Jan.

1, 2015

From the Archives: Mario Cuomo’s All-Star

Family Feud
By Peter Blauner

Mario Cuomo with his wife Matilda during the 1989 New York City Columbus Day Party at the
Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Photo: Ron Galella/Wire Image

This article appeared in the February 13, 1989 issue of New York Magazine.

The family gathered at the three-day wake last fall for Charles Raffa, Mario Cuomo’s strong-
willed, 84-year-old father-in-law. Matilda Cuomo, the governor’s youthful, dark-haired wife,
stood by the coffin with her 82-year-old mother, and the four other Raffa children helped greet
visitors and accept condolences. Raffa had been an old-world patriarch, a man who believed
deeply in the family, and the tableau at his wake suggested nothing to disappoint him.

But within a few weeks, members of the Raffa family were facing off against one another in a
bitter feud over the legacy of their father, who died without fully recovering from a mysterious
beating in 1984. The trouble began with the estate — largely commercial properties and homes
— that Raffa left. Some estimates have placed its value as high as $13.8 million, though friends
of the family say it’s closer to $5 million. In any case, the will has spawned an angry court battle,
with the family bickering over who will control the money.

On one side, Matilda Cuomo, 57, joined by her younger brother and sister, is challenging the
validity of the will, which leaves her $700,000 before taxes (under the high estimate) and names
her brother Sam as executor of the estate. In court papers, Ms. Cuomo has accused Sam Raffa of
being “untrustworthy,” and she has sought to question him about the disappearance of a
$100,000 trust fund that her father had set up for her. Sam Raffa, who has his brother Frank on
his side, has fought back, claiming his sister is trying to “harass” and “intimidate” him to get a
larger share of the estate.

The feud is an embarrassment for the governor, but the court battle getting underway is not so
much about Mario Cuomo as it is about his late father-in-law and the complex relationships
among his children. Over the years, as Matilda Raffa Cuomo became known as a key player in
her husband’s successful political career, a rift developed between her and her lesser-known
brother Sam, a Republican, who is now a deputy county attorney in Nassau. “Sam has had to
deal with being the governor’s brother-in-law for a long time,” says a source close to the case.

As it became clear that Matilda Cuomo and Sam Raffa would collide in claiming their legacies,
friends and associates warned Matilda that she would certainly face the kind of painful publicity
she’d always tried to avoid (she refused to be interviewed for this article, as did the other
members of her family). She decided to go ahead with the court fight anyway. “She felt what
Sam was doing was wrong, and she made up her mind to go all the way,” says a friend of hers. I
don’t think [the governor] had much to do with the decision.”

The case poses questions about Charles Raffa’s competence at the time he signed a codicil to the
will and about the true value of his estate. But it also brings into focus the family itself. “A will
becomes a reflection of what somebody really thinks of you,” says a lawyer familiar with the
case. “You find out what you were worth to them. If it was just about money, you could settle it
in 20 seconds.” More feuding lies ahead, and the strain is already showing on the state’s First
Family. “They’re like any other people,” says a Cuomo adviser. “You can find 3,000 cases like
this in any surrogate’s court. The only difference in this one is the last name.”

Charles Raffa was 23 when he came to this country from Messina, Sicily, in 1927. He had little
money, less English, a wife named Mary Gitto, and tremendous ambition. Within a few years, he
went from being an uneducated laborer to running his own firm, making supermarket shelves
and refrigeration units. He later invested his profits in real estate, including a home in East
Flatbush and a summer house in New Jersey.

The Raffa family grew steadily. First came two boys, Frank, now 62, who grew up to be an
engineer, and Sam, 59. The two youngest children were Joseph, 45, who lives in California and
works with computers, and Nancy, a fortyish housewife in New Jersey. The middle child,
Matilda, showed her promise early on. She was accepted at Columbia Teachers College,
Brooklyn College, and Hunter. Her older brothers were concerned about her safety in traveling to
and from Manhattan, however, and they insisted that she go to the teachers’ college at St. John’s,
where Sam attended law school.

In 1951, Matilda Raffa met Mario Cuomo, who was two years behind her brother at the law
school. To this day, people close to the family say Sam Raffa has been jealous of the success of
his younger schoolmate. “Sam’s basically an insecure guy,” says a family friend. “Here he is, the
son of a rich man, and he has to stand by and watch as Mario Cuomo, the son of the guy who ran
a grocery store, goes by him and becomes secretary of state, then lieutenant governor, and then
governor. It’s got to leave him feeling unfulfilled.”

