Russell Bufalino: The Boss Too Powerful to Touch HT

February 25th, 1994, 2:10 p.m. Nesbbit Memorial Hospital, Kingston, Pennsylvania. Russell Buffalino died in a hospital bed at the age of 90. No assassin’s bullet, no prison cell, natural causes. for a man who ran one of America’s most powerful crime families for 35 years, who allegedly ordered the murder of Jimmy Hoffa, who controlled Teamsters unions and had the CIA on speed dial.

This quiet ending seemed impossible. But that was always Buffalino’s genius. He made the impossible look ordinary. This wasn’t just another mobster. While John Gotti was doing per walks for the cameras and Al Capone was making headlines, Russell Buffalino was making millions in complete silence. He ran northeastern Pennsylvania like a personal kingdom.

He had New York’s five families asking for permission. He controlled the garment industry, ammunition manufacturing, Cuban casinos, and the most powerful union in America. The FBI knew who he was. They just couldn’t prove what he did. And by the time they finally caught him, he’d already won. This is the story of how a Sicilian immigrant with a third grade education built a criminal empire so sophisticated that it took federal investigators 40 years to understand how it worked.

From the Appalachian disaster that exposed the mafia to America to his alleged role in history’s most famous disappearance to his final prison sentence at age 77. This is the rise, reign, and quiet fall of Russell Buffalino. But here’s what the history books don’t tell you. Balino didn’t just run a crime family. He ran a multinational corporation disguised as one.

and the secrets he took to his grave might explain some of the 20th century’s biggest mysteries. Russell Buffalino was born October 29th, 1903 in Montadoro, Sicily, a dusty hillside town where poverty wasn’t a condition, it was a guarantee. His father, Angelo Buffalino, did what millions of Sicilians did at the turn of the century.

He left on July 9th, 1903, 3 months before Russell was born. Angelo stepped off a boat at Ellis Island and headed straight to the coal mines of Pittston, Pennsylvania. The work was brutal. The pay was worse, but it was America. By December, Angelo sent for his wife Christina and their children. Russell was 3 months old when he first saw America.

The family settled in Pittston, a town built on coal and controlled by men who understood that real power came from controlling the men who did the digging. For a few months, they tried. Angelo worked the mines. Christina kept the house. Then in 1904, Angelo Buffalino died in a mine accident. Russell was barely one year old.

Christina packed up the children and went back to Sicily. She tried to make it work, but Sicily in 1904 had even less opportunity than Pennsylvania. So in January 1906, she brought the family back. Russell was two. He’d crossed the Atlantic twice and his father was dead. That kind of childhood teaches you something important. Stability is an illusion.

The only thing you can count on is yourself. In 1910, when Russell was seven, his mother died. He went back to Sicily alone. For 4 years, he lived with relatives in the same poverty his parents had tried to escape. Then in February 1914, at age 11, Russell Buffalino made his final trip to America.

This time he came alone. He settled in Pittston with distant relatives. He had a third grade education, no parents, and nothing to lose. He was 11 years old. That’s when his real education began. By the time he was 14, Mufalino had moved to Buffalo, New York. The city was wide open in 1917. Bootlegging was about to become the most profitable business in America, and Buffalo was perfectly positioned right on the Canadian border.

Easy access to Lake Erie. And full of Sicilian immigrants who understood the old rules, Buffalino started small. Petty theft, lararseny, breaking into warehouses. nothing sophisticated, but he was smart and he kept his mouth shut. In the Sicilian underworld, those two qualities were worth more than muscle.

He worked alongside mobsters who would become legends. Men from Montadoro, his hometown in Sicily. The connections mattered. In the mafia, where you came from, determined who you could trust, and trust determined everything. Buffalino met John Montana, another Montadoro immigrant who ran significant operations in Buffalo.

Montana became his first real mentor. He taught Russell that violence was expensive and attention was dangerous. The best criminals, Montana said, were the ones nobody talked about. By the early 1920s, Buffalino had moved from Buffalo to Endicott, New York, a small city near Bingmpington.

