Cosa Nostra News

Was Russell Bufalino ever the boss of the Genovese family in a temporary fashion, we were recently asked via email. The following is our answer ... Russell Bufalino By 1975, Russell Bufalino —the soft-spoken, eight-fingered Sicilian with the lazy eye who was called “McGee” by his closest associates —was at the height of his power in the American Cosa Nostra. According to law enforcement and journalist sources, at around this time he was at the helm of no less than three crime families: In addition to his own crime family in Pittston, Pennsylvania, he had assumed control of (as well as absorbed) the Buffalo crime family after the July 1974 death of longtime boss Stefano Magaddino . Bufalino also reportedly had assumed temporary control of New York’s Genovese family, sometime after the July 1972 murder of front boss Thomas (Tommy Ryan Eboli) and before Anthony (Fat Tony) Salerno took over. Bufalino may have been arguably one of the most powerful mobsters in the nation in t...

A federal appeals court dismissed a defamation lawsuit last Monday filed by a convicted murderer serving life in prison. The lawsuit, over the book  The Quiet Don , about the late Cosa Nostra boss Russell Bufalino , had caused the defendant depression, and supposedly made other inmates target him for violence. Coviello was arrested in 1978 for murder. In its order, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Louis Coviello, the convict who filed the lawsuit, had failed to pay the fee on time to have his case heard. Coviello was challenging a lower court ruling that had thrown out the $1 million defamation suit against the book's author and publishers: The Berkley Publishing Group and the Penguin Group.

Things are going from bad to worse for Philadelphia's alleged mob boss. First, his fine-dining establishment in Boca was put on the block a mere months following its grand opening. Then Skinny Joey was linked to a group of c onvicted criminals and individuals with organized crime ties  who "dumped tons of contaminated soil and construction debris near residential areas and waterways in New Jersey in recent years." Joey Merlino may no longer be able to indulge in gambling in Pennsylvania following an altercation. Now the Pennsylvania State Gaming Control Board no longer wants Joseph "Skinny Joey" Merlino strutting into any of the state's casinos -- as George Anastasia reported last week for Philly Voice -- so t hey filed a petition to prohibit Merlino from doing just that .

A federal judge voiced his belief that the former FBI agent who was Greg Scarpa Senior's handler had indeed passed on intel that resulted in murders. Judge Korman Judge Edward Korman’s words were recently uncovered in a 2012 transcript of a court case related to Gregory Scarpa Jr. The judge was referring to murders that were part of the early 1990s Colombo crime family wa r. “It was my view and remains my view that Lin DeVecchio provided information to Scarpa that got people killed,” Korman said, according to the transcript.  “I found it pretty outrageous and the bottom line was, of course, nothing happened to Lin DeVecchio. He was permitted to retire and in his retirement was actually doing background checks for the (FBI),” the judge said. Scarpa Jr. was  seeking a reduction of his racketeering sentence  as a reward for helping the feds find explosives hidden in the home of Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, as  noted back in August, whe...

Frank Costello's mausoleum, with the front gate blown apart. "Lilo" heralding his return to the streets.... This is a revise of an old story that I've been sitting on entirely too long.... Italy has exported two global entities -- the Mafia and the Catholic Church. Ironic. Made men generally are Roman-Catholics. Still, not much has been generally written about Mafiosi making (or not making) peace with the New Testament God before shuffling off this mortal coil. At the same time, Sicilian or Italian mobsters are very dedicated to their faith. In fact, some of them study the bible.  "In Italy, there is not a single Mafioso who isn't religious," Padre Nino Fasullo, an anti-Mafia priest in Italy, once said. "For a phenomenon like the Mafia, which has no intellectual justification at all, religion may represent the only ideological apparatus to which it can refer . ... We're all in the church. Even the Mafia. Unfortunately. The church is e...