In December of 1980, Charlie the Crab, the head of the Cleveland faction, disappeared without a trace, and, soon after, Kroner searched the apartment of one of the city’s most notorious assassins. The apartment was cluttered with knickknacks, and Kroner and his partner went through each room carefully. In a cabinet, Kroner noticed a breadbox and opened it. Inside, tucked amid the stale bread, was an audiotape. When he played it, he heard male voices, saying, “He’s a scared motherfucker” and “You either play our fucking game or you[’re] going to be put in a fucking box.” Two of the voices, Kroner was sure, belonged to Charlie and his brother, Orlie the Crab. There was also another voice, one Kroner thought he recognized from television and radio. Then it dawned on him: it was James Traficant, a former college football star, who had recently been elected sheriff of Youngstown.
Later, Kroner and his partner, acting on a tip, drilled open the Carabbias’ sister’s safe-deposit box, where they found a similar tape with a handwritten note. It said, “If I die these tapes go to the F.B.I. in Washington. I feel I have more people after me because of these tapes and… I pray and ask God to guide and protect my family.”
Back at headquarters, Kroner and his colleagues listened to a jumble of voices on the tape arguing about which public officials they thought were allegedly being paid off by the rival Pittsburgh Mob.
“You believe they got all them fuckin’ people?” Orlie said.
“I know they got” him, Traficant said, referring to one prominent politician.
“Oh, they definitely got” him, Charlie said.
Traficant paused, as if running through other names in his mind. “I don’t know all of them,” he finally said. “But I know it’s a fuckin’ fistful.”
With its Pittsburgh rival controlling many of the valley’s politicians, the Cleveland faction knew it needed some powerful representatives of its own. And the tapes, apparently made by Charlie the Crab at two meetings during the 1980 sheriff’s campaign, appeared to show them buying Traficant. “I am a loyal fucker,” Traficant informed the Carabbia brothers, “and my loyalty is here, and now we’ve gotta set up the business that they’ve run for all these fuckin’ years and swing that business over to you, and that’s what your concern is. That’s why you financed me, and I understand that.”
The arrangement appeared to be an old-fashioned one: Traficant acknowledged receiving more than a hundred thousand dollars from the Cleveland faction for his campaign; in exchange, he indicated that he would use the sheriff’s office to protect the Carabbias’ rackets while shutting down their rivals.
Charlie told Traficant, “Your uncle Tony was my goombah… and we feel that you’re like a brother to us. We don’t want you to make any fuckin’ mistakes.” Traficant assured his benefactors that he was solid, and that if any of his deputies betrayed them “they’ll fuckin’ come up swimming in [the] Mahoning River.”
But, according to the tapes, Traficant was not worried primarily about his deputies; he was worried about the Pittsburgh Mob. As Charlie knew, Traficant had accepted money from Pittsburgh, too-some sixty thousand dollars. (The first installment had come with the message “I want you to be my friend.”) The young candidate for sheriff was now double-crossing the Pittsburgh family: he had just given over at least some of its money to Charlie the Crab in order to prove his loyalty, and he knew that when the Pittsburgh family found out it would retaliate. “Look, I don’t wanna fuckin’ die in six months, Charlie,” Traficant said.
Kroner and his colleagues could hear Traficant hatching a plan to protect himself from the Pittsburgh Mafia and the officials they controlled. “Let’s look at it this way, O.K.?” he said. “They can get to the judges and get what they need done… What they don’t have is the sheriff, and… I’m one step ahead.” On the day he was sworn into office, Traficant said he’d take some of the money the Pittsburgh family had given him and use it as evidence to arrest them for bribery. What’s more, Traficant rehearsed what he and the Crabs would say if their secret dealings were ever uncovered by the authorities: “I was so fucking pissed off at this crooked government, I came to you and asked you guys if you would assist me to break it up, and you said, ‘Fuck it… we’ll do it.’ O.K.? That’s gonna be what you’re gonna say in court.”
“Orlie, too?” Charlie asked. “He’s got a bad heart-”
“Look… I’m not talking fucking daydreams,” Traficant said. “If they’re gonna fuck with me, I’m gonna nail them.” Traficant was taken with the audacity of his plan. “If you think about it,” he mused, “if I fuckin’ did that-”
“You can run for governor,” Charlie said.
They all broke into laughter.
After Kroner and his superiors reviewed the tapes, they called Traficant down to headquarters. Kroner had never met the sheriff before, and he watched as he settled into the chair across from him. Traficant, who was forty-one years old and had once worked in the mills, was an imposing figure, with wide shoulders and a flamboyant, brown toupee that stuck up on top. Kroner told Traficant that he had watched him play quarterback at the University of Pittsburgh. (An N.F.L. scout once said that Traficant, “at the most critical point in a game,” would “keep the ball himself and run with it,” bowling over anyone in his path.)
What happened next at the F.B.I. meeting with Traficant is in dispute. According to sworn court testimony from Kroner and other agents present, Kroner asked the sheriff if he was conducting an investigation into organized crime in the valley. Traficant said he wasn’t. Kroner then asked him if he knew Charlie the Crab or Orlie the Crab. Traficant said he’d only heard of them.
You never met them? Kroner asked.
No, Traficant said.
You never received money from them?
No, he said again.
Then Kroner popped in the tape:
TRAFICANT: “They have given sixty thousand dollars.”
ORLIE THE CRAB: “They gave sixty. What’d we give?”
TRAFICANT: “O.K., a hundred and three.”
After a few seconds, Traficant slumped in his seat. “I don’t want to hear any more,” he said, according to Kroner. “I’ve heard enough.”
In the F.B.I.’s version of events, Traficant acknowledged that he’d taken the money, and he agreed to cooperate in exchange for immunity. In front of two witnesses, he signed a confession that read: “During the period of time that I campaigned for sheriff of Mahoning County, Ohio, I accepted money… with the understanding that certain illegal activities would be allowed to take place in Mahoning County after my election and that as sheriff I would not interfere with those activities.” But several weeks later, the F.B.I. says, when Traficant realized that he would have to resign as sheriff and that the reason for his resignation would become public, he recanted his confession. “Do what you have to do,” he told Kroner, “and I’ll do what I have to do.” Or, as Traficant later told a local television reporter, “All those people trying to put me in jail should go fuck themselves.”
Kroner and the F.B.I. arrested Traficant for allegedly taking a hundred and sixty-three thousand dollars in bribes from the Mob. The indictment charged that he “did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire, confederate, and agree” with racketeers to commit crimes against the United States. He faced up to twenty-three years in jail. To everyone’s astonishment, Traficant decided to represent himself in court, even though he wasn’t a lawyer and even though the judge warned him that “almost no one in his right mind” would do so.