That’s where he met Joseph Barbara. Barbara was a bootleger who understood something most criminals didn’t. Prohibition would end eventually. The smart money wasn’t in alcohol. It was in the infrastructure you built selling it. The trucks, the warehouses, the political connections, the union relationships. Barbara was building a legitimate business empire on top of an illegitimate foundation.

Bufalino paid attention. On August 9th, 1928, Buffalino married Carolyn Candra. She came from a connected Sicilian mafia family. It wasn’t just a marriage, it was a merger. Bufalino was 24 years old and he just tied himself to one of the most powerful crime networks in Pennsylvania. Through the Seandra family, Buffalino gained connections to the Pittston rackets, the Scranton operations, and the entire northeastern Pennsylvania underworld.

He went from being an ambitious bootleger to being family. In 1940, Buffalino moved to Kingston, Pennsylvania, right next to Pittston. He bought a modest brick house at 304 East Doran Street. From the outside, it looked like any workingclass home, small, unimpressive, easy to miss. Bufalino would live in that house for the next 54 years.

While other mob bosses bought mansions and drove Cadillacs, Buffalino kept his house and drove a 10-year-old car. He understood something important. The IRS couldn’t investigate what they couldn’t see. During World War II, Buffalino worked as a mechanic at the Canada Dry Ginger Ale Bottling Company in Bingmpington.

His boss was Joseph Barbara, the same bootleger who’d taken him under his wing in the 1920s. By now, Barbara was running the mafia in northeastern Pennsylvania and southern New York. He had gambling operations, lone sharking networks, and labor racketeering schemes across the region.

Bufalino worked for him. Officially, he fixed soda machines. Unofficially, he was learning how to run a criminal empire. In the 1950s, Boufalino made his move into the garment industry. He bought seven dress factories in the Pittston area. On paper, they were legitimate businesses. They employed local women, produced clothing, and filed taxes.

In reality, they were money laundering operations and labor control mechanisms. Anyone who wanted a dress contract in New York City had to go through Buffalino. He controlled the production, the transportation, and the workers. The International Ladies Garment Workers Union tried to organize the shops. Bufolino made sure they failed.

He wasn’t violent about it. He just made sure that union organizers understood that Pittston wasn’t their territory. By 1953, the FBI had identified Buffalino as one of the two most powerful men in the mafia of the Pittston, Pennsylvania area and the political and underworld leader of the region.

His FBI file, which would eventually grow to 114 pages, described a man who controlled gambling, lone sharking, labor racketeering, and legitimate businesses across northeastern Pennsylvania. But knowing who Buffalino was and proving what he did were two different things. Jay Edgar Hoover’s FBI was focused on communists.

Organized crime was a secondary concern that gave Boufalino space to operate. Boufalino’s reach extended far beyond Pennsylvania. He had connections in New York City, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, and Havana. In the 1950s, before Fidel Castro’s revolution, Buffalino reportedly owned a piece of a casino and a racetrack in Cuba.

He traveled there frequently. The FBI documented the trips, but didn’t understand their significance until much later. Cuba wasn’t just about gambling. It was about international narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and political influence. The mob had turned Havana into an offshore criminal headquarters.

Buffalino was a shareholder. Through his connections and his garment factories, Buffalino became a silent partner in Medicalico Industries, which the Pennsylvania Crime Commission later identified as the largest supplier of ammunition to the United States government. Think about that. A mafia boss with a financial stake in a company that armed the US military.

Buffalino understood something that most mobsters never figured out. The biggest money wasn’t in gambling or drugs or prostitution. It was in government contracts, legal money that nobody questioned. Medico gave Buffalino cover, income, and connections to politicians who controlled defense spending. On November 14th, 1957, everything changed.

Joseph Barbara hosted a meeting at his estate in Appalachin, New York. It was supposed to be a routine sitdown. Mob bosses from across the country along with some from Italy and Cuba would gather to discuss business. Specifically, they needed to address the recent murder of Albert Anastasia, the man who’d created Murder Incorporated.

