Business or Blood (42 page)

Author Peter Edwards attended Juan Ramon Fernandez's court case in Newmarket, Ontario.

Confidential police reports dealt with the Coluccio brothers' time in Canada.

Paolo Renda's parole records were useful here.

An American prison source told of Vito Rizzuto's reaction to the death.

Nicolò's tax records were of great use here.

Libertina Rizzuto's troubles in Lugano, Switzerland, are dealt with in a Swiss justice department report entitled
Il Procuratore Pubblico della Repubblica e Cantone del Ticino aux autorités judiciaires compétentes du Canada
, dated December 16, 1994.

An RCMP investigation that was launched in 2006 led to the firing of nine employees from the Montreal office. Criminal charges were laid against six of them, amidst allegations of kickbacks, bribes and other unsavoury links to the Rizzuto crime family.

Author Peter Edwards visited Vic (The Egg) Cotroni's old home in Lavaltrie, Quebec.

Police reports and sources dealt with Alfonso Caruana's wedding in Toronto in April 1995.

Normand (Casper) Ouimet was originally charged with twenty-two counts of murder but pleaded guilty in March 2014 to the lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

Author Peter Edwards visited Antoine-Berthelet Avenue.

A prison source told of Vito's reaction to his father's death.

Sources and reports dealt with Nick Cortese's arrest. His parole records were also of use.

A police source told of the box left outside the church before the funeral.

A police report and sources told of the funeral of Cosimo Stalteri and the Cuntrera anniversary celebrations.

Author Peter Edwards interviewed mobster Joe Di Maulo.

Police reports told of Di Maulo's golfing relationship with Vito Rizzuto.

Raynald Desjardins's parole records also helped us.

Police reports and sources told of Giuseppe (Joe) Lo Presti.

Sources who cannot be named were of great help here.

In the days after the failed shooting of Desjardins, one of Arcuri's relatives had phoned to taunt him. The relative said he knew Arcuri's group was behind the failed attack on Desjardins and he was going to miss him. To make things worse, the verbal jab was on the phone, which was much easier to intercept than an encrypted text message. Was Arcuri's relative so cruel he wanted police to listen in?

Again, sources who cannot be named were of great help here.

Moreno Gallo's parole records were also of use.

When Gallo had spoken of the Angelo Facchino murder to the parole board, he had tried to package as a public service of sorts shooting the Dubois clan associate three times on Saint-Denis Street. They didn't buy it. “The victim was apparently a drug dealer dealing drugs in your younger sister's school,” a parole board detention review hearing stated. “You had warned the person to stop but he had continued. You say that it was self-defense.… However, you had a Beretta .9 mm pistol and an accomplice.”

Again, sources who cannot be named were of great help here.

Yet again, sources who cannot be named were of great help here.

Moreno Gallo's deportation hearing records helped us here.

Author Antonio Nicaso interviewed Giuseppe Spagnolo's son, Liborio, in Sicily.

Author Peter Edwards was part of the media horde awaiting Vito Rizzuto's return to Toronto on October 5, 2012, at Pearson International Airport.

Vito Rizzuto was related to his wife, Giovanna, by blood as well as by marriage, since his mother and wife are first cousins. Vito Rizzuto was also related to his father-in-law, the late Leonardo Cammalleri, by blood and marriage. Leonardo Cammalleri was the brother of Vito's maternal grandmother, Giuseppa Cammalleri Manno, making him also Vito's great-uncle.

Police sources and Peter Scarcella's parole records were of use here.

Police sources and Daniel Renaud's work in La Presse helped us. Renaud is consistently one of the top reporters covering organized crime in Quebec and he graciously recounted his interview with Di Maulo. The interview was not for publication at the time and Renaud wrote of it after Di Maulo's death.

Thanks to Linda Gyulai of the Montreal
Gazette
for the report from the Broward Sheriff's Office.

Hot Freeze
by Martin Brett helped here.

The Montreal
Gazette
report cited in
chapter 2
was of use again. Since the Charbonneau Commission only goes back fifteen years, this investigative report is particularly important for anyone hoping
to understand the roots of the current corruption problem in Quebec construction.

Rapporto giudiziario a carico di Bono Giuseppe + 159
, issued by the Questura di Roma on February 7, 1983, states that Antonino (Don Nino) Manno was forced by police to leave Cattolica Eraclea and lived in another part of Italy for a time because he was considered to be in the Mafia and dangerous, in a process known as
soggiorno obbligato
, or internal banishment.

Domenico Manno's court and immigration files helped here.

There was: “United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh circuit, June 23, 205, Thomas K. Kahn clerk, Domenico Manno versus United States of America, Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida”; “United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit, Atlanta, Georgia, August 15, 2005, Clarence Maddox, clerk, Appeal Number: 04-16329-DD, Case Style: Domenico Manno v. USA, District Court Number: 04-60424 CV-JAG.”

For Divito, there's: “U.S. District Court, Middle District of Florida (Tampa), Criminal Docket for Case #: 8:94-cr-00169-RAL-4, Case title: USA v. Dubois, et al, Date Filed: 08/12/1994; Date Terminated: 03/13/2006, Judge Richard A Lazzara, Defendant, Pierino Divito.”

Police files and sources told of Vito's 2005 trip to Casa de Campo. There's some debate about why those tapes were never used in court. One theory is that the quality was poor. Another theory is that they were simply forgotten somewhere in storage. Odd as it sounds, the tapes made by Robert Menard of Paolo Violi's old ice cream shop were forgotten for years before they were properly analyzed.

La Presse
and the Montreal
Gazette
were our best sources here.

Moreno Gallo's immigration file and parole files helped us here.

