Genovese crime family

The Genovese crime family is presented as a hierarchy whose members and leaders could reach beyond organized crime into the politics of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Its role emerges most clearly through Tony Pro’s rise and rupture with Jimmy Hoffa, Russell Bufalino’s position above Pro in the underworld hierarchy, and Fat Tony Salerno’s place at the family’s head in 1975. In Frank Sheeran’s account, the family’s influence is also part of the chain of authority surrounding Hoffa’s disappearance: a killing that, he says, required territorial approval and was reported to Salerno afterward.

Rank and authority

The book gives the family’s hierarchy through the relationships among specific men rather than through a general organizational history. Sheeran describes Russell Bufalino as having acted as the family’s boss from time to time, while Tony Pro stood far below him in rank. Hoffa, Sheeran suggests, may have underestimated Pro because he was close to Bufalino and trusted Bufalino’s affection and loyalty. That personal alliance did not erase the difference in their positions: Bufalino’s standing could shape how Hoffa assessed a conflict with Pro, but it could not prevent the conflict from becoming personal and lasting.

By the time Hoffa disappeared in 1975, Fat Tony Salerno was the boss of the family to which Tony Pro belonged. The distinction between Pro’s local influence and Salerno’s broader authority appears in Sheeran’s description of their political reach. Pro controlled two or three locals in northern New Jersey; Salerno, he said, had much greater influence over convention delegates. The family is thus depicted not only as a chain of criminal rank but as a network capable of affecting contests for power inside the Teamsters.

Tony Pro and Hoffa

Tony Pro had been a strong and loyal supporter of Hoffa. Before Hoffa’s jury-tampering trial, Pro helped him raise trading stamps to cover expenses, supported him with an executive-board vote, and gave speeches praising him. Their alliance had practical value as well as public visibility: Pro’s backing helped Hoffa within union politics, while Hoffa’s position mattered to Pro’s interests.

Their relationship broke down in prison over a pension question. Pro was incarcerated for extortion connected, in Sheeran’s account, to a trucking-company owner whose workers had slowed their pace; after Pro was paid, the drivers returned to full speed. While both men were at Lewisburg, Pro asked Hoffa for help with his pension. Different pension rules applied to their respective convictions, and Hoffa could not resolve Pro’s problem. The disagreement escalated into an exchange of insults and a physical confrontation that guards reportedly had to break up. Sheeran says that from then on the two men hated one another until their deaths. The episode turned a dispute over benefits into a permanent breach between a former ally and the union leader he had once supported.

Bufalino’s closeness to Hoffa helps explain why Hoffa may have thought Pro’s hostility manageable. Sheeran portrays Bufalino’s friendship with Hoffa as sincere and grounded in keeping one’s word; he also stresses that Bufalino outranked Pro. But a personal bond between Hoffa and Bufalino was not the same as control over Pro’s grievance. The family’s hierarchy and the union’s internal conflict intersected without making either one simple.

Influence within the Teamsters

The book connects the family’s power to the Teamsters through competing claims on pension money, local offices, and convention delegates. In 1974, amid talk that Hoffa might no longer be a reliable source of pension-fund loans, Sheeran brought his concerns to Bufalino. Bufalino reportedly argued that the fund had finite resources regardless of who controlled it, and said that Pro and others were causing problems while Hoffa retained support among old friends. He also promised to take Sheeran to meet Salerno after Bufalino’s trial.

After Bufalino was acquitted in an upstate New York extortion case, he and Sheeran met Salerno at the Vesuvio Restaurant. They explained that Hoffa and Pro had a personal dispute over Pro’s pension and asked Salerno not to obstruct Hoffa at the 1976 convention. Salerno, according to Sheeran, said he would not stand in Hoffa’s way, but would not tell Pro what to do. His response marks the limit as well as the reach of his influence: he could decline to oppose Hoffa, yet he did not claim to command Pro’s actions. The account presents union politics as a field shaped by personal loyalties, criminal hierarchy, and delegate influence rather than by a single controlling hand.

Territorial approval and the disappearance

Sheeran’s account of the aftermath of Hoffa’s disappearance places the family inside a wider system of territorial permissions. Five days after Hoffa vanished, the Federal Bureau of Investigation recorded a meeting at the Vesuvio Restaurant attended by Salerno, Bufalino, Sheeran, Pro, and Sal Briguglio. Sheeran later described the meeting as a report to Salerno about how the killing had been carried out and whether any loose ends remained. He said New York had not sanctioned the operation but had not opposed it, and that it could not have been done without Detroit’s approval because Detroit was the territory involved. He also identified Chicago as relevant because of its proximity and connections with Detroit.

These claims are Sheeran’s retrospective account, not a neutral map of the family’s formal procedures. In his telling, the meeting’s restrained purpose was to inform a senior figure and leave open the possibility of further orders; he also reasoned that Salerno would not already know the details if New York had been involved. The scene makes authority appear distributed: local territory mattered, neighboring connections mattered, and a senior boss was given a report after the fact. The book does not present this as proof of every participant’s role, but as Sheeran’s explanation of how the operation was authorized and managed.

Investigation and narrative significance

The FBI’s early suspect list included Pro, Sal Briguglio, and Sheeran, among other men; the broader investigation eventually assembled seventy volumes and more than 16,000 pages in the HOFFEX file. The list places men associated with the family’s power network among the investigators’ central leads, but inclusion as a suspect is not itself evidence of guilt. The account’s importance lies in how it brings the family’s hierarchy, Pro’s feud with Hoffa, and the claimed post-disappearance meeting into the same frame.

Through these episodes, the Genovese crime family is shown as more than a backdrop to Hoffa’s union struggles. Its rank structure shaped how characters judged one another; its members’ influence reached into local and national labor politics; and its asserted territorial rules provide Sheeran’s explanation for why a killing could require approval across jurisdictions. At the same time, the story’s dependence on Sheeran’s recollections leaves a distinction between documented investigative attention and the narrator’s account of what the family’s authority meant in practice.