Hells Angels Montreal Nomad leader Maurice (Mom) Boucher, one more Vito ally lost to prison.
Salvatore Cazzetta (centre, seated), founder of the Rock Machine biker gang.
Ducarme Joseph was a Montreal street-gang leader Vito could rely on—for a time.
Vito’s war continued with the daytime assassination of ’Ndrangheta drug smuggler and street boss Carmine (The Animal) Verduci.
Vittorio (Victor) Mirarchi was left by his late father to Desjardins’ care and thrived under his mentor, just as Desjardins had once thrived under Vito.
’Ndrangheta killer Domenic Napoli had been part of a hit team in Siderno but ran afoul of Panepinto for encroaching on his video-gambling turf in York Region.
In Bagheria, Sicily, Fernandez tried to wait out Vito’s war and maintain loyalty to both the godfather and his enemy Desjardins.
Portuguese national Fernando Pimentel brought Fernandez extra muscle in Bagheria.
Fernandez underestimating the extent of police surveillance in Italy.
Fernandez with Andrea Fortunato Carbone, Michele Modica’s bodyguard who escaped the California Sandwiches shooting unscathed.
Fernandez with mobster Pietro Scaduto, also present at the North York shooting and deported.
Vito and Fernandez in happier days. In Vito’s last war, no slight went unpunished.
POSTSCRIPT
There’s a term in Italian—staffetta—that translates roughly to “passing the baton.” It is natural to wonder if Vito had made plans to pass the baton to another or others in his group before his death. Even if he wasn’t dying of cancer, he must have contemplated the possibility of his own murder.
Revenge was an all-consuming and sacred pursuit in the final year of his life. A short list of his next murder victims is believed to have included a long-time member of a street gang, a developer and an Ontario mobster with a long history of drug problems. Vito’s death meant the new leadership of his group had the choice of picking up the baton and continuing the slaughter or moving on to rebuild after the damage done by Project Colisée and the Charbonneau Commission. Or would they choose a Canadian compromise, killing a few of his enemies as a nod to the old guard in the family and then turning to business?
Police surveillance officers were startled in early 2014 to see Vito’s last consigliere Rocco Sollecito making the rounds with a fresh face in the milieu. This man has a clean criminal record but enjoyed a tight, affectionate tie to Vito. Sollecito seemed bent on introducing him to everyone who was anyone in his world. As he made the rounds with Sollecito, the man carried himself with the utmost seriousness, as one might expect from the new boss of a major crime family.
The quick decision not to hold an autopsy on Vito’s body means the cause of his death will be forever a mystery. If Vito did indeed die of cancer, it was an odd strain of the disease as in recent weeks he looked as though he had put on a little weight and seemed full of energy. If he was murdered, it was likely poison dropped in a glass from a smiling well-wisher. If Ponytail De Vito could be poisoned in maximum-security Donnacona penitentiary, then Vito could be drugged in a bustling public nightspot. Perhaps the killer even liked Vito, but chose business over blood. Perhaps the new boss already knows the answer to this riddle.
There were good reasons to fear Vito’s revenge, even months after his death. In April 2014, Carmine Verduci of the Toronto ’Ndrangheta was shot dead in mid-afternoon outside a café in Vaughan. Verduci had been host of the camera di controllo meeting in his yellow brick home in Woodbridge on October 7, 2009, while Vito was in prison and his family was under siege in Montreal. “To me it’s a huge message,” a police officer specializing in organized crime said. “It’s not over just because Vito’s dead.… Certain people have to die before business gets done.” On the evening of August 2, 2014, the body of gang leader Ducarme Joseph was found in the middle of a St. Michel district street. Someone had pumped multiple gunshots into the prime suspect in the murder of Vito’s son, Nick Jr.
As this book goes to press, a half-dozen other men on Vito’s hit list have not yet been murdered. They do not need this book to know they are fortunate to be alive.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
VITO RIZZUTO’S MONTREAL GROUP
Francesco (Compare Frank) Arcadi. Underboss in Rizzuto crime family.
Agostino (The Seigneur of Saint-Léonard) Cuntrera. Member of wealthy international money-laundering family.
Federico (Freddy) Del Peschio. Family friend of Rizzuto crime family.
