The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino (5 page)

F
OUR

R
osario Bufalino—Charles Bufalino’s nephew—was two months old when he arrived in America in 1904. His family had followed hundreds of other immigrants from Montedoro, Sicily, over the vast ocean to the new country, and after settling in Manhattan for a few months, the new immigrants followed a well-traveled road for Italians out of New York that took them upstate to Buffalo.

After his mother, Cristina, died in 1910, Rosario returned to Sicily with his older brother Giuseppe but returned to Buffalo in 1914. By the time he was a teenager, young Rosario was known by his American name, Russell, and he learned a trade as an automobile mechanic. But his real work was pursuing some of the Old World customs, such as petty thefts, selling stolen property, hijacking and other assorted crimes. Deemed smart, resourceful and, most important, trustworthy, Russell had grown into a young man when he caught the attention of John Montana, the underboss for the Buffalo crime family’s head, Stefano Magaddino.

Magaddino was also Sicilian but hailed from Castellammare del Golfo, a northwestern coastal village. Born in 1891, Magaddino followed his father Giovanni’s footsteps into the Sicilian Mafia but fled the island after an older brother was killed. He originally settled in Brooklyn with a cousin, Vito Bonaventure, who headed a group of paid killers that took Magaddino under their wing. Within a short time, Magaddino was linked to several murders in New York and was subsequently charged with killing a New Jersey man. He was later released when a witness recanted. After escaping an assassination attempt, Magaddino fled to Buffalo to work under Giuseppe DiCarlo. When DiCarlo died, in 1922, Magaddino quickly assumed control of the family. Though illiterate, Magaddino amassed a fortune due chiefly to the burgeoning liquor trade that grew during Prohibition. Magaddino’s strength was the ports he controlled on Lake Erie, from which he allowed other crime families from other cities, such as Cleveland and New York, to smuggle alcohol from Canada. Of course, he took a percentage of each shipment.

By 1930, Magaddino’s crime syndicate bore his name, and his vast wealth and ruthlessness earned him the respect and stature as one of the most powerful organized crime leaders in the United States. In addition to his illegal ventures, Magaddino also had a number of legitimate businesses, including ownership of several funeral parlors, which earned him the nickname “the Undertaker.” An astute businessman, Magaddino conducted his business privately, quietly and, when necessary, violently. In 1931, Magaddino’s stature in Italian organized crime circles reached its zenith when he was given a seat on the newly formed Commission, the appointed national leadership of
La Cosa Nostra
.

A bloody war between two New York Castellammare families that had torn the Italian mob apart was ended when several young, up-and-coming gangsters, led by Charles “Lucky” Luciano, assassinated the leaders. To preserve future peace, Luciano and several others scheduled a meeting in Chicago with the purpose of establishing a governing body that would settle disputes between the various mob families. The heads of New York’s five families were appointed to the new board, along with Al Capone, from Chicago, and Magaddino, from Buffalo, with Luciano serving as the Commission’s first chairman. The group agreed to meet every few years or as needed when called on to iron out differences among warring mob families with the understanding that the Commission would be the final authority.

Throughout the 1920s, Bufalino watched and learned from the powerful Magaddino, and his rising profile and stature within the family drew Magaddino’s respect. He didn’t hesitate, for instance, to call upon his young protégé to snuff out enemies, a familiar task for anyone who sought to become a “made” member of the family, that is, to be officially inducted into the organized crime family.

There would also be several arrests. Bufalino was charged by the Buffalo police in 1927 and again in 1935 for receiving stolen property. At five feet eight inches and only 138 pounds, Bufalino wasn’t an imposing figure. He had black hair and dull, gray eyes, with a three-inch vaccination scar above his elbow and an L-shaped scar above the right temple. His left eyelid drooped, the result of a muscle irregularity in his face, and it gave him a somewhat comic appearance. But Bufalino had a steely resolve and intelligence that set him apart from the other young hoods, and he became an important underworld figure in Buffalo and one of Magaddino’s trusted lieutenants. Bufalino was so highly thought of, he was guided to take a bride from another important Sicilian family, this one from northeastern Pennsylvania.

