The Life We Chose: William “Big Billy” D'Elia and the Last Secrets of America's Most Powerful Mafia Family

Prologue

It was a late afternoon in October 2006 when a black Lincoln Town Car pulled in front of the modest house on a hill in Hughestown, a borough in northeast Pennsylvania midway between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.

The driver, a tall, middle-aged man with jet-black hair, was about to open his door when a car abruptly pulled in behind him, blue lights flashing. He looked into the rearview mirror. Behind the blue lights were more vehicles, their lights also flashing. Closing in ahead of him were even more cars and SUVs, filling the normally tranquil street in front of his home.

Above was a loud whirring noise, and he peered up through the front windshield to see a Chinook helicopter overhead.

Within seconds his car was surrounded by frantic men and women, some in uniform, others wearing windbreakers emblazoned with FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security. All had their guns drawn and pointed at him. They screamed out directives to put his hands up and to slowly get out of the car. It was all happening so fast, with near-military precision, but he knew the drill.

Here we go again, he mumbled to himself.

Five and a half years earlier, on May 31, 2001, the FBI, U.S. Secret Service, Pennsylvania State Police, Internal Revenue Service, and U.S. Postal Inspection Service had all raided the same home. He had just driven away but was pulled over on a local road. When they searched his car then, they found several guns in the trunk, including an AK-47 and a shotgun. In the backseat was a suitcase, and inside was a MAC-10 submachine gun. A nine-millimeter Beretta was holstered to his side.

Now, on this late fall afternoon and with the sun already setting, he was again surrounded by an overwhelming show of law enforcement officers and agents. But this time they included the Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Free on bail from an earlier money-laundering charge, he wasn’t carrying any weapons. But he did have $38,000 in cash in his inside breast pocket, money he had just collected from a Russian in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.

As he slowly emerged from the car and into the cacophony of chaos and noise, he could decipher the loud, nervous repetitions of "Hands above your head! and We’ll blow your fucking head off!"

One young agent pointing a gun at him couldn’t keep his hand from shaking.

Easy with that, he said.

He turned around and was shoved against the car, searched, handcuffed, placed inside an FBI vehicle, and then taken to the local magistrate and charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill a witness in his money-laundering case. After, he was transported to the Lackawanna County Prison in Scranton. His stay there was short but pleasant given all the food—mostly Italian delicacies and desserts—that had been sent to his cell courtesy of friends, local businesses, and restaurants. His jailers didn’t mind. Many knew him personally. A few days later he was transferred to the prison in neighboring Pike County, which borders New York State and New Jersey.

It was there, without warning, he was roused from his cell, shackled, and escorted out of the back of the prison and into the rear of an unmarked FBI SUV. Within minutes, a long procession of unmarked law enforcement vehicles sped west along Interstate 84. It looked like a presidential motorcade, but that didn’t stop an overzealous state police highway trooper from flagging down the lead vehicle, which he had clocked going over ninety miles per hour.

When the trooper approached, the driver opened his window and confidently flashed his badge and FBI credential.

License and registration, sir, said the trooper.

The FBI agent, a bit flummoxed, held his identification higher. FBI, transporting a prisoner to the federal courthouse in Scranton, he said.

The trooper remained undaunted. License and registration, sir.

FBI, said the agent, now a bit agitated. We’re transporting a prisoner to the federal courthouse in Scranton.

I don’t care. License and registration, the trooper repeated. He peered into the rear of the truck and immediately recognized the large figure in an orange jumpsuit seated on the passenger side. The trooper’s eyes grew wide.

"Is that Billy D’Elia?!" he said, gawking.

Yes, said the FBI agent.

Well, why didn’t you tell me you had Big Billy in here! Then go through!

* * *

William Big Billy D’Elia was the most sought-after organized crime leader in the United States, who had for years been on the radar of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

He was known as the mob’s negotiator, the guy who was summoned to settle problems—or make them go away. New York, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Los Angeles. Wherever there was trouble, the call went out to Big Billy.

But he was more than just the mob’s fixer. Billy was Mafia royalty, the so-called son of Russell Bufalino, who was arguably the most powerful and important organized crime figure of the twentieth century. Billy had spent nearly thirty years at Bufalino’s side, from the mid-1960s until Bufalino’s death in 1994, and subsequently became the unquestioned leader of the Bufalino Family.

