The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino (17 page)

S
IXTEEN

I
t was 10
P
.
M
. on Wednesday, July 30, when Josephine Hoffa realized something was wrong.

Her husband had not returned home from his afternoon meeting at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant in nearby Bloomfield Township, which was less than twenty miles northwest of Detroit. Jimmy would usually call just to let his wife know he was all right, but the call never came, and by 8
A
.
M
. the next morning, it was the police who were called, and thus began an investigation that ultimately resulted in more than two hundred FBI agents scouring for clues into the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa.

Agents knew he had been at the restaurant, where they found his green 1974 Pontiac Grand DeVille. And they also learned that he went there intending to meet Tony Provenzano and Tony Giacalone, a high-ranking Detroit underworld figure. The two men denied they had scheduled a meeting, with each saying they were busy doing other things. Provenzano said he was getting a massage in New Jersey, while Giacalone was attending to one of his businesses.

A grand jury was impanelled in December 1975, and witnesses were subpoenaed, which aside from Provenzano and Giacalone consisted of a core group of men that included Charles O’Brien, a self-described “foster son” of Hoffa; Salvatore “Sally Bugs” Briguglio, a Detroit Teamster business agent; Thomas Andretta and his brother Stephen; Frank Sheeran; and Russell Bufalino. When they arrived to testify, they were accompanied by their attorney, William Bufalino, who advised each man to take the Fifth Amendment, which they did. Their testimony notwithstanding, the FBI was still able to put together a list of the chief suspects, and Bufalino, Sheeran and Provenzano were at the top.

The FBI developed a theory that Hoffa’s boasting finally resulted in his demise, and the agency was sure he had gotten into a car with O’Brien and several other men, including Briguglio, around 2:30
P
.
M
. that Wednesday afternoon.

Whatever happened after that was well planned and handled in a precision-like manner.

Along with the almost unbearable pressure exerted by the FBI, New York authorities had begun pressing Bufalino on his remaining garment-industry interests. Bufalino once controlled dozens of shops and manufacturing plants but now only had interests in six, including Fair Frox Inc., on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Bufalino claimed he had been employed at Fair Frox since 1972 and collected a regular paycheck. The firm had been in business since 1956. In June 1976, Bufalino was interviewed by New York investigators at the Consulate Hotel. With him were Max Stein, Fairfrox’s treasurer, and Al Flora, the ex-fighter who was now Bufalino’s part-time bodyguard and chauffeur. The quizzing by the New York investigators was pointless but part of what Bufalino perceived to be the FBI’s unrelenting effort to get him, or someone else involved in the Hoffa disappearance, to crack.

Two months later, in August 1976, Johnny Roselli met his demise. He was found dead, stuffed inside a drum floating in a Miami bay. Roselli had been tortured; no doubt his killers wanted to know exactly what he told the Church Committee.

Roselli had testified twice and gave the committee limited information. He was subpoenaed for a third time and scheduled to testify again in September, but his death, along with those of Giancana and, they believed, Hoffa, led the committee to deliver its incomplete report on the CIA’s relationship with organized crime.

Despite its full-court press, the FBI couldn’t develop enough evidence to charge anyone in the Hoffa case. But that didn’t stop the agency from pursuing the chief suspects for other crimes. The government lived by a certain credo. If it couldn’t prosecute you for one serious crime, it would surely get you on something else. And that was never more true than for the men who were the chief suspects in the Hoffa case, who were hounded for several years.

Union leader and Genovese family captain Tony Provenzano was subsequently tried and convicted in 1978 for the 1961 murder of a Teamster official. Anthony Giacalone was sentenced to ten years in prison for income tax fraud. Salvatore Briguglio, who had been under intense federal pressure and was connected with Provenzano to the 1961 Teamster murder, was shot and killed in New York in March 1978. Frank Sheeran was indicted in 1980 on several charges, including two murders, but he was acquitted. He eventually went to prison in 1982, following his 1981 conviction on labor racketeering, and was sentenced to thirty-two years in prison. Prosecutors had tried for several years to convince Sheeran to flip, even offering him a limited prison term if he would tell all he knew about the Hoffa murder and Russell Bufalino. Sheeran declined.

