When you think about organized crime in America, New York, New Jersey, and Chicago come to mind, and maybe Miami. However, what about Northeastern Pennsylvania and upstate New York? Thanks to the powerful, long reigning crime boss Russell Alberto Bufalino, these parts of the country played a prominent, if low key role in American Mafia history. As an up and coming gangster and eventual crime boss, Bufalino put together the infamous – and disastrous – Appalachin Meeting of Mafia leaders in upstate New York. He built a power base with rackets that reached deep into the unions of coal miners and other rural Americans as well. And while the Bufalino family and its hold on the rural Northeast may have long since subsided, Russell Alberto Bufalino and his crime family shaped this part of the country in ways that endure even today.
Early Years – From the Streets to the Mob
Russell Bufalino was in Sicily in 1903 to parents who soon Emigrated to Buffalo New York. Like many other notorious gangsters of the 20th Century, Bufalino had humble criminal beginnings as a street criminal and petty thief. As a teenager, the young criminal had a criminal rap sheet listing offenses such as larceny, receiving stolen goods, and fencing stolen jewelry. He established a reputation as a competent tough criminal in those days on the street, and slowly moved up the ranks of the underworld.
After Prohibition took effect in 1919, Bufalino gravitated to the lucrative field of bootlegging. He soon became friends and associates with Joseph Barbara, a fellow Sicilian and well- established bootlegger in his own right. Working with Barbara was Russell Bufalino’s gateway into the Mafia. Shortly after linking up with Barbara, Bufalino relocated to Barbara’s home territory of Endicott, New York. Bufalino’s fortunes rose along with Joseph Barbara’s; when the latter became the head of the small but influential crime family on the rural New York-Pennsylvania border, Bufalino was promoted to underboss and relocated once again to Kingston, Pennsylvania. Leading some of Barbara’s most important criminal activities, Barbara made critical connections with Key Mafiosos in New York and elsewhere.
From Appalachin Organizer to Rural Kingpin
In 1957, Barbara tapped Bufalino to arrange an unprecedented meeting of gangsters at his home in rural Appalachin, New York. Bufalino used the Mafia ties he had cemented to contact key delegates from many of the prominent crime families across the United States, Canada and as far away as Sicily. However, the infamous meeting ended in disaster. The gathering roused the suspicion of local police, and soon cops and Federal agents were descending upon Barbara’s ranch; some gangsters were apprehended, while others fled into the nearby woods. The Appalachin fiasco destroyed Barbara’s reputation as a mobster; he retired soon afterwards and Bufalino – despite having been a key organizer of the Appalachin Meeting – was named the new head of the family.
Bufalino’s ascension to boss coincided with the mob’s increasing influence over powerful and lucrative labor unions. The coal mining towns dotting the Crime Family’s territory helped make Bufalino and his small, tight-knit group of Wise Guys wealthy. Bufalino’s corrupt associates in the labor unions included Teamster’s President Jimmy Hoffa. Years after his death, some accounts would claim that Bufalino ordered the hit on Hoffa to maintain mob control over the Teamsters although this has never been definitively proven.
Bufalino also used a connection to a corrupt U.S. Congressman to enrich himself and his criminal network. The Bufalino Crime Family developed a lucrative connection to Congressman Dan Flood, whose District was in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Flood eventually left Congress in disgrace, but not before he steered millions of dollars in Vietnam War Defense contracts and other dubious, taxpayer-funded projects into his District, enriching Bufalino and other gangsters in the process.
Despite his low-key success with union and government corruption and other rackets, the law finally began closing in on the aging Bufalino. In 1977, he was convicted of a relatively low level extortion charge and sentenced to a year in prison. Later, the Mob leader was tried and convicted of attempting to murder a witness from the original extortion trial; the hitman hired to kill the witness had turned into an informant, and his testimony helped convict Bufalino. The crime boss drew a ten year prison sentence this time, effectively ending his reign over rural Pennsylvania and New York. Elderly and in ill health at the time of his prison release years later, Bufalino eventually died of natural causes in 1994 at 91 years of age.
Parting Thoughts
While Russell Bufalino is not as well-known as many other organized crime bosses, his decades leading rackets in Northeastern Pennsylvania left an infamous mark on American history. Bufalino’s tight control of corrupt unions siphoned millions of dollars from American workers into the coffers of the mob. Additionally, money that should have been devoted to the Vietnam War effort ended up in Bufalino’s pockets instead. So, while Bufalino may be a lesser known Mafia Kingpin, the impact of his criminal activities loomed large over the 20th Century.