Sam Raffa’s supporters deny that assertion. “He does not feel he is envious of his brother-in-
law,” says lawyer Ed McCoyd. “Some of the press reports have portrayed him as this
mastermind schemer. He’s not. He’s a very pleasant guy with a family, who had great affection
for his father.”

Nevertheless, as Mario Cuomo continued his political ascent through the ‘70s and ‘80s, Sam
Raffa seemed to be the one member of the family who was not consistently included in the
winner’s circle. “Everybody in the family gets along, except for Sam,” says one Cuomo aide.

Sam Raffa has worked steadily as a deputy at the Nassau County Attorney’s office handling
various municipal matters and today makes $42,620 a year. On the side, he has a small private
practice. He lives quietly in Syosset and served as one of several lawyers handling his
father’s affairs.
In his later years, most of Charles Raffa’s business involved his real-estate properties.
Throughout the ‘60s, Raffa bought up dozens of buildings in Brooklyn and Queens and on Long
Island. Five years ago, one of the deals he tried to make turned into a forerunner of the battles
that would later erupt among his children. In late 1983, the owner of Red’s, a Brooklyn toy store,
became interested in buying a large storefront space Raffa owned on the main street in Long
Beach, Long Island. Lucille Falcone, once the law partner and girlfriend of the governor’s son
Andrew, was brought in to handle the deal for Raffa, and a contract was signed to sell the
property for more than $300,000. But before the deal could close, Falcone was replaced by Sam
Raffa. “I think Sam’s feathers were ruffled because he was not the lawyer before,” says Ronald
Krakauer, the lawyer for the buyer. “He wanted to be the hero and make the deal for his father.”
During one deposition in the case, Sam Raffa tried to explain the situation with his father. “Our
relationship is beyond the father-son loving relationship,” he told Krakauer. “I’m his attorney,
and I was then and I am now in charge of his affairs.”

The deal soon fell apart, with each side accusing the other of not living up to the terms of the
contract. Today, the matter is still in litigation. “If Falcone had not been fired, the deal would
have gone through,” Krakauer says. “We just got caught in the first cross fire of a family feud.”

In 1984, the extended Cuomo-Raffa family found itself facing a far more serious crisis. On May
22, Charles Raffa was visiting one of his properties, an empty supermarket on Stanley Avenue in
the East New York section of Brooklyn. At about noon, neighbors saw Raffa stumbling out of
the building, mumbling incoherently. He had been beaten, and his head had been sliced open so
badly that his scalp covered his eyes. He was never able to give a useful description of his
attackers, and the police never made an arrest.

Over the months and years that followed, rumors about what had happened multiplied.
According to one, Raffa was an arsonist trying to burn down his own building, and the beating
was a mob hit. In another, the governor himself had orchestrated an official cover-up of the
incident by having his bodyguard (a New York City police detective) wash the car to remove
fingerprints linking Raffa with a young man who’d been seen in the car earlier. Nicholas Pileggi
showed in an article in New York (“Cuomo and Those Rumors,” November 2, 1987) that most of
the stories were false, misleading, or largely unsubstantiated.

In the meantime, though, Raffa’s condition continued to deteriorate, and it became clear that he
was no longer able to handle his affairs. Taxes had not been paid on some properties, and some
bills were not being collected. Members of the family applied to the Supreme Court in Brooklyn
to have a conservator appointed, and the court asked a Manhattan lawyer, Harvey Sackstein, to
evaluate the situation. Sackstein reported in June 1987 that Raffa was unable to speak or
otherwise express himself and that his real-estate holdings were estimated to have a value of
about $5 million. He recommended that a conservator be named to look after Raffa’s
business dealings.

From the start, family members jockeyed over who would be the conservator. Sam Raffa came
forward, saying he was best suited because he had the most-detailed knowledge of his father’s
holdings. But he expected to be challenged by some members of the family, who, his lawyer said
in court papers, “will allege that Sam Raffa is slow to take necessary actions.”
Indeed, Mary Raffa told the court in opposing Sam’s appointment, “I have been most
disappointed in what Sam has done and not done in connection with his father’s business affairs
in the last several years.” Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Sebastian Leone eventually worked
out a compromise between the parties so that Frank and Sam Raffa served as co-conservators
with Manufacturers Hanover Trust in overseeing the assets.

