The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino (6 page)

To units of the Pennsylvania State Police must go credit for the only successful forays against the gambling interests, even though they usually follow a policy of not going into the cities unless requested to do so by the district attorney or city officials themselves.

In March of this year, without notice to the Scranton police, several details of state police staged a series of raids in the city designed to cripple the operations of Louis Cohen. Vast quantities of Treasury-balance tickets, printing equipment, engraving plates, stapling machines and supplies were seized. Seven persons were arrested. The value of the seized material was in excess of $50,000, and the tickets being processed were intended for distribution in the months between October 1951 and February 1952. A similar seizure in Wilkes-Barre, also by the state police, yielded an even greater volume of tickets, materials and equipment, and struck hard at the source of supply for so-called independent operators not linked with Cohen. The committee endeavored unsuccessfully to serve a subpoena on Cohen prior to its hearing in Washington on August 7 in connection with the Scranton investigation. Accompanied by counsel, Cohen subsequently appeared in Washington and presented himself to the committee, but insufficient time remained for proper interrogation of the witness.

While Cohen was evading process, the committee subpoenaed his chief lieutenant in Pennsylvania, Patrick Joseph Size, of Scranton. Claiming that his answers would tend to incriminate him, Size refused to give any testimony about his activities or his dealings with Cohen. He also refused to explain suspicious long-distance telephone calls made every Friday from his home to Allentown, Reading, Schuylkill Haven, Wilkes-Barre and Williamsport.

Jimmy Mack, of Wilkes-Barre, also known as Vincenzo Maccarone, testified before the committee. He admitted owning pinball machines and a few slot machines and said that he grossed $50 to $60 a day as a numbers banker in Wilkes-Barre. Pretending that he did not know whether the numbers business was against the law, he pointed to the fact that the police never interfered with him or gave him trouble in connection with his slot machines. He added that he operated the slot machines in private clubs outside the city, and none of them ever was seized.

Captain Harry E. McElroy, director of the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information of the Pennsylvania State Police, with headquarters at Harrisburg, told the committee that Sergeant Charles Hartman, of the state police, had reported a bribe offer from Jimmy Mack, acting on behalf of Cohen, and that the state police commissioner had given instructions to Hartman “to string Mack along,” because all signs indicated that the time was approaching to close in on the Cohen operations. The advisability of trying to bait Cohen into passing the bribe was considered, but this was eventually abandoned in favor of the direct thrust that would cripple his operations. Mack denied the bribe offer, but the committee sees no reason for doubting the word of Captain McElroy.

The Treasury-balance racket, Captain McElroy said, has two divisions. In one division are a number of independent operators. The other division consists of the syndicate headed by Cohen. The state is divided into districts with separate organizations in each district. The racket runs into many millions; in fact, Captain McElroy estimated that it grosses more than $30 million per year, with the syndicate operation accounting for more than $20 million of this figure. He identified Size as Cohen’s principal representative in Pennsylvania and declared that information in the hands of the state police indicates that Cohen operates on an interstate basis.

Captain McElroy told the committee that raids made during the past one and one-half years have resulted in confiscation of millions of tickets and printing equipment, material and supplies worth tremendous amounts of money, but he complained that it is difficult to get evidence against the leaders. “They sit behind somewhere and the money comes in to them and they don’t have direct operations, and that’s that,” Captain McElroy declared. He estimated that the operators realize net profit of about 20 percent of the gross intake. He said he had heard of many instances where the racket interests refused to pay the big “hits.”

Captain McElroy was asked whether use of the U.S. Treasury balance has the psychological effect of giving the lottery the benefit of the prestige of the federal government. He testified that he was certain that this was so.

George T. Harris, superintendent of the Washington office of Western Union, testified that a Western Union employee is sent every morning to obtain the Treasury balance, and he transmits it directly from the Treasury Department to Western Union’s commercial news department in New York. The number is wired from there to Chicago, from which it is wired to sixteen subscribers to this special service. Fifty-one subscribers in the East are serviced from New York. Three Scranton subscribers are included in the list.