In 1928, Bufalino married Caroline Sciandra. Her family had emigrated in the late 1800s from Montedoro, following the road from New York to the Wyoming Valley. Her brother, John, was a miner whose real work involved extortion, loan sharking and murder under the direction of Santo Volpe. The marriage unified the Sciandra and Bufalino families, which had family members living in Buffalo and the Scranton area. It also came with the blessing of Magaddino, who soon after sent another rising hood, Joseph Barbara, to northeastern Pennsylvania to watch over Magaddino’s bootlegging interests.

Barbara was a young man with a temper who’d so much as stick a knife in you as he would shake your hand, and it wasn’t long after his arrival in 1930 from Buffalo that he was linked to the murder of a Magaddino rival. The charges were later dropped, but Barbara remained in the region and was tasked with a variety of jobs, including contract killings. At times when he needed help, Russell Bufalino was dispatched to assist him.

Barbara eventually moved north, just over the Pennsylvania–New York border to Endicott, New York, where he opened a soft-drink distribution plant. In 1938, Russell Bufalino and his wife, Carla, moved to Pennsylvania. Bufalino’s marriage to a Sciandra, along with his blood relation to his uncle Charles Bufalino, made him the perfect choice to assist John Sciandra, who took over control of all organized crime activity from Santo Volpe, who decided to “retire” after beating back a murder charge in 1933. Russell was now firmly entrenched as his brother-in-law’s underboss.

For legitimacy purposes, Bufalino was employed as an auto mechanic at the Canada Dry bottling plant owned by Barbara, though it was nothing more than a ruse to cover his real work, which, by the end of World War II, focused on union racketeering and the garment industry.

* * *

BY 1945, THE
thousands of women who worked in the Wyoming Valley’s nonunion garment manufacturing centers were earning as little as $16 per week.

With most of their coal-miner husbands returning from the war but unable to find work, the women had no choice but to submit to the demands of the garment plants, where they often labored twelve to sixteen hours per day. Little girls as young as ten years old could also be found stitching the individual pieces produced at the plants. To the bosses, it didn’t matter how old the workers were, as long as the work got done. They were modern-day sweatshops, and there were dozens throughout the region, from Scranton through Pittston to Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. Because of the low pay and awful working conditions, the industry did little to stimulate the economic rebirth of a region still struggling with the demise of coal.

Yet throughout the Wyoming Valley, especially in and around Pittston, many of the dress factories that lined the main street were owned by Russell Bufalino.

The New York City–based garment industry relied on northeastern Pennsylvania as a source of cheap labor at a time when the industry’s major union, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), was making headway unionizing New York’s shops. For decades, organizers with the ILGWU fought for and eventually gained a major foothold among garment workers in New York City. It wasn’t easy. Cracked skulls, broken bones, gunshot wounds and even death awaited many of the organizers from Mafiosi eager to keep their costs low and profits high.

Undeterred, the ILGWU eventually forced many of the organized crime–owned garment firms to seek cheaper labor elsewhere. And it didn’t come any cheaper, or under more control, than in northeast Pennsylvania.

The region’s close proximity to New York and the dire economy created a perfect storm of conditions. Any work was better than no work, and many of the shops, initially fueled by Magaddino money from Buffalo, were highly profitable and earned more than enough to pay the bribes required by the local police chiefs, politicians, and local and county officials, who all turned a blind eye to complaints.

With nowhere to turn, the few who would confront the industry were usually met with stiff resistance through threats, violence, bombed homes and even murder. Among those consulting Russell Bufalino were his uncle Charles and Santo Volpe, and their experiences dating back to the violence used against the mining communities served as a valuable lesson plan.