Now that he was finally in custody, law enforcement agencies throughout the country were eager to talk with him. Almost every week Billy was transported from the Pike County prison to the William J. Nealon Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Scranton to meet with one investigator after another.

There were the detectives from New York City assigned to the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force who quizzed him about money-laundering operations based in the Bronx that allegedly wired tens of millions to Middle Eastern terrorists. Another group of detectives, from New York’s organized crime task force, sought information on decades’ worth of Mafia activity there with a focus on the hierarchy of the Five Families, while Philadelphia detectives were keenly interested in Billy’s firsthand knowledge of their city’s once-powerful and violent crime family, which had been through two bloody wars.

More FBI agents arrived looking for information on Mafia families in Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles, and elsewhere, while the Secret Service wanted to know about counterfeit-money operations throughout the country. New Jersey investigators wanted to hear about his ties to illegal gambling and money-laundering operations in Atlantic City, which had banned Billy from entering the city in 2003. And in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the state capital, Billy was subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury investigating a longtime friend, a Scranton billionaire, who was suspected of lying about his mob ties to gain approval for a casino license.

Every week, there was someone or something new to discuss. And of course, there was Jimmy Hoffa.

That first trip to the Scranton federal courthouse, the one interrupted by a state trooper, was to bring Billy face-to-face with two FBI agents from Detroit who were part of a new unit assembled to investigate the 1975 disappearance of the former Teamsters leader.

Though Billy was never a suspect himself, Russell Bufalino was among the handful of men the FBI strongly believed had taken part in Hoffa’s disappearance and alleged murder. Frank Sheeran, a Bufalino subordinate and Billy confidant, was another suspect, and the FBI was convinced they both had shared details with Billy about their involvement. They must have, the agents reasoned, given how close Billy had been to both men. But when the federal agents announced their intentions, Billy brushed them off, saying only that Hoffa was not on the farm, a reference to a field in Michigan where investigators were searching for the former Teamsters boss’s remains.

The dejected agents flew back to Detroit empty-handed, much like every other federal agent, investigator, detective, and prosecutor who came to speak to Billy then, and over the ensuing years. But Billy did have a story to tell.

He was just waiting for the right time to share it.

Chapter 1

Pittston

Blood, brains, and bone were all that was left of Snowball’s little furry white head.

Just a few weeks old, the puppy had been playfully prancing in the backyard with the boy. It was a gift from a neighbor who had one too many puppies. When he came by the house to deliver the dog, he delighted the little boy, who held him to his chest and immediately knew what he’d name him.

It was just a couple of days later that the boy took Snowball outside and the white puppy romped from one side of the backyard to the other. But then he wandered among the soon-to-be-ripe tomato plants way in the rear, and the boy watched in horror as a brick suddenly came crashing down on the puppy’s head with such force it killed him instantly.

The boy ran to the dead animal and fell to his knees in a state of grief and shock that only a four-year-old could feel. Teary-eyed, he looked up to his father, who was still holding the brick, which dripped red puppy blood and dark brain matter.

The father took pride in his garden, and he didn’t appreciate anything, including a puppy, disturbing his tomato plants.

You wanted a dog. Now clean him up, he said.

The boy, whom everyone called Billy, followed his father’s command and put the dead pet, along with its brains, into a bag.

His father, William P. D’Elia, was a plumber by trade, but his day job was driving a rig for the city of Pittston’s fire department. He worked a four-days-on schedule, with his three days off split between earning extra cash with the odd plumbing job and drinking beers at Viola’s bar, his personal refuge on Main Street.

When his father-in-law died, William P.’s wife, Theresa, knew to call him there.

Pa died, she cried.

What are you calling me for! he shouted. Call the undertaker.

William P. was the son of Italian immigrants. They had arrived in Pittston around the turn of the century via the same route over the vast ocean that had led many others before them to this little town on the banks of the Susquehanna River in northeast Pennsylvania. It was pretty there, the river slicing through the mountains, which were painted green during the summer and with brilliant brown hues during the fall.

Dozens of communities sprouted up along the river’s banks, from Scranton south to Wilkes-Barre, after anthracite coal was discovered in the late 1700s—tons of it. The communities had names such as Port Griffith, which was eight miles downriver from Scranton, and Exeter and Kingston, which were just across from Wilkes-Barre.

