Click here to subscribe today or Login.
A federal appeals court has dismissed the case of a convicted murderer serving a life sentence who said he was defamed by the author of a book on late mob boss Russell Bufalino of Kingston.
In its order issued Monday, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Louis Coviello failed to pay the fee on time to have his case heard. Coviello was challenging a lower court ruling from March that threw out his defamation suit seeking $1 million in damages from author Matt Birkbeck, The Berkley Publishing Group and the Penguin Group.
Coviello said the book, “The Quiet Don,” falsely stated he confessed to killing a witness against a reputed mobster by placing a pillow over his head while he lay in a hospital bed in Scranton. He further denied accounts in the book of his cooperation with authorities investigating alleged mob ties of Dunmore businessman and family friend Louis DeNaples.
Following a hung jury trial in 1977, Coviello’s father Joseph and DeNaples pleaded no contest to defrauding the federal government during the cleanup of Tropical Storm Agnes. They were sentenced to probation. However, four other men, including a member of the Bufalino crime family, were later convicted for their roles in bribing a juror during the trial.
To support his claims in the defamation suit, Coviello provided a declaration last year saying Birkbeck attempted to broker a deal that would offer freedom in exchange for information about DeNaples. Coviello alleged Birkbeck was acting on behalf of federal and state law enforcement authorities who owed the author for assisting them with their investigations of the Bufalino crime family in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
But the conspiracy allegation failed to hold, first with Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Schwab of Harrisburg, who recommended Coviello’s case be tossed; and then with U.S. District Judge Yvette Kane, who accepted Schwab’s recommendation and granted the defendants’ request for dismissal.
The 60-year-old inmate at the State Correctional Institution Mahanoy in Schuylkill County has represented himself in the case filed in 2015 related to Birkbeck’s book about Bufalino. Coviello said he has been labeled an informant and targeted for attacks from other inmates.
A football star in the 1970s at Dunmore high school, Coviello was convicted in the 1978 killing of Dominic Coriniti during a drug deal. In 1983, Coviello and another inmate at the State Correctional Institution Pittsburgh held two corrections officers hostage before releasing them after nearly six days.
For other local news stories, click here.