The Sixth Family (6 page)
Authors: Lee Lamothe
Back in the Sicilian town of Cattolica Eraclea, the son of the murdered Vito Rizzuto, Nicolò, came of age amid the death and tumult of the Second World War without ever knowing his father, although he had a stepfather for guidance after his mother, Maria Renda, remarried. That second marriage, to Liborio Milioto, gave Nicolò a half-sister, whose offspring remain close to the Rizzutos to this day.
At the close of the war, having grown into a strong and industrious man, Nicolò Rizzuto started a family of his own.
Nicolò’s choice of bride was not merely a matter of falling in love with the robust and determined Libertina Manno. Winning the hand of such a woman and—perhaps more important—gaining the approval of her father to marry her, would have been an intimidating but important affair, more so than for the average man navigating a relationship with a future father-in-law. Nicolò’s romantic success brought him more than a wife, lifelong companion and future mother of his children. Marrying Libertina brought Nicolò closer into the family of Antonio Manno, the head of a family of great note in the area, one designated in Italian police files as the Famiglia Manno, the “Manno Family.”
The Mannos were the pre-eminent Mafia clan in the southwest of the province of Agrigento, ruling a territory that stretches out in a long triangle linking the towns of Cattolica Eraclea, Siculiana and Montallegro. Antonio Manno, who was born in 1904 and died in 1980, was the undisputed
capo mafia
of this important area. He is also ground zero for the formation of the Sixth Family and a showcase for the intermingling of the clans that would become notorious: his mother was a Caruana; his wife was a Cammalleri; his sister married Calogero Renda, who had earlier traveled to America with the Rizzuto patriarch.
capo mafia
of this important area. He is also ground zero for the formation of the Sixth Family and a showcase for the intermingling of the clans that would become notorious: his mother was a Caruana; his wife was a Cammalleri; his sister married Calogero Renda, who had earlier traveled to America with the Rizzuto patriarch.
When Nicolò married Libertina Manno, he “married up” in the underworld. With Antonio Manno as her father and her mother being Giuseppina Cammalleri, a woman from a prominent clan with similar outlaw traditions, Libertina was from rich Mafia stock. To be allowed to marry her was a crucial sign of acceptance and approval of Nicolò on many levels.
As a young couple, Nicolò and Libertina Rizzuto moved through Cattolica Eraclea in a social milieu that included friends and family; the distinction between who was merely a friend and who was family continued to blur and, indeed, be erased as the Manno clan expanded, by entrusting their many daughters (they had surprisingly few sons) to well-chosen grooms who were often “Men of Honor,” as the mafiosi call themselves. In Cattolica Eraclea, and within the Mafia triangle of nearby towns, the Famiglia Manno met and married a number of like-minded people from a few—a very few—families. Perhaps because of the smallness of their village and the insular clique they built for themselves within it—but likely by a clever plan to protect the family from betrayal—the closeness of the group was tightened further by marriages amongst these families. It is a family where the lines of connection stretch backwards and forwards simultaneously—with first and second cousins intermarrying—making it common for members to describe their relationships to each other in several ways, such as being both a cousin and a son-in-law. From the Manno clan springs a family tree with branches that would spread briefly to entangle a new family name, only to fold back in on itself.
The list of names and interweaving relationships is often hard to follow but each would distinguish itself in Sixth Family deeds: the Rizzuto, Manno and Renda families are joined by the Cammalleri, Sciascia, LoPresti, Ragusa, Arcuri, and Sciortino families—among others. Members of the sprawling clans of the Caruanas and the Cuntreras from nearby Siculiana, who are renowned for their drug prowess, and the Vella and Mongiovì families would also woo and be wooed into the Famiglia Manno through marriage, one of the strongest bases of power among the Sicilian clans. This is the traditional base of the Sixth Family.
After the ill-fated move to America in 1925 by Vito Rizzuto and Calogero Renda, other Sixth Family members also left Sicily under a cloud. Sometime during the night of August 14, 1955, the first democratically elected mayor of Cattolica Eraclea, Giuseppe Spagnolo, lay sleeping outdoors, in the rural stretch between his home town and Cianciana, a village seven miles north on the other side of the Plátani river. Spagnolo was heralded as the “peasant mayor,” the first and only peasant to be so elected, propelled into office by the popularity of his radical land reform policy. After his election in 1946, Spagnolo raised the ire of the Mafia by refusing to hand the most fertile land over to the local mobsters. Instead, Spagnolo insisted that the best land go to the neediest—and that clearly did not include the Famiglia Manno. Spagnolo soon faced their wrath. His own farm was vandalized, his barn set ablaze and threats made against him. He did not waver, although he appears to have moved into hiding, preferring outdoor sleeping quarters over his farmhouse. The move did not protect him.
