Rochester mob boss Jake Russo disappeared in September 1964.

He has been presumed dead, but his body has never been found.

A videotaped interview of another mobster may answer what happened to Russo.

On Sept. 12, 2014, the children of Jake Russo ran a memorial ad in the Democrat and Chronicle for their late father.

"50 Years and Never Forgotten," it read. "The Truth has set you Free. Now, you may rest in peace. Loving Daughters."

The timing of the ad was not happenstance. Fifty years to the day before the ad ran, Jake Russo, a Rochester mob enforcer who had become its temporary boss, disappeared. He has never been seen since.

"The rumor was that Jake's skeleton became rebar, part of the concrete support structure of the Veterans Memorial Bridge," said retired state Trooper George Thompson, who was known for his diligent and determined investigations of Rochester mob activity.

But, Thompson acknowledged, that was just one of the rumors — perhaps far-fetched, perhaps not — that circulated in the years after Russo's disappearance in 1964. Now, however, there may be some answers. Oddly, those answers come from another mobster — a dead one.

In interviews conducted and videotaped several years before his 2014 death, former Rochester mob consigliere Rene Piccarreto Sr. said that Russo was strangled in the basement of a restaurant on State Street in downtown Rochester — a restaurant that, years later, would become the original Pizza Stop, the popular dining spot for those with a craving for New York-style pizza.

It was not a coincidence, according to Piccarreto, that the dapper mobster Frank Valenti ran a restaurant at that location at the time. Nor was it a coincidence, according to Piccarreto, that Valenti immediately thereafter assumed the reins of Rochester's organized crime contingent.

Shortly before his disappearance, Russo met and verbally sparred with Stefano "the Undertaker" Magaddino, the ruthless, Buffalo-based Mafia chieftain who ran organized crime operations in central and western New York, parts of Pennsylvania and even Toronto for more than three decades, ending in the late 1960s.

Magaddino, who then had control of Rochester's mobsters, wanted more money from the local gambling operations. But there was no more to be had. "Like getting water from a stone," Piccarreto said in the interview, which was shared with the Democrat and Chronicle.

"He told Jake, 'I want to see $200 a week here,'" Piccarreto said. "... Jake told him at that point ... 'Steve, I can't give you $200 a week if I haven’t got it.' The old man said, 'I want to see $200 a week — every week.'" (In current dollars, $200 would equal about $1,600.)

Piccarreto, who had traveled with Russo to the Buffalo meeting, said that Russo implied that he would go over Magaddino's head if he continued to insist on the impossible. The message to Magaddino was this: Russo planned to go to "the commission in New York (City)" where the Mafia family leaders met, and that "the hierarchy of the so-called Mafia" would hear of Magaddino's unreasonable demands.

"When Jake challenged him that way, (Magaddino) knew he had a problem with Jake Russo," Piccarreto said. "When we got in the car, I said 'Jake, you made a mistake. You should have never forewarned this guy what we were going to do.'"

Not long thereafter, on Sept. 12, 1964, Russo vanished. He was married with two young daughters.

Rochester had by then been a hub of organized crime for decades, but Russo's disappearance, and a subsequent assumption of leadership by Frank Valenti, set the stage for the city's and region's most notorious mob era. There would be bombings, arsons and killings, and corrupt cops working both against the mob and with the mob.

But that was all still to come. That history would be the subject of books, and enough newspaper print and television news film to stockpile a warehouse. Yet, except for the media coverage immediately afterward, little would be said or written about Russo's disappearance — so little that there were many who suspected him still to be alive.

"There are reports that the crime syndicate was dissatisfied with Russo's inability to keep non-affiliated gamblers from encroaching on its territory," The New York Times wrote of Russo's disappearance in a December 1964 story about percolating mob strife in Rochester. "He was recently reported as having gone to Florida."

After leaving federal prison on racketeering crimes in 2007, Piccarreto lived in California. There, he was interviewed by local filmmakers whom he knew from when he previously lived in California. The video from the interviews was shared with Piccarreto's family in Rochester, including his son Loren Piccarreto and nephew Rick Sacchitella, who allowed the Democrat and Chronicle to watch some of the videos, without making copies.

In the interviews, Piccarreto wears a yellow, short-sleeved cotton shirt. Filmed in his California home, he sits in front of a photo of himself from his days in the Marines. Framed stripes from his military uniform also hang on the wall. Pride in his military service is evident; Piccarreto fought at Iwo Jima, then was stationed in Nagasaki as a military police officer after the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945.