By the late 1800s Pittston had become a central coal hub, the brittle black rock mined and shipped through its canals down to Philadelphia and even farther, into Baltimore. Italian immigrants had come in such droves, they eased out the Scots and Irish working the mines and took control of them.

Mining jobs in Pittston were plentiful. An underground river of anthracite called the Big Vein stretched through the entire town and under the Susquehanna River into West Pittston. Several mining companies worked the rich vein, much of which was virtually free of impurities. That made the black rock even more valuable. But the work was incredibly dangerous, and injury and death were a way of life.

One early morning in June 1896, the roof of the Red Ash vein of the Twin Shaft mine caved in, killing seventy-five of the one hundred men and boys who were working there, four hundred feet underground. Their bodies were never recovered. In 1905 seven miners working the Clear Spring Coal Company’s shaft in West Pittston ended their shift and boarded a cage meant to carry them to the surface. As they were hoisted up, the cable broke and the men plummeted two hundred terrifying feet to their deaths. Rescuers found only body parts.

Despite the dangers, Pittston became one of several final landing spots for the thousands of Italian immigrants who sailed into New York but didn’t want to stay in the crowded city. Many traveled even farther west and settled in places like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, while others went no farther than Pittston. Some families even split up, with some members staying in Pittston while brothers, sisters, parents, and cousins continued the journey. Geography didn’t matter for Italian immigrants. For them, blood ties were everything, not your location.

The D’Elias lived in a white house on Wilford Street, which wasn’t far from the river. Single-family homes with small front gardens and white picket fences lined the street.

After his arrival from Italy, Billy’s grandfather had worked underground in the mines for several years but later avoided the drudgery and early death that went with mining when he became the weighmaster for the Pennsylvania Coal Company. His favorite activity was sitting on his front porch every Thursday afternoon slicing up vegetables and fruits from his brother-in-law’s grocery store. They were too old to sell but too fresh to throw out, so he cut up the good stuff and canned it.

Billy loved his grandparents, George and Maria, who lived in a separate apartment that was attached to the house. And Billy cherished his mother. Warm and nurturing, Theresa D’Elia was of Irish descent, with a maiden name of Walsh. She worked as a clerk at Kleinrock’s Army & Navy downtown. It was Theresa’s sister, Aunt Lottie, who watched over Billy and his two older sisters, Margaret, whom everyone called Peggy, and Shirley. A sweetheart of a woman, Lottie had never married, and between her and Theresa they took care of the big house, which had been sold to William P. by his father. George had owned three houses and sold one to his son on the condition that Maria be allowed to stay in the separate apartment when he was gone. Theresa agreed, but only if her sister could live in the house too.

The two-story home had plenty of room with a big kitchen. And of course, there was the backyard with the tomato garden in the back, a place where Billy never ventured after disposing of Snowball.

What was I going to do? said Billy, recalling that terrible memory years later. I was just a little kid. I mean, the puppy just ran into his plants. It wasn’t nothing. He could have just told me to pick it up and take it inside, but he was a nasty prick. He just picked up a brick and smashed the dog’s head in front of me. That’s a tough thing to see for a little kid.

WILLIAM J. D’ELIA WAS BORN in Pittston Hospital on June 24, 1946, and aside from the traumatic experience of witnessing his dog’s murder, growing up in Pittston with a vacant father but loving family during the 1950s was fairly idyllic.

Quaint homes, each displaying an American flag, lined every block, and the neighborhood children owned the streets, riding their bikes, playing games. One of them was Sam Marranca, whom everyone called Kooch. He was a bit of a rascal who at just age ten knew his way around a pool table. One of Billy’s best friends, Kooch lived by the firehouse where Billy’s dad worked. They got along together, Kooch and William P., as did William P. and Wally Shandra, another mischievous sort who lived a couple of blocks away on Oak Street. William P. would take them and other neighborhood kids fishing, but never his son.

It was kind of weird, said Billy. He was good to the other kids, just not me.

A gifted athlete, Billy played American Legion baseball and was on a team that won a tournament when he was twelve. But unlike many of the other kids, whose parents cheered them on during games, Billy’s didn’t. His mother worked full-time, and his father took no interest in any of his activities.

