The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino (10 page)

Aside from his contacts with Santo Volpe and Charles Bufalino, the report linked Bufalino to several other mobsters, including Bruno. Agents tracked Bufalino to hangouts such as the Imperial Poolroom in Pittston and an office he used near the Martz bus terminal in Scranton. They also followed him on his weekly trips to New York City, where he routinely stayed at the Hotel Forrester, with side trips to the Hotel Lexington and the Hotel New Yorker.

Bufalino usually flew to New York from the airport in Evoca, Pennsylvania, near Scranton on Monday morning and returned to Pennsylvania on Wednesday. The report said that Bufalino ran all gambling activity in the region, including betting on football, baseball, basketball and crap games.

Bufalino’s closest friend, according to the FBI, was William Medico, the owner of the Medico Electric Company. Medico allegedly made his money in bootlegging during Prohibition and subsequently moved to legitimate and illegitimate businesses. Medico was described as a capo in the Bufalino family, and there was wide suspicion that it was Bufalino who actually owned the Medico firm.

By 1956, the FBI was trailing Bufalino regularly and even followed him, Medico and James Osticco, Bufalino’s underboss, to Cuba, where they were spotted meeting with Santo Trafficante Jr. the South Florida Mafia boss who co-owned the Sans Souci night club. Bufalino remained there for a month. Medico later denied having been on the trip, but he forgot that he returned via the Bahamas, from where the FBI recovered a postcard he sent on May 5, 1956, which was stamped with the mark of the British Empire, which controlled the islands.

The 1956 trip wasn’t the first time Bufalino had been to Cuba, but it was the first in which Bufalino had been followed to Cuba. Havana was a bustling city, alive with its casinos and nightlife, and unbeknownst to the FBI, Russell Bufalino wasn’t just some tourist.

E
IGHT

I
n December 1946, the heads of all
the organized crime families in the United States were summoned by Lucky Luciano to meet at the Hotel Nacional, in Havana.

Luciano had been imprisoned at the beginning of World War II following a conviction on a pandering charge, but he later struck an agreement to help the U.S. government by having his men keep an eye on the East Coast docks and waterfronts for German saboteurs. When the war ended, Luciano was rewarded with a pardon by New York governor Thomas E. Dewey but ordered to leave the country.

Luciano departed for Italy, where years earlier he saw the potential for heroin, particularly the vast, virgin market in the United States. Following the war, Luciano summoned the families to Havana to discuss, strategize and organize the flow of narcotics from Italy into the United States. Luciano also had another subject on the agenda, and that was to resolve some festering issues that resulted from the return of Vito Genovese.

The meeting was considered historic, given the sheer numbers and power of those in attendance, which included Frank Costello, Albert Anastasia and Stefano Magaddino, who brought with him several underlings from the Buffalo and Scranton families, including Russell Bufalino.

Then in his early forties, Bufalino was a recognized leader, operating as an underboss to his brother-in-law John Sciandra but expanding his own power and influence beyond Pennsylvania and into New York City. Bufalino remained behind the scenes in Havana while the family leaders ironed out agreements on the drug trade, with the Italian heroin shipped to Havana and then brought into the United States.

Cuba was rapidly becoming a central business center for organized crime. The small country had a large identity problem due chiefly to the ever-changing political landscape, thanks in part to a former Cuban army sergeant who led a revolt in 1933.

After ascending to power, Ruben Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar subsequently gained the favor of the U.S. government, which recognized his new government in 1934. Handpicked presidents headed a puppet regime for several years before Batísta won the first election in 1940 under Cuba’s newly devised constitution. Batista lost the presidency in 1944, but by then he had developed a business partnership with organized crime, which subsequently used that foothold to buy and build new hotels and casinos to lure tourists from the United States and Europe.

After losing the election, Batista divided his time over the next four years traveling from Cuba to Florida and New York, where he maintained residences and nurtured friendships. And among those he developed deep friendships with in the United States was Russell Bufalino. When Batista retook control of the country in a coup in 1952, his government was immediately recognized by President Dwight Eisenhower, and within months, he reached agreements with the Mafiosi and several American corporations, promising to match dollar for dollar any investment over $1 million in a hotel and casino. The point man for the organized crime interests was Meyer Lansky, a Jewish gangster allied with Luciano who was now the brains behind the entire Cuban operation.