In the video, Piccarreto is wiry with thin gray hair, and he occasionally flashes the infectious smile that made him such a readily recognized figure about town in the 1960s, '70s and, before his imprisonment, the early '80s. During the mob era, cops considered him a gentleman gangster. In the video, he answers questions with apparent sincerity and a desire to right the record of some of what he considers to be unknown or misstated about Rochester's Mafia history.

When telling of Jake Russo's fate, Piccarreto sometimes pauses as if catching a breath — moments that seem more grief than reflection. There are no tears, yet one cannot help but see a blink of pain, a fissure within the hardened Marine and mobster, when the topic is Russo.

"My father hated it," Piccarreto's son, Loren, said in a recent interview. "He hated what happened (to Russo). He and Jake were like brothers. They were best of friends."

The Democrat and Chronicle watched the section of the interviews in which Piccarreto talks of Russo's death. Relatives of Russo have also met with Piccarreto's family and viewed the segment. Asked about Piccarreto's claims, Russo's relatives provided a statement to the Democrat and Chronicle, requesting to be identified only as family members of Jake Russo.

"We have always hoped that closure would be found some day with the discovery of our father's remains," the statement said. "We still, and always will, actively pursue all information that will lead to that end. He was first and foremost our father, grandfather, husband, son, brother, and uncle."

Russo's wife, Phyllis, died in 2007.

The videotaped interviews with Piccarreto were conducted almost a decade ago, and, with Piccarreto no longer among the living, he can't be asked more about what he knows about Russo. To this day, there has only been speculation about Russo's disappearance.

"Where Is Jake Russo? Valenti's Enforcer Missing," blared the front-page headline of the Dec. 14, 1964, Democrat and Chronicle.

By that time, Russo had been missing for three months, but the media were only beginning to learn of the disappearance.

The Democrat and Chronicle story did not include a photograph of Russo. With a half century now passed, the history of the era tells us why.

For one, Russo was not of the same ilk as those who came after him. He did not carry the same flamboyance and flair as Valenti or another notorious figure, Salvatore "Sammy G." Gingello, an underboss killed in a 1978 car bombing in Rochester. Russo had largely worked in the mob trenches before finding himself in the leadership ranks.

More:40-year mystery: Where were the police when mobster 'Sammy G' Gingello was murdered?

More importantly, perhaps, was that the media's attention — locally and nationally — would become far more pervasive in the months and years after Russo's disappearance. Valenti was such a prominent figure locally, before he was forced out of town by other organized crime figures in 1972 for skimming too much money, that the Democrat and Chronicle published regular features about him under a standing headline of "Spotlight on Gambling Czar."

To this day, it is difficult to find more than one photo of Russo online. (His family used that same photograph in the 2014 memorial ad.) There are dozens and dozens of Valenti and Gingello photos that are easy to locate.

But the story of Jake Russo's disappearance cannot be told without mention of one of the most storied episodes in Mafia history: the arrests of mobsters in the rural Southern Tier town of Apalachin.

In 1957, Frank Valenti and his brother, Stanley, were among the Mafia members who met at the Apalachin home of organized crime magnate Joseph Barbara. The Valentis were then the overseers of Rochester's mob contingent.

The Apalachin meeting, which was busted by law enforcement, proved to police the scope of organized crime, as leaders from across the country gathered to plot out the future. (The meeting also raised questions about the smarts of organized crime leaders: Police understandably became suspicious when mobster Barbara booked a bevy of hotel rooms, and when luxury cars — some from out of state — began to roll into the Tioga County community.)

Both Valentis refused to testify about the meeting and were arrested. Stanley Valenti went to prison; his brother did not. But Frank Valenti was arrested again in 1961 for election fraud. He'd illegally voted in an earlier election in which he could not vote because he was a convicted felon and he had not then lived in New York for a year.

After the election crimes, Valenti agreed to leave New York for three years as part of his probation. He moved to Pittsburgh, where he had been previously active in Mafia factions.

With the Valentis gone, Russo was given control. He had been one of the top lieutenants in the Rochester crime machine, helping the Valentis maintain illicit gambling shops.

Known to order mob hits without as much as a sympathetic second thought, Magaddino carried the moniker of "the Undertaker" as a double entendre of sorts: His legitimate business was a Niagara Falls funeral home.

An immigrant from Sicily, Magaddino had a career in organized crime dating to the Prohibition, when he smuggled liquor across Lake Ontario from Canada. His cousin was Joseph Bonanno, who would be the leader of the Bonanno crime family.

