Guy Panepinto’s replacement on the streets of Toronto came in an equally large and powerful package. Juan Ramon Paz Fernandez was alternately known on the streets as James Shaddock, Joey Bravo and Johnny Bravo. He shared Panepinto’s affection for the gym and once posed for a photo with wrestler Hulk Hogan, beaming like a schoolboy.
Fernandez had been ushered into Vito’s circle in Montreal by Raynald Desjardins a decade earlier. When police investigated Agostino Cuntrera between November 1990 and April 1991 for shaking down pizza parlours, Fernandez showed up on wiretaps as a principal aquaintance of the Sicilian Mafioso.
Like Vito, Fernandez was capable of charm and threats in Italian, Spanish and English. Also like Vito, he had been brought to Canada as a child. Born in the fishing port of Ribeira in Galicia, Spain, Fernandez was just five years old when he first set foot in Canada. He graduated from youthful break-and-enters for jewellery, cash and credit cards to being the driver for mob boss Frank (The Big Guy) Cotroni. Fernandez stood out for his movie-star good looks, volcanic temper and black belt in karate, which let him act out his aggressions in an efficient and deadly manner. His temper put him behind bars when in 1977 he punched his seventeen-year-old stripper girlfriend in the throat so hard that it killed her, after she reportedly refused to have sex with one of his associates. At age twenty-two, he was looking at twelve years in prison for her death. In an odd way, the sentence proved to be a career boost. It was behind bars that he met and impressed Desjardins.
He was back behind bars in 1991 for trafficking three kilos of cocaine, and somehow found the time to become engaged. When Fernandez was married in Archambault prison in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines on April 10, 1992, Desjardins and his brother Jacques were among the guests. Vito was invited too, but authorities considered him too notorious to allow into the prison.
In 1994, Fernandez was in maximum-security Donnacona penitentiary near Quebec City. Somehow, he was able to arrange for strippers to visit and liven up the cellblocks. It was a telling display of power, although running strippers into prisons was not without precedent. Lawyers have the power to designate legal assistants, meaning they can send in assistants who specialize in removing their briefs rather than drafting legal ones.
While doing his time, Fernandez remained an unrepentant gangster. At Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines maximum-security prison, fifty kilometres northwest of Montreal, he was led into a room with Hells Angels hit man turned informer Serges (Skin) Quesnel by a compliant guard. Quesnel would later tell author Pierre Martineau that he feared for his life, until he learned that Fernandez wasn’t after his blood. Instead, Fernandez wanted Quesnel to corrupt another prisoner who was to be a witness in an upcoming Mafia trial for a promise of fifty thousand dollars. The bid failed when Quesnel told authorities. This brought furious words from Fernandez and Quesnel was moved out of his reach.
Fernandez had never taken out Canadian citizenship, remaining a Spanish national. His sentence served, he was ordered deported, but remained in Montreal on appeal, selling high-end vehicles and running a juice bar. Soon police were seeing him in the company of Vito, walking a few steps behind, as a trusted associate but not close to an equal. When finally ordered deported in 1999, Fernandez reportedly boasted: “I’m going to show them how I dance.”
He danced around Canadian border security, returning to the country within months. He was deported again in 2001, and this time it took him only two months to sneak back. Now known in the GTA by the cartoonish moniker Johnny Bravo, Fernandez had the confidence and friendship of both Vito and Desjardins. He must have thought that such friendships would make him doubly safe.
In January 2001, Vito called a meeting at a north Toronto restaurant, where invited guests included a broad cross-section of Mafia groups, including members of the ’Ndrangheta, the Gambino crime family, the Buffalo mob and local Sicilian mobsters. Vito recognized a power vacuum in the Toronto area, and he was going to fill it with help from associates. He had clearly broken away from the Bonanno crime family and wanted to go from being a strong player in Ontario to the province’s dominant force. It went without saying that no one person at the table had the power to stop him.
