Smiling Joe Di Maulo was embedded in the underworld by marriage as well as his own criminal activity. His wife was Raynald Desjardins’s sister and his daughter married Francesco Cotroni, the son of Frank (The Big Guy) Cotroni, not long after Francesco was released from prison after serving three years for his role in a contract killing. The Di Maulo–Cotroni nuptials were called “the marriage of the year in the Montreal milieu” by respected Journal de Montréal crime writer Michel Auger and further cemented Di Maulo’s already formidable contacts.
Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, it seemed that Vito, Desjardins and Smiling Joe Di Maulo really were untouchable. Desjardins and Smiling Joe had risen so high by this time that it was easy to forget they had both once been waiters. Desjardins’s name—and Vito’s—kept coming up in massive drug investigations, but charges never stuck. Smiling Joe preferred to stay away from the drug trade, finding other areas in which to prosper. Then, in 1994, came Desjardins’s arrest for cocaine smuggling. In that scheme he worked with the Hells Angels, and he oversaw at least eighteen other plots in an attempt to import seven hundred kilograms of cocaine. Vito’s shadow hung over the whole effort, but he was not charged. Desjardins proved unmanageable when finally in custody. A parole report later noted: “While at Parthenais, you were found in possession of two blades and you also assaulted another inmate in the face and injured his eye.” Worse yet, he tried to get two prisoners to murder another offender.
Desjardins could have done considerable damage to Di Maulo and Vito if he had been a weaker, chattier man. Even after he was sentenced to a fifteen-year term, Desjardins remained solid. Ratting out Vito or Joe Di Maulo would have bought him preferred treatment with prosecutors, but Desjardins didn’t give up the names of his associates. Desjardins quickly established himself as a feared man inside Leclerc medium-security institution in Laval. Guards felt he was trying to run Range 4AB. Known by fellow inmates as “the Millionaire,” he managed to get a jogging track repaired at his own expense and somehow secured a truck filled with three thousand dollars’ worth of seafood. It was “a spectacular way to show your strength and power within the institution,” the parole board said in a ruling, commenting on the exercise facility. He also managed to gain control of prison refrigerators and telephones and secure a computer for his cell. He and his cellblock cronies made daily calls to conduct business, even though that was obviously against prison policy.
By the end of 1995, Desjardins’s conduct was deemed so bad that he was transferred to maximum-security Donnacona Institution, about forty kilometres west of Quebec City, because of concerns for the safety of staff and inmates. Generally, prisoners are transferred from medium- to less restrictive minimum-security facilities, but Desjardins proved to be a dangerous exception. The parole board later claimed the move was necessary because of his extremely aggressive behaviour, which included his role at the centre of a war between two prison clans.
“These concerns included information from reliable sources relating to your need to control and intimidate; your links to the Hell’s [sic] Angels and involvement in the Italian Mafia; and the ‘contracts’ you put out on inmates and staff, including an alleged contract to murder inmate (name withheld) and one to poison inmate (name withheld). The Board of Investigation on the (name withheld) incident indicated that a ‘war’ existed between you and (name withheld) and that you put a ‘murder contract’ on him.” Exactly why he acted so aggressively was anyone’s guess, as he refused examination by psychologists or psychiatrists.
Faced with a criminal record that stretched back to 1971, authorities denied Desjardins day parole on October 31, 2000. “After reviewing all of the information, the members found that the attitudes and values that led you to this lifestyle in the first place had not changed,” the parole board ruled. “They found no indication of real remorse.” On August 29, 2002, the parole board again turned him down for day parole, rejecting any likelihood that he would steer clear of the life he’d left behind. “In the years immediately before your arrest, you led a life full of advantages: a luxurious residence, pleasure boats, a fleet of luxury cars, vacations, evenings out,” the board ruled. It concluded that he would likely resort to violence if he left prison.
Desjardins was finally freed on statutory release on June 2, 2004. By this time, he had drifted away from Vito. It also seemed doubtful that Desjardins would be hooking up publicly with his old chum and accomplice Vincenzo (Jimmy) Di Maulo, who was freed on day parole in 2004 after serving nearly a decade for his money-laundering conviction. Jimmy’s parole conditions were tight, barring him from associating with people “related to the drug milieu and/or organized crime, including your brother Joe Di Maulo, who is known as an influential member of the Montreal Mafia.”
