people who had signed Cortellessa’s nomination papers. Buddy’s blitzkrieg resulted in the Board of Canvassers invalidating several signatures. Cortellessa was knocked off the ballot.
The mayor had more important concerns. He was going Hollywood.
The motion-picture industry, which had had a strong presence in Providence during the silent-film era in the 1920s, was rediscovering the city. From Michael Corrente’s Federal Hill to the Farrelly brothers’ There’s Something About Mary to Steven Spielberg’s historic slave drama, Amistad, the city became a Hollywood set.
Personally, Cianci disliked Federal Hill, for its portrayal of mobsters. But when the film won international awards, he publicly embraced Corrente, who, it turned out, was a distant cousin of Frank Corrente’s, from suburban Coventry. When Michael Corrente chose to film American Buffalo, starring Dustin Hoffman, in Pawtucket instead of Providence, Cianci was upset. In 1995 he launched the Providence Film Commission. Two years later, Cianci began sponsoring an annual “Rhode Island Night” at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, during a major film-industry convention. The event featured homegrown Rhode Island stars like actor James Woods, from Warwick, and homegrown foods: clam cakes, Del’s frozen lemonade, coffee milk, and, of course, the mayor’s marinara sauce.
“Providence has been making locations for years,” said Cianci, who sold himself as the mayor of a film-friendly community. He would personally cut through red tape and do what it took to accommodate moviemakers. For the movie Dumb & Dumber, filmmaker Peter Farrelly said that Cianci offered to shut down Interstate 95 so that Farrelly and his brother could film the opening scene of Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels driving out of Providence—an offer the Farrellys declined for the potential traffic tie-ups it would create. (The fact that some of the Teamsters on local film crews had Mafia ties only added to the allure of Providence as a place where life imitated art.)
The mayor loved the spotlight. When Meet Joe Black, starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, was being filmed at the waterfront Aldrich mansion in Warwick, members of the film crew had to wave Cianci’s yacht away after he cruised into camera range.
The crowning moment came when NBC chose Providence as the location for a prime-time television series, Providence, a feel-good drama about a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon who returns to her roots on the East Side. The producer said that he picked Providence because he liked the name, as in “divine Providence.” The show, with its loving shots of WaterPlace Park and the city’s historic architecture bathed in golden light, became a ratings success and a tourism bonanza. Cianci even wangled a cameo, playing himself. He judged a cooking contest featuring his ubiquitous marinara sauce. At national mayors’ conferences, Cianci joked, the mayor of Baltimore would lament that his city got stuck with the TV series Homicide.
In the spring of 1997, Homicide star Melissa Leo came to Providence to film a low-budget thriller that had been pulled together with the assistance of the mayor’s film commission. She played a Medicaid-fraud investigator who uncovers a serial killer who is a government official. The film crew used the mayor’s office as the serial killer’s office, bringing in a tank of piranha. There was also a boat chase scene down the Providence River. To keep the water levels up for filming, Cianci ordered the Fox Point Hurricane Barrier closed, to keep in the tide. That caused a crisis at the adjacent power plant, which relied on the outflowing water to power its turbines. During filming one afternoon, frantic Narragansett Electric officials called the city to report that the turbines were overheating and would seize up if the hurrica
ne barrier wasn’t reopened. The filming was completed, the barrier opened, and the crisis averted.
The following year, in the spring of 1997, Cianci attended the movie’s premiere at the Showcase Cinemas in Warwick. Several hundred men and women in tuxedos and evening gowns mingled in the theater and drank a champagne toast. Cianci said that he was “honored, after all I’ve been through, that you chose my offices to film a movie called Code of Ethics.”
Within a year, another film crew would set up shop in the basement of an industrial building in the city’s faded West Broadway neighborhood. But there would be no announcement or press release. The mayor didn’t even know.
Operation Plunder Dome had come to the Renaissance City for an extended run.
“Everyone on the campus has noticed the ‘Buddha.’”
Moses Brown yearbook, 1958
It was on the wrestling mat that Cianci (front row, third from right) learned some of the moves that would serve him well in politics.