As for Bufalino, the slightest of threats from a man who spent a lifetime saying little gave the FBI all it needed to put the Quiet Don away for life.

* * *

ON THE MORNING
of October 27, 1976, FBI agents from Philadelphia arrived at Russell Bufalino’s home in Kingston to take him into custody on federal extortion charges related to a run-in Bufalino had with a Brooklyn bartender, Jack Napoli, who had used Bufalino’s name as an introduction to a jewelry dealer who had diamonds Napoli had wanted. A federal grand jury in New York handed down the indictment against Bufalino and three other men. When the agents awakened Bufalino, now seventy-two, they allowed him to dress before taking him to a preliminary hearing in Wilkes-Barre, where he was released on $50,000 bond.

Around the same time in Brooklyn, FBI agents knocked on the door of the Bensonhurst home of Joseph Lapadura, seventy-two, who was one of the other men included in the indictment. Lapadura, a talkative fellow, had for years run floating crap games for Bufalino and had numerous arrests dating back to 1922. He told the agents he didn’t know why he was being arrested but said he was willing to talk about his old friend. The two men had been friends for years, often meeting at the Vesuvio restaurant, and as far as Lapadura knew, Bufalino’s only business was a dress manufacturing company in Manhattan. Lapadura was arraigned and released on $10,000 bond.

According to the indictment, Napoli bought the diamonds for $25,000, but the check he wrote bounced. When word got back to Bufalino that some low-level wise guy not only bounced a check buying stolen diamonds, but had used Bufalino’s name in the process, the old don was furious.

Napoli got wind that Bufalino was unhappy, and he ran to the FBI. Napoli was subsequently called to a meeting at the Vesuvio restaurant, and when Napoli arrived, Bufalino couldn’t control himself. Napoli was a large man at six feet six inches and around 240 pounds, yet Bufalino threatened to kill him with his own hands unless he returned the diamonds immediately.

“I’m going to kill you, cocksucker, and I’m going to do it myself and I’m going to jail just for you.”

It was the rarest of exceptions to see Bufalino that angry, but what Napoli did was, in Bufalino’s mind, beyond disrespect. Napoli had taken Bufalino’s name and stomped on it. Napoli was told to make good on the diamonds. Unbeknownst to Bufalino, Napoli already knew he was in trouble and ran to the FBI. Napoli had been wired for the meeting, and everything Bufalino said was caught on tape.

Following his indictment, Bufalino’s solution to beat the rap was to kill Napoli before he could testify. For help, Bufalino reached out to Jimmy “the Weasel” Fratianno.

Aladena James Fratianno was born in 1913 in Naples, Italy, and his family later immigrated to Cleveland, Ohio. As a teenager, Fratianno committed a variety of petty thefts and earned the nickname Jimmy the Weasel after throwing a rotten tomato at a policeman and running away. The act caught the attention of some older boys, who said, “Look at him running, just like a weasel.” The cop wrote on his report, “They called him a weasel,” and the name stuck.

In 1946, Fratianno moved to Los Angeles, where he owned several businesses, including a cigar store in Santa Monica, that were fronts for bookmaking, loan sharking and other illegal activities. He became a made member of the Los Angeles mob in 1946 and over the next thirty years took part in ten murders. In 1960, an argument with the mob hierarchy forced Fratianno to seek protection in Chicago under Sam Giancana. He was sent back to Los Angeles in 1975 to help run that family following internal discord.

