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...

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...