Business or Blood

by Peter Edwards

  At 10:10 a.m., police arrived to see the motionless body of Salvatore Montagna lying on the snowy shore. At 11:34, the acting boss of the Bonanno crime family was pronounced dead at Le Gardeur hospital.

  As police analyzed the crime scene, a Montrealer flew to Toronto Island airport and went to a restaurant in Yorkville. There, he sat down with two members of the Commisso crime family. The lunch over, he returned to the airport and immediately flew home to Montreal.

  Later that day, some of Desjardins’s men finally had time to do something truly pleasant: visit the newborn baby in hospital.

  One life had ended and another had just begun.

  CHAPTER 30

  Someone’s watching

  Raynald Desjardins couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched. Again. Were those Italians that his wife saw in a navy blue Explorer near his home? What about that suspicious-looking man wearing a cap in a grey Mitsubishi? It was hard to sneak up on Desjardins at home, as the front of his house faced the river, with little room to park, and the back of his home was carved out of stone, with no yard. Still, the failed attack by the hit man on the Sea-Doo reminded the Montreal mobster that there was always room for improvement when it came to home security.

  There was talk in Desjardins’s circle about how Montagna had met with some relatives of Paolo Violi in Toronto along with “Turkey,” the nickname for Moreno Gallo. They weren’t worried about revenge for Montagna’s murder, though. Neither the Violis nor Gallo were likely to care enough to avenge his death. Gallo likely had his own security concerns, as police notified him shortly after the murder that they thought his life was also in danger.

  Meanwhile, Mirarchi stressed when he thought of the well-being of his son and daughter. If something happened to him, hopefully it wouldn’t be at a time when his family was present. The rest he could take.

  By midday November 26, 2011, RCMP officers were eyeballing a suburban townhome on Queensbury Drive on the outskirts of Ottawa, which served as Jack Simpson’s hideout. Inside, grey-haired Simpson grew more restless by the hour. Just hanging out in Ottawa’s colourless suburbs felt like a near-death experience. Perhaps he could rent a motel room with a weekly rate in Montreal. He could return by bus. Maybe they would give him a phone and another to his girlfriend so they could at least talk.

  There had been a seventeen-piece brass band and twenty-three cars laden with flowers for the funeral of Vic (The Egg) Cotroni. At the funeral of the Egg’s younger brother, Frank (The Big Guy) Cotroni, a white dove was released for each of the seventy years of his life. Matters of ceremony were far more restrained when it came time to put Salvatore Montagna into the cold ground of a country where he was born but never really accepted.

  Just six dozen people showed up on November 27, 2011, for his funeral service at Notre Dame de Pompei church on Sauvé Street East, near Saint-Michel Boulevard. That paled against the hundreds of mourners at the recent funerals of Nicolò and Agostino Cuntrera. There were only female members of the Arcuri family paying their respects. Domenico Arcuri Sr. had introduced Montagna to members of the Montreal underworld, but now he was too fearful for his security to see him off. Just two limousines carried wreaths of flowers for the New Yorker. The most notable arrangement was from Montagna’s daughters, which read: we will never forget you.

  The day after Montagna’s funeral, Jack Simpson still couldn’t overcome his overpowering sense of restlessness in Ottawa. Crashing down from the adrenalin rush of Montreal’s milieu to being housebound in the staid nation’s capital in the dead of winter was a shock. His boredom ended that day when officers arrived at his door with a warrant for his arrest on parole violation, as he wasn’t supposed to leave the province of Quebec without permission. His explanation that he was job hunting didn’t impress anyone, and he was ordered to drop to the floor and was handcuffed. On a coffee table, in plain view, was his BlackBerry. There was a bundle of hundred-dollar bills in a bag on his bed, adding up to ten thousand dollars.

  Fear seeped into the Desjardins group until it was all-consuming. Would police come calling for them next? Could there be a rat in their group? They heard on November 30, 2011, of the arrest of someone in their circle nicknamed “Moe.” Moe was close to Simpson. Was there a connection between the two arrests? Next came word that someone had been shot, but the identity of the victim was unclear.

  With the new boss of the Bonanno crime family lying dead in a cold Canadian grave, the silence from the organization’s power base spoke volumes. Montagna had boasted of the dozens of New York mobsters who would rally to his side. Racked by informers and arrests, the onceproud Bonanno family was in no position to mete out vengeance or even to divine what had just happened north of the border.

