named Estelle Carey was suspected of ratting on a gang member.The mob realized that women often knew more than they should about gangsters and that it would be useful to finish Estelle off in a torturous manner that would convince other women that silence meant survival. Most of Chicago's favorite methods were used on her. Her nose was broken, and her face badly bruised. There were knife wounds and throat slashes, and she was badly burned. Among the weapons used were a rolling pin, a flatiron and a blackjack.
Life magazine once recounted the agonizing death a 300-pound mob loan shark named william Jackson whom the Chicago Outfit suspected of being both a stool pigeon and a knock-down artist. To get him to confess, they took him to a mob meat-rendering place where he was tied up and hung from a meat hook, Bullets were pumped into him and he was worked over with ice picks and baseball bats; an electric cattle prod was used on his rectum. It took two days for Jackson to die. An FBI bug on a mob apartment later caught several of the boys nostalgically discussing Jackson's demise and amid howls of laughter bemoaning the fact that he hadn't survived longer.
A soldier in the Magaddino family in Buffalo, Albert Agueci, once was arrested with his brother in a narcotics case, one which also involved informer Joe Valachi. Agueci got angry when he and his brother got no bail money from the family and let it be known that he was going to "declare" himself unless boss Steve Magaddino came through for him. All he got was silence and finally was released on bail only after his wife sold his house.
Agueci had acted most irresponsibly and compounded his errors by calling on Magaddino and threatening him. He became a buckwheats candidate. An illegal FBI wiretap caught two capos in the family joyfully anticipating taking him to "Mary's farm" and "cutting him up." The FBI concentrated their search for Mary's farm in the Buffalo area but it turned out to be near Rochester, New York. A few weeks later Agueci's body was found in a field. His arms were tied behind his back with wire and he had been strangled with a clothesline. His body was then soaked with gasoline and set ablaze. Identification of the body was made possible because of a single unburned finger. The worst of Agueci's treatment showed up in an autopsy report which found that about 30 pounds of flesh had been striped from agueci's body while he was still alive.
Buckwheats is an essential ingredient in organized crime, one in which only the most cunning and/or the most brutal survive. it may be why Mafia gangsters in America triumphed over their Neapolitan Camorra counterparts. As New York Times writer Nicholas Gage once noted: "... the Camorra punishment for a 'rat' was merely to slit his tongue before killing him, while the Mafia punishment was to cut off his genitals and jam them down his throat before execution." On such nuances are crime empires built.
Bufalino, Russell, A. (1903->): Crime family boss The McClellan Committee dubbed Russ Bufalino, boss of the Pittstown, Pennsylvania, crime family. "one of the most ruthless and powerful leaders of the Mafia in the United States." He might also be described aptly as "shadowy" since, until well into the 1970s, he avoided any major convictions.
A man some have described as having "nervous eyes"—they seem to rotate to opposite corners so that they give others the odd sensation that he is looking around them instead of at them, a condition that can make a threat from him seem matter-of-factly awesome—Bufalino centered his operations through much of Pennsylvania but constantly stretched the boundaries of his power into New Jersey and upstate New York. When the aged Stefano Magaddino, boss of the Buffalo family, died in the mid-1970s, Bufalino made a concerted push in that direction as well.
Strong in labor racketeering and considered a major power behind the scenes in Teamsters Union affairs, Bufalino has been considered by federal authorities as the number one suspect in the disappearance of ex union head Jimmy Hoffa. The Pittstown family has often been considered active in the peddling of drugs and the fencing of stolen jewelry, Bufalino's arrest record dates back to his mid-20s and includes minor charges such as petty larceny, receiving stolen goods and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
He did not have a serious conviction until 1977 when he got a four-year sentence for extortion after threatening a witness because he owed $25,000 to a diamond fence associated with Bufalino. Unfortunately, the witness was taped at the time and then tucked away in the witness protection program. Bufalino found out where his was hidden and asked his man Jimmy "the Weasel" Fratianno to arrange to hit hi. Fratianno couldn't find his and Bufalino was convicted. An indignant Bufalino told the court: "If you had to deal with an animal like that, Judge, you'd have done the same damn thing."