The truce lasted less than a year and a half. On October 19, 1988, Charles Raffa died at the
Jewish Institute for Geriatric Care in New Hyde Park, on Long Island. The first sign of trouble
came a few days later, at the reading of the will, signed in 1977. Raffa left his wife, Mary, a third
of the estate. He then rewarded Frank and Sam for naming their sons after him by giving each of
those two grandchildren shares of his stock holdings estimated in value at more than $1.5 million
(he had also said that if Joseph Raffa, who has two daughters, had a son and called him Charles,
that grandson would receive an equal share). Finally, the elder Raffa gave each of his three sons
25 percent of the remaining estate and assigned Matilda Cuomo and her sister, Nancy Mazzola,
12.5 percent each. (That means that under the high estimate of the estate’s value, Charles Raffa’s
sons would each get approximately $1,400,000 and his daughters $700,000.) He named Ronald
Bianchi, an upstate lawyer, as executor of the will.

The real surprise, though, was a handwritten codicil to the will signed in a spidery scrawl by
Raffa on September 9, 1984, three and a half months after the mugging and four years before his
death. The document revoked the clause naming Bianchi as executor and appointed Sam Raffa in
his place, entitling him to legal fees and an executor’s commission to be determined by the court.
Sam Raffa later said in court documents that he had drafted the codicil.

Charles Raffa was living at home on the date the codicil was signed. Perhaps coincidentally, his
doctor, Philip Moskowitz of New York University Medical Center, wrote a note that day saying
that since Raffa had been beaten, he “has had severe difficulties with ambulation, memory, and
decision making. He has become totally dependent on others for the activities of daily living.”

Some other people close to the family insisted they were not shocked that Sam Raffa had been
named executor in the codicil. In fact, they said, money was not necessarily the prime
motivation. “There’s an ego interest involved for Sam,” says one source. “By being named
executor, he thinks he’s becoming an important person. This gives him the respect he ‘deserves.’
He steps into Charlie Raffa’s shoes.”

Matilda Cuomo was quickly joined by her younger brother, Joseph, and her sister, Nancy, in
challenging the codicil. “For years, Matilda had been giving Sam the benefit of the doubt,” says
a friend of hers. “But when she saw that codicil, it was like the straw that broke the camel’s back.
She tried to talk to Sam about it, but he wouldn’t listen. She had to take him to court.”

There was also a financial motivation. For Matilda Cuomo, who grew up in a relatively well-to-
do family, money seems always to have been a sensitive issue. “Mario gave up his law practice
so he could be a full-time lieutenant governor,” she told a reporter just before her husband was
elected governor in 1982. “He really sacrificed the family’s needs. I have no aversion to making
money. He could have made a lot more money for himself, truly.” Her husband’s growing
prominence did not change the feeling. “To some people, [her share of the estate] might not seem
like all that much money,” says a family friend. “Not enough to go to court over. To Mario and
Matilda Cuomo, it’s a fortune. They haven’t got any money.”

Sam Raffa took the will to Nassau County Surrogate’s Court for probate. The first issue the two
sides argued about was whether they were in the right court — a question that hinged on where
Charles Raffa lived (or intended to live) toward the end of his life. Sam Raffa claimed that
Charles Raffa had actually lived in Sam’s Syosset house for a while before being hospitalized
and that he had intended to return when he was well enough. As a result, Sam Raffa argued, the
will should be probated in the Nassau County courts — the same courts, of course, in which Sam
Raffa had practiced law for many years.

Matilda Cuomo’s side countered that her father had never wanted to leave his Brooklyn home
and live with her brother. “The truth happens to be that, in his more than eight decades of his life,
he never spent more than a week at the home of Sam J. Raffa,” she said in court papers. She
added that if her brother was “so untrustworthy as to misrepresent so elemental a fact as my
father’s residence address, for some real or imagined advantage,” he was not fit to be the
executor. The proceedings belonged in Brooklyn, she said.