A police source told of Gallo's difficulties in Ontario with mob gambling operations.

In March 2013, former RCMP translator Angelo Cecere pleaded guilty to breach of trust and disclosing private communications. The plea was for removing sensitive RCMP documents from the force's C Division headquarters, on Dorchester Boulevard, to his home and then passing them on to Nicolas Di Marco, who had helped run an illegal casino in Saint-Léonard for Nick (The Ritz) Rizzuto Jr. The documents were removed between 1993 and 2007, until the force was finally tipped off by an undisclosed source that they had a security leak among their employees.

When sentencing Cecere to jail for a year, Court of Quebec judge Gilles Cadieux didn't accept a defence argument that jail would be unduly harsh as it meant Cecere would lose the services of his guide dog. Prosecutor Lyne Décarie wasn't so sure it was a real guide dog anyway, noting that it hadn't been trained by a recognized association for the blind.

In July, the blind mole applied for parole. He told the Quebec parole board that he helped out the mob at a time when half of his salary had been swallowed up by his divorce and he was under the influence of antidepressants. He had hoped to get at least $250,000 from the Mafia for the information. Commissioners Celine Chamberland and John Dugré also heard that he had been held in the jail infirmary after bullying from other inmates who wanted him to help with their legal forms and correspondence. The commissioners praised his candour and then turned down his bid for parole. Justice might often be blind, but crime could be too.

Italian court and police records helped here.

The hit man who detonated the explosives that killed Giovanni Falcone was Giovanni (U Verru, The Pig) Brusca (born May 20, 1957, in San Giuseppe Jato), the son of Bernardo Brusca. Both men committed
multiple homicides. Nicolò Rizzuto appeared in a Rome police report called
Rapporto giudiziario a carico di Bono Giuseppe + 159
, issued by the Questura di Roma on February 7, 1983. The report dealt with suspects believed to be involved in the “French Connection” heroin network, in which heroin was refined in Marseilles, France, and then smuggled to North America. Vito Rizzuto was on the list of 160 suspects, along with his friend Gerlando (George from Canada) Sciascia.

Another man on the list, Tommaso Buscetta (1928–2000), later became widely known as the first important member of the Sicilian Mafia to co-operate with authorities and break the code of silence, or
omertà
.

Yet another member of the list was Vittorio Mangano. He was a member of the Sicilian Mafia as well as the stable keeper at Silvio Berlusconi's villa in the 1970s. Berlusconi went on to become Italian prime minister while Mangano became known as
lo stalliere di Arcore
, “the stable keeper of Arcore.”

In the 1959 investigation, Nicolò Rizzuto is portrayed by police as taking part in a revitalization of the old French Connection network. The network also includes Michele Zaza and his smuggling associates in the Camorra crime group of Naples. Later it would be concluded that the Cuntrera–Caruanas were also involved, washing money with hotels and other related businesses in Caracas, Venezuela, and Valencia, Spain.

Italian court and police records formed the basis for this chapter.

Italian court and police records again guided us.

Police sources told of Vito's movements.

Author Peter Edwards checked out the exterior of the King City home where Vito Rizzuto often stayed.

A source with knowledge of the Montreal police told of their security problems, including in the IT department.

Paul Cherry's January 29, 2014, story in the Montreal
Gazette
entitled ORGANIZED CRIME OFFICER UNDER INVESTIGATION IS ASSIGNED TO LESS IMPORTANT DUTIES was useful. Cherry is consistently one of Quebec's top organized crime reporters, for both the Mafia and outlaw bikers.

On March 13, 2014, Benoit Roberge, fifty, pleaded guilty in court to participating in the activities of a criminal organization and breach of trust before Court of Quebec judge Robert Marchi. Court heard he made some $115,000 selling information to René (Balloune) Charlebois of the Hells Angels. Charlebois had been convicted of killing a police informant in 2000. Charlebois escaped from prison in September 2013. Just before his escape, he telephoned Roberge and told him he had made recordings of previous conversations between them. At that point, Roberge had retired from police work and was working for Revenu Québec. Charlebois had initially hoped to blackmail his way into regaining his old drug-trafficking network. Instead, he killed himself in a chalet on Île Guèvremont in Sorel on September 25, 2013. One of his associates helped police in their sting operation against Roberge, who was arrested trying to buy back the recordings. In court, Roberge portrayed himself as the victim of a deadly threat from Charlebois. “Your Honour, my life has been destroyed,” Roberge said. “The fight begins today for the good of my family, which has suffered enormously. And I want to offer my apologies to the society I served for twenty-eight years at the risk and peril of my life and that of my family. I take the entire responsibility for my acts which were done under the influence of a threat toward [a relative whose name cannot be published because of a court-ordered ban] by René Charlebois.

“[My] message to other police officers is that if you find yourself in the torment and the constraints, ask for help and advice to find the best solution.”

Police sources told of Gallo's troubles with gambling operations.

Tonino Callocchia was sentenced in 1998 to ten years in prison for importing cocaine through Toronto's Pearson International Airport.

There's a plaque in the basement of the Loreto Funeral Home with a sign “Dal 01 novembre 2012 al 31 ottobre 2013” to commemorate people who had funerals out of the home between those dates. In the third column, four names from the top, is an intriguing entry; “De Vito Giuseppe.” Did Ponytail make some kind of peace with Vito's family at the very end of his life? Or did the Rizzuto family make some sort of peace with De Vito's family?

Police and government sources told of Vito Rizzuto's movements and health.

Among the mourners at Verduci's funeral was a GTA construction company owner who's also a major new mob boss. He came to York Region from Iran via Italy, and seems connected to most of the key players in Vito's old world.