Nicolo Rizzuto, who forged the most powerful and successful criminal organization this country has known, was shot and killed inside his luxurious Montreal mansion on Wednesday, the strongest signal yet that the reign of the beleaguered Sicilian Mafia family is all but over.
Mr. Rizzuto, 86, was taken to hospital by ambulance around 5:45 p.m. and a police spokesman confirmed on Wednesday night that he had died.
His death is a stunning development in an already perplexing criminal milieu. Mr. Rizzuto was a figure of almost mythic stature, although largely a symbolic one in recent years, as his son, Vito, had taken control over the awesome criminal structure that spanned the globe.
The shooting, if – as is assumed by investigators – it was perpetrated by a competing criminal network, challenges the last claim the clan had on the city’s underworld and its long tradition as being the most powerful criminal authority in Canada.
"If there is anything that signals a war, this is it. Someone killed Vito’s son, someone killed his father. What will he do?" said a police investigator specializing in organized crime.
Mr. Rizzuto’s son, Vito, who took over the position as the crime boss, continued his father’s work, expanding and forging allies in Asia, South America, across Europe, the Caribbean and others.
While Mr. Rizzuto had a hard time losing the coarse gruffness with outsiders that he learned in rural Sicily, his son was a boss for the new millennium and Mr. Rizzuto was comfortable with his succession, until Vito was arrested in 2004. He remains in prison in the United States for his role in three gangland murders.
It is the latest and most shocking calamity to hit a family that has been familiar with tragedy in recent years.
In December, 2009, Nick Rizzuto – the grandson and namesake of Mr. Rizzuto – was shot on the street and murdered in Montreal’s Notre Dame de Grace neighbourhood.
This spring, Paolo Renda, Mr. Rizzuto’s son-in-law and the man believed by police to be the "consigliere" – or councillor – in the organization, was apparently abducted not long after his release from prison. There has been no word on his fate since.
Several other murders that have touched the family, but not cut as closely, have forced police to worry that an underworld crime war, or at least a deadly struggle for control, in the city is underway. A spate of recent firebombings against Italian cafes was also linked to the power vacuum in Montreal as the Rizzutos’ control seemed to dissipate.
Attacking Mr. Rizzuto, however, would have been inconceivable in years past, as the family had such a reputation and direct presence on the street.
Born Feb. 18, 1924, in Cattolica Eraclea, a remote and rural village of 5,000 people in western Sicily, Nicolo Rizzuto was named after his grandfather, a sign of the family’s value of tradition. Despite the town’s seclusion and humble appearance, it is a town rich in Mafia tradition in an area heavily under the mob’s influence.
As a young man, he married up into the mob, winning the hand of Libertina Manno, the daughter of the region’s powerful Mafia boss.
The couple, along with their two children, including Vito, who was eight years old, immigrated to Canada in 1954 and settled in Montreal, a city that was already under the influence of the Mafia, although mobsters originally from Calabria, the neighbouring province across the strait in southern Italy, were in control.
Over the next 20 years, Mr. Rizzuto chafed against the regime of Paolo Violi, the Montreal boss. It was a struggle in which he triumphed after Violi and three of his brothers were systematically murdered by Sicilian mobsters.
It left Montreal, the most important city in Canada’s underworld, firmly in the hands of Mr. Rizzuto. He would not let go. Until Wednesday night.
Mr. Rizzuto’s son, Vito, grew to take his position at his side, groomed in the Mafia way. Vito was sent to New York in 1981 to help the powerful Bonanno Mafia family there quell an internal revolt by killing the three leaders of the rebellion.
Mr. Rizzuto would become a Canadian citizen, but never turned his back on his homeland, maintaining links to crime figures in the town and in many cities and towns in Italy throughout his life.
Despite the plethora of criminal acts police suspected him of, he led something of a charmed life.
It was not until 2008 that he pleaded guilty to possession of the proceeds of crime as well as gangsterism, marking his first conviction in Canada. At the time of his arrest, in 2006, the RCMP declared the Rizzuto organization: "one of the pinnacles of organized crime in this country."
The charges came after the organization was thoroughly penetrated by secret police microphones and video cameras, catching Mr. Rizzuto many times receiving mounds of cash in the backroom of the downmarket cafe on Jarry Street East that he long used as his headquarters.
He was seen laboriously counting out money in Italian before stuffing it in his socks or pockets for safe keeping.
Earlier this year, Mr. Rizzuto pleaded guilty to tax evasion in Montreal and paid $209,000 in fines after $5.2-million in unclaimed income was found in Swiss bank accounts held in the name of others.
He was also wanted in Italy for Mafia association but did not face arrest or extradition here since Canada does not recognize a crime of association, only charges of overt criminal acts.
ahumphreys@nationalpost.com
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