Moses Brown yearbook
The ivy-covered halls of Moses Brown were a world away from Italian Silver Lake for Cianci (third row from front, fourth from left), who strove to fit in with the WASP sons of privilege.
Moses Brown yearbook
Before Providence was Buddy’s town, it belonged to New England mob boss Raymond L. S. Patriarca, whose control of cops, judges, and politicians earned him a reputation as the unofficial mayor of Providence.
William L. Rooney, The Providence Journal
Bookmaker Rudolph Marfeo’s 1968 murder in Pannone’s Market, near where Cianci grew up, was the culmination of a bloody mob war that would draw the future mayor into the prosecution of Patriarca.
Providence Police Department Photo
Mayor Joseph Doorley, who once stood on the ramparts of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, saw his fortunes decline along with his city’s, culminating in a 1974 mutiny in the ranks of the mighty Democratic machine.
The Providence Journal
Cianci announced his candidacy for mayor in the spring of 1974. He ran as the anticorruption candidate. “The Providence River is like the Democratic machine that has been running this city—namely, it stinks,’’ he said.
The Providence Journal
Cianci poses with his wife, Sheila, and daughter Nicole at home in January 1975, shortly before being sworn in as Providence’s first Italian-American mayor.
The Providence Journal
Mr. Democrat, Larry McGarry (in wheelchair), visits Cianci in the mayor’s office on inauguration day 1975.
Thomas D. Stevens, The Providence Journal
Cianci became the ringmaster of the circus at City Hall and an ally of President Ford. Some said that Cianci had the potential to become the first Italian-American in the Oval Office.
Circus: The Providence Journal; Cianci and Ford: Associated Press
The mayor, seeking to revitalize the dormant downtown, invited the press along for a 1977 police raid of an adult bookstore.
Michael Kelly, The Providence Journal
Cianci and John Chafee, seen here in 1980 when Cianci ran for governor, dueled behind the scenes in 1976 for a coveted U.S. Senate seat.
William K. Daby, The Providence Journal
The mayor leads the Brown University band on a 1976 downtown trolley tour as they play tunes by the Providence-born showman George M. Cohan.
William L. Rooney, The Providence Journal
“Let them arrest me,’’ Cianci declared when the Bristol town fathers attempted to ban him from the Fourth of July parade. “I am going to march to celebrate the joy of being an American.’’
Andy Dickerman, The Providence Journal
Ronald Glantz was the mayor’s Mr. Fix-It—and, Glantz later said, his accomplice in bribery. Glantz went to prison for his own scam involving kickbacks for the purchase of garbage trucks.
Richard Benjamin, The Providence Journal
Cianci makes Frank Sinatra, whose father was a firefighter, an honorary fire chief in 1979. The wiseguys turned out when Sinatra, who was friendly with Raymond Patriarca, performed in Providence. After Sinatra’s death in 1998, the flag over City Hall flew at half-mast.
The Providence Journal
A relentless campaigner, Cianci crisscrossed Rhode Island when he ran for governor in 1980. “I would attend the opening of an envelope,’’ he said.
Andy Dickerman, The Providence Journal
Seeking to break a nasty 1981 strike, the mayor deployed armed police officers to ride shotgun during the midnight ride of the garbage trucks.
John L. Hanlon, The Providence Journal
Buckles Melise (below, right), shown during the 1981 sanitation strike, was mobster Bobo Marrapese’s man at Public Works and also a loyal Cianci fund-raiser. The mayor joked that it was “great public policy’’ when Buckles sledgehammered a striking garbage worker.
Peter Morgan, The Providence Journal
Bristol contractor Raymond DeLeo (right) described the night that the mayor assaulted him for an alleged affair with Cianci’s wife: “I saw a crazed man. I saw a lunatic.’’
Thomas D. Stevens, The Providence Journal
The mayor, standing next to state prosecutor Susan McGuirl, receives a five-year suspended prison sentence after pleading no contest to felony assault of DeLeo. The plea forced him to resign and was widely viewed as the end of his political career.
