Free The Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino by Matt Birkbeck Page B

had been taken on account of the “loss” of prisoners because that was not under his jurisdiction.
    James G. Conaboy, captain on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, testified he knew very little about the numbers business because operations were virtually over before his shift began. Office details and handling of complaints about disorderly conduct, mischievous boys, etc., keep him so busy “that I do not have the time to personally go out and observe every activity in the city or under my jurisdiction. From the fact that no patrolman, sergeant, or lieutenant has ever submitted verbally or written any complaint to me, I had presumed that the conditions in Scranton were at least favorable, and I had no occasion to suspect anything else.”
    If any gambling violation had been brought to his attention, Conaboy said, he would have made out a report to the superintendent of police, but “I never had a complaint from a subordinate, citizen, or anybody else as to the activities of a horse room or numbers, and therefore I would have no occasion or necessity to submit a report to my superior.”
    The Scranton, Pittston and Wilkes-Barre horse rooms were all “drops” for wire service being supplied by Metro-Globe News Service, of Hoboken, New Jersey. In Scranton, only one operator applied for the service under his own name. The other three adopted the obviously fictitious names of the “Greek Social Club,” the “Modern Amusement Co.” and the “B. & B. Club.” The Pittston subscribers were the “Pittston Social Club” and the “Wyoming Valley Social Club.” In Wilkes-Barre, the service was furnished to J. Sheerin.
    The committee sought the testimony of Jack Parisi, longtime associate of Albert Anastasia, reputed head of Murder, Inc., in New York, about his activities in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, but Parisi entered a Philadelphia hospital the day before the committee’s hearing in August. Doctors confirmed that he was suffering from a chronic leg injury directly attributed to a bullet wound in the hip sustained many years ago. Parisi vanished from New York in 1939, when police began hunting him for two murders. For ten years he enjoyed sanctuary in Pennsylvania coal-field communities until state police flushed him out of a specially designed hideout in Hazleton and turned him over to the New York authorities. Parisi “beat the rap” in the two murder cases and returned to Hazleton, where he blossomed out as production manager in the Nuremberg Dress Company factory at Nuremberg, a few miles from Hazleton. The owner of the company is Harry Strasser, alias Cohen, alias Lefty, with a New York criminal record. Strasser and Anastasia are partners in the Madison Dress Company in Hazleton, and Strasser is also listed as the owner of the Mount Carmel Garment Company, in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania; the Bobby Dress Company, in Dickson City, Pennsylvania; and the Interstate Dress Transportation Company. The committee also has evidence of additional infiltration of the garment industry in Pennsylvania by racket interests, but lack of time and funds compelled the committee to forego a more intensive investigation of this phase of racketeering activity in legitimate business.
    Except for the aggressive investigative accomplishments of the Pennsylvania State Police and their noteworthy efforts to cripple lottery operations centered in the cities of northeastern Pennsylvania, the committee finds that official lethargy toward organized gambling is so appalling as to be shocking to the public conscience.
    The slap-on-the-wrist attitude evidenced by the “close and stay closed” orders of nebulous tenure can hardly be regarded as an adequate substitute for rigid enforcement that is marked by arrest and conviction and, where the circumstances warrant it, imprisonment.

S IX

    B y the middle of 2006, construction had already begun on the new Mount Airy Casino Resort as contractors, engineers and planners zipped through local and county zoning