THE LAST BOSS OF MONREAL

BY FABRIZIO CATALFAMO

Vito Rizzuto

February 21, 1946 – December 23, 2013), also known as “Montreal’s Teflon Don”, was an Italian-Canadian crime boss alleged to be the leader of the Sicilian Mafia in Canada. He headed the notorious Rizzuto crime family based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

Rizzuto was born in Cattolica Eraclea, Sicily, Italy in 1946 and immigrated to Montreal with his parents in 1954. His father Nicolo married into the mob, and later started his own crime syndicate in Montreal after overtaking the Cotroni crime family in the late 1970s. He had several run-ins with the law but was able to avoid conviction for any major offenses until 2004.

In 1981, Rizzuto participated in the killing of three rival capos in New

York City ordered by Joe Massino of the Bonanno crime family, and he was indicted by a Brooklyn federal grand jury in connection with these killings in 2004. He was extradited to the United States in 2006, and pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and racketeering charges in 2007. He was given a 10-year prison sentence, but was released in late 2012.

The Rizzuto crime family had been in the midst of a power struggle while Rizzuto was incarcerated; his son Nicolo Jr. was killed in 2009, and his father killed in 2010. Rizzuto died shortly after on December 23, 2013, due to complications from pneumonia, which may have been induced by lung cancer.

In 1954, on Vito’s eighth birthday, he immigrated with his family to Canada, docking at Pier 21 in Halifax,

Nova Scotia before moving on to Montreal, Quebec. Vito was the first child of Nicolo Rizzuto and his wife, Libertina Manno. His mother was the daughter of Antonio Manno, a local Mafia leader in their hometown. Vito was named after his grandfather, who was murdered on August 12, 1933 in Patterson, New York, Nicolo would later be murdered as well, killed by a single sniper’s bullet at his residence in the Cartierville borough of Montreal on November 10, 2010.

Vito married Giovanna Cammalleri, daughter of compatriot mobster Leonardo Cammalleri, on November 26, 1966, and had three children. His eldest son, Nicolo Rizzuto (Nick Jr.) –named after his grandfather – was born on December 4, 1967. He was shot six times and killed near his car in the Montreal borough of NotreDame-de-Grâce on December 28,

2009. His other son is Leonardo Rizzuto, and the third child is his daughter, Libertina “Bettina” –named after her grandmother. His sister Maria was married to Paolo Renda, reputed consigliere of the Rizzuto crime family, who went missing on May 20, 2010. Vito’s son, Leonardo, and Rocco Sollecito’s son, Stefano, are believed to be the heads of the Mafia in Montreal, who were both arrested and charged with drug trafficking and gangsterism in November 2015. On February 19, 2018, they were released from prison, acquitted of charges of gangsterism and conspiracy to traffic cocaine.

In the 1970s, his father Nicolo was an underling in the Sicilian faction, led by Luigi Greco until his death in 1972, of the Calabrian Cotroni crime family. As tension then grew into a power struggle between the Calabrian and Sicilian factions of the family, a mob war began in 1973.This led to a violent Mafia war in Montreal which resulted in the deaths of Violi and his brothers, along with others, spanning the mid-1970s to the early 1980s until the war ceased. By the mid 1980s, the Rizzuto crime family emerged as Montreal’s pre-eminent crime family after the turf war.

According to law enforcement officials, Rizzuto oversaw a criminal empire that imported and distributed tons of heroin, cocaine and hashish in Canada, laundered hundreds of millions of dollars, lent out millions more through loansharking operations and profited handsomely from illegal gambling, fraud and contract killings. In 1972, Rizzuto was sentenced to two years for conspiring to commit arson of Renda’s hair salon in Boucherville in 1968 with the intention of defrauding insurers; he served 18 months of the sentence.

In October 1987, a ship off the coast of northeast Newfoundland and and Labrador was seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). The RCMP found 16 tonnes of hashish in the surrounding area, and Rizzuto, Raynald Desjardins and four associates were arrested; Rizzuto was freed on bail in March 1988.[23] Rizzuto’s trial began in October 1990 in a St. John’s courthouse, but when the RCMP overstepped the bounds of Rizzuto’s warrant by wiretapping restaurant conversations between Rizzuto and his lawyer, the Newfoundland Supreme Court dropped the case.