The distance and anger between father and son erupted one Christmas when Billy interceded after his father knocked his sister Shirley into the Christmas tree during an argument.

They were having words and he slapped her in the face, said Billy. He knocked her down, so I jumped in and said, ‘You prick. Don’t ever touch her again.’ I was just a kid, eleven, twelve years old. He didn’t really hit us a lot, only when he had a cocktail before. But after I jumped in he says, ‘As long as I live, you’ll never get a dime of my money.’ What did that mean to a twelve-year-old? Nothing. Like I said, he was just a nasty prick.

When she wasn’t working, Theresa devoted much of her time and attention to keeping the peace between her husband and gentle son, who, despite doing little homework, happened to be a good student at Jefferson Elementary School. Theresa adored Billy, and her motherly affection instilled a softness and likability in her only son.

My mom, she always stood up for me, said Billy.

So long as he avoided his father, the family dynamic remained relatively tranquil. Billy played with his friends after school and by the time he got home, Aunt Lottie usually had dinner on the table for everyone. On Sundays the entire family would dress up and attend the nine A.M. Mass at St. Mary, Help of Christians, with the exception of Grandma Maria. Born a Catholic, she became a Protestant and eventually a Holy Roller—part of an Evangelical denomination. Its members would gather on the front porch every Wednesday with other believers and work themselves into a frenzy, rolling across the porch at exactly three P.M.

It was like God would be coming into them. It went back to the early days when Catholics couldn’t get jobs in Pittston, said Billy. So some people, like my grandparents, who came right from Italy became Presbyterians. My father converted back to Catholicism when my sister Shirley made her confirmation. My grandmother went from Catholic to Presbyterian to becoming a Holy Roller. But she had this other side to her. She used to walk by the shoe store with her shopping bag where they had all the samples out. But they wouldn’t put the whole set out, just one shoe. So when she died they found twenty left shoes in her closet. She stole all the samples.

When Mass ended they’d wait in line with the other parishioners to greet the priest and then drive over to Ristagno’s bakery in nearby Exeter for warm Italian bread, which they’d bring home and dip into the tomato sauce that Grandma had been simmering all morning. A couple of hours later they’d start on the pasta and meatballs.

When he entered Pittston High School, Billy was thin as a rail but stood well over six feet tall. He had given up sports by then. Sort of. Instead, he and Wally sold football betting sheets, the small, rectangular slivers of paper where bettors would pick the winner of a minimum of four college or NFL games. But each pick had to beat the spread. They’d hand out the sheets at the beginning of the week, then retrieve them and the money before the weekend’s games and give them over to the bookie.

A lot of people in Pittston liked betting football, said Billy.

There were also a lot of kids his age working the sheets, so he and Wally tried some other ways to make money, such as selling newspapers. They weren’t employed by the papers. Instead, they’d wait for the delivery trucks to drop the stacks of papers on Main Street, steal them, and resell them at a discount. While they made a few bucks, after a while it wasn’t worth the effort. So Billy took a job at his uncle’s grocery store, only to soon realize that his customer service abilities were less than ideal.

I needed to work, so I went there, but I was always getting yelled at, said Billy. My uncle always told me to be careful with this and that, like be careful with those chocolate éclairs because they cost him a lot of money. But I was real skinny, like ninety-seven pounds, and kind of sensitive to people thinking I was weak. So one day this guy that was bigger than me asked me to carry his groceries to his car. I told him to carry his own fucking bag. My uncle said this wasn’t working out.

Another summer he went to work with his father. Their relationship had remained frosty at best, but William P. needed a plumber’s assistant and grudgingly offered the job to his son.

He had a contract to replace all the fire extinguishers in the Pittston public schools, said Billy. They had those old copper extinguishers, and every year they had to be inspected. You’d go in, twist the top off, and there was a bottle of acid in there. You had to dump that out and put new acid in, and then pump out the water. That was a big contract, and he was getting fifteen dollars a fire extinguisher, and he was going to pay me half. So when the check came I said, ‘Where’s my half?’ and he said, ‘You eat here, don’t ya? You sleep here, don’t ya? That’s your half.’