William L. Rooney, The Providence Journal
One week after resigning as mayor in 1984, Cianci serves as grand marshal at the St. Joseph’s Day parade on Federal Hill and receives a hero’s welcome.
The Providence Journal
Cianci and girlfriend Wendy Materna outside his Power Street house in 1990, celebrating a political comeback that The Wall Street Journal said “would be the envy of Richard Nixon.’’
Bob Thayer, The Providence Journal
WaterFire, the creation of artist Barnaby Evans, won international acclaim and became a signature event of Buddy Cianci’s trend-setting Renaissance.
Sandor Bodo, The Providence Journal
WaterPlace Park, dedicated in 1994 on the site of the Great Salt Cove of colonial times, helped make Providencea national model for urban renewal. Money and other magazines called it one of America’s most livable cities.
The Providence Journal
Cianci, flanked by longtime ad man Norm Roussel, gets a hug from Wendy Materna after announcing for reelection in 1994. Materna faced her own decision—about whether to marry the mayor and stay in Providence.
Bob Thayer, The Providence Journal
The mayor kisses a pig named Petunia, a moment captured in the acclaimed PBS documentary on American politics Vote for Me. The documentary crowned Cianci “the King of Retail.’’
Bob Thayer, The Providence Journal
Cianci flew to Palm Beach, Florida, in 1997 in an effort to convince New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft to move his NFL franchise to Providence.
Glenn Osmundson, The Providence Journal
Actor Anthony Quinn, who moved to Rhode Island in 1995, came to regard the effervescent Cianci as a son. “I don’t know of any artist or man in the world who has the dreams for a place that Buddy has for Providence,’’ Quinn said.
William K. Daby, The Providence Journal
The mayor stands outside his carriage house on Power Street, dubbed by associates the “Crime Castle.’’ In 1999, the FBI appeared at his doorstep.
Bob Thayer, The Providence Journal
Frank Corrente, Cianci’s top aide and campaign treasurer, helped rescue the mayor from bankruptcy. Corrente craved power and younger women at City Hall.
Mary Murphy, The Providence Journal
Edward Voccola (right), with Plunder Dome codefendant Richard Autiello, was accused of paying bribes to lease his auto-body shop, which was near a strip club, to the city as a registration center for schoolchildren. A witness against him in an insurance-fraud case was sent black roses and an animal tongue.
Mary Murphy, The
Providence Journal
Businessman Antonio Freitas spent a year undercover for the FBI, armed with hidden cameras and microphones as he penetrated a web of City Hall corruption.
Mary Murphy, The Providence Journal
Cianci’s appointees to lead the city tax board, Joseph Pannone (above) and David Ead (right), found themselves sharing a jail cell the day Operation Plunder Dome became public. The pair would become key figures in the case against the mayor.
The Providence Journal
On the opening day of his epic racketeering trial, Cianci and his lawyer Richard Egbert choose to walk from the Biltmore (right) to the federal courthouse on the opposite end of Kennedy Plaza. City Hall is behind the mayor.
Kathy Borchers, The Providence Journal
Under indictment for racketeering, Cianci visited Ground Zero in New York two weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks, along with hiscity photographer and videographer.
Peter Goldberg
The government’s team in Operation Plunder Dome. FBI agent Dennis Aiken is flanked by prosecutors Terrence Donnelly (left) and Richard Rose (right).
Kathy Borchers, The Providence Journal
The defense team has lunch in the mayor’s anteroom during the trial. At the end of the second week of jury deliberations, Egbert offers encouragement.
Peter Goldberg
The nation’s longest-serving active mayor ponders his fate after his conviction prompts him not to seek a seventh term. “I was convicted,” he said, “of being the mayor.”
Peter Goldberg
In December 2002, Cianci checked out of the Biltmore and reported to federal prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey—which he called “a very, very inexpensive spa.’’
Gretchen Ertl, The Providence Journal
CHAPTER NINE
Mr. Freon
Buddy Cianci was walking out of the Capital Grille in late 1995 when he bumped into a ghost from his past.
“How ya doin’, Mayor?” asked a man with a drawl like molasses.
Dennis Aiken, the FBI agent from Mississippi, was back.