Vito pushed into Ontario, setting up an ecstasy ring in the Toronto, Mississauga, Bolton and Barrie areas and a hydroponic marijuana grow operation on a farm outside Barrie. At the same time, Vito oversaw the formation of a high-tech gambling ring that worked through video rental stores, bookies with portable computers and gas stations and took in some two hundred million dollars’ worth of sports bets per year in Hamilton, Ottawa, the GTA and Montreal for wagering on professional football, basketball and hockey, US college sports and horse racing.
Vito’s point men were Stefano (Steve) Sollecito, a son of his lieutenant Rocco Sollecito, and Joe Renda, who wasn’t directly related to Vito’s brother-in-law/cousin, Paolo. Fernandez was in and out of the country so much at this point that he could not be counted on to maintain a daily presence in the Toronto area. He also had more of a mind for violence than for business. Joe Renda had recently come up from New York City, where he had been on good terms with Vito’s friend Gerlando (George from Canada) Sciascia, a Bonanno member and former Montrealer who acted as an emissary of sorts between the Rizzutos and the New York families. It was Sciascia who ran his hand through his silver hair to signal the start of gunfire in the Three Captains Murders. Then Sciascia ran afoul of John Gotti by criticizing a senior Gambino member for his drug use. The worst part about his criticism was that it was wholly true. That made it embarrassing for the Gambinos, and so Big Joey Massino decided to paper things over by having Sciascia killed. Vito could never forgive Big Joey for that betrayal. He had seethed and held his tongue when Salvatore Vitale travelled up to Montreal after the Sciascia murder and lied that Sciascia was likely murdered because of a drug deal gone wrong. Perhaps Vito already suspected that Vitale had been part of the plot to kill his friend. Maybe it sounded like an insult to Vito when he was offered Sciascia’s old post as the Bonannos’ Montreal emissary, because when the Americans met with Vito in Montreal, a chair was pointedly left empty in the place where Sciascia would have sat.
One of Vito’s Toronto contacts at the time was Carmelo Bruzzese of Maple, in York Region. Bruzzese had no full-time job, although he alternately told authorities that he sold cars, furniture and wood. He had lived on and off in Canada since the early 1960s, but remained an Italian citizen. He became a permanent resident of Canada in May 1974 and married a year later, raising a family of five with his wife. Despite having no discernible income, he lived well in both countries, driving a BMW in Canada that was not his own. Pressed by immigration authorities, Bruzzese said he couldn’t immediately identify the car’s legal owner because the name was Iraqi and difficult to remember. His medical prescriptions were filled from the health plan of an acquaintance. He had homes in Italy and Canada and plenty of cash, but none of that cash was traceable. Like Vito, Carmelo largely stayed out of the public eye.
Italian authorities concluded Bruzzese held a senior rank in the ’Ndrangheta, although he had no criminal convictions in Canada or Italy. Bruzzese’s villa in Italy had a custom-built, remote-controlled hiding spot behind the bar. Pressed about it by immigration officials, he described it as a storage space for valuables, such as wine, money and legal firearms.
Police might not have paid much attention to Bruzzese if not for his son-in-law, Antonio Coluccio, whose brothers Giuseppe and Salvatore were considered major international ’Ndrangheta drug traffickers. Their father, Vincenzo, had been a member of the ’Ndrangheta who was murdered in Italy in a Mafia war when Antonio was less than two years old.
Italian police listened in on Christmas Eve 2004, as Bruzzese took a call from Vito’s lieutanant, Compare Frank Arcadi, who was about to visit Vito in jail in Montreal shortly after his arrest. Bruzzese asked Rizzuto’s lieutenant to send the jailed Mafia leader “my best regards,” according to the wiretap transcripts.
Earlier that year, Italian police had intercepted a conversation between Vito and Bruzzese in which Vito had spoken reassuringly to the Calabrian grandfather. Vito spoke confidently of the future, saying, “There is no problem.”