As Cuba’s economy, and fortunes, improved, so too did the fortunes of its corrupt president. Batista secured a cut, typically 10 percent to 30 percent, of casino revenues. He also took bribes from U.S. companies eager to win contracts for various construction projects, including those for new airports and highways. The astonishing cash infusion led Cuba to quickly become a playground for the wealthy, and at its height, the money flowing through the island produced a take for the mob that exceeded $1 million per day from the casinos alone. Lansky, ever the businessman, insisted that the spoils from Cuba be shared, and nearly every major organized crime boss in the United States would have some interest in a Cuban hotel and casino, including the Sans Souci, Sevilla-Biltmore, Commodoro, Deauville, Capri, Nacional and Plaza.

Russell Bufalino was no exception, and he counted pieces of the Sans Souci and the Plaza hotels along with co-ownership of a dog track and a shrimping business. But Bufalino also had something the other mob leaders didn’t have—a long-standing friendship with Batista. The two men had become so close that during the hot Cuban summers, Batista would send his children to northeastern Pennsylvania to vacation under Bufalino’s protection.

By 1956, Bufalino’s lucrative business interests included his holdings in Cuba; his infiltration of the Teamsters union, particularly its Central States pension fund; his choke hold over the garment industry; and a host of other businesses in Pennsylvania and New York. He was also the recognized leader of the northeastern Pennsylvania family, having taken over for John Sciandra in 1949. Joseph Barbara still ran New York’s southern tier, but he was in ill health, having suffered two heart attacks within a year.

Now in his midfifties, Bufalino was duly recognized by other mob leaders as one of the most important gangsters in the country. Yet few outside organized crime circles knew or heard of him, and those who did had a hard time understanding why a crime boss from Kingston, Pennsylvania, could wield more power than a boss from New York or Chicago. But he did, which is why Bufalino was called upon to quell what could have been the greatest mob war since 1931.

* * *

IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON
on November 13, 1957, when New York State Police sergeant Edgar Croswell and trooper Vincent Vasisko arrived at the Parkway Motel on Route 17 near Binghamton, New York. They had been called to investigate a bad-check charge, and once inside the motel, Croswell recognized a man talking to the motel owners, Warren and Helen Schroeder. It was Joseph Barbara’s son, Joseph Barbara Jr.

Croswell was all too familiar with the elder Barbara and his business interests in central New York. Barbara Sr. had lived in the region for nearly two decades. He owned a Canada Dry bottling plant and several other legitimate businesses. But Croswell knew about Barbara’s history as a contract killer in Buffalo for Stefano Magaddino before relocating to central New York in the mid-1930s.

And if anyone doubted his violent side, they just had to look at his arrest record. Barbara had been picked up by the Pennsylvania State Police and charged with murdering a Sicilian from Montedoro, Calogero Calamera, on January 4, 1931. Calamera was walking along a Pittston street for a late-night walk when he was approached by two men and shot six times. Before he died, he told police he had outstanding issues with Santo Volpe and Charles Bufalino and gave descriptions of the two men who shot him. Police arrested Barbara, but later dropped the charges.

Barbara was arrested again a year later, again on suspicion of murder, but that charge was later withdrawn when a witness recanted. In February 1933, Barbara was arrested yet again after the body of a bootlegger and hijacker, Samuel Wichner, was found in the trunk of a car in Scranton with a noose around his neck and the other end of the rope fastened to his knees. Before his demise, Wichner had told his wife he met with Barbara at his home the night before to discuss a bootlegging business venture with Barbara and Santo Volpe but was told to come back the following night.

Barbara was charged again with murder, but like his other arrests, the charge was later dropped due to lack of evidence.

In 1946, six years after assuming control of the central New York territory, Barbara was charged with illegal acquisition of sugar, which was used to make alcohol. He was found guilty and fined $5,000. Following that arrest, he remained out of sight and spent much of his time at his estate in nearby Apalachin, a small hamlet just west of Binghamton that played host to several important meetings. In 1956, men in silk suits and late-model cars converged on the Barbara estate. The official reason was to pay their respects to Barbara after he suffered a heart attack, but Croswell learned Barbara hosted a meeting of the Commission, the appointed national leadership of
La Cosa Nostra
, which brought the heads of the five most important families throughout the United States and representatives from other families to his home to discuss business. The estate was in the country, with little if any police presence and isolated from the big cities. It was also a relatively easy commute from Buffalo for Stefano Magaddino, who remained a powerful force within organized crime and served as the de facto host.