Lorenzo (Skunk) Giordano. Tough senior member in Rizzuto crime family.
Mike Lapolla. Enforcer for Rizzuto crime family who was murdered March 10, 2005.
Domenico Macri. Murdered soldier in Rizzuto crime family and nephew of lieutenant Francesco Arcadi.
Paolo Renda. Trusted consigliere, cousin and brother-in-law of Vito Rizzuto.
Nicolò (Nick) Rizzuto Jr. Murdered eldest son of Vito Rizzuto.
Nicolò (Zio Cola, Uncle Nick) Rizzuto Sr. For decades he was the top Mafioso in Canada, before passing control to his only son, Vito.
Vito Rizzuto. Son of Nicolò Rizzuto and top figure in Canadian Mafia.
Rocco (Sauce) Sollecito. Member of Vito’s inner circle. His son Stefano was part of Vito’s expansion into Ontario in the early 2000s.
MONTREAL PLOTTERS AND ENEMIES OF VITO RIZZUTO
Giovanni (Johnny) Bertolo. Close associate of Raynald Desjardins, and murder victim.
Raynald Desjardins. One-time ally of Vito Rizzuto who broke ranks after serving a lengthy sentence for drug trafficking and sparked a bloody underworld war.
Giuseppe (Joe) Di Maulo. Brother-in-law of Raynald Desjardins and senior underworld figure.
Paolo Gervasi. Montreal strip club owner who was murdered on January 19, 2004. Vito Rizzuto was blamed for his killing.
Moreno Gallo. A millionaire baker who was once a member of Vito’s group. He backed Salvatore Montagna of New York in his push to run the Montreal mob.
Lorenzo (Larry) Lo Presti. Neighbour of Vito Rizzuto and son of murdered Mafia lieutenant.
Vittorio (Victor) Mirarchi. Suspect in murder of New York City Mafia boss Salvatore Montagna.
Paolo Violi. Former head of the Cotroni crime family of Montreal, which for a time included Vito and Nicolò Rizzuto.
VITO RIZZUTO’S TORONTO GROUP
Juan Ramon (Joe Bravo) Fernandez. Former Toronto lieutenant for Vito Rizzuto.
Gaetano (Guy) Panepinto. Toronto lieutenant for Vito Rizzuto.
TORONTO ’NDRANGHETA
Antonio Coluccio. Brother of ’Ndrangheta members Giuseppe and Salvatore Coluccio. Told by federal government he is inadmissible to live in Canada.
Giuseppe Coluccio. Former Toronto resident said to be top member of international ’Ndrangheta crime family.
Salvatore Coluccio. Former Toronto resident said to be high-level ’Ndrangheta member.
SICILIAN MAFIA
Andrea Fortunato Carbone. Sicilian bodyguard for Michele Modica in Canada.
Pietro Scaduto. Sicilian companion of Michele Modica in Canada. Deported from Canada after 2004 shooting that paralyzed Louis Russo.
NEW YORKERS
Joe (Big Joey) Massino. Former head of the informer-infested Bonanno crime family of New York City.
Salvatore (Sal the Ironworker, The Bambino Boss) Montagna. Head of New York–based Bonanno crime family.
George (George from Canada) Sciascia. Associate of Vito Rizzuto who was murdered in New York City at behest of Big Joey Massino.
ASSORTED BIKERS
Maurice (Mom) Boucher. One-time leader of the Hells Angels’ Nomads chapter in Montreal, he was serving two life terms for murder by the time Vito Rizzuto was extradited to the USA.
Salvatore Cazzetta. Founder of the Rock Machine, which warred with the Hells Angels in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was close to Boucher in the early 1980s, when they both were members of the SS gang.
ENDNOTES
CHAPTER 1: BLOW TO TH
E HEART
An American prison source told of Vito’s moods when getting the news of his son’s death.
Sicilian Mafia boss Tommaso Buscetta spoke with the RCMP in 1987 about his time in Canada. We were able to obtain a copy of this report, which provided his assessment of why Nicolò was admitted to the Mafia.
Vito’s top spot in Canadian organized crime was outlined in a secret report to the Minister of Justice and Solicitor General of Canada dated February 1996 and entitled Présentation au Ministre de la Justice et au Solliciteur Général du Canada.