Upon his release from prison, when Desjardins grandly announced that he was going to become a “construction entrepreneur,” plenty of skeptics in Quebec didn’t think a move into the construction industry was synonymous with going straight. If anything, it was a freeway into the province’s heartland of corruption.
CHAPTER 26
Fault lines
Lorenzo (Larry) Lo Presti grew up on Mafia Row, a few mansions down Antoine-Berthelet Avenue from Vito’s home. His aunt was married to Vito’s uncle, Domenico Manno, one of the tight circle of Rizzuto men involved in the Paolo Violi murder. Larry’s high school was Father McDonald Comprehensive, which Vito’s daughter, Bettina, also attended. There, Lorenzo talked like someone who wanted nothing other than to be a Mafioso, and he travelled with a muscular black youth who later became his bodyguard. In his high school yearbook, he declared “money is everything” as his motto and listed his ambition as “to be like my father.”
For many high school boys, the ambition of carrying on the family business would have been seen as mundane or perhaps sweet. For Larry, carrying on the family tradition was more complicated and dangerous. His father, Giuseppe (Joe) Lo Presti, was a partner with Nicolò Rizzuto in D.M. Transport, which was registered in 1972. The senior Lo Presti was also a suspect in the Paolo Violi murder back in 1978, although nothing was ever proven. Joe Lo Presti certainly was considered a man of some influence in the milieu, even though he deliberately went out of his way to keep a low profile, with muted suits and a soft monotone in conversation. Living in such grand accommodations, he also clearly had a lot of money for someone who was not in town much to tend to his construction or trucking businesses. In reality, Joe Lo Presti was the Montreal mob’s ambassador to the New York Bonanno family, and spent a good deal of his time south of the border brokering international drug deals.
After high school, Larry worked for a time running video poker machines with Nick Rizzuto Jr. Larry’s perspective changed forever late on the night of Wednesday, April 29, 1992, after police found his father’s body wrapped in plastic and dumped by the side of railway tracks in northeast Montreal. Joe Lo Presti’s pager was ringing as police approached his corpse. When they contacted the caller, they found it was twenty-three-year-old Larry, who was summoned in to identify his father at the Parthenais Street morgue.
The working police theory was that the senior Lo Presti had trusted his killer up until the final instant of his life, when someone put a small-calibre bullet in his head. Whoever he met in a downtown restaurant that day had likely set him up for murder, and perhaps also drove him to his death, since Lo Presti’s Porsche was found parked outside the restaurant. Perhaps that so-called friend even fired the fatal bullet. Did Lo Presti suspect anything was wrong as he left the restaurant? The killer left some four thousand dollars on the body, a sign of either arrogance or respect. The execution remained unsolved, but it was widely accepted by police that Vito’s hand guided the crime.
One theory concerned five kilograms of heroin that had gone missing in France. That heroin had been Lo Presti’s responsibility, and the gangsters who paid for shipment were in no mood for excuses. A second possibility was that New York mob boss John Gotti had ordered him killed for undisclo
sed reasons. With Gotti’s mercurial temper, lives often ended quickly with little explanation. Although Joe Lo Presti was Vito’s neighbour and close associate, if the second theory was true, Vito had apparently conceded to Gotti’s demand to sate the American’s anger.
Vito attended the funeral, and perhaps he felt true sadness, if not guilt, as the killing had been for business and not personal reasons. Not long after that, the Lo Presti family home on Mafia Row went up for sale and the family moved away. Any friendship Larry felt for Nick Jr. soon evaporated.
In the wake of his father’s death, it wasn’t surprising that Larry Lo Presti gravitated towards the American newcomer Montagna. Also leaning towards Montagna were Antonio (Waldo, W., Tony Suzuki) Pietrantonio and Domenico Arcuri Sr., who took it upon himself to introduce Montagna to others in the milieu who might become useful allies. One was Giuseppe (Closure) Colapelle, who was freed on parole back in June 2004, although he would prove more comfortable in the orbit of Raynald Desjardins.