Anastasia had been shot to death in a barber’s chair at the Park Sheran Hotel in Manhattan on October 25th. The hit had been unsanctioned. Someone needed to answer for it. Barbara asked Buffalino to handle the logistics, find a location, arrange accommodations, make sure everyone arrived safely. Buffalino chose Barbara’s ranch in Appalachian.

It was remote, private, easy to secure, or so they thought. What Buffalino didn’t know was that a local state trooper named Edgar Croswell had been watching Barbara for over a year. Croswell had noticed unusual activity. Reserveries at local hotels, large orders of meat from butchers, expensive cars arriving from out of state.

Something was happening. On the afternoon of November 14th, Cwell and other troopers set up a roadblock near Barbara’s estate. When mobsters started leaving the property, police stopped them. Some tried to drive through. Others abandoned their cars and ran into the woods.

58 mob bosses were arrested, including Russell Boufalino. Another 50 escaped into the forest, ruining expensive suits and custom shoes as they scrambled through the trees. It was a disaster. The Appalachian meeting became front page news across America. For the first time, the public understood that the mafia wasn’t just some Italian stereotype.

It was a nationwide criminal network with organization, hierarchy, and power. Buffalino was arrested at a roadblock while driving a car that included Veto Genevies and three other men. He told police he’d come to visit his sick friend Barbara. The FBI didn’t believe him. Neither did the grand jury. Bufalino and the others were indicted for conspiracy and obstruction of justice. But the charges didn’t stick.

In 1960, an appeals court overturned all the convictions. The government couldn’t prove that attending a meeting was a crime. The mobsters walked, but the damage was done. The FBI now understood what it was dealing with. A national conspiracy, and Russell Buffalino was one of its key architects.

After Appalachin, the government tried to deport Buffalino. The Immigration and Naturalization Service claimed his family had falsified his birth records when they brought him to America as an infant. For 15 years, Buffalino fought deportation proceedings. His lawyers filed motion after motion. The case dragged through the courts.

Finally, in 1973, the Italian government announced it would not accept Buffalino back. He was free to stay in the United States. The irony was perfect. Italy didn’t want him either. When Joseph Barbara died in June 1959 from a heart attack, the commission, the ruling body of the American mafia, officially recognized Russell Buffalino as boss of the northeastern Pennsylvania crime family.

He was 55 years old. He’d spent his entire adult life building toward this moment. And now, at a time when most bosses were attracting FBI attention and media coverage, Buffalino went the opposite direction. He became quieter, more careful, less visible. While other bosses held court in social clubs and restaurants, Buffalino ran his operations from his living room on East Dorant Street.

He dressed like a retiree. He drove an old car. He shopped at local stores. Neighbors described him as a perfect gentleman, polite, soft-spoken, generous with his time. But the FBI knew better. By the early 1960s, Boufalino controlled an empire that stretched from Pennsylvania to Florida, from New York to California.

He had soldiers in Detroit working with the Teamsters. He had connections in Chicago managing gambling operations. He had relationships with Angelo Bruno in Philadelphia and the Genevese family in New York. Unlike most mob bosses who ruled through fear, Buffalino ruled through consensus. He didn’t demand loyalty. He earned it.

He solved problems. He mediated disputes. He made people money. That’s why they called him McGee or the old man. It was a sign of respect. Bufalino’s most important relationship was with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the most powerful labor union in America. His cousin William Boufalino was the Teamstster’s longtime legal council.

Through Bill Buffalino, Russell developed a working relationship with Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters’s president. Hawa understood that union power came from two things. Membership numbers and mob muscle. The mob controlled the locals. They rigged elections. They intimidated rivals. In return, the Teamsters gave the mob access to the pension fund, a billion dollar treasure chest that could be loaned out to finance casinos, real estate developments, and criminal operations.

It was the perfect partnership. In 1955, Buffalino met Frank Sheran at a truck stop in Endicott, New York. Sharon was a Teamster truck driver whose vehicle had broken down. Buffalino stopped to help. He lent Sharon some tools. They talked. Boufalino offered him some side work. Small jobs, easy money.