  Montagna’s assassination left plenty of mobsters in Montreal nervously wondering: what happens to Montagna’s allies now that he’s dead? Antonio (Tony Suzuki) Pietrantonio got his answer when a gunman opened fire on him on December 13, 2011, outside a Jarry Street East grill, just south of the Métropolitain expressway. Pietrantonio survived, despite serious injuries. The would-be assassin’s getaway car was found blocks away, near the corner of Jacques-Casault and Joseph-Quintal streets. As Tony Suzuki recovered, there would be plenty of time for his would-be killers to reload.

  Within hours, Sergeant Benoit Dubé and Detective Sergeant Martin Robert of the Sûreté du Québec drove back to Desjardins’s Laval home in an attempt to talk about the failed hit on Tony Suzuki. Police asked if he had received any threats and Desjardins replied that all was well and he didn’t need a thing.

  That afternoon, the detectives drove out to Tony Suzuki’s home on pine-tree-lined Des Ancêtres Street in Sainte-Adèle, to discuss the attempt on his life. They didn’t get closer to him than his outdoor intercom. They asked if he had received any threats. He replied that all was going well and he too didn’t need a thing.

  Jonathan Mignacca had been free on bail since November 16, 2011, but his conditions included one against him going into Laval, except for court appearances or to see his lawyer. He specifically was not allowed to associate with Raynald Desjardins. That wasn’t much good if he was supposed to be the mobster’s bodyguard. On December 28, 2011, an old blue four-door Volkswagen sat parked in front of Desjardins’s Laval home. It might be nothing. In happy times, gangsters cruise the streets in Escalades and BMWs. When they’re trying to sneak about, they turn to Fusions and Volkswagens.

  Jack Simpson was already behind bars in Kingston Penitentiary on December 20, 2011, when he was charged with first-degree murder for the death of Salvatore Montagna. Also that day, the Sûreté du Québec arrested Vittorio Mirarchi and seized his BlackBerry. Calogero Milioto was also charged that day with the murder of Montagna and possession of firearms. His BlackBerry Curve was seized from a coat pocket.

  The SQ executed a search warrant in the Anjou apartment of twenty-seven-year-old Felice (Pony) Racaniello, where they found the construction worker’s chrome and black BlackBerry 9300 in a kitchen wine rack. A BlackBerry model 9800 was found in a pocket of Racaniello’s coat and it was confiscated as well.

  The SQ arrested and charged Desjardins without incident at his office at 10310 Secant Street, and seized a BlackBerry and an iPad. Mirarchi, who up to this point had enjoyed a low public profile and had no criminal record, was hit with the same first-degree-murder charge as his mentor. Forty-year-old Calogero Milioto and fifty-nine-year-old Pietro Magistrale were arrested on weapons charges as police unearthed a small arsenal of rifles and handguns.

  In total, some two hundred officers from the SQ, the RCMP and the municipal forces of Montreal, Longueuil and Laval executed sixteen search warrants on December 20, scooping up pistols, bulletproof vests, large sums of money and several more BlackBerrys. The Desjardins crew could only hope their devices’ message security was as good as the company’s reputation.

  Desjardins stopped and looked towards the waiting news cameras as he stepped out of the prisoners’ van. Officers on the rooftop with mi
litary-level rifles scanned the assembled journalists as he waved to someone in the group. In some quarters, the native-born Quebecker was now considered to be Quebec’s most important organized crime player, and he looked every inch the part. He appeared confident and solid, like someone who felt in control, even if he was getting out of a police van in shackles to face a murder beef. It was much like the V-for-victory pose Mom Boucher of the Hells Angels had struck for press cameras after he had been initially acquitted on two murder charges. If the media had to take their photos and video, Vito’s former sidekick wasn’t going to blink in front of the cameras.

  CHAPTER 31

  Homeward bound

  Moreno Gallo liked to describe himself as a family man and a Little Italy baker who gave back to the community. That was accurate as far as it went, but hardly a complete description. The Canada Border Services Agency was less charitable, calling him someone with an “active implication in organized crime.” Authorities also noted that he was vulnerable for deportation. Gallo had lived in Canada since 1954, when he arrived from Calabria at age nine to join his father. He had never bothered to take out citizenship, and that came back to bite him hard in the winter of 2012, when he was a sixty-six-year-old man.

