Russell Bufalino was considered the most powerful Mob boss of his day, if not all time. But until now, no one has ever traced Russell's career back to the coal fields of Northeastern Pennsylvania, or explored the legacy of the Pittston crime family Russell would inherit. Charles Bufalino, cousin and caretaker of the family's explosive history, offers the most authentic and probable solution to the greatest Mob mystery of all time: What really happened to Jimmy Hoffa?
Stretching back to the Bufalino roots in Sicily and the emigration of the men of Montedoro to the turn-of-the-nineteenth-century Pennsylvania coal fields, this gripping story lays the groundwork for the inception of an organized crime empire. Once in America, the Bufalinos penetrated both sides of the labor-versus-management conflict to magnify their own power and ultimately influence events on the national stage. By the 1950s, Russell would be named boss—the Don of all Dons. Blood ties and extended family were his to control. Likewise, his enemies, including Teamsters president, Jimmy Hoffa.
Delving deeply into corroborated family documentation, Charles Bufalino separates fact from fiction and corrects the presumed history of his ruthlessly enterprising ancestors to paint an intimate portrait of one of the most storied crime families of the twentieth century.