The committee also questioned Joseph Baldassari, a partner in the Baldassari Amusement Company, but he proved to be extremely uncooperative. The committee had information to the effect that Baldassari and his brother Al are engaged in an extensive gambling enterprise operating under official sanction. However, he refused to answer most of the questions put to him on the ground that his answer might tend to incriminate him. He produced voluminous records but refused to disclose their contents. He refused to say whether he knew Louis Cohen and other underworld characters or whether he took Scranton police on trips in his airplane. He did admit, however, that his father was Ulisses Baldassari, who furnished the bail for the seven defendants arrested by the state police in the raids on Cohen’s printing operations.

He declined to say whether he owned any slot machines and whether his brother ran a horse room at 108 Adams Avenue. He also refused to say whether he had paid protection money to any official or whether it was true that he had given a $2,500 ring to the director of public safety.

At first he refused to name the partners in Baldassari Amusement Company, but he was finally compelled to admit that they consisted of himself, his brother Al and their two wives. He was unwilling to try to reconcile this with the fact that the firm’s income-tax returns listed only the two wives as the partners.

The district attorney of Lackawanna County, Carlon M. O’Malley, gave what seemed to the committee to be a rather unsatisfactory explanation of the small number of gambling prosecutions in his county. He said his office by tradition is a prosecuting office, not a policing agency, although he does have four county detectives. He said he would be naive if he attempted to tell the committee that the Scranton horse rooms did not exist or had not existed for a number of years, but he claimed that the responsibility for any laxity rested with the city police department, which has 175 uniformed men and 12 detectives. He referred to the state police raids on the Cohen lottery ticket printing establishment last March, in connection with which Patrick Joseph Size, Gregory Size, and others received fines ranging from $200 to $300, but no jail sentences were imposed.

O’Malley stated that on June 29, while on vacation, he issued orders to his staff to conduct a survey of gambling in the areas of Lackawanna County outside of Scranton. This was prompted, he said, by the reappearance of Cohen-controlled Treasury-balance lottery tickets in the county. It is significant to note that this committee’s investigators entered Scranton on June 20, and their presence was publicly announced several days before Mr. O’Malley ordered his survey.

He said his staff reported back that they and the state police had communicated with all police chiefs in the communities outside of Scranton and had been informed that they had no knowledge of gambling, with the exception of punchboards, which they promised to suppress forthwith.

Mr. O’Malley submitted to the committee a report of the survey, which showed that warnings to cease operations had been given to all suspected gamblers, including Louis Cohen, although Cohen’s chief lieutenant, Patrick Joseph Size, was not in Scranton when the warning was issued. In spite of Mr. O’Malley’s disclaimer of responsibility for gambling in the city of Scranton, the “close and stay closed” order described in his report was issued to a number of Scranton gamblers.

Committee counsel posed this question to Mr. O’Malley: “I wonder if you can explain why it is the place stays wide open until our investigators arrive and our investigators can find it [gambling] like any other citizen, yet the police are not doing anything about it. Are the police receiving protection for that?” His answer was, “I have no knowledge of that and cannot answer it.” Mr. O’Malley’s attention was also called to the fact that the horse room in the Greyhound Terminal Building was across the street from the district attorney’s office, and the Baldassari horse room was in the next block. He acknowledged that a gambling place in Carbondale was located in a building owned by the mother of the prothonotary of Lackawanna County.

Mr. O’Malley argued that crime conditions in Lackawanna County are far better than they were prior to World War II. He attributed this improvement largely to the action of the U.S. Army and the FBI.

Joseph Scalleat, a Hazleton racketeer, was recommended for contempt by the committee after a brief but highly irritating appearance. He refused to bring records as directed by the subpoena because he “didn’t think it was necessary,” and he defiantly told the committee at the outset that he was going to refuse to answer all questions. He refused to tell the committee what business he was pursuing, whether he had any brothers named Sam and Albert, or if he knew Jack Parisi, a former New York convict, or had any contacts with him. He refused to say if he remembered Parisi’s arrest by state police in a hideout located in a building occupied by his sister and her husband.