Those who worked for Magaddino and answered to him often would be summoned to regular meetings for updates on crime activities: How much were the gambling dens bringing in? Was there anyone trying to invade the turf? Was there a need for an arson at an uncooperative business?

In the fall of 1964, Russo and Piccarreto made that drive to Buffalo for one such meeting. Russo had brothers in charge of some of Rochester's illegal crap games, and Magaddino had decided that Russo was letting his brothers get a too-fat cut.

It wasn't so, Piccarreto said in the video interview. Instead, for a period, the games had not produced much, and Russo made sure that his brothers and others at least took in some money to survive.

"Greedy old man that (Magaddino) was, he said: 'I don't want to hear anything about your brothers, taking care of your brothers,'" Piccarreto said. That's when Magaddino demanded the $200 weekly, insisting that it could be done even after Russo insisted that it couldn't.

After that meeting, Magaddino sent deputies to Rochester to scope out the gambling activities. "The old man told these guys that he sent from Buffalo, his henchmen, 'Check (Russo) out and see what he's doing.'"

Piccarreto said he's sure there was no evidence that Russo was shafting Magaddino — Russo "never stole a quarter," Piccarreto said — but Magaddino had made up his mind regardless: Russo had dared to challenge him, and would die for it.

Valenti had by then returned to Rochester and maintained a restaurant, The Quill Room, at 123 State St. In the years after, the location would be a burger joint and other establishments before Pizza Stop, which has since moved to another State Street location.

On Sept. 11, 1964, Russo got a call to meet Valenti for dinner the next day. He left his house Sept. 12, telling his wife where he was going. He never returned.

The next day Phyllis Russo called her husband's good friend, Rene Piccarreto, who had not been at the meeting. But Piccarreto was sure that Magaddino had gotten just what he wanted: Russo was dead, and Valenti would again be in charge.

Piccarreto later learned more.

"They took him downstairs (at the restaurant). They had a few guys there. They choked him and then they wrapped him up and buried him.

"That's the demise of Jake Russo."

George Karalus, a retired state trooper who was part of a team that tailed and investigated Magaddinno, said of the Buffalo-based crime boss, "He did not order a lot of murders, but the murders that he ordered, it had to happen."

With Russo gone, Piccarreto and his friend, Samuel "Red" Russotti, were summoned to a meeting with Magaddinno. Piccarreto didn't expect to come back, thinking he may be killed there. (Russotti would become the local mob leader after Valenti was later forced out of town.)

The meeting was in a Magaddino-owned restaurant that was closed for the afternoon. Magaddino had Piccarreto sit in a chair in front of him, and asked for proof that Russo had been taking more from the gambling operations than he should have.

"Jake Russo, what did he do with all that money?" Magaddino asked. Piccarreto answered, "He didn't have any money. What are you talking about?"

"You're a liar," Magaddino said, his finger on Piccarreto's chest. "I said, 'Steve, I'm not a liar,'" Piccarreto said in the interview.

Magaddino was surrounded by his underlings, and Piccarreto sensed that they now knew the truth: "There was no reason to kill (Russo), outside of he was going to take him down in front of his peers from New York."

Through the years there have been many theories about Russo's fate. Russo's body has not been found, and, if Piccarreto knew where he might have been buried, he did not say so on the video.

The aftermath of Russo's disappearance belies the belief some have that the Mafia took care of the families of those who served in its ranks and died, even if at the hands of others in organized crime. Without a body, Russo's family could not collect any insurance, and no one provided assistance.

The leadership did nothing to help.

But the leadership did change. In December 1964, as word was becoming public that Russo could not be found, Frank Valenti held two separate parties at downtown restaurants. Local media and police got wind of the fetes.

"Cosa Nostra Mobster Moves In," said a December 1964 Democrat and Chronicle headline about Valenti's emergence as the town's new "gambling czar."

"His method of operation is along traditional underworld lines," the story said. "Bookies and other gamblers are visited by a Valenti henchman and offered 'protection' for a share of the receipts. This includes a collection service from bettors who fail to repay credit, 'handling' of disgruntled losers, a guarantee against interference from rival underworld forces and other 'services.' "

At the first dinner party, nearly 100 people came. There was plenty of steak for all.

There, Valenti had a simple message for those who previously dealt with Russo.

Valenti's message, according to 1964 news accounts and police testimony: "I'm the man to see in Rochester."

GCRAIG@Gannett.com