As they jockeyed for new alliances, no one was about to publicly declare war on Vito’s family or anyone else. No one even wanted to acknowledge that the milieu had split into opposing camps. Far better to feign friendship and strike unexpectedly. On the surface, Vito’s former allies still got along and shared BlackBerry PINs. The smart phone’s purportedly unbeatable encryption capability was sought out by businessmen and politicians, including American president Barack Obama and the US Defense Department. Not surprisingly, for the same reasons, it was also popular with criminals.
Perhaps there was no need for a war with the Rizzutos. Vito’s family hadn’t retaliated after the murder of Nick Jr. or the disappearance of consigliere Paolo Renda. No response followed the murders of long-time Rizzuto family loyalist Agostino Cuntrera and his bodyguard Liborio Sciascia. The family appeared passive after the slaying of Nicolò. So it was understandable that many of Vito’s former associates found the prospect of aligning themselves with Salvatore Montagna or Raynald Desjardins to be a reasonable response to this new post-Rizzuto underworld order.
There were still a few glimmers of life on Vito’s side, if one looked hard enough. Vito loyalist Rocco (Sauce) Sollecito was paroled in June 2011. Police had already warned the sixty-two-year-old behind bars that his life was in danger. “Your file contains extensive information in connection with your safety,” a parole decision read. Sollecito replied to parole authorities that he planned to support himself through legal activities and his pension.
By the middle of 2011, there had been so much change for everyone in the milieu to process. To help his boss, Desjardins, keep up with the times, Giuseppe (Closure) Colapelle assumed the role of a full-blown underworld spy, keeping tabs on the movements of Montagna and his camp. Colapelle feigned respect for the New Yorker while at the same time mocking him behind his back, often calling him Nancy—“NY” for New York, apparently, with the rest added to feminize it.
Colapelle reported that Montagna had moved out of his home in Saint-Hubert and was staying in a hotel. Did that have something to do with his girlfriend being in town? Or was he trying to hide out from Desjardins? Why hadn’t he already moved to Woodbridge, Ontario, as planned?
Desjardins was on holiday in Europe with his wife in early August when Colapelle couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to explode. The Desjardins camp dripped with contempt for Montagna. When not calling him Nancy, they called him Mickey, short for Mickey Mouse. It was hard to take the newcomer from New York too seriously when he boasted that his guys would come by the dozens to support him. He sounded like a mouthy kid on the schoolyard, bragging about his tough big brother. Exactly where was his power base? What was left in New York? Was he talking about new contacts in Toronto, perhaps? Did the New Yorker really believe he could just show up in their city and take control?
As Desjardins chilled in Europe, black street gangs started venturing into cafés on Vito’s old turf and requesting envelopes—protection money. They weren’t collecting for themselves. If Montagna’s loudmouth men hadn’t already failed to impress Colapelle, here they were using black gang members as collectors, which he didn’t particularly like; somehow, it seemed more respectable when extortion payments were demanded by Italian mobsters.
Meanwhile, Colapelle worried about the possibility of an information leak in the Desjardins group and called upon them to change their BlackBerrys immediately. Whoever won the battle in cyberspace would likely win the war for the streets, and Closure didn’t plan to make these hostilities easy for his enemies.
At 5:34 p.m. on August 15, 2011, Desjardins returned to Trudeau International Airport in Montreal on Flight TS711, after thirty days in Italy, Corsica and France. When police later checked his passport, they would find no trace of the extended trip. They did find other out-of-the-country jaunts, including a trip to Colombia from February 7 to 24, 2011, and another trip there a few months later, from April 11 to 21. His passport was stamped for a trip to the Bahamas in November 2009 and to the Dominican Republic on December 28, 2009. Interestingly, that was the day of Nick Jr.’s murder. The Quebec Hells Angels had set up a charter in the Caribbean island earlier that year, giving themselves and Desjardins a place to tan and talk, hopefully away from the eyes of Canadian police.