Billy was still working the football sheets with Wally, and every Monday they’d run up to a printing shop in Clarks Summit and pick them up and distribute them to the regular clientele. If Pittston had a local pastime, it was gambling. And not just football. Bookies lingered at all hours on nearly every street corner and inside the local pool halls, like LaTorre’s and the Imperial, their pants pockets usually bulging with cash.

The pool halls were filled day and night, men and boys shooting pool or playing cards or pinball in the dimly lit, smoke-filled quarters. Pool was so popular in Pittston that several local men, such as Lou Butera, emerged as challengers for world championships. Shooting pool was a serious business in Pittston, with men wagering on every game, and sometimes every shot.

North Pittston is where I grew up, but south Pittston was where all the action was, said Billy. You had two, three poolrooms across the street from each other. They were always crowded. We had Pearl’s Pizza and another pizza place down the street. On Friday nights you couldn’t walk along the sidewalk. That’s how crowded with people it was. Gambling was a big deal.

It was at Pittston High School in the early 1960s that a lab teacher asked Billy to go downtown for her and place a bet on a horse. She gave him twenty dollars and a half day off to make the bet. Not long after, Billy and Wally were running bets for all the teachers.

We had thousands in the bank from the sheets and the teachers’ betting, said Billy. I thought I was a little wise guy with the leather jacket and combat boots. One of the bookies was ‘Big Lou’ Butera and he was married to Pearl Medico, who owned Pearl’s Pizza and was a sister of the Medico brothers, Bill and Phil. They owned this big business in the area making tools and weapons for the government. I didn’t really know anything about them until later. But at Pearl’s Pizza, they had a divider there between the tables and the front end where they cooked and served takeout. So I’d sit there with a rubber band and matches and shoot them over the divider into the sauce. One day there was a guy in there watching me and he yells out, ‘Why don’t you kick him in the ass.’ I looked at him and said, ‘Do you think you’re big enough?’ and he says, ‘Yeah, you want to try me?’ Guess what? He kicked my ass out the store and all the way up the street to the bank building. He was a tough little guy. His name was Loquasto.

It was around that time that Billy started dating Ellen Ward. She was a tiny, cute girl who lived nearby and was part of a bigger group of kids that Billy hung out with in the neighborhood or downtown at the pizza parlors. But most of the time they’d be at Ellen’s house.

We became very close. We all went there because her mother would feed everybody, said Billy. "Every kid in the neighborhood ate in that house. Her father worked for the Pennsylvania Power and Light company and when he would come home from work, he’d put on his sweater. They were so nice together it was like the perfect home, like Father Knows Best. But at nine o’clock he’d say, ‘It’s time to fix the furnace,’ and that was it. Everyone knew it was time to leave."

Billy and Ellen dated when they were fifteen, but Billy’s teenage eyes always roamed, and Ellen found another boyfriend. When he graduated high school in 1964 he had grown to six feet four inches tall and towered over everyone. He had plans to attend college and study accounting, but that following summer he kept running the football sheets with Wally. They’d meet at the Imperial poolroom, in which locals and gangsters were often found together. Aside from coal and the poolrooms, if Pittston had anything, it was gangsters. And a lot of them. They had been there since the late 1800s, and they melded with the community.

It started with Stefano LaTorre, who owned LaTorre’s poolroom. He emigrated from the small Sicilian town of Montedoro in the late 1800s. A member of the Mafia there, he was only seventeen when he arrived in Pittston, where he quickly took up extortion, loan-sharking, and murder. Other Montedoro men, such as Calogero Bufalino, whom everyone in America called Charles, and Santo Volpe joined him.

They all worked the mines but quickly settled into their old-world customs, often exploiting their fellow immigrant Italian miners. Together, they were known as the Black Hand.

The police tried to control them. Their first arrests came in 1907, when several Black Hand members were charged with terrorizing the community by demanding payoffs and tribute from fellow Italian miners. Charles Bufalino and LaTorre were convicted and spent a year in prison. Volpe was acquitted and for months after the trial led a bloody vendetta in which local residents who had cooperated with the police were murdered in retribution, their corpses left along Railroad Street in south Pittston.

Despite the unwanted police attention, by 1910 they had control of all underworld activity in Pittston and the surrounding towns and set their sights on expanding their business, buying coal mines and gaining influence over the burgeoning unions. By