Vito Rizzuto stepped off a ship in Halifax harbour with his mother and father on Feb. 21, 1954 – his eighth birthday. The family would soon move to Montreal, and would allegedly, over the next 50 years, carve out a place as both the biggest name in Canadian crime and as one of the world’s most significant and influential Mafia clans.
Nicolo (Nick) Rizzuto Jr., named for his grandfather Nicolo, was the eldest of Vito Rizzuto and Giovanna Cammalleri’s three children, raised on Antoine Berthelet Street in the north end of Montreal.
Vito would obtain Canadian citizenship, but never forgot his Sicilian roots. The family hails from Cattolica Eraclea, a remote rural village in the mountains of Sicily, home to 5,000 people.
It is from this patch of land that some of the world’s most rapacious drug traffickers have come. Starting in the 1950s, the organization branched out around the world.
Some members moved to Venezuela. Others came to Canada. The relocations were strategic moves to secure key transit points in the movement of heroin and cocaine between Europe and the Americas.
Throughout the 90s, Vito twice faced – and beat – serious drug charges in Canada, earning him the nickname “Teflon Don.” But he couldn’t escape charges in 2004, after informants gave sworn testimony that he was behind the murders of three mobsters, captains of the Bonanno crime family, one of New York City’s five big Sicilian Mafia families.
The statements led to Vito being arrested inside his Montreal mansion early in the morning of Jan. 20, 2004. He was extradited to face trial for racketeering in New York and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was released from a Colorado prison on Oct. 5. He returned to Canada the same day, landing at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
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Nick Rizzuto Jr.
According to his business associate Tony Magi and several police sources, Nick Rizzuto was involved in real-estate development, specifically two residential projects in LaSalle and Lachine.
Although Nick Jr. was believed by police to have been involved in his father’s affairs, his criminal record did not reflect a career in organized crime. From 1991 to 1994, he was convicted of impaired driving three times, but he never faced charges related to organized crime.
In 1995, Nick Jr. married the daughter of Emanuele Ragusa, a man considered to be a very influential figure in the Rizzuto organization. Ragusa received a lengthy prison term after pleading guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering.
Nick Jr. was killed in broad daylight outside a construction company on Dec. 28, 2009.
Recent developments
The following May, Paolo Renda, the Rizzuto family’s consigliere, and son-in-law of Nicolo Rizzuto, disappeared. His luxury car was found close to his home, with the keys in the ignition and the windows down. He hasn’t been seen since.
A month later, Agostino Cuntrera, considered a possible successor to Vito Rizzuto, was shot dead.
Cuntrera was alleged to have aided in the 1978 slaying of Paolo Violi, reputed to be the don of the Calabrian faction led by Vic Cotroni. Cuntrera was thought to have assumed the reins of the Montreal clan after Vito Rizzuto’s arrest a decade earlier, controlling a group of drug traffickers out of a Montreal cafe.
The family patriarch, 86-year-old Nicolo Rizzuto, was shot dead in his home on Nov. 10, 2010. He was having dinner with his wife and daughter at the time.
The Rizzuto family has come up repeatedly at the Quebec corruption inquiry. Police surveillance video of Nicolo Rizzuto stuffing cash into his socks at a reputed organized crime hangout was shown. There was testimony that Vito Rizzuto was heavily involved in deciding which companies would receive contracts for roadwork in Montreal.
The organized crime terrain has shifted since the 66-year-old Rizzuto was extradited to the United States and there’s little he will recognize now.
The scope of those changes extends from his own family to international drug routes.
His son and father have both been murdered, his brother-in-law is missing, his father-in-law has passed away from natural causes, and numerous friends are either in jail or dead.
As for his empire, it has been under attack since a spate of firebombings on certain businesses in recent years.
An RCMP analyst at Quebec’s inquiry last week offered an observation similar to what has been speculated for a few years – that a faction of the Calabrian Mafia, the ’Ndrangheta, based in Ontario, has taken over. The Sicilian clan headed by Rizzuto is still around, but weakened.
– With files from The Canadian Press, Postmedia News
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