An excellent overview of Vito’s financial situation was: Tax Court of Canada, Invoice number: A-238-2003, February 12, 2003, Tax Court of Canada, Appellant: Vito Rizzuto.
Financially, there’s also Cour Canadienne de L’Impôt, entre M. Vito Rizzuto et Sa Majesté La Reine, September 14, 1998.
One of the few times Vito testified in court was at the 1995 trial of Valentino Morielli, in which he said he played more than one hundred times a year. Vito also spoke of playing in charity golf tournaments with other mobsters, including Vincenzo Di Maulo. Morielli was an old school chum of Vito’s involved in major-league drug importing and money laundering. He died of natural causes in January 2014.
CHAPTER 2: NICK JR. AND NICOLÒ
“Records show Mob boss worked on Expo 67, city parks,” by Linda Gyulai, Montreal Gazette civic affairs reporter, January 30, 2014, gives an excellent look at Nicolò’s early business interests. Gyulai went through the city archives to write a series of stories that also appeared on January 31, 2014. She led the way in reporting on Rizzuto ties to city works in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s especially.
Oreste Pagano’s voluminous statements to Canadian police told us of the wedding of Nick Rizzuto Jr. They include: “Transcripts, Project Omerta, July 8, September 21, November 18, 1999”; Emanuele Ragusa’s parole files helped explain his situation.
Confidential police sources helped as well.
For Project Colisée, Annexe C2, 2002-UMECO-3438 helped with financial records and key conversations from transcripts.
A particularly useful report is Tom Blickman’s The Rothschilds of the Mafia on Aruba, published by Transnational Institute (http://www.tni.org), Transnational Organized Crime, vol. 3, no. 2, summer 1997. It deals with the complicated rise of the Cuntrera–Caruanas and the importance of Rapporto giudiziario a carico di Bono Giuseppe + 159, issued by the Questura di Roma on February 7, 1983.
The Scotto trial was spared prosecution because of the statute of limitations.
CHAPTER 3: EL PADRINO
Buscetta’s 1987 interview with the RCMP helped again here.
A police report states that Antonino Manno emigrated to Canada with the help of a federal politician, but it does not identify who that politician was.
CHAPTER 4: GOING TO WAR
Like Vito and Violi, Mammoliti betrayed no shame about his lifestyle. He lived openly after breaking out of prison in 1972, to the point that he married his fourteen-year-old girlfriend at the Santa Maria Assunta church in Castellace di Oppido Mamertina on August 23, 1975. The church was a short walk from a police station, but that didn’t deter Mammoliti, who needed the church’s large hall for his many guests. The wedding was celebrated by the priest and Violi’s relative, Don Serafino Violi.
Aruba called “Mafia Island” by Corriere della Sera on March 4, 1993, and “the first state to be bought by the bosses of Cosa Nostra.”
Again, we were aided by insights from Linda Gyulai, Montreal Gazette civic affairs reporter. In works cited in chapter 2 endnotes, Nicolò Rizzuto’s daughter, Maria Renda, represented the brothers Paolo and Gaspare Cuntrera in 1983, when the brothers lived in Caracas, Venezuela, and the city wanted to expropriate 9,040 square feet of land they and their brother Pasquale owned in Rivière des Prairies. City officials had lost touch with the Cuntreras, and so ads were taken out in the Montreal Gazette and Le Devoir to inform them of the city’s intentions. It was an odd dance, as Italian authorities sought to locate the Cuntrera brothers to extradite them on drug and money-laundering charges, while Venezuelan officials said they didn’t know where to find them, even though they were living in the South American country. Meanwhile, Montreal city officials negotiated with them on the expropriation through Maria Renda.