  For a time, the wealthy baker protested his innocence through lawyers and fought the deportation to Italy. “I was nine when I arrived in Canada,” he told court through his lawyer. “I have no recollection of Italy.” He suddenly reversed course in late January 2012, agreeing to leave of his own accord. He sold his $1.2-million home in Laval, on the shore of the Rivière des Prairies, apparently deciding that life outside Canada was preferable to a possible burial in Montreal. “He understood that if he had stayed here, he would have been vulnerable,” his lawyer, Stephen Fineberg, told reporters. “He chose to live in total freedom overseas.” Gallo might once have been considered a mediator in the underworld, but these were tough times for peacemakers. The underworld was split into Vito’s friends and Vito’s enemies, with no safe ground in between.

  In March 2012, a New York Post story suggested Vito was slipping emotionally. The article quoted an unnamed source from the Florence, Colorado, prison as reporting that Vito said: “I do not just want to be the godfather of Canada. I want to be the godfather of the world.” The report also quoted unnamed American police sources as saying they believed the hit on Sal Montagna was ordered by Vito. The first statement about Vito was questionable. The second one was clearly wrong, but the fact that it was believed was a tribute to Vito’s former stature. It was also an accepted truth that Vito would have to return to Montreal once he was released in early October 2012. Vito was a proud man, and to avoid the city after the murders of his son and father would be a public admission of defeat.

  Gallo’s decision to flee Montreal seemed wise, as bodies kept falling in his old milieu and paranoia was the new norm. Closure Colapelle chose to stay. Around 6 p.m. on March 1, 2012, a bullet caught Desjardins’s spy as he sat in his SUV outside a pub in a Saint-Léonard strip mall near the intersection of Langelier and Lavoisier boulevards. Closure had always felt that killers would come after him, if they couldn’t get to Desjardins and Mirarchi. The dead spy had been right.

  Giuseppe (Joe) Renda feared he was possibly next in line for a hit man’s bullet. A decade ago, he had been one of Vito’s point men in Ontario. Then it had seemed a safe bet to hitch his saddle to Montagna, but those days too were long gone, and now it was time to duck and look for cover. The murder of Larry Lo Presti had shaken him. Then there was the attempted murder of Tony Suzuki and a visit by police saying his life was in danger. Still, he had to make a living. He presented himself like a rich man but had a crushing mortgage on a luxurious stone home on De Maisonneuve Boulevard in Westmount and outstanding utility bills and taxes to the tune of almost $600,000.

  On May 4, 2012, he reportedly had a business meeting with someone from the old Agostino Cuntrera camp. At ten-thirty that morning, he said goodbye to his wife Benedetta (Betty) and walked out the door. Betty notified police when he didn’t return by suppertime. His car was later discovered on Saint-Urbain Street in Little Italy. Forensic testing yielded nothing. Six days after he went missing, police searched a building under renovation on Jeanne-Mance. Again they didn’t find a thing. The fifty-three-year-old left no clues behind, just a massive debt. His home was sold for $1.15 million and his widow declared bankruptcy, sold her Mercedes and moved into a condo with relatives. Her husband had been known as a discreet man. Now she and police believed he was the victim of an equally discreet abductor.

  The remains of Vito’s side took a hit in July 2012 when Rocco (Sauce) Sollecito was arrested on a parole violation, after he was spotted in a Laval bar with men who had criminal records. He had been free for a year and was due for full, unconditional release in October, less than two weeks after Vito was due back in Canada on parole. By then he wouldn’t have to report to parole officers at all, but now he’d spend the time until his statutory release back in prison.

  Sollecito’s rearrest came a week after his son Giuseppe (Joe) Sollecito was sentenced to six months in jail and fined $200,000 for keeping the Rizzuto family gambling house on Jean-Talon East, along with Nick Jr. Joe Sollecito also ran a thrift store and pizzeria in Florida. Nicola Di Marco had already been hit with a $50,000 fine and an eighteen-month jail term in the case. Another co-accused was Giuseppe (Closure) Colapelle, but he had met his fate before the case got to court.

