Vincent A. Cianci Jr., known universally as "Buddy," a "Jekyll and Hyde" who became Providence's longest serving mayor, died Thursday morning at Miriam Hospital. He was 74.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Vincent A. “Buddy” Cianci Jr., Providence’s longest serving mayor who championed the rebirth of the city he loved but whose felonious deeds twice expelled him from office, died Thursday. He was 74.

An ambulance rushed Cianci to Miriam Hospital Wednesday evening after he suffered severe abdominal pain while taping his weekly WLNE Channel 6 television show. He had been treated for colon cancer in 2014, the same year he tried unsuccessfully to resurrect his reign over the city.

Cianci was one of Rhode Island’s biggest celebrities, a shrewd politician with a larger-than-life persona who over the years was described as both a charismatic visionary and a vindictive scoundrel.

He was known simply as "Buddy" to everyone, everywhere; the sharp-tongued, quick-witted man with the famous toupee, which he surrendered in 2002 when he reported to federal prison to serve 4½ years on a corruption charge.

To live or work in Providence meant being asked over the last four decades the same question: “And how’s Buddy doing?” as if he was as much a city fixture as the Superman Building.

The death of Cianci, who rubbed elbows with presidents and movie stars — and yet attended so many public events that people joked he would attend the opening of an envelope or a garage door — brought an avalanche of remembrances.

“I think they broke the mold with Buddy Cianci,” said former Providence Mayor Joseph Paolino Jr., a one-time political foe who often visited Cianci in federal prison after Cianci was convicted in 2002 for running a criminal enterprise from City Hall.

“One of my greatest adversaries became one of my greatest friends," Paolino said. "Part of being mayor was being [a] showman, and he understood the power of the bully pulpit.”

South Kingstown Police Chief Vincent Vespia Jr. met Cianci when Vespia was a young state trooper and Cianci a prosecutor in the state attorney general’s office.

Vespia described Cianci as “an amazing person" with an extraordinary intellect who could also “make you laugh at the drop of a hat.

"He became controversial. I know that,” said Vespia. “But friendship is unconditional."

Later in life, as physical ailments beset Cianci, Vespia said, “He was strong. He was a bulldog. He wouldn't give in to his physical ailments.”

But he was also such "a thick-head" that when he needed to see a doctor, he refused to make an appointment. "I had to make the appointment and I had to take him there,” said Vespia. "That was a foolish move, but it indicates the strength of the man."

Mike Stanton, a former reporter for The Providence Journal, wrote the Cianci biography, "Prince of Providence."

“He was a great political character and someone who you identify with Providence — for the good and bad,” said Stanton. “Good because he brought a lot of excitement and regeneration to the city and bad because he also brought a lot of embarrassment and corruption investigations.

“The tragedy of Buddy is when the darker side of him got in the way. That undermined the good,” he said.

Born on April 30, 1941, Cianci grew up in the Laurel Hill section of Cranston, the youngest child of Dr. Vincent A. Cianci and Esther (Capobianco) Cianci.

He began his public life as an assistant state attorney general after a stint in the Army, and played a starring role in a prominent criminal case.

The case involved Raymond L.S. Patriarca, the Providence-based boss of the New England mob. Patriarca was put on trial with other defendants in 1969 for the murder of mobster Rudolph Marfeo, who was gunned down in a Pocasset Avenue market in April 1968, a month after Patriarca was convicted of conspiring in the murder of his brother, William Marfeo.

Patriarca relied on a priest for his defense, summoning a pastor from the Washington, D.C. area as an alibi witness. But Cianci tracked down records at the priest's parish that showed the priest could not have been in Patriarca's company on the day of the slaying because the priest had presided over a baptism in Virginia at that time. Patriarca was convicted and sentenced to 10 years.

In 1974 Cianci announced his candidacy for mayor as an anti-corruption candidate. It was a time of political upheaval. In September of that year, Mayor Joseph A. Doorley Jr. won a bruising Democratic primary that divided party loyalties. The split carried significant consequences for the election that November.

Cianci narrowly defeated Doorley in the November election.

In his memoir, "Politics and Pasta," Cianci said of his first days in office: “Let me be candid here, on the day I took office I knew as much about being mayor as I did about brain surgery. If I had known then what the job actually required, I wouldn’t have voted for myself. I walked into that office completely inexperienced and unprepared — but confident. Believe me, I was confident. Maybe I didn’t know precisely what I was doing, but I was confident I could save the city.”

The young Republican's triumph in a traditionally Democratic state helped win Cianci an audience with Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon's successor, at the White House. And at the 1976 Republican National Convention, Cianci delivered a prime-time television speech, introducing Texas Gov. John Connally.

He would be reelected in 1978 and again 1982, this time running as an independent, with the support of city employee unions. Then, in 1983, came one of the darkest moments in Cianci's career.

In the midst of a divorce from his wife, Sheila, Cianci summoned Bristol contractor Raymond DeLeo to the mayor's rented house on Power Street. There, he accused DeLeo of having an affair with Sheila.

Cianci ordered his police bodyguard, Patrolman James K. Hassett, to search DeLeo, who denied the affair. DeLeo, over the course of several hours, was forced to sit in a chair while Cianci slapped him, threw a drink on him, burned his face with a cigarette and threatened to smash a fireplace log over his head.

