Mitchell Janhevich couldn't believe what he was seeing. Inside a
noisy hotspot called The Joy Club one evening in May, 2003, the Montreal
beat cop spotted – amidst the frenzy of lights and sound – five
men huddled together in a VIP section. He immediately recognized one of
them as Vito Rizzuto, who seemed engaged in a sort of gangster get-together.
When Rizzuto and his friends left the club and climbed into a Mercedes
Benz, Janhevich followed them in his cruiser and eventually pulled them
over.
As Janhevich approached the Mercedes, a heated verbal exchange broke out
between the passengers and the police officer. Soon, Rizzuto lost his temper,
clambered from the car and stalked over to Janhevich. A tall man with hawkish
features, Rizzuto confronted Janhevich and demanded: "Do you have
any idea who I am?"
Rizzuto, one of Canada's most successful gangsters.
"Teflon Don": Montreal mafia kingpin
Janhevich knew perfectly well who Vito Rizzuto is, although most Canadians
would be hard-pressed to place the name. Which is surprising, given that
Rizzuto is considered the "Teflon Don" of Canada, due to his
success in evading conviction during the more than two decades he reigned
over Montreal's underworld. In fact, Victor "Vito" Rizzuto
is fairly unique in how he successfully merged old-world Sicilian Cosa
Nostra sensibilities with modern-day management methods in creating and
running his crime family.
Debonair, charming, with trademark swept-back iron hair, the 60
year-old Rizzuto has a healthy appetite for beautiful women, sports cars,
mansions, golf and haute cuisine. He is one of the most successful gangsters
this country has ever produced and, were it not for the fallibility of
the dons of the American mafia, he would likely be a free man to this
day.
Born into a prominant Sicilian mafia family
Rizzuto was bred to be a mafia prince. Born in 1946 in Cattolica Eraclea,
a small village of 6,000 in the mountainous province of Agrigento in Sicily,
Rizzuto is the oldest son of Nicolo "Nick" Rizzuto, a true "man
of honour" – the stony-eyed hard cases who belong to the Sicilian
Mafia.
When Vito was eight he and his family came to Canada, settling in Montreal,
part of a wave of Sicilian mafioso who emigrated to this country in the
1950s and would shape the criminal underworld for decades to come. In those
days, the New York-based Bonanno crime family considered Montreal part
of its territory, largely because of the convenience of the city's
port for offloading heroin shipments from Europe.
'Mafia Row' in Montreal - where the Rizzuto family home is located.
Nick Rizzuto joined the Bonanno organization, running a tough crew of
Sicilian gangsters and establishing himself as an up-and-comer in the Canadian
mob. As he came of age, Vito followed in his father's footsteps.
He became a Canadian citizen in 1966 and married Giovanna Cammelleri in
a classic mob-style wedding ceremony attended by Montreal's gangster
gentry. Two years later, the 22 year-old Rizzuto was arrested after
he and his brother-in-law burned down a barbershop for insurance money – his
only conviction ever. He was in jail for only a few months.
By the '70s, the Rizzutos and other Sicilians were at odds with
the leadership of the Bonanno's Montreal organization, then headed
by the volatile Calabrian, Paolo Violi. Finally, one night in 1978, the
Rizzutos' problem was solved: Violi was shot in the back of the head
as he sat down for a meal at a Montreal restaurant. His grisly slaying
ushered in the Rizzuto era.
A mafia-style shooting in New York
Vito's true mafia baptism occurred in 1981 when a factional tug-of-war
within the Bonnano family in New York led to the decision to murder three
dissident captains. A request went out to Montreal for hit men, and Vito
was dispatched as a shooter. On the night of May 5, 1981, the three mob
captains showed up at a hangout in Brooklyn, where gunmen immediately jumped
out of a closet and opened fire. The first person charging from the closet
was Vito Rizzuto.
A photo taken of Rizutto by FBI agents.
In Montreal, Vito embraced the day-to-day operations of the family. He
moved into a palatial house on a street called "Mafia Row",
due to the fact its occupants are mostly mobsters and their relatives.
His house is 4,300 square metres, with his father living in a similar spread
next door.
Vito established his presence in loan-sharking, gambling, drug smuggling,
and money-laundering. He formed alliances with other Italian-based crime
families, along with the Hell's Angels, Montreal's West End
Gang and South American cartels.
The glamorous - and dangerous - world of a gangster
Vito's routine was to rise at eleven o'clock every morning and
go to the Cosenza bar, a social club the family runs on Jarry St. East,
about thirty kilometers from their home. He is an avid golfer and could
often be found on the links around Montreal. He drove upscale cars, including
Lincolns, Mercedes, Jaguars and Corvettes. He owns resort property in Mexico
and always traveled with bodyguards outside of Montreal.
Yet police had little success curbing his operations. In the '80s,
Rizzuto was arrested twice for importing hash, but got off both times when
a witness changed his story and wiretaps used by police were deemed illegal.
Joe Pistone, an FBI plant in the Bonnano crime family, says violence is part
of life for any mafia member.
Vito Rizzuto's world is a violent one. In 1992, for example, Giuseppe
Lopresti, a neighbor of Vito's in Mafia Row and one of his
closest associates, was found in a vacant lot, murdered, his body wrapped
in a canvas sheet. He had been shot in the head, apparently because he'd
run afoul of the New York mob. In 1997, Hamilton mobster Johnny "Pops" Papalia
and his right-hand man were murdered. Papalia's death allowed Rizzuto
to extend his reach into Ontario.
New York mafia connection turns on Rizzuto
By the 1990s, Vito's organization was so powerful it was considered
stronger than most of New York's five Cosa Nostra families. But,
his fall from this pinnacle was due to the treachery of his American partners-in-crime
in the Bonanno family. The FBI had waged a relentless war against the New
York mafia and in 2001, they targeted the Bonanno family and its cunning
boss, Joey Massino. Their efforts to break the family paid off when Massino's
right-hand man, Salvatore Vitale, agreed to co-operate. Vitale fingered
Rizzuto as among the shooters in the 1981 killing of the three dissident
Bonanno captains. Consequently, on the early morning of January 20, 2004,
Vito was arrested at his home in Montreal.
In August, 2006, after Rizzuto's many appeals were exhausted, the
Montreal mobster was finally deported from his prison cell in Quebec to
New York where he now awaits trial. His father Nick, meanwhile, is still
alive and residing in Montreal, although who will oversee the Rizzuto organization
remains uncertain.