Sharan didn’t know who Buffalino was. He just knew the old man seemed connected. Over the next few months, Sheran started doing more work for Buffalino, driving him to meetings, delivering packages, waiting in the car while Buffalino conducted business. By the time Sharon understood who Russell Buffalino actually was, he was already part of the family.

Buffalino introduced Sharan to Jimmy Hawa. The introduction happened over the phone. Hawa was in Detroit. Sharan was in Philadelphia. According to Sharon’s later account, Hawa’s first words were, “I heard you paint houses.” In mob language. That meant, “I heard you killed people.

” The paint was blood splattered on walls. Sharan replied, “I do my own carpentry, too.” Meaning he disposed of bodies. Hawa hired him on the spot. The next day, Shiran flew to Detroit and started working as Hawa’s personal enforcer. It was a job interview Russell Boufalino had arranged, and it would change the course of American history.

Throughout the 1960s, Boufalino’s influence grew. He had a silent hand in Hollywood. In 1972, singer Al Martino was cast as Johnny Fontaine in The Godfather, then had the role taken away and given to Vic Deone. Martino went to Boufalino, his Godfather, in real life, and explained the situation.

Bufalino made a phone call to Paramount Pictures. Within days, news articles appeared claiming director Francis Ford Copala didn’t know the role had been given to Demone. The studio backed down. Deone dropped the role. Martino got it back. According to Wanda Ruddy, wife of the film’s producer, Russell Buffalino had final script approval of The Godfather.

A real Godfather controlling a movie about godfathers. You can’t make that up. But Buffalino’s most significant operation was something the FBI didn’t fully understand until years later. According to multiple sources, including a 1975 Time magazine report, the CIA recruited Buffalino and several other mob figures, including Sam Gianana, Johnny Rosselli, and Santo Trafocante to participate in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro.

The plan involved poisoning Castro before the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. The operation failed. Castro survived. The Bay of Pigs became a disaster. But the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency had partnered with the mafia revealed something important. Boufalino wasn’t just a mob boss.

He was a national security asset. The relationship between Buffalino and Jimmy Hawa grew stronger throughout the 1960s. Hawa trusted Buffalino’s advice. When Hawa had problems with rivals in the Teamsters, Buffalino helped eliminate them. Not always through violence. Sometimes through intimidation, sometimes through legal maneuvering.

Bufalino understood that the best solutions were the ones that didn’t leave bodies. But when bodies were necessary, Buffalino had people like Frank Sheran. In 1964, Hawa was indicted on jury tampering charges. In 1967, he was convicted and sentenced to 13 years in federal prison. Before he went in, Hawa appointed Frank Fitz Simmons as acting president of the Teamsters.

It was supposed to be temporary. Hawa would serve a few years, get parrolled and take back control. But Fitz Simmons had other ideas. And so did the mob. Fitz Simmons was easier to control than Hawa. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t demand respect. He just signed the checks and approved the loans from the pension fund.

On December 23rd, 1971, President Richard Nixon commuted Hawa’s sentence. There was one condition. Hawa couldn’t participate in union activities until 1980. It was a poison pill. Hawa was free, but he was powerless. He immediately began planning his comeback. He hired lawyers to challenge the restriction. He started meeting with old allies.

He talked about running for president again. He threatened to expose corruption in the union. He was loud. He was angry. And he was becoming a problem. Russell Buffalino watched all of this with growing concern. Hawa’s campaign for reinstatement was attracting federal attention. Investigators were looking into pension fund loans.

They were interviewing witnesses. They were building cases. Offa had become a liability. He knew too much and he was talking too much. According to multiple accounts, including Frank Sheran’s deathbed confession, Buffalino and other mob bosses made a decision. Hawa had to go. On July 30th, 1975, Jimmy Hawa drove to the Makuse Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Township, Michigan.