From the darkness of the night emerged several men, each holding a
lupara
, the distinctive shotgun of Sicily. Seven shots rang out, tearing into Spagnolo where he lay. It was a shocking crime. The open assault on civility and democracy outraged the government and the townspeople. By the time authorities identified four men suspected in the assassination, three of the men had fled, apparently after hiding in a local church. Undeterred by their absence, the government moved to prosecute them. The accused included Leonardo Cammalleri and Giacinto Arcuri, who were found guilty,
in absentia
, of murder and handed life sentences. The sentences were later upheld on appeal. But the men were still not to be found. They had fled to Canada, where—despite an arrest warrant issued against them by the Italian government—they settled in Montreal and Toronto. When the Italian government was wrongly informed that Arcuri had died, the arrest warrant for him was canceled. In Canada, Arcuri, whose mother was a Cammalleri, joined up with his Sixth Family associates and remains free in Toronto where he is considered an important man of influence within the underworld. Similarly, Leonardo Cammalleri would somehow avoid prosecution, settling in Montreal and then Toronto, where he raised his family, including his daughter, Giovanna, who would later marry Nicolò’s son, Vito Rizzuto.
lupara
, the distinctive shotgun of Sicily. Seven shots rang out, tearing into Spagnolo where he lay. It was a shocking crime. The open assault on civility and democracy outraged the government and the townspeople. By the time authorities identified four men suspected in the assassination, three of the men had fled, apparently after hiding in a local church. Undeterred by their absence, the government moved to prosecute them. The accused included Leonardo Cammalleri and Giacinto Arcuri, who were found guilty,
in absentia
, of murder and handed life sentences. The sentences were later upheld on appeal. But the men were still not to be found. They had fled to Canada, where—despite an arrest warrant issued against them by the Italian government—they settled in Montreal and Toronto. When the Italian government was wrongly informed that Arcuri had died, the arrest warrant for him was canceled. In Canada, Arcuri, whose mother was a Cammalleri, joined up with his Sixth Family associates and remains free in Toronto where he is considered an important man of influence within the underworld. Similarly, Leonardo Cammalleri would somehow avoid prosecution, settling in Montreal and then Toronto, where he raised his family, including his daughter, Giovanna, who would later marry Nicolò’s son, Vito Rizzuto.
The deep relationships the clans forged in the lean years in Cattolica Eraclea would remain intact for generations as the family strategically spread across the globe.
Sitting on a hilltop along the Mediterranean coast, the city of Agrigento is both the capital and main urban center of the province that shares its name. The city has gained international recognition for the ancient Greek ruins of Akragas, the Valley of the Temples, an extensive and awe-inspiring site built along a sea-facing ridge, considered the best-preserved Greek ruins outside of Greece. Sandy beaches to each side of Agrigento draw locals from their homes on the warmest weekends and the rutted medieval streets exude the Old World feel sought by tourists. The nearby Porto Empédocle runs regular ferries to the Pelagic Islands, a pair of bleak rocks in the Mediterranean Sea that, since they lie closer to Africa than to Europe, place the historical remoteness of Sicily in acute context. These tourist draws do not translate into community riches, however. Agrigento, government statistics show, is one of Italy’s poorest cities.
Despite its poverty, the province of Agrigento has an old and sophisticated Mafia. Over generations, a small number of families, or
cosche
, emerged to dominate their towns along the coast and into the interior, engaging in crimes that seem almost quaint in their reflection of time and place—cattle rustling, stealing farm produce, misdirecting irrigation, organizing hired farmhands and thievery. Gradually, public institutions also fell under the control of the leading Men of Honor, who were grabbing and stealing what little there was to take, all the while accepting nods of “respect” from their victims. Their criminal ingenuity and prowess continued to evolve.
cosche
, emerged to dominate their towns along the coast and into the interior, engaging in crimes that seem almost quaint in their reflection of time and place—cattle rustling, stealing farm produce, misdirecting irrigation, organizing hired farmhands and thievery. Gradually, public institutions also fell under the control of the leading Men of Honor, who were grabbing and stealing what little there was to take, all the while accepting nods of “respect” from their victims. Their criminal ingenuity and prowess continued to evolve.
