My surname is not common, but it is notorious. One of the real-life mobsters portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s new movie, “The Irishman,” is named Russell Bufalino.
When I was growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania, Mr. Bufalino lived about 10 miles away from my family, which consisted of my father, a lawyer; my mother, a homemaker of Irish and German descent who had to be taught by my paternal grandmother how to cook a marinara sauce properly; me, and my four brothers.
According to numerous reports, Mr. Bufalino the gangster, not my father, had begun his criminal life as a bootlegger during Prohibition, and later ran a gambling ring and other rackets. After his death in 1994, rumors emerged that he had played a role in a C.I.A.-sponsored assassination attempt on Fidel Castro, and in the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa, the head of the Teamsters union. A Philadelphia Inquirer writer referred to Russell as a “malevolent Forrest Gump.”
I have a vague recollection of having met him at some community event at which several people of Italian heritage had pinched my cheek, but, in the house I grew up in, Russell was considered persona non grata.
He was in a crime family; therefore, he was not part of ours.
Bufalino is an unusual name, however, so everyone in town assumed we were all either established or budding mafiosos.
In 1978, when I was 13, Russell was convicted of extortion.
The crime and sentencing were amply covered by the local newspapers, and, needless to say, the headlines were not kind to my family name. “I saw that your grandfather is going to prison,” a tactless high school classmate said to me at the time. I still remember the perverse joy I got from informing him that my dear, law-abiding grandfather had died when I was just 4 years old.
The assumption that my family was mobbed up crescendoed later that year after my father had donated $120 to
the gubernatorial campaign of Richard Thornburgh, and the Associated Press accused the candidate of having accepted money from the mafia.
“Governor-elect Richard Thornburgh, who rose to fame by battling organized crime, accepted political contributions from several individuals with alleged mob ties,” said the article, which referred to my father as an “attorney who is related to Russell Bufalino, described by the Crime Commission as a mafia boss.”
My father sued the A.P. for defamation, and sought $400,000 in damages.
The case dragged on for years. To bolster its defense, the A.P. attempted to establish a genealogy that would prove my father was related to Russell. My ancestors and Russell had emigrated to the United States from the same small town in Sicily, so one would have expected the DNA strands to have crossed at some point, but, as it turned out, no documentation of a familial connection was ever found.
Ultimately, my father agreed to settle out of court. The A.P. ran a retraction, and reimbursed him for attorney’s fees.
The family name has slowly become less synonymous with organized crime since Russell’s death, but his infamy still lingers. “I Heard You Paint Houses,” the book “The Irishman” is based on, chronicles the misdeeds of Frank Sheeran, who claimed to have killed Jimmy Hoffa at Russell’s behest.
The book was released in 2004, Robert De Niro started developing it as a movie in 2007, Martin Scorsese signed on as director in 2014, Netflix agreed to bankroll it in 2017, and the finished film is being shown at the Hamptons International Film Festival this week.
Through all of that time, my family and I have been girding ourselves for the mafia rumors to redound upon us once again. And now, instead of just the residents of a small Pennsylvania town, the whole world (including my neighbors in Springs) will know about Russell Bufalino. Just when you thought you were out, he pulls you back in.
Jamie Bufalino is a reporter for The East Hampton Star.