  There weren’t huge headlines when, on Sunday, July 16, 2012, sixty-year-old Walter Ricardo Gutierrez was killed in a hail of gunshots while walking towards his west-end home. There were nods that Gutierrez had been involved in the mid-1990s with Vito’s group in money laundering, along with lawyers Joseph Lagana, Richard Judd and Vincenzo Vecchio. Back then, Vito was always reported in the press as too elusive for police ever to capture. More recently, the Montreal Gazette had taken to referring to his family with the phrase “once-powerful.”

  Still, Vito’s group seemed to have bite. His name was whispered after street gang leader Chénier Dupuy was shot dead that August as he sat in an SUV outside a restaurant. Hours later, assassins ended the life of Dupuy’s friend Lamartine Sévère Paul outside his apartment building in Laval.

  There was talk that Dupuy had recently attended a meeting of street gang leaders in Sainte-Adèle, where he refused to join a new street-gang alliance run by black biker Gregory Wooley, who was close to Vito. There also was talk that an intergenerational war was tearing apart the Reds street gang, also known as the Bo Gars (Cute Guys). While older members had an association with Vito, younger ones were hungry and frustrated at being left little more than crumbs.

  The same week as the murders of Dupuy and Paul, Riccardo Ruffullo, a man with Mafia links, was slain in his Côte-des-Neiges penthouse condominium. Not surprisingly, the mood in the milieu was one of hyper-alertness and caution. Vito was coming home soon and people would be called to account for their actions, or lack of action, while he was gone. Maria Mourani, author of two books on street gangs and a Bloc Québécois member of Parliament, told the Montreal Gazette that others in the underworld were equally stressed: “One of my sources said there are people sleeping in hotel rooms under false names.”

  When it might be safe to return home was anyone’s guess, but for those who’d laid claim to a piece of Rizzuto turf in Vito’s absence, things were about to get a whole lot worse before they got better.

  CHAPTER 32

  Vito’s return

  There is a monument in a small square in Cattolica Eraclea to honour Giuseppe Spagnolo, the town’s first democratically elected mayor. It reads simply, Giuseppe Spagnolo, sindaco, leader politico, ucciso dalla mafia, for the union leader and politician, assassinated by the Mafia in 1955. It was Spagnolo’s son Liborio who would later recall Nicolò Rizzuto as a confident young campiere, charming and tough, preferring words to violence. One of Giuseppe Spagnolo’s killers was hidden by a local priest before fleeing to York Region, and convicted
in absentia of the murder after he was on Canadian soil. He was Leonardo Cammalleri, a member of the cosca, or crime group, of Mafia boss Antonino (Don Nino) Manno. The convicted killer Cammalleri was also the father-in-law of Nicolò Rizzuto ’s son, Vito. In the Mafia, such stories wither and drop from view, but they seldom really end. They just wind into other narratives.

  Italian authorities never pressed for Cammalleri’s extradition and Canadian authorities showed no interest in pushing the case further, despite emotional entreaties from Spagnolo’s daughter, who also settled in the Toronto area. On November 26, 1966, Cammalleri was concerned enough about the possibility of his arrest that he stayed outside a Toronto church in his car while Vito married his daughter Giovanna. Among those who made the trip from Montreal for the wedding that day was rising mobster Paolo Violi.

  Meanwhile, Rosario Gurreri, one of the witnesses who helped Sicilian police with their investigation, moved to Montreal, where he opened a small restaurant in the city’s Plateau neighbourhood. That was where his body was found on March 5, 1972, hacked a dozen times with a hatchet. As a final insult, a knife was stuck deep in his heart. No one was ever arrested for that crime either.

  Technically still wanted for the Giuseppe Spagnolo murder back in 1955, Leonardo Cammalleri drew his final breath in late September 2012 at age ninety-two in his north Montreal home. Vito was due to be released from prison on October 6, so it was only natural to wonder if he would attend his father-in-law’s funeral. It was still up in the air whether Cammalleri would be buried in York Region, where he lived much of his life, or in Montreal, where he spent his final years. The website of Complexe Funéraire Loreto contained no announcement. Wherever the funeral was to be held, it seemed imperative that Vito serve notice that he was not afraid to appear in plain sight of his enemies. Attendance at the funeral and visitation would also give him a chance to see who had the nerve to support him publicly and who would reveal where they stood by their absence.