“Agrigento’s type of criminality,” an Italian judge said of the local Mafia clans, “is a form of almost scientific crime, especially if compared to the Mafia in Palermo. The latter is vulgar because it doesn’t think twice about shooting in a public street; it acts on impulse. The one from the province of Agrigento is sophisticated: it studies and plans crime with a scientific perfection.”
Similar to the ruins in the Valley of the Temples, there is another archeological site along the Mediterranean, just southwest of Cattolica Eraclea. Eraclea Minoa shares a portion of its name with the Rizzutos’ home town. In contrast to the community in Cattolica, leaders in Minoa try hard to attract tourists visiting the more famous ruins of Agrigento. The Sixth Family has not helped that cause. As late as the 1990s, the Famiglia Manno was accused of plundering the sites and selling archeological objects of historical value.
In Mafia circles, this passes for living off the land.
While such tawdry thievery certainly helped line the pockets of family members who remained behind in Sicily, the real family money would be generated abroad and the real family power stems from the men who left Agrigento for richer prospects in the New World.
As a geographic location, Antonio Manno’s Mafia triangle is as remote and insignificant to legitimate global commerce as any in Italy, but its impact on the international trade in illicit drugs would be unparalleled. This rural triangle became an incubator for a resource crucial to the mass transit of drugs—that resource being the skilled and strong Men of Honor who would leave their family homes and set down roots in North and South America and parts of Europe to build an interwoven and seemingly impenetrable family-based organization that is the modern-day Sixth Family.
In Agrigento province, the Famiglia Manno—sometimes now called the “Famiglia Manno-Rizzuto,” as a nod to Vito Rizzuto’s prominence in international underworld affairs—is still tracked by the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, Italy’s anti-Mafia investigations department, and by organized crime investigators with the Carabinieri and the Polizia di Stato, the national police
.
The real concern, however, is with the diaspora that spread these gangsters around the world: to Venezuela, Brazil, Germany, Canada and the United States.
.
The real concern, however, is with the diaspora that spread these gangsters around the world: to Venezuela, Brazil, Germany, Canada and the United States.
When it came time for Nicolò Rizzuto to wrap up his affairs in Cattolica Eraclea and to pack up his family for relocation, it was to Canada that he went. There he would forge a bold outpost in Montreal. Over time, the Rizzutos would be joined by members of the cluster of interconnected families Nicolò had known all his life: Sciascia, Renda, LoPresti, Ragusa, Cammalleri, Arcuri, Sciortino and Manno. Each would be welcomed into an organization forming in the New World, as the Famiglia Manno became the Sixth Family.
It was a move of strategic brilliance, in keeping with their “scientific perfection” of crime.
CHAPTER 4
HALIFAX, CANADA, FEBRUARY 1954There was just a trace of rain falling over Pier 21 in Halifax, the major seaport on Canada’s Atlantic coast, when 774 passengers who had started their voyage in Palermo, the principal city of Italy’s southern island of Sicily, disembarked in the New World. For people acclimatized to the heat of southern Italy, this was something of a lucky break as, just four days before, nearly five inches of snow had blanketed the city, and two days after that a deluge of rain had washed it into the ocean. Among that crush of travelers, mostly new arrivals with plans for permanent immigration, was Nicolò Rizzuto, following his father’s footsteps in leaving the family home in Cattolica Eraclea for brighter economic prospects in North America. Unlike the trip of his father some 30 years earlier, however, Nicolò came not with criminal colleagues but with his family.
Their 24,000-gross-ton ship, the M/S
Vulcania
, considered one of the finest transatlantic passenger vessels ever built, arrived from Palermo on February 21, 1954—young Vito’s eighth birthday. A future full of anticipation and promised opportunity might well have been gift enough for the boy.
Vulcania
, considered one of the finest transatlantic passenger vessels ever built, arrived from Palermo on February 21, 1954—young Vito’s eighth birthday. A future full of anticipation and promised opportunity might well have been gift enough for the boy.
Like most immigrants to Canada, the Rizzutos quickly headed to one of central Canada’s largest cities. A bustling and colorful city along the St. Lawrence River, with a large port of its own, Montreal was dominated by its French-speaking population and offered a European feel that English-Canadian cities could not match. In Montreal, a thriving “Little Italy” had evolved as waves of immigrants settled close together, enjoying the labor opportunities and social freedoms of the New World without giving up their culture, one complete with grocery stores carrying familiar food and churches and social clubs mimicking life in their former homeland.
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