He was supposed to meet with Anthony Provenzano, a New Jersey Teamsters leader and Genevese crime family captain, and Anthony Jacalone, a Detroit mob captain. Hoffa thought they were going to discuss his reinstatement. He called his wife at 2:30 p.m. to say the men were late. That was the last time anyone heard from him. Offa disappeared.

His car was found in the parking lot. He was never seen again. On July 30th, 1982, 7 years to the day after his disappearance, he was declared legally dead. According to Frank Sheran’s account given to author Charles Brandt and published in the book I heard you paint houses, Shiran was the trigger man.

He claimed that Russell Buffalino ordered the hit and arranged the logistics. Sheran said he picked up Hawa, drove him to a house in Detroit, walked him inside and shot him twice in the back of the head. Then he dragged the body through the kitchen to a waiting vehicle. Hoffa was taken to a crematorium and turned to ash. Sharan’s account has never been verified.

No physical evidence supports it. But it remains one of the most detailed explanations of what happened to Jimmy Ha. Whether or not Chiran killed Huffa, the FBI believed Russell Buffalino was involved. They just couldn’t prove it. And that was the story of Buffalino’s entire career.

Everyone knew what he was. Nobody could prove what he did. In 1977, Russell Boufalino made a rare mistake. Jack Napoli, a mob associate who owed money to a New York jeweler, was brought before Buffalino. Napoli owed $25,000. He couldn’t pay. According to Napoli’s later testimony, Buffalino threatened to kill him if he didn’t settle the debt.

Napoli, terrified, went to the FBI. He entered the witness protection program and agreed to testify. On August 8th, 1978, Boufalino was convicted of extortion and sentenced to 4 years in federal prison. He was 74 years old. Before reporting to prison, Buffalino made arrangements.

He appointed Edward Candra as acting boss. He removed himself from day-to-day operations. He prepared for what he knew was coming. The conviction gave the FBI leverage. They would pressure Napoli to give more testimony. They would build more cases. Boufalino understood the government’s playbook.

He’d watched it destroy other bosses. Now it was his turn. While Balolino was in prison, the FBI approached Napoli with a new proposal. Testify again, this time about the extortion case. They wanted Napoli to say that Buffalino had tried to have him killed. Napoli agreed. He told investigators that Buffalino had reached out to Jimmy Fatiano, a Los Angeles mob hitman turned informant and Michael Rzatello, a Los Angeles mobster, to kill him in 1976 before Napoli could testify in the extortion case.

Fatiano confirmed the story. In May 1981, Buffalino was released from prison after serving nearly 3 years. Three months later, he was indicted again. This time for conspiracy to murder a federal witness. At 77 years old, Boufalino faced the possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison. The trial began in October 1981.

Fatiano testified that Buffalino had asked him to kill Napoli. Rosatello was also charged, but was acquitted. On October 23rd, 1981, Russell Buffalino was convicted of conspiracy to murder a federal witness. He was sentenced to 10 years in the United States Penitentiary at Levvenworth, Kansas.

He was 78 years old. Levvenworth was hard- time, maximum security. Buffalino’s health deteriorated quickly. In 1987, he suffered a stroke and was transferred to the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri. By 1989, Boufalino was a shadow of himself, frail, weak, no longer a threat.

In May 1989, he was released on parole. He’d served 8 years. Buffalino returned to Kingston to his house on East Dorance Street. The FBI kept him under surveillance. The Pennsylvania Crime Commission monitored his movements. But Buffalino was done. His empire had fractured. Younger mobsters had taken over.

The Boufalino crime family still existed. But it was smaller, weaker, less influential. The FBI had won. Not through a dramatic takedown or a massive RICO case. They won through patience. They waited for Buffalino to make one mistake. Then they used that mistake to bury him. For the next 5 years, Boufalino lived quietly.

He attended family gatherings. He went to church. He stayed out of trouble. On February 25th, 1994, Russell Buffalino died at Nesbbit Memorial Hospital in Kingston. He was 90 years old. He was buried at Dennis Cemetery in Sawyersville, Pennsylvania. There were no headlines, no media coverage, no documentary specials.

