by Lamothe, Lee
When the gunfire stopped, all the survivors except Massino and Vitale raced out of the club.
“The only one standing in the room other than the three dead bodies was Joseph Massino,” an amazed Vitale said, recalling the scene. “Everybody else was gone.”
Time has not been kind to those involved in the murder of the three captains, an act that has since become a rich part of popular lore, forming the core of a multitude of trials and police investigations, and being colorfully re-created and immortalized on film in the Hollywood movie Donnie Brasco.
Several of the notorious men involved would later be imprisoned, likely for the rest of their lives. Others would go on to shatter their oath of omertà, the Mafia’s vow of silence, and cooperate with government agents to far-reaching effect. Still others would, themselves, be killed in the continuing gangland intrigue; one would die in a plane crash and another under even more unusual circumstances—hanging, face-to-face with his son, both officially declared to have committed suicide. One by one, each of them would fall—at the wrong end of a gun, through life imprisonment or in a freak incident. All but one.
Vito Rizzuto is the last man standing.
“The significant factor surrounding these murders is that Vito Rizzuto, Nick Rizzuto’s son, is suspected of being involved,” concludes a confidential FBI report from 1985—almost prescient as it was written 20 years before there were informants filling in the extensive blanks of what authorities knew of the mysterious murders. The same report outlines with some amazement the Rizzuto family’s central role as a hub for extensive criminal interests in America, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, France and Switzerland, noting Vito’s and his father’s relationships with some of the world’s most significant drug barons. More recent investigations would add China, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Haiti, Belize, Bahamas, Aruba, Dominican Republic and Panama to the list of the family’s international interests. Two decades ago, FBI special agents wrote with a growing sense of alarm that Vito, a shadowy mob figure based in Canada, was not only trusted to carry out this most sensitive bit of internal Bonanno business but also operated with seeming autonomy and impunity around the world. Compared to what New York-based authorities were used to looking at, largely homegrown gangsters lording it over turf they could drive across in a leisurely afternoon, the breadth of geography and intertwining connections of the Rizzuto organization surprised even seasoned investigators.
Within the blood-splattered walls of the Brooklyn social club, the Sixth Family had emerged with a deafening crescendo. The Canadian connection had been made.
The New York mob had gotten a taste of a gangster who would eventually eclipse them all.
This is the story of a war, of a family and of a man. It documents a hard struggle for the biggest prize in crime—the New York drug market. At the same time, it reveals the hidden history of the family that helped wage and win that war. Finally, it tells the story of the man who heads that family and how he runs the family business, an enterprise that grew within three generations from a small operation in rural Sicily to a mammoth, North American-based crime corporation with grasping hands reaching around the globe.
Vito Rizzuto is a man of many parts. He is the product of a strong family from a tough place. Without the drugs and the murders, the story of the Sixth Family would be an illustrious and celebrated tale of success, drive and ambition; a story of tradition, culture, love and hate. But the story cannot be told without noting the movement of massive quantities of drugs and the copious murders, because the vast, alarmingly successful global operation that the Sixth Family built, expanded and assiduously protects is a franchise for drugs: heroin at the outset, then cocaine, hashish, ecstasy—whatever the market demands, whatever turns a profit. This book, however, is not meant to be a tawdry account of the day-to-day life of a gangster, but rather a probing and lasting examination of a criminal dynasty that made “Rizzuto” one of the most important names in the world of crime.
The Sixth Family is as much a genuine family as it is an organization. A careful examination of the major players shows that blood ties and marital links are an integral part of its operation. It grows slowly and carefully, often absorbing new members when an acolyte, or one of their children, marries a child or sibling of another key operational player, suggesting either the insular nature of the families or a crafty, purposeful plan. The result is a family tree that in its roots and in many of its branches closely mirrors police reports on important criminal networks. It is a hallmark that distinguishes the Sixth Family from the Five Families of New York, which recruit neighborhood crooks based on a pattern of high-paying scores, a materialistic standard of loyalty that has proven to be a weak foundation.
The Sixth Family is not a term the organization uses to describe itself. Rather, it is a name coined by the authors of this book to describe the network of clans that has gelled around the Rizzuto organization, a term chosen to highlight both the close ties between its members and its place in the underworld alongside the Five Families of New York City.
The Sixth Family is a blend of unvarnished capitalism and globalization, tempered only by loyalty and a deep criminal culture more than a century old, although it is bound more by its own personal relationships than by archaic Mafia rituals. The Sixth Family is a tight web of drug-trafficking clans. Instead of maintaining a geographic base in Sicily, like traditional Mafia families, they consider the globe their village; instead of beating a profit out of the streets of New York, like many of their Mafia confederates, they make the world their marketplace.
While New Yorkers retain memories of colorful mobsters such as John Gotti, Chicago clings to the legend of Al Capone, and Montreal still reminisces about its old Godfather, Vic Cotroni, the entire world can claim the Sixth Family. For the Sixth Family lays claim to the world.