The battle quickly escalated. In early December, Sam Raffa objected to his sister’s “personal
attack on me,” calling it “part of a plan to eventually attack the provisions of my father’s will.”
He asked Judge C. Raymond Radigan, of Nassau County Surrogate’s Court, to let him continue
as executor. Radigan agreed to a temporary arrangement with Sam Raffa. But the judge forbade
Raffa to sell any of his father’s property without court approval until the venue of the
proceedings was settled.

In the meantime, an even more ferocious legal wrangle splintered off from the case. Matilda
Cuomo’s side brought a separate action against her brother in Manhattan Supreme Court,
charging that a $100,000 trust fund her father had set up for her at Citibank had been “invaded
improperly” while Sam Raffa had power of attorney for his father.

“When Matilda questioned her brother, Sam Raffa, about the trust fund, he denied any
knowledge of the trust fund,” her lawyer, Peter James Johnson Jr., said in court papers, “and, in
fact, brazenly laughed away her queries concerning the evidence of the account as ‘stupid,’
‘idiotic,’ ‘You’re crazy,’ and ‘I never heard of any trust fund for you.’”

Sam Raffa got tough, too, accusing his sister of trying to gain an advantage in the Nassau County
case. One of Raffa’s lawyers, David Keegan, called the suit “nothing more than a fishing
expedition … motivated by disappointed expectations.” Raffa did admit that his father had set up
a temporary trust fund, but he said it had been closed before Charles Raffa died. His father, Sam
Raffa said, had taken more than $21,000 out of the account to pay off back taxes to the IRS;
another $70,000 had gone toward paying off business expenses; and the $6,331.82 left over had
gone into a conservatorship account.

Johnson pointed out that all of those transactions had taken place while Charles Raffa was very
ill and Sam had power of attorney. “Who’s kidding whom?” the lawyer asked in court papers.
By Christmastime, the court appeared to be leaning Ms. Cuomo’s way. Citibank officials
confirmed that the trust fund was in Matilda’s name and that Sam Raffa — using the power of
attorney — had transferred most of the money to an insured money-market account. Manhattan
Supreme Court Justice Walter Schackman granted that Sam Raffa had told the truth about the
account but said, “The court finds it difficult to understand why [Sam Raffa] did not make a full
disclosure to this court of the complete circumstances surrounding the withdrawal of the funds
and why an IRS levy was made against the account.” The judge then ordered Raffa to answer
questions about the trust fund from Ms. Cuomo’s lawyer. That deposition was closed to the
press, but at a tense session beforehand, Sam Raffa gestured at the lawyers for the other side and
said, “Let’s face it, they have nothing.”

In Nassau County, Judge Radigan is also trying to clear up some of the issues. He assigned
Father Alan Placa, a priest and lawyer who is fluent in Italian, to visit Charles Raffa’s widow,
Mary. At various times, she has appeared to be on each side of the family split. Father Placa has
recommended that a guardian be appointed to help her follow the proceedings. “Her main
concern,” says Radigan, “is that the family stays together.” Radigan also assigned an appraiser to
examine the records and look at the 50 or so properties Charles Raffa owned in New York, New
Jersey, and Italy, so that a realistic value can be calculated for the estate.

The $13.8 million figure has appeared in several press accounts and documents, but people
familiar with the case say they don’t know how the number got that high. They claim the old
estimate of $5 million is closer to the truth. “A lot of those properties might not be worth that
much right now,” says one source. “You’d have to put an awful lot of work into them to make
selling them worthwhile.” A visit to some of the sites confirms there are problems. One Raffa
building, at 1784 Atlantic Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, for example, is an abandoned two-
story warehouse. Its windows are smashed, its front driveway is a graveyard of burnt furniture
and old tires, and crack users wander in and out of the building. Around the corner, on Utica
Avenue, a vacant lot owned by Raffa is strewn with weeds and crack vials. Besides the
properties, Raffa’s estate consists of a few stocks and not much in the way of cash.

While the assessing is going on, the family is trying to deal with the emotional impact of the
courtroom battle. The governor has carefully avoided saying anything about the case, but
Matilda Cuomo is said to be heartbroken about the family infighting. “In spite of everything,
Sam is still her brother,” says a friend. “When Sam comes off badly, it hurts her too.”

Raffa’s lawyer Ed McCoyd says his client also finds the acrimony upsetting, but that does not
mean the family is about to work things out. “I don’t know if it’s possible,” McCoyd says. “But I
know that before it can happen, a lot of people are going to have to say they’re sorry to
each other.”