He died the way he lived quietly. A few dozen people attended his funeral. The FBI sent representatives to photograph attendees. They documented who came to pay respects. They built files. But Russell Buffalino was gone. After his death, the FBI released portions of his file, 114 pages documenting 40 years of suspected criminal activity.

The file described Buffalino as one of the most powerful mob bosses in America. It detailed his control of northeastern Pennsylvania, his influence over the Teamsters, his connections to other crime families, and his suspected involvement in major crimes, including murder, extortion, labor racketeering, and narcotics trafficking.

But most of the file consisted of surveillance reports, witness statements, and unproven allegations. The FBI knew what Bfalino did. They just couldn’t prove most of it. The Boufalino crime family survived his death but never recovered its power. Billy Deia, who’d been acting boss since 1989, took over officially, but the organization was a fraction of its former size.

By the 2000s, the Buffalino family had fewer than 20 made members and a handful of associates. Federal prosecutions had decimated the leadership. The Garmin industry had moved overseas. The Teamsters’s pension fund was under federal oversight. The empire Boufalino built had collapsed, but Boufalino’s legacy lived in other ways.

In 1993, Frank Sheran confessed to author Charles Brandt that he’d killed Jimmy Hawa on Russell Buffalino’s orders. The confession was published in 2004 in the book I Heard You Paintous in 2019. Director Martin Scorsesei adapted the book into the film The Irishman. [clears throat] Joe Peshy portrayed Russell Buffalino.

Robert Dairo played Frank [snorts] Sheran. The film brought Buffalino’s story to millions of people who’d never heard his name. Suddenly, The Quiet Dawn was famous. Decades after his death, Russell Boufalino became a household name. He would have hated that. What made Balolino different from other mob bosses? It wasn’t intelligence.

Plenty of mobsters were smart. It wasn’t ruthlessness. The mafia had no shortage of killers. It was patience. Buffalino understood that power wasn’t about making noise. It was about making money. He didn’t need respect from the streets. He needed respect from the commission. He didn’t need to be feared by rivals.

He needed to be trusted by partners. While other bosses fought wars and made headlines, Buffalino built businesses and made deals. He controlled labor unions without starting labor wars. He ran the garment industry without attracting federal investigations. He influenced national politics without ever running for office.

He had the CIA asking for favors. He had Hollywood producers taking his calls. He had the Teamsters president on speed dial. And he did all of it from a small house in Kingston, Pennsylvania, a town most Americans couldn’t find on a map. The FBI spent 40 years trying to take down Russell Buffalino.

They finally succeeded when he was 77 years old. By then, he’d already accomplished more than most mob bosses could imagine. He’d built an empire, controlled industries, influenced national events, and died a free man at 90 years old. Most mafia bosses end up dead in the street or dying in prison. Buffalino got 74 years of freedom and 16 years of power before he spent his first day behind bars.

That’s not failure. That’s mastery. Russell Buffalino proved something important about organized crime. The bosses you hear about aren’t always the most powerful ones. The most powerful ones are the ones you never hear about until it’s too late. Gutty wanted headlines. Capone wanted celebrity. Buffalino wanted control.

And for four decades, he had it. He ran a crime family with the efficiency of a corporation and the secrecy of a intelligence agency. He made millions without attracting attention. He influenced history without leaving fingerprints. That’s the real story of Russell Buffalino. Not the man Hollywood portrayed, not the mobster the FBI described, but the one his neighbors knew.

A quiet old man who lived in a modest house, drove an old car, and never caused any trouble until you looked closer. Then you realized that quiet old man had spent 50 years controlling more power than most politicians ever dream of. He was the boss too powerful to touch until he wasn’t. If you found this story fascinating, hit subscribe.

We drop a new mob documentary every week. Drop a comment. What’s more dangerous in organized crime? Being loud and feared or being quiet and underestimated? Russell Buffalino knew the answer and it kept him alive for 90 years.