The Quebec Official Gazette for Saturday, December 7, 1968, notes: “Notice is hereby given that under the first part of the Companies Act, the Lieutenant Governor dc province granted islands letters patent, dated 17th day of October 1968 to incorporate: Robert Papalia, Antonio Papalia, both businessmen, 7347 Papineau Avenue, and Vincenzo Messina, tailor, 750, Iberville Street, all three of Montreal, for the following purposes: Operate and administer nightclubs, restaurants, bars, night clubs, record companies and other entertainment and shopping as well as performances and musical and dramatic performances, under the name ‘The New Cheetah Club 69 Ltd.’ With a total capital of $40,000, divided into 1,000 ordinary shares of a par value of $10 each and 3,000 preferred shares of a par value of $10 each. The registered office of the company is Montreal, judicial district of Montreal. The Deputy Minister of Financial Institutions, companies and cooperatives, Ls- Philippe Bouchard. 27067 4838-68.”
CHAPTER 5: INVISIBLE ENEMY
Moreno Gallo’s parole records were particularly useful. They are: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, Immigration Division, No de dossier de la SI / ID File No.: 0018-A8-01482, Record of Proceedings, The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and Moreno Gallo, February 12, 2009, Montreal.
CHAPTER 6: DANGEROUS NEW ASSOCIATES
Confidential police reports were of great use.
Radio-Canada’s Enquête team broke the story of the 1000 de la Commune residents. Their investigative work on corruption in the construction industry was truly excellent. The tape of Vito’s conversation with Tony Magi was played at the Charbonneau Commission in March 2014.
CHAPTER 7: GANGS
Richard Ogilvie’s deportation file was useful.
CHAPTER 8: BLOOD TRAIL
Police and parole files on Giovanni Cazzetta were of great help.
There’s also: R. v. Cazzetta, 2003 CanLII 39827 (QC CA).
Few people understand the complicated world of Quebec outlaw bikers better than Paul Cherry, author of The Biker Trials: Bringing Down the Hells Angels, ECW Press, Toronto, 2005.
CHAPTER 9: UNRAVELLING
Police sources told of Vito’s reaction.
Michele Modica’s was dealt with in the cases against Peter Scarcella et al. in the Louise Russo shooting.
Sources helped put Salvatore Calautti’s background into perspective, as did confidential police files.
Parole hearing records for Annie Arbic and Sharon Simon helped.
As this book goes to press, Sergio Piccirilli and his co-accused Antal Babos have been granted a new trial by the Supreme Court of Canada on twenty-two offences related to firearms and the production and trafficking of methamphetamines.
CHAPTER 10: UNDECLARED WAR
Author Peter Edwards toured the Streit plant north of Toronto.
CHAPTER 11: PONYTAIL’S NIGHTMARE
Former Rock Machine member Normand Brisebois told of how Nicolò and Vito Rizzuto would visit Cabaret Castel Tina.
CHAPTER 12: WHO’S NEXT?
Italian prosecutor Nicola Gratteri helped with perspective.
Police sources helped with Vittorio Mirarchi.
For Vito’s case in the Three Captains Murders, there was: United States District Court Eastern District of New York, United States of America against Vito Rizzuto, CR 03-1382(S-1), May 4, 2007, before the Honorable Nicholas G. Garaufis, United States District Judge.
CHAPTER 13: FOREIGN SHORE
We have copies of Vito Rizzuto Sr.’s citizenship papers from November 5, 1931, and Calogero Renda’s travel papers from Palermo, Sicily.
We also drew from Vito Rizzuto Sr.’s immigration files, obtained from the US Department of Homeland Security.
Carmine Galan
te’s FBI file helped with his Montreal connection.
Paterson, NJ, is the birthplace of Joe Pistone, the FBI agent who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family and rocked the world of Vito Sr.’s grandson, Vito Jr.
There were a couple of explanations of why town fathers added a t to their community’s name. One theory was that a founding member of the community simply didn’t care about spelling. The other possibility is that the extra t was added to avoid confusion with their larger, better-known counterpart. Whatever the case, it was a tiny, out-of-the-way place, perfect for lying low.
The history of the New York City Mafia is dealt with exhaustively by Selwyn Raab in Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires, Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2005.
Italian sources and archives helped with the Rizzuto family history.
The Binghamton Press, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Pawling Chronicle, Pawling-Patterson News, Putnam County Courier and Rome Daily Sentinel helped with Vito Sr.’s murder and the fate of his killers, as did “Supreme Court: Putnam County, November 4, 1933, The People of the State of New York Against Stephano Spinello, Rosario Arcuro and Max L. Simon. Indictment for Murder, first degree.”
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