On May 24, 1983, a grand jury indicted Cianci on charges of kidnapping, assault, assault with a dangerous weapon, attempted extortion and conspiracy.

Addressing the indictment later that day, Cianci cracked jokes at a news conference and declared, "I will continue to operate the city government. I love the job of mayor. These are merely accusations against me. I will have no comment on the domestic matter that involved my family."

But before his trial began, Cianci pleaded no contest. A judge gave him a five-year suspended sentence. That made him a convicted felon. Under the terms of the city charter, he was forced to resign as mayor.

In a 1989 interview Cianci discussed his resignation. "My whole lifestyle changed. I didn't have a job. I'd spend a lot of time alone. I'd read a lot and take walks. I lost the office. And I had lost my family and a lot of my assets in the divorce. There was a lot of trauma and personal hurt."

Months after his resignation, Cianci began his second career, becoming a radio talk-show host on WHJJ, in 1985. "The radio was a godsend,” Cianci recalled. “It has been the major source of my therapy. All wounds heal."

In 1990, Cianci again ran for mayor and was reelected in a three-way race. Buddy II — as the second era of his 21 total years as mayor would come to be called — centered on themes of neighborhood revitalization and downtown renewal.

And for the next decade, Cianci was the tireless cheerleader of the city’s renaissance — showing off newly created riverfronts downtown, promoting the construction of the Providence Place mall, the city’s arts community and lobbying to have the New England Patriots build a stadium in Providence. He officiated the opening of mall stores and the downtown skating rink, became a regular at Providence Bruins home games and welcomed the growing gay and lesbian community to the city.

But behind the comeback, the government alleged, Cianci had returned to his corrupt ways.

In 1999 federal authorities began an investigation into City Hall corruption and bribe-taking. They called it "Operation Plunder Dome."

Over the next few years, four city officials were convicted on corruption charges. Two lawyers also pleaded guilty to criminal charges.

In April 2001, a federal grand jury indicted Cianci on racketeering, conspiracy, extortion, witness tampering and mail fraud. Over his seven-week trial in 2002, reporters from around the country dropped in to the federal courthouse on Kennedy Plaza to report on Cianci’s troubles.

The trial began in April 2002 with Cianci facing 24 charges arising from Operation Plunder Dome, which had already resulted in six convictions, including the four city officials charged with taking bribes for tax favors.

Before the case reached the jury, Judge Ernest C. Torres threw out some of the charges. The jury eventually convicted Cianci of one charge, racketeering conspiracy, and acquitted him on 11 other counts.

On Sept. 6, 2002, Cianci faced Torres at his sentencing hearing. "I'm struck by the parallels between the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," Torres said. "There appear to be two very different Buddy Ciancis. My job is to sentence the second Buddy Cianci," Torres said. "Because the first Buddy Cianci wouldn't be here."

Torres sentenced Cianci to 64 months in a federal prison, a $100,000 fine, two years of probation, and 150 hours of community service. The mayor resigned immediately.

Five years later, months after his release, Cianci returned to the radio airwaves with trademark Cianci wit.

"As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted," he said, speaking into the microphone. "I thank all of you who welcomed me home after my trip to New Jersey. It's very heartwarming to come here."

Cianci, who won six elections as Providence’s mayor, said in his memoir: “It was never my ambition to become the first Italian American mayor of Providence. Of course, it also was never my ambition to serve almost five years in a federal prison. But both things happened.”

In an interview with The Journal after his release, Cianci said that his prison experience had made him more reflective and introspective.

"I am more respectful of people," said Cianci. "I've never been more at peace with myself than I am now."

In January 2010, Cianci told his radio listening audience that he was “taking a good look” at running against then U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, but in the end he chose not to.

In April 2012 Cianci's only child and the mother of his three grandchildren, Nicole B. Cianci, 38, was found dead in a Knight Street apartment. Her death, which police said was not suspicious, devastated Cianci.

But in June 2014, after weeks of hinting on the air that he just might run again for mayor again, a horde of reporters gathered in City Hall to see if Cianci would file nomination papers. While Cianci was making the announcement on his radio show, an old friend, Alfred Passarelli, who had filed Cianci’s candidacy papers in 1990, again filed them for Cianci's latest go-around.

While on the campaign trail, a Journal columnist asked Cianci why he just didn’t retire. "What fun would that be?" Cianci said. "Laying on a beach, traveling — I don't have that kind of personality. I have to be involved, exercising my mind. I don't like just sitting home. ... The City of Providence is my significant other."

Running again as an independent in a three-man race, Cianci lost to Democrat Jorge O. Elorza and returned to work at the radio station.

Earlier this month, Cianci, who is survived by three grandchildren, announced he was engaged to his girlfriend, Tara Marie Haywood, a model and actress who is in her 30s.

“We love each other and why not get married?” Cianci said then. “I’m sure we’ll be happy.”

Funeral arrangements, by the Nardolillo Funeral Home, in Cranston, are incomplete.

With Journal staff reports

tmooney@providencejournal.com

(401) 277-7359

On Twitter: @mooneyprojo