CHAPTER 1
AGRIGENTO PROVINCE, SICILY, 2006
A narrow road, carved from the chalky hills of southern Sicily, cuts north at Montallegro from the coastal highway that links the major cities of Agrigento and Trapani. As the road bends and twists its way some seven miles north and 600 feet up, sun-bleached vistas alternately rise and fall from the sides of the pavement. Scrub brush and thin bunches of long green grass poke out of dusty soil that clings tenuously to rocky, mountainous hilltops. An occasional farmhouse dots the land, set behind hard-won fields of grapevines and hardy crops such as pistachio trees, olive groves and ancient almond orchards.
Enchanting, tranquil, rustic—a host of adjectives can describe such Old World scenes, and on a map, Cattolica Eraclea looks like any one of the hundreds of hilltop villages that define Italy’s island of Sicily. On the outskirts of town, as the road flattens, a recently erected sign comes into view, offering travelers hospitality in three languages: “Benvenuti,” “Willkommen” and “Welcome” to Cattolica Eraclea. The sign then lists the location and phone numbers of the Carabinieri, the federal police force, and the Polizia Municipale, the local police detachment.
Around a bend, set on a small traffic island, there is another sign announcing the town. This sign is rusted, pockmarked and marred with graffiti, suggesting a certain malaise has set in, an idea reinforced by the absence among the tall, orange-tiled houses of the low cranes and scaffolding that signal new construction and remodeling in most Sicilian towns. The inordinate number of newer high-end automobiles navigating the narrow streets—with BMW the favorite and Alfa Romeo not far behind—belies the appearance of Cattolica Eraclea as a poor village with few prospects.
Small-town Sicily is known to hospitably welcome the children and grandchildren of émigrés to the Americas who make a pilgrimage back to the old country to see where their ancestors came from and to visit the graves of known and unknown relatives—in Sicilian terms, to respect the tradition of sangu de me sangu, “blood of my blood.” In Cattolica Eraclea, however, responses to questions about how old the church is or how to get to the cemetery are not met with a smile and a dizzying monologue about
the town. Despite the welcoming roadside sign, answers provided to strangers are abrupt and precise. Instead of the usual friendly inquisitiveness about one’s family—when they left and where they went—you are likely to be followed by a sinister-looking man in one of those BMWs, a person to be encountered three or four more times as you walk among the graves of the town cemetery, allowing you to leave his sight only when you reach the town limits.
The residents’ suspicions probably spring from the simple fact that the town and its surrounding province of Agrigento have, over several decades, given the world some of its most rapacious drug-trafficking clans.
Cattolica Eraclea is a community of some 6,000 people that is missed by a wide margin on each side by the twin highways and rail lines connecting the cities of Palermo and Agrigento, infrastructures that look as if they have made considerable effort to bend around the town. This no doubt contributes to the rarity of tourists, a fact that speaks to the absence of hotels. It is as if the people just wish to be left alone. That is not to say the town is without its visual charm. The old Town Hall, for instance, and the original Borsellino palace, built in 1764, the town’s clock tower, the powerful architectural statement of the Fascist-era Palazzo Municipale and the Mother Church Dedicated to the Holy Spirit, with its lofty bell tower and double-decker stone columns, are pleasing marvels.
Another church of some beauty is la Chiesa della Madonna del Rosario, the Church of the Madonna of the Rosary. It is a testament to the religious roots of a town named for its faith—Cattolica is Italian for “Catholic”—that a village of such size would have so many churches. The Chiesa del Rosario, as it is commonly known, features an imposing stone façade broken only by a circular window set with a stained-glass portrait of the Virgin Mary praying over the infant Jesus. Built in 1638 and topped by three bells in an open tower, the formidable exterior of the church gives way to a surprisingly bright nave inside, where rows of wooden pews lead to a sunlit apse and intricately carved altar. Parishioners still gather in this venerable church that casts its wide shadow over Via Ospedale, a narrow street near the center of Cattolica Eraclea.
In modest homes along Via Ospedale, a short, dead-end street, the nucleus of the Sixth Family began to form. It was in a house here that Nicolò Rizzuto was born on February 18, 1924, and it was here also that Nicolò would marry and would welcome the birth of his first child, a son. Born on February 21, 1946, that beloved bambino would be called Vito, in honor of Nicolò’s long-dead father—a man who gave Nicolò his start in life as well as a criminal pedigree, but a father he would never personally know.
Nicolò Rizzuto’s father, Vito, was born to Nicolò Rizzuto and Giuseppa Marra on April 12, 1901, and grew up in Cattolica Eraclea. And just as the names would be handed down through the ages—with the Vito Rizzuto of today being the son of Nicolò who is the son of Vito who is the son of Nicolò—a desire to move to the New World also extended through the generations.
CATTOLICA ERACLEA, SICILY, 1924
The previous generation’s Vito Rizzuto was slim and fit, standing 5-foot-6 with a strong jaw, brown eyes, a full head of chestnut-colored hair and a modest scar low on the left side of his forehead. He decided to leave Cattolica Eraclea in 1924.