Colapelle had much to tell his boss. There was the trouble with the black gangs, but their new boss remained the priority. They needed to keep a constant eye on Montagna, who had recently changed his cars. They also needed guns.
By late August, Colapelle heard talk that some of Montagna’s group would be playing golf in a tournament in a week’s time. Perhaps Mickey would be on the links with them; despite the American’s bluster, Colapelle had noticed that he actually kept a low profile. It would be a good chance to assess Mickey’s Montreal power base. Perhaps the Arcuris would be there in their golf togs. Colapelle had no doubt that the family of Domenico Arcuri Sr. was now deeply entrenched in the Montagna camp. Domenico Sr. had once been considered a Rizzuto ally, but those days were long gone. The Arcuris had a history of backing winners, stretching back to the Rizzuto–Violi wars. Domenico Sr. was believed to have taken part in setting up Paolo Violi’s 1978 execution, and it was Domenico Sr. who took over Violi’s old ice cream business afterwards. Soon he became known by the happy title of “King of Ice Cream.” Aside from making a tasty product, he also helped the company grow by bombing a competitor in 1983 who dared sell his wares at Italian banquet halls. If the King of Ice Cream wanted to continue backing winners, he had no more need for the Rizzutos.
Desjardins agreed to buy four tickets for the golf event, just to keep up the appearance of getting along. If the Desjardins side met with the Montagna people at the golf tournament, they would likely break out smiles and not guns. Civility helped keep an enemy off guard. Meanwhile, the Desjardins side looked about for more “toys,” a code word for guns. Pretence could keep the buildup of arms and resentments under wraps for only so long.
By mid-September 2011, there was talk among the Desjardins camp of another clumsy extortion attempt by the Montagna people. As the story went, some of Montagna’s men went to a baker who had recently set up shop and told him he could no longer sell cold meat, just bread. The squeezing of the baker was typical of Montagna’s aggressive, greedy push for pizzo, extortion money, which they preferred to think of as a tax.
Squeezing too hard on people outside the underworld—or “legits”—was a recipe for disaster. Squeeze legits too hard and they run to the police. Montagna didn’t seem to understand or care.
CHAPTER 27
Time for Tims
The rifle shots made a harsh, metallic sound. Not the soft pop-pop-pop firecracker report of lower-powered automatic pistols, these sounded like iron hammers pounding on steel spikes. A little after 9:30 a.m. on September 16, 2011, two dozen shots were heard, rapid-fire, from Lévesque Boulevard near the Highway 25 toll bridge. They sounded close to Desjardins’s luxury house on the Rivière des Prairies, in Laval’s Saint-Vincent-de-
Paul district. They were so loud they startled a lone passenger on a passing bus.
The gunfire originated near a clump of bushes on Desjardins’s property, close to the river, where he often met with contacts. He was getting into his new black BMW X5 when the shooting began. Bodyguard Jonathan (Kid) Mignacca was sitting half in his Jeep. He fired twice at the black gunman, who was at a disadvantage as he was shooting uphill. Mignacca’s show of force was enough to chase the assailant back to a waiting red Sea-Doo. Desjardins’s BMW was pockmarked with bullets, but he didn’t suffer a scrape. Mignacca received only minor wounds. The sole casualty that morning was the Sea-Doo, which was later discovered on the Montreal side of the river, torched.
Streets were closed off. Ford Fusions swarmed the area. Fusions were the cars of choice for undercover cops trying to look inconspicuous; several of them in one part of town was enough to make a pistol-packing gangster’s heart race. Members of Desjardins’s group let out a collective sigh of relief when they learned that their leader—known in the group as “Old” and “China”—was okay. He had spent only a little time in the back of a police cruiser for questioning. Mignacca was in hospital, but doing well. While police found no gun on him, there were gunpowder traces on his hands and he faced charges for discharging a weapon.
Desjardins was remarkably cool during the questioning by police. Someone with a machine gun had just tried to fill him in and he didn’t look a bit rattled. He also showed absolutely no interest in giving police any clues. They seized his car and Mignacca’s BlackBerrys, hoping analysis would reveal information the gangster wouldn’t.
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