Barbara had also used his home for important meetings within his own family and lent it out to others to iron out intrafamily disputes. For nearly two years, men flew into the Binghamton airport and registered in local hotels under assumed names to meet at the Barbara estate.

When Barbara’s son left the Parkway Motel on November 13, 1957, Croswell asked Mrs. Schroeder about her conversation. She said that Barbara Jr. had reserved three rooms for that night and the next and that the rooms were held under his father’s Canada Dry Bottling Company. Barbara didn’t say who the rooms were for but said the men were part of a Canada Dry convention his father was hosting at his home.

Suspicious, Croswell and Vasisko waited till dusk before driving to Barbara Sr.’s Apalachin home. They followed the single road as it wound up toward a hilltop, and when the troopers arrived, they spotted several cars, all with out-of-state license plates. The troopers quickly copied the plate numbers and, upon returning to their barracks, sent the numbers by teletype to the Binghamton office of the U.S. Treasury’s Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Unit. While waiting for a reply, they went back to the Parkway Motel, where they spotted a Cadillac. After writing down that plate number, they went inside to talk to Mr. Schroeder and asked if he could get one of Barbara’s guests to sign a registration card. Schroeder said that Barbara left implicit instructions that none of his guests were to sign and that he’d take care of the bill the following morning.

The troopers returned to their car and waited outside the motel until 2:30
A
.
M
. They came back around noon the next day with an agent from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax unit. They had learned that the Cadillac, which was still parked, belonged to the Buckeye Cigarette Service Company Inc., of Cleveland, Ohio. Croswell went inside the motel but was told by Mr. Schroeder that all of Barbara’s guests had departed. The troopers rushed to the Canada Dry bottling plant, and then to Barbara’s home in Apalachin.

The single-lane road split into two driveways near the house, with one leading to a four-car garage and side parking lot, while the other driveway wrapped around the home to a backyard barn. The estate itself was ranch style and made of stone. Several cars were parked in the front, and the troopers were jotting down some of the numbers from the license plates when about a dozen men walked out front from the rear of the home. Croswell called out to them but they ran, and Croswell immediately called in for reinforcements. Within minutes, police quickly set up a roadblock at the bottom of the lone road that led to the house to stop anyone from getting in, or out.

With more and more police arriving, some of the men scattered into the nearby woods, while others hopped into their cars and sped down the road, only to be stopped at the roadblock. When asked why they were at the house, nearly all said they were there to visit their sick friend Barbara. The police took the men into custody, including several who had been captured after fleeing into the woods. One by one they were identified, and when the police finished, they knew this was more than a sick call.

* * *

IT WAS JUST
three weeks earlier, on October 25, 1957, when two men walked into a barbershop in New York City and shot Albert Anastasia to death.

Anastasia’s long-simmering feud with Vito Genovese had finally reached a climax, as did Genovese’s battle with Frank Costello, who months earlier avoided a similar fate after being shot and wounded as he walked out of his New York apartment. With Anastasia gone and Costello in hiding, it was time to quickly make amends. So Genovese called on Russell Bufalino to schedule a meeting of the Commission to make a peace.

The first call Bufalino made was to Stefano Magaddino. With the New York families on the verge of all-out war, Magaddino had the influence to gather everyone together, and they all agreed to meet at Barbara’s country estate in Apalachin, New York.

By November 5, the meeting was set, and Barbara ordered nearly $500 worth of meat and cold cuts from a local store to be delivered to his home on November 13. Bufalino handled all the organizational duties, from notifying the guests and helping to arrange their transportation. A week before the meeting, Bufalino was in New York City making final arrangements with the heads of the New York families. He then left for Scranton, where he stayed at the Hotel Casey with several other men before driving up to Apalachin. Other attendees arrived by car or by plane, landing at the nearby Binghamton Airport.

When the meeting began, Genovese made his case to the Commission members, recounting his early years with Lucky Luciano, Anastasia and Costello and how he, Genovese, should have been given a leading position upon his return from Italy after World War II. His relative demotion was insulting, he said, and the insult festered for more than a decade. But now, with Anastasia dead and Costello agreeing to retirement, Genovese wanted the Commission’s recognition as the new boss of what would be called the Genovese family, and a seat on the Commission.