Rizzuto had moved into a home on Via Ospedale in 1919, months after the close of the First World War. He appears to have then completed a post-war stint in the Italian army—but even there he could not resist his outlaw urgings. On June 23, 1921, he was sentenced by the Military Tribunal of Rome to two months’ incarceration in a military jail for theft. At the age of 22, on March 9, 1923, he married Maria Renda, a family friend, relative and neighbor who was three years his senior. Just 10 months before he left Sicily—never to return—he and Maria had their first and only child, Nicolò.
There was no doubt sadness and uncertainty at leaving his young family behind, but both husband and wife must have taken some comfort in knowing that the other would remain among family despite their separation. Maria Renda and baby Nicolò would live on the same short street, perhaps even in the same house, as the Rizzutos. For her part, Maria knew that her husband was leaving Sicily accompanied by her brother, Calogero Renda. Calogero was two inches shorter and a year younger than Rizzuto. With a darker complexion and a mole on his left cheek, Calogero appeared to be a man of some means—he owned fashionable clothes and had the ability to travel internationally. (On February 1, 1923, police in Agrigento issued him a passport, #126/241107, allowing him to travel to Buenos Aires, Argentina.) Calogero also lived on Via Ospedale in Cattolica Eraclea, with his mother, Grazia Spinella. By 1924, his father, Paolo Renda, was already dead.
Vito Rizzuto and Calogero Renda planned their departure during extraordinary times in Italy. Benito Mussolini, the Fascist leader, was turning the crisis over the murder of socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti, his most potent political rival, into an opportunity. Matteotti disappeared in June 1924 as he was delivering withering denunciations of Mussolini. A month later, Matteotti’s decomposing body was found in a shallow grave outside Rome. The political storm that followed this obvious assassination at the hands of the Fascists weakened Mussolini and for months there was doubt about his ability to retain power. In December, he promised to reconvene parliament after Christmas to discuss electoral reform. In the New Year, instead of concessions, however, Mussolini seized full dictatorial powers.
It was at that very time of political uncertainty that Rizzuto, Renda and four close friends planned their departure, heading north past Rome. By December 1924, they had crossed the border into France. A few days after arriving in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a northern port city near Calais on the English Channel, the six friends bought third-class tickets for passage to America. It was a meandering trip, more a tourist cruise than an immigrant steamer. The S.S. Edam left Rotterdam, its home port with the Holland-America Line, and stopped in Boulogne-sur-Mer on December 14, 1924, to collect Rizzuto and his pals before crossing the Atlantic over Christmas and New Year’s. The ship arrived in Havana, Cuba, on January 5, 1925, and then left for Tampico, Mexico, arriving there on January 16, before finally heading to America.
It was a suspiciously unusual and expensive route for supposedly simple laborers from rural Sicily immigrating to America. Rizzuto and Renda, however, seemed to have unusual reasons.
NEW ORLEANS, JANUARY 19, 1925
When the S.S. Edam drew into port at New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S. immigration officials were far more concerned with two Cuban stowaways who had crept aboard the ship in Havana than with Vito Rizzuto and his entourage, all of whom presented American officials with the required paperwork and visas. The rules for immigrants from Italy had recently changed as the United States grew increasingly concerned about the continuing waves of new arrivals. As of July 1, 1924, a quota system was imposed on Italian immigrants, sharply limiting the number that could legally enter America. Every Italian émigré needed an immigrant quota visa issued prior to their departure by the U.S. State Department.
As Vito Rizzuto led his small group off the S.S. Edam, Immigration Inspector J.W. McVey examined the quota visas and identity papers for each of them.
Giving his occupation as “laborer” and falsely declaring himself to be single, Rizzuto listed his next-of-kin as his father, Nicolò, in Cattolica Eraclea. He said he was able to read and write in Italian and was arriving in America for the first time with the intention of becoming a citizen. As required, he declared he was not a polygamist, an anarchist or an advocate of overthrowing the U.S. government; he had not been in prison or an insane asylum and was not “deformed or crippled.” He was in good health and carried with him $40 in cash to fund his new life. His final destination, he claimed, was New Orleans, where he was joining his cousin, Pietro Marino.
Next to present himself to Inspector McVey was Calogero Renda. Like Rizzuto, he declared himself a laborer suitable for immigration and intent on becoming a citizen. He gave his next-of-kin as his mother, had $35 with him and, like Rizzuto, had plans to stay
with Pietro Marino, whom he described as his uncle.
Also traveling with Rizzuto were four other men, one more from his hometown of Cattolica Eraclea and three from Siculiana, a Mafia stronghold just 12 miles to the south. The two towns were closely linked, socially and criminally, and citizens from each would later work together to build the Sixth Family into one of the world’s most successful criminal enterprises.
Mercurio Campisi was the next to be inspected. He was a friend of the Rizzutos who lived on the same street, Via Ospedale, in Cattolica Eraclea. His father, Salvadore, remained there. At the age of 37, Campisi was an experienced traveler. He had lived in the U.S. from 1911 until 1915 and again in the early 1920s and appears several times in passenger manifests and immigration records, shuttling back and forth between Sicily and the United States. Unbeknownst to officials in New Orleans at the time, just a year earlier he had been detained and deported after arriving illegally in New York. This time, Campisi had $50 with him and said he was heading to Seattle to join his uncle, Alfonso Vaccarino.