By the early 1940s, Russell had ownership stakes in at least a dozen garment businesses, including the Pennsylvania Drape and Curtain Company, Ann Lee Frocks Company and Alamo Dress Manufacturing Company, all in Pittston, and Dixie Frocks Company, in Wyoming, Pennsylvania. The garments made in those shops would be shipped, usually by truck, to New York, where they’d be sold by jobbers to large, national department-store chains. At the end of World War II, the garment industry had supplanted coal as one of organized crime’s chief businesses, and Russell Bufalino was becoming a major force within mob circles.

F
IVE

T
he dinner given in honor of Vito Genovese upon his return to America in 1945 was one fit for a king.

Genovese was among the young, extremely violent hoods who, along with Frank Costello and Albert Anastasia, helped Lucky Luciano in his climb to the top of the Commission in 1931. It was Genovese who conspired with Luciano to plot the murders of Giuseppe “Joseph” Masseria, then the “boss of bosses,” and Salvatore Maranzano. Their demise paved the way for the new organization that would dictate future business and settle disputes.

Born in 1897 near Naples, Genovese had a propensity for violence that often left a trail of bodies, including the love interests of women Genovese courted. He was also an ambitious businessman working for Masseria who earned his keep via bootlegging and extortion. Genovese’s business interests in the 1920s led to his introduction to Russell Bufalino and the Magaddino family. The two men shared more than their Italian heritage—both were rising through the ranks of their respective crime families.

Named by Luciano as the leader of one of New York’s five crime families, Genovese was elevated in 1936 to temporarily replace Luciano as head of the Commission after Luciano was convicted for pandering. But Genovese had his own legal problems, having been indicted in a 1934 murder. Fearing imprisonment, Genovese fled to Italy, where he settled and became an early supporter of dictator Benito Mussolini.

That changed in 1944. With the outcome of the war certain, Genovese began working for the Allies as an interpreter. And when he wasn’t helping U.S. forces, Genovese was earning thousands in the black market selling food and supplies stolen from U.S. Army trucks. He was subsequently arrested by the Military Police but never tried. When the war ended, he was returned to Brooklyn to stand trial for the 1934 murder, but the key witness in the case had died after mysteriously taking medication laced with poison.

Upon Genovese’s release, he was feted at a welcome-home dinner in New York attended by top Mafiosi, among them his old friend Russell Bufalino. But the dynamics of the New York crime families had changed, and another old friend, Frank Costello, was now in charge. Costello was born in Calabria, Italy, in 1891 and like thousands of other Italian immigrants arrived by ship into New York Harbor in 1900. He joined a gang as a teen and had several brushes with the law for robbery and petty crimes. By 1920, he counted Luciano and Genovese as friends and business partners. Their business interests swelled with Prohibition, and the young gangsters expanded into other underworld pursuits, including gambling, prostitution and bookmaking.

While Luciano and Genovese provided the muscle for the triumvirate, Costello made alliances with local politicians, judges and key law enforcement officials, providing them with thousands of dollars in payoffs. As Luciano rose to the head of the new Commission, Genovese and Costello were given titles of underboss and consigliere, respectively. Another member of their group, Albert Anastasia, was awarded with a leadership role in the infamous “Murder Incorporated,” the group that carried out dozens of mob executions for the Commission.

But Genovese’s departure to Italy opened the door for Costello’s ascent, and his cerebral management style and political contacts proved lucrative. By 1945, Costello’s position as boss could not be challenged, not even by Genovese, who quietly seethed but decided to bide his time. There was, after all, business to conduct.

By the end of the war, the New York mob bosses had major financial interests in the garment industry, Costello and Anastasia included. And those interests included ownership of nonunion manufacturing shops in Pennsylvania. From the end of the 1930s through World War II, the mob lords reaped their garment industry profits in relative peace with little to fear from law enforcement or anyone else, for that matter, thanks chiefly to their strongest partner, Russell Bufalino.