David F. Haggerty, a constable in Scranton for twelve years and an owner of harness-racing horses, refused to tell the committee whether he had any interest in the horse room on Penn Avenue operated by James “Buz” Caffrey. He admitted that he gave no attention to his duties as constable because it was strictly a commission or fee office, and “I just never went in for it.” He testified that he derives no income from being a constable and that he “just about breaks even” in the operation of his stable, but he declined to answer when questioned about the source of $19,500 in “commissions” listed in his income-tax returns for 1949 and 1950.

The committee asked Mr. Haggerty, “Do you know of any political contributions made from the gambling interests in connection with the political life of Scranton?” His answer was, “I will have to decline to answer that on the grounds it may tend to incriminate me.”

Thomas Sesso, who has lived in Scranton thirty-three years, has been a numbers banker for twenty years and has never been arrested himself, although his runners were apprehended three or four times. He told the committee he grossed $15,000 to $20,000 a year and operated only in a couple of blocks in the central city because “when a man don’t stretch too far the police never get you.”

There were times during his years as a numbers banker that he was compelled to suspend operations. How did he know “when the heat was on”? His answer: “The city gives the order out to the cops, something comes out, then I just stop.” As a numbers banker, he has done well financially. When he gave up his shoemaking establishment twenty years ago, he had nothing. Now he has $20,000, in cash, three properties, money invested in a mortgage and a Lincoln automobile. He was asked, “You are retiring now on your earnings?” He replied, “That’s right. Right now I don’t know nothing. When the future coming, I don’t know what I do.”

Two Scranton police captains appearing before the committee blandly insisted that their manifold duties in other fields of police work left them with little time to enforce gambling laws. Richard Beynon, the day captain, maintained that he was responsible only for traffic control. He knew the horse rooms were operating but didn’t know if they had wire service. He knew Treasury tickets were sold in the city, but he claimed he never personally witnessed any sales. He didn’t know the Cohens or anything about them, but he knew the Baldassari brothers as “businessmen,” and he also knew that the numbers lottery was operating. He did not know of any numbers takers other than Sesso, but he did not think there were any.

The only slot machines Beynon knew anything about were located in veterans’ posts and private clubs, but he had no knowledge about whether they were operating. Asked about a raid on a gambling house in West Scranton in which the raiding detail seized eight or nine men but “lost” all but two of them before the arrival of the lieutenant, Beynon said he didn’t know whether any disciplinary action had been taken on account of the “loss” of prisoners because that was not under his jurisdiction.

James G. Conaboy, captain on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, testified he knew very little about the numbers business because operations were virtually over before his shift began. Office details and handling of complaints about disorderly conduct, mischievous boys, etc., keep him so busy “that I do not have the time to personally go out and observe every activity in the city or under my jurisdiction. From the fact that no patrolman, sergeant, or lieutenant has ever submitted verbally or written any complaint to me, I had presumed that the conditions in Scranton were at least favorable, and I had no occasion to suspect anything else.”

If any gambling violation had been brought to his attention, Conaboy said, he would have made out a report to the superintendent of police, but “I never had a complaint from a subordinate, citizen, or anybody else as to the activities of a horse room or numbers, and therefore I would have no occasion or necessity to submit a report to my superior.”

The Scranton, Pittston and Wilkes-Barre horse rooms were all “drops” for wire service being supplied by Metro-Globe News Service, of Hoboken, New Jersey. In Scranton, only one operator applied for the service under his own name. The other three adopted the obviously fictitious names of the “Greek Social Club,” the “Modern Amusement Co.” and the “B. & B. Club.” The Pittston subscribers were the “Pittston Social Club” and the “Wyoming Valley Social Club.” In Wilkes-Barre, the service was furnished to J. Sheerin.