Rocco Scafidi on Bufalino

[Eline2015]

Angelo Meli and Angelo Polizzi lived here before relocate to Detroit

[SILENT PARTNERZ]

Celeste Morello is wrong when stating
Russell Bufalino was NOT the boss and
that the family was not a stand alone.
Now, when it was created, where the
members came from may be up for debate.

[Frank]

I have read about Barbara not being boss of that family, but a Buffalo capo. That Buffalino had been boss since 1951 I'm not saying that's correct, but it's out there.

[B.]

I have read about Barbara not being boss of that family, but a Buffalo capo. That Buffalino had been boss since 1951 I'm not saying that's correct, but it's out there.

There is some grey area in that part of New York state, with both Magaddino and Bufalino members operating in SW NYS and even though Buffalo is more commonly associated with the Castellammaresi, some of the men from Castellammare in that Endicott area along the NY/PA border were most likely part of the Scranton/Bufalino family. If that's the case, Barbara could very well have been a member of either group and though I don't believe he was ever boss of the future Bufalino family, I personally haven't seen enough definitive info on his membership to know for sure.

None of this is simple, though... Russell Bufalino originally lived in Buffalo and was criminally active there in the 1920s. He was from Montedoro, like others from the Scranton family, but Buffalo also had its own Montedoro element with Buffalo leader John Montana being from there. There are intersections and overlap between these families and areas which is why it continues to be confusing even today.

She forms her conclusion first and then accepts evidence that supports her claim and refutes evidence that takes away from it.

Imagine an extreme scenario where I am obsessive over the notion that Jew's and Italians are part of the larger overarching National Crime Syndicate. I cite Veasey and Knapik/Merola as examples of the Italian rule not being in place, discount Joe Bonanno entirely and cite James Fratianno's book about Lanksy having his own Family set up like the Italians as further evidence.

When it comes to Philadelphia Morello gets kudos for researching the origins of these men. But her attempts to divide up those she likes and those that don't support her theory into two categories of Sicilian Mafiosi and Mainland gangsters shows her biased agenda. Especially considering that Sicilian Mafiosi in Philadelphia, unlike in Pittsburgh at the time, had records just as bad as anyone else. They weren't blowing up eachother's businesses to settle old world disputes using their methodology they were moving their goods to another location, blowing the storefront to shit, blaming the 'so-called Black Hand' and collecting insurance money. The city's mafiosi then, like now, weren't fucking rocking scientists.

It wouldn't surprise me if (the area of) Scranton goes pretty far back, 1870's perhaps, certainly 1880. At this stage they would have had links to NY and New Orleans. But when they became an autonomous group is the question. Baring in mind the mafia was more fraternal and less capitalist, there was never any notion of New Orleans or NY wanting "control" over this new expanding area between them. It was rather like: there's alot of us there, so that area needs its own rappresentante, someone they can go to, someone we can go to, in the event there's something that concerns the area. Let's say the NO boss has a made nephew who's moving to the area for work, you need someone to receive the letter of transfer/recommendation in that area. Or someone ran afoul of NO and fled to another part of the country, the boss can send the word to SF, SL, Chicago, NY, Scranton that so-and-so has a death sentence on him.

Haha, I love the Veasey, etc. example. I find myself trying not to do the same thing when I have a theory and it's difficult not to do it a little bit (especially if the sources are reliable on other subjects), but Morello seems to make a point of doing it whenever she can.

One comment on the line of your post I bolded, though -- I don't believe that there had to be a lot of members for there to be a rappresentante. "A lot" would be open to interpretation of course, especially depending on the size of the city, Sicilian community, etc. Pentito Leonardo Messina claimed a family in Sicily needed only ten members and it seems likely that the early Sicilian mafia groups in the US were smaller, like their village counterparts, rather than the hulking "territory" and "big city" families that developed over time. We've had long conversations about this and I don't think we disagree with each other. Just one example I've seen since we last talked about it is Magaddino boasting on a bug that his family had 22 members when he took over and he expanded it to 125. My guess is he didn't just go on a mass recruitment drive, but this huge spike in membership also included bringing smaller existing mafia groups under his fold. I believe Utica was most likely one of these groups, but given the range of his territory it could have also included Rochester, Erie, and maybe other places with their own small, independent groups.

I do believe Morello may be right that the Norristown Sciacchetani were never part of the Philadelphia family, though I would have to know where she got the idea that they were satellite members of NYC. I will give her the benefit of the doubt about her great uncle Rosario Montalbano being a mafioso who lived in Brooklyn/Manhattan in the 1920s before settling in Norristown. If he was a mafioso as she says, his living in Brooklyn/Manhattan would fit with other Sciacchetani in NYC, especially with the Gambino family. But the idea that he -- and others from Sciacca in Norristown -- stayed part of an NYC family in PA doesn't seem to be info she would have access to given that she herself says that her uncle Montalbano wouldn't share any mafia-related info with her when she interviewed him.

Because I'm interested in where small families may have existed early on, only to disband or be merged with larger families before "common knowledge" mafia history comes along, I would put Norristown on that list of possibilities. There was a large enough Schiacchetani community there to provide the minimum ten members needed to form a family and given that they don't seem to have belonged to any other PA family, plus Sciacca's strong mafia connections and ties to NYC, it seems as likely spot as any without having more info to prove/disprove.

Maybe Morello is right, though in a roundabout way, that her great-uncle and others ended up under NYC after a theoretical Norristown family was disbanded, similar to what has been said about Birmingham falling under Tom Gagliano's authority after they disbanded. When Newark was disbanded the family was split between multiple families, but it was said that Joe Profaci was tasked with handling the matter ala Gagliano in Birmingham. From these limited examples, combined with common sense from what we know of mafia protocol, a disbanded group would have to fall under another family's influence, though in the case of a family like Birmingham, or again theoretically, Norristown, it would be little more than a formality since those members were "inactive." If these cities had "active" members/associates, viable rackets, or even just business opportunities, we probably would have seen them become satellite decinas or crews in larger families, which I suspect is what happened with Utica and other cities, and also explains why other families have had longstanding crews far from their "HQ".

Maybe Morello is also right about Endicott being its own family of primarily Castellammaresi, though it didn't exist "instead" of the upstate PA/SW NYS Bufalino family like Morello wants to believe, but earlier on in history when smaller families of mostly paesani were the norm. As smaller groups merged with other groups into larger "territory" families, it's possible Endicott became one with the upstate PA family, though I have no info to back this speculation up, just entertaining Morello's own speculation in a way that might make more sense. If this were the case, and a Castellammaresi Endicott family did exist, a whole other mystery would be why they joined the future Bufalino group and not Buffalo.