By 1945, Costello and Anastasia had established strong alliances with Bufalino, who himself had varied interests in their home turf of New York City. Bufalino spent a lot of time in New York, arriving in Manhattan on a Monday and staying through Wednesday. He had a suite at the Hotel Forrester in midtown and would conduct business at a restaurant he owned, the Vesuvio, in midtown on West Forty-Eighth Street.

Along with the restaurant, Bufalino owned or was a part owner of several dress shops in the garment industry and jewelry shops along Manhattan’s famed “Diamond District” on West Forty-Seventh Street. An astute jeweler, Bufalino always carried a magnifying glass to look at newly stolen loads of diamonds, gold, rubies and other precious stones that had been taken from someone’s house, a store or right off the body of a lifeless victim. Back home in Pennsylvania, Bufalino operated his wide-ranging interests, particularly those in the garment industry, with little interference from law enforcement nor any of the burgeoning unions.

And then came Min Matheson.

A representative from the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), Matheson arrived in Wilkes-Barre in 1945 with one mission: to unionize the thousands of poorly paid, overworked women who labored in garment shops like those owned by Bufalino.

Prior to Matheson’s arrival, only a handful of shops were aligned with the ILGWU, and her sudden arrival in Pittston, Bufalino’s home turf, didn’t go unnoticed. In 1946, Matheson convinced some thirty sewing-machine operators to picket in front of a Bufalino dress shop on Pittston’s Main Street. Matheson led the picket line but was treated to an onslaught of insults from some of the locals who gathered to watch. Some of Bufalino’s men were there, holding bats and waving shotguns while menacing the women. But Matheson and her strikers continued to picket the shop, and they remained there day after day for eight months. They were the first salvos in a war that would last years.

Bufalino responded in 1946 by organizing his own union, the Anthracite Needle Workers Association. Membership in Bufalino’s union was small but increased incrementally when workers pressed by Bufalino’s men were quietly reminded that just a few years earlier it was Bufalino who was behind the damage at the Lori Dress Company, where two hundred sewing machines were destroyed in a bid to put Lori Dress out of business.

Bufalino was never charged, but everyone knew, including law enforcement, who was behind it. Undeterred by Bufalino or his threats, Matheson was relentless, visiting dress and manufacturing shops throughout the region and slowly convincing women to take the leap and unionize.

By 1949, Matheson’s efforts were bearing fruit. She had union contracts with more than forty dress factories, and her war with Bufalino was now affecting the profit margins of other organized crime leaders who had interests in the Pennsylvania garment industry, among them Albert Anastasia.

Anastasia’s interests in the garment industry included stores in New York and factories in Pennsylvania. When Matheson began organizing a nonunion shop near Hazleton owned by Anastasia, his unhappiness with the situation was made clear to Bufalino. The resulting solution involved Matheson’s brother, Will Lurye. A father of four children, Lurye joined his sister as union organizer, giving up a $150-per-week job as a presser to follow the family calling for union organizing for $80 per week.

While Matheson was picketing Anastasia’s Hazleton shop, Lurye was marching in New York in front of another manufacturing plant connected to Anastasia. But just days after setting up the picket line, Lurye was accosted by two men inside a public telephone booth and stabbed repeatedly. He died within minutes.

Lurye’s murder was front-page news in New York, but its real purpose was to serve as a clear message to Matheson in Pennsylvania. Her father, who was in the hospital when her brother was killed, died a week later. He too had been a union organizer and instilled the same spirit and belief in his children. Instead of packing and leaving, Matheson instead was emboldened by her brother’s murder, and she subsequently focused her unionizing efforts on Pittston’s Main Street, which was Bufalino’s home turf.

Matheson specifically picketed one garment manufacturer that had joined another Bufalino-led union, the Northeastern Pennsylvania Needle Worker’s Association, which was run by Bufalino’s brother-in-law, Angelo Sciandra. Their slogan was “Sign with us, or you’ll be sorry.” Some worried workers signed, while others held out. The racketeers union infuriated Matheson, who continued to visit Pittston daily despite warnings from her superiors in New York to stay away. As the threats continued, Matheson persisted. One night, while walking in Pittston, Matheson was approached from behind by a man who pleaded with her to get out of town.

