Benjamin “Lefty” Ruggiero is best known to the public through the classic mob movie Donnie Brasco, but FBI files suggest the Bonanno crime family soldier may also have played a role in events depicted in another famous Mafia film, The Irishman. Federal records indicate that shortly before Genovese crime family soldier Salvatore “Sally Bugs” Briguglio was murdered in Manhattan’s Little Italy in 1978, he had been seen meeting with Ruggiero in the neighborhood. Briguglio was a New Jersey-based mobster and hitman who appears as a character in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. In the early 1960s, he served in the crew of Genovese captain Anthony “Tony the Shake” Curillo, alongside Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, another prominent figure in the film.
Briguglio was involved in the 1958 murder of John Scandan, a hit sanctioned at a meeting of Genovese captains in which Provenzano also took part. He was additionally connected to the killing of Teamsters official Anthony Castellitto, a murder that is also dramatized in The Irishman. Some sources have even speculated, without confirmation, that Briguglio may have been the trigger man in the disappearance of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa in 1975. Briguglio’s own life ended violently in 1978.
He was shot multiple times outside a restaurant in Little Italy, just as he was about to stand trial for the Castellitto murder. Detectives at the time believed two gunmen attempted to kidnap him but shot him on the spot when he resisted. According to an FBI file, an informant said that on the evening Briguglio was killed, he had been seen talking with Ruggiero, also known as “Lefty Guns,” at a social club in the area. Ruggiero reportedly ran a ziganette card game at that club, which was close to where Briguglio was gunned down.
The file raised the question of whether Ruggiero was involved in setting up Briguglio for the hit. Shortly after Briguglio’s murder, Ruggiero’s son-in-law, identified in FBI records only as Marco, disappeared and was presumed dead. The FBI file noted that Marco was a notorious jewel robber in his early thirties who lived in Manhattan. Sources told the FBI that an artist’s sketch of the man who rented a car believed to have been used in the Briguglio killing bore a strong resemblance to Marco.
When an unidentified small body was found in a chest in Westchester County, an informant said on “good authority” that it was Marco. The FBI file stated that Marco was believed to have been killed because of his possible involvement in the Briguglio hit, describing him as a loose end who had to be eliminated to protect the other conspirators. If Marco was indeed involved in the assassination, the records add weight to the theory that Ruggiero was also in on the murder, especially given reports that Briguglio had met with him shortly before being killed. Had the filmmakers behind The Irishman been aware of that meeting, Ruggiero could conceivably have been included in the film’s depiction of Briguglio’s murder, creating an unusual crossover between two iconic mob movies.
The motive for Briguglio’s murder remains a matter of speculation. Some sources have suggested the mob feared he had become or could become an informant, and that Provenzano, facing trial alongside him, sought permission to have him killed.