Testimony of John C. Montana before the McClellan Committee, 1958 (Part 32)
The president of Buffalo's Van Dyke Taxicab Co. testified under oath about his birth, his businesses and his trip of November 14, 1957, saying he drove with Anthony Maggadino, "an uncle through marriage to my nephew," and stopped at Joseph Barbara's for help with his car.
- Date
- 1958-06-30/1958-07-03
- Kind
- hearing
- Retrieved
- 2026-10-12
- Rights
- A work of the United States Congress, printed by the Government Printing Office. Public domain in the United States under 17 U.S.C. § 105. The page image stored here was rendered from the Internet Archive's PDF of the Boston Public Library copy; quotations follow the Archive's OCR, checked against the page image.
Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, hearings before the Senate Select Committee, Part 32, testimony beginning at printed page 12293. Montana was sworn and appeared with counsel, Frank G. Raichle of Buffalo. The stored image is printed page 12299. The opening page prints his home address, which this archive does not reproduce.
He testified that he was president of the Van Dyke Taxicab Co. of Buffalo, and that “I was born on June 30, 1893, in Montedoro, Italy,” coming to Buffalo in 1907. Asked about the Buffalo Beverage Corp., a Budweiser distributor, he said “Peter Maggadino had an interest also.” He described the Empire State Brewery and his years on the Buffalo city council.
Asked by Robert F. Kennedy how he came to be at Apalachin in November 1957, he said he left Buffalo on the morning of November 14 for an appointment in Pittston, Pennsylvania, and a meeting in New York the next day. He said he had another man in the car: “Anthony Maggadino was his name.” Asked whether he knew of Maggadino’s record, he said, “If he has, it is unbeknown to me.” Kennedy then read from the committee’s information a list of arrests in Italy and the United States, which Montana said he did not know about. Asked whether Maggadino was a friend, Montana said: “Well, he is an uncle through marriage to my nephew.” He said his windshield wiper and then his brakes failed, and that, knowing Joseph Barbara had trucks and mechanics nearby, he drove up the hill to ask for help. “The first time I knew that was Apalachin was when I read it in the paper.”
These are Montana’s sworn answers. The arrest list is counsel’s reading of committee information, not evidence of the facts it lists. Montana’s later federal conviction arising from the Apalachin grand-jury inquiries was reversed in United States v. Bufalino, 285 F.2d 408 (2d Cir. 1960).