“For God’s sake, Min. They’ve ordered me to close my shop. They’ve threatened my family,” he said.

The plea had the opposite effect on Matheson, who went public with her crusade. She gave interviews to newspapers and, in one radio appearance, told the host that “to live by permission of goons is worse than death. Gentlemen, hoodlums, I don’t scare easily.”

And she didn’t. Each year, Matheson made gains, and one by one, the nonunion, gangster-controlled shops were slowly brought into the ILGWU’s fold. By 1953, Matheson had unionized sixty new shops and seven hundred employees. The numbers were still somewhat small when judged against the hundreds of small shops that operated throughout the region, but the growth continued to attract Bufalino’s attention. By 1955, for instance, for every new shop that Matheson brought into the ILGWU, Bufalino would send her a funeral-sized floral arrangement, while intimidation and violence were never far away. During one potentially explosive march in front of a Bufalino-owned shop, Matheson and her picketers were serenaded with catcalls and pleas from Bufalino’s associates to bring their husbands with them. Irate, Matheson saw Bufalino watching from across the street as his men cursed the female picketers, and she broke ranks and walked toward him. Standing only five feet three inches, Matheson lashed out, “I don’t need my husband to protect me. I’m twice the man you’ll ever be, Russ Bufalino.”

Bufalino didn’t reply, and after a long pause, the women on the picket line cheered as Matheson returned to join them.

The decade-long battle with Min Matheson led to several investigations of New York’s garment industry. Law enforcement for years had tried to get its hands around the mob-controlled shops, and state and federal law agencies impaneled investigative grand juries to probe the industry in attempts to flush out organized crime influence in the garment industry and labor racketeering, though with little success.

In 1950, the U.S. government also decided to take a closer look, and the Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce was formed. Headed by chairman Senator Estes Kefauver, the committee eventually expanded its focus and probed the mob’s influence in several industries.

The Kefauver Committee, as it was known, held more than a dozen hearings, and for the very first time, the U.S. public had an opportunity to take a peek inside organized crime. The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, had put his resources into fighting Communism and had long dismissed the notion that a national Italian crime syndicate even existed. But the committee found there was in fact an organized crime structure that was, in many places, aided and abetted by law enforcement, which cared little about the mobsters’ activities so long as they remained out of sight and produced little violence.

“The public knows that the tentacles of organized crime reach into virtually every community throughout the country. It also knows that law enforcement is essentially a local matter calling for constant vigilance at the local level and a strengthening of public and private morality,” read a passage from the report.

The committee put a particular focus on law enforcement and wanted to know why police throughout the country seemingly looked the other way when it came to lucrative vices, such as gambling. One of the cities studied was Scranton, where by 1950, Bufalino held a death grip not just over the garment industry, but over all gambling activity in Scranton and the Wyoming Valley. No poker parlor or sports book could operate without Bufalino’s permission, and he collected a cut of all gross profits while the police looked the other way.

In its final report, in 1951, the committee delivered a lengthy and scathing criticism of Scranton law enforcement and police departments in neighboring cities and towns:

Gambling Law-enforcement officials in Scranton seemingly are afflicted with the same peculiar blindness toward organized gambling that has been apparent to the committee in its inquiries in other cities. Four horse rooms running wide open and heavily patronized were found by committee investigators. A numbers banker testified that he did business for twenty years without ever having been arrested himself, although there were three or four occasions when his runners were picked up. Punchboards littered store counters, and U.S. Treasury balance tickets were openly sold. It is clearly evident that there is a strange reluctance on the part of the police in Scranton to arrest anybody for violations of the gambling laws. Horse rooms are never raided. Periodically, when “the heat is on,” the order goes out to “close and stay closed,” but such an edict lacks any prolonged or lasting effectiveness. The same can also be said for the cities of Pittston and Wilkes-Barre adjoining Luzerne County.