The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino (14 page)

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 O
CTOBER 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 for
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.

T
WELVE

I
n 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.

Before the troopers left the prison, Coviello pulled out several letters he had written over the past year or so to the state gaming board and to Greg Matzel, the co-owner of Pocono Manor who lost his bid to DeNaples for a slots license.

“You can use these. You can see the gaming board knew what it was dealing with,” Coviello said.

The troopers took the letters and read them with great interest.

December 26, 2006

Dear Mr. Matzel,

I don’t have time for chit chat so I’m going to be blunt. Do what you think is best.

I watched the hearings with interest. Since your lawyers wrote me on September 8th I have had 3 interviews with the Gaming Control Board and the State Police who work with the Gaming Control Board.

First off lets not pretend to fool each other. I knew you would have to send my letter to the Gaming Control Board. I did what I did for me and I used you and you used me. In here, a fair exchange is no robbery.

Listen to me, last Tuesday, the day before the hearings I was interviewed again and I was shocked to see that Louie still got the votes. Did you listen closely to Tad Decker’s words of, those who receive licenses will still be investigated. I knew the first delay was due to me and I knew Tads words of caution are due to what’s going on.

If you can appeal this decision appeal it. I was read parts of Louie’s interview, he lied, he said he hardly knew me or my father.

In late 69 or 70 Louie had the Scranton Garbage Contract. There was a strike and SCAB workers were hired. My father was the Superintendent for Louie. My picture was in the Scranton Times under the title; Child Labor. I was like 13. How do you deny that. His brother was my best man at my wedding. Louie’s whole family attended my wedding. My son and father in law either work for him now or did in the past. I slept in this guys house a whole summer when my parents were getting a divorce.

I drove his brothers corvette my senior year in high school.

Are these lies PERJURY?? Did you see his daughter Lisa, I use to baby sit for his kids.

The last words these cops told me was they’ll be back.

You did not get a fair shake. I watched both your presentation and Louie’s. I need you to push this. I’m not waiting for a reply either.

I have 2 more ACES to play. Send me an investigator if need be. Can you get a copy of his interview. You should have heard him blow up when incidents from the past were thrown at him.

You are the only one I don’t suspect of taking a suit case full of money. I just had a visit today and the people who visited me were not contacted by the investigators and they told me last week they were seeing them on Thursday.

You are not getting a fair shake and if you don’t step up to the plate you won’t get your bats.

Listen to this, Attorney Cognetti was the prosecutor who prosecuted Louie, my father and myself. He begged me to give Louie up and my chargers would be dropped, now he works for him. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to add this up.

I apologize for any typos but I am rushed for time tonight.

Good Luck,

Louis Coviello EA6952

April 11, 2007

Mr. Matzel,

Its 4 in the morning and if I don’t get this out now it might not go for a few days. I know, you sent my last letter to the Gaming Control Board and they told me not to write you anymore. I guess if I followed rules I would have never spent 15 years in solitary confinement these past 29 years.

I’m sending this letter certified mail. Its a waste of money but I will know you received it. Did you know I sent Louie a certified letter just like this last summer. Yes sir, and he never told the Gaming Control Board about it. And I sent them a copy of the letter and the green card. Did you also know I have been interviewed 7 times. I was interviewed the day before the hearings. As I was interviewed they were on the phone with a field agent as they showed me photos. I had a visit a few weeks ago and they verified past crimes. In fact they dug so far they showed me something I forgot about. This was a law suit that involved my father and Louis. This is the same Louie who for 84 pages denied hardly knowing me or my father. If you could get your hands on these 84 pages you could prove perjury. And its public information. Go to the courthouse, library and Scranton Times. The cops have it, they know.

So here’s what I am thinking. The field agents are being over ruled by their superiors. That is, their being told to let it go. No doubt politicians are pushing to drop this.

I’m sure you were either watching the hearings or there when Louis presented his case. I’m sure you saw little Lisa. I use to baby sit for her. Her brother Doctor DeNaples just sent me a message that he wants to see me. He was my favorite. He never missed one of my games. His Uncle Eugene DeNaples is my son’s God Father and my best man at my wedding. The cops know all this. I’m sure the church has records. February 5th of 1976. St. Anthony’s church in Dunmore.

So tell me, how is it possible that Louie remembers seeing me around town. His exact words that were read to me where, “yeah, he was a kid from the neighborhood, he played football, he went to Texas A&M. I didn’t really know him. And his father drove truck for me once in awhile. I think Louis is still in prison isn’t he.”

He didn’t mention the certified letter I sent him nor the times in the past 29 years when I wrote him.

I hope you are getting the message. I read where you hired a lawyer in Pittsburgh. Your money would be better spent by sending me an investigator that could follow a map and give you concrete evidence. Then you could take this to the board and cry bloody murder.

I wasn’t given the polygraph test and I know why. Then there would be more evidence that what I said is true. They told me, they knew I’m not lying so there is no need to give me one. In fact they told me when this process first started my credibility was like whale shit but its rising. The cops are amazed at my memory.

Louie knows I write you. I sent him a few letters since June. I told him to get my fucken money. Why didn’t he report me. If someone tries to extort you wouldn’t you call the cops? You wouldn’t if you didn’t want the information made public. And that’s going to be my last resort. I’m going to tell you what to do. Before you send this to the Gaming Control Board. Go down the Scranton Times and Scranton Tribune Office and get a copy of every article on Louie. They have 6 folders of them. And in them articles is evidence that Louie lied when the board questioned him. Go back to 1968. Get the articles on the Scranton Garbage Strike. He had a contract with the city. My father was the Superintendent. Louie forgot about this.