In 1977, Fratianno became a government witness after he was charged with the murder of Danny Green, a union official in Cleveland who was killed after someone put a bomb under his car. It was Fratianno who introduced Green’s killer to the Cleveland mob. Promised no more than five years in prison for his various crimes if he cooperated, Fratianno served only twenty-one months and was placed in the Witness Protection Program. Fratianno told the feds about Bufalino’s plot to kill Jack Napoli. Fratianno said he first met Bufalino in September 1976 at the Rainbow Room in New York. Gangsters from around the country had all come to New York to see Frank Sinatra, who was making his second appearance at the Westchester Premier Theater, in nearby Tarrytown. The 3,500-seat facility had opened a year earlier and was owned by three men, New York mobsters Gregory DePalma and Richard Fusco, and Eliot Weisman, a securities salesman, with the financial help of Carlo Gambino, who headed the New York family that now bore his name.

The Gambino money came with a steep 10 percent interest rate, but it didn’t matter because the trio, who opened the venue with a Diana Ross concert in 1975, skimmed hundreds of thousands of dollars off the top from tickets, merchandise, food and parking. Sinatra had performed in April 1976 and returned in September 1976 to sold-out audiences. Unbeknownst to all, the theater and its owners were under federal investigation, led by a young assistant U.S. attorney, Nathanial Akerman.

Following Sinatra’s September 1976 performance, Fratianno and several friends, including Mike Rizzitello, arrived at the Rainbow Room in midtown Manhattan. There, Fratianno first met Bufalino, who was introduced as the head of the Pittston family. Fratianno in turn was introduced as the acting boss of the Los Angeles family.

Bufalino pulled Fratianno over to the side, and the two men spoke for twenty minutes or so, then said good-bye. On his drive back to Westchester, Rizzitello told Fratianno that Bufalino relayed how a grand jury was investigating his role in an extortion plot and that he wanted someone who was planning to testify against him at the upcoming trial clipped. The “someone” was Jack Napoli, who had been in hiding with the help of the FBI. Bufalino had incredible contacts within the federal government and learned Napoli was running a pork store in Walnut Creek, California, which was near Fratianno’s home in San Francisco.

Napoli was indeed in Walnut Creek. After he turned himself in to the FBI, he was taken to Washington, D.C., where he met with U.S. Marshall James B. Colosanto of the Witness Security Division. They in turn placed Napoli and his wife in Walnut Creek, which was about as far away as you could get from northeastern Pennsylvania. Napoli did open a pork store, as Bufalino had learned, but he fled the area owing $3,000 to Wells Fargo Bank, and no one knew where he was.

Two days later, a meeting was scheduled at Vesuvio and Fratianno, Rizzitello and Bufalino sat down to talk about Bufalino’s problem. Fratianno agreed to help, and when he flew home, he spent some time in Walnut Creek trying to locate Napoli, but to no avail.

Six months later, in May 1977, Fratianno returned to New York for the third Sinatra concert at the Westchester Premier Theater, after which he drove into Manhattan to meet with Bufalino again at the Vesuvio restaurant.

Accompanied again by Rizzitello, Fratianno didn’t have much to report.

“I looked for Napoli, but I couldn’t find him,” he said.

“Well, the guy might have left. I’ll find some other way,” said Bufalino, who remained free on bail.

Fratianno was later arrested on multiple charges, including the murder of Danny Green, and he made his deal with the FBI to become an informant.

Fratianno later testified against Bufalino, and it was enough for the charges to stick. Bufalino was found guilty on October 21, 1977, and sentenced to four years in prison.

Following his sentencing, the FBI bureau in New York sent a telex to then director Clarence M. Kelley trumpeting Bufalino’s conviction.

Russell Bufalino is the boss of his own organized crime family and controls the northeastern Pennsylvania region, as well as New York’s southern tier. In addition to this, Bufalino spends approximately half of his time in New York City.

Bufalino is particularly well-known in the business community in the Wilkes-Barre–Scranton area of Pennsylvania, as well as by judges and local legislators in that area. Information from sources in Philadelphia indicated that the business community was following very closely the trial and conviction of Bufalino, as well as what type of sentence he would receive. It was their feeling that if Bufalino was not given time in jail on his conviction, then they would know that Bufalino had the Federal Government in his pocket and they would lose all respect for the criminal justice system.