February 11, 2011, was shaping up to be a busy day. Toronto and York Regional police intelligence officers, part of the anti–organized crime Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit, had plans to stake out the funeral visitation for Cosimo Stalteri, the grand old man of the Ontario ’Ndrangheta. He had just died in hospital at age eighty-six. An original member of the Toronto camera di controllo, Stalteri had recently been promoted from the rank of santista—the shadowy organization’s equivalent of a senior lobbyist with senior mainstream people such as bankers and politicians—to vangelista—the ’Ndrangheta version of a respected senior statesman. It was a safe assumption that Stalteri was never in the pro-Vito camp, as he was Calabrian, from Toronto and on good terms with some of Vito’s die-hard enemies. At the absolute minimum, Stalteri was a neutral in the hostilities that were surgically disassembling Vito’s empire.
Also scheduled for that Friday was surveillance of the fiftieth wedding anniversary celebrations of Paolo Cuntrera at Hazelton Manor in Vaughan. On the surface, Cuntrera would appear to be on Vito’s side in the current tensions, as he and his brothers Pasquale and Gaspare were cousins of Vito’s recently murdered ally Agostino Cuntrera of Montreal. Paolo and his siblings had garnered considerable interest from Italian authorities for decades. Pasquale Cuntrera was considered a kingpin of a network that—the late Italian judge Giovanni Falcone estimated—had washed $77 billion in drug money in Canada, England and five other countries. The 1992 murder of Falcone, and that of his fellow judge Paolo Borsellino only months earlier, created pressure for Venezuelan authorities to finally extradite the three brothers (the fourth, Liborio, moved to England in 1975 and died there of natural causes in 1982).
Once back in Italy, Pasquale was convicted on charges of running a drug ring between Italy, Canada and Venezuela. In 1998, the sixty-three-year-old somehow managed to escape custody, even though he now appeared to be confined to a wheelchair. A week later, Pasquale was rearrested in Spain while strolling down a beach with his wife, the wheelchair nowhere in sight. As he went back to prison, his brothers Paolo and Gaspare settled in the Toronto area after their Italian legal difficulties had run their course. Both men were Canadian citizens and the move was entirely legal, although police maintained an interest in them.
Stalteri’s funeral visitation came first on the agenda for the surveillance officers. They noted that attendance was solid, as might be expected for a man who was feared, respected and liked for decades. Back in his hometown of Siderno in the Italian province of Reggio Calabria, Stalteri had convictions for assault causing bodily harm, theft and carrying an unregistered revolver, but he received an amnesty from Italian authorities before he immigrated to Canada in 1952. He had no further criminal record in Canada, despite appearing in numerous police reports for his ’Ndrangheta associations.
In 1962, Stalteri was appointed to the camera di controllo in Toronto by Giacomo Luppino of Hamilton, Paolo Violi’s father-in-law. Also in that governing body were Michele (Mike the Baker) Racco, Vincenzo (Jimmy) Deleo, Rocco Zito, Salvatore Triumbari and Filippo Vendemini. It was a tough group for a tough environment: Triumbari was murdered in 1967 and Vendemini slain in 1969, and neither murder was ever solved. They also didn’t take opposition lightly. Zito was later convicted of beating a man to death with a liquor bottle during the Christmas season. Stalteri returned to Italy in 1973 for a visit and killed a street vendor in an argument over a toy. Italian authorities sought his extradition over the murder, then let the warrant expire when they falsely determined that he had died. He was also believed by police to be involved in alien smuggling and heroin trafficking in Toronto, although neither suspicion was ever proven.
What the surveillance officers saw immediately after the funeral visitation might have shocked even Vito. Stalteri’s mourners climbed onto a chartered bus and rode off to the anniversary reception for the Cuntreras.
How could this be possible? Weren’t they mortal, blood enemies?
And yet it was clearly happening. Members of both the Sicilian and Calabrian factions of Canadian organized crime, including representatives from Hamilton, York Region, Ottawa, Montreal and Sherbrooke, Quebec, were breaking bread together as if they were on some mob version of homecoming week.
Among the three hundred guests were several members of the Commisso crime family. It was no secret that they didn’t mix well with Vito, but that wasn’t the thing that would have shocked him most about the gathering. One of the welcomed guests at the Sicilian celebration was Salvatore (Sam) Calautti, the hard-core ’Ndrangheta hit man who was the suspected killer of Gaetano (Guy) Panepinto and a prime suspect in four other unsolved mob murders—one of which was the slaying of Vito’s father.
The fact that the Sicilians could entertain a Calabrian hit man who was believed to have killed their most esteemed member was breathtaking. That they could sit down and socialize also with Calautti’s bosses and confederates suggested a fundamental change in the underworld. Blood ties didn’t seem to matter any longer.
It was unthinkable, but it was happening right in front of the intelligence officers. What police witnessed was bonding between the Ontario Sicilians and the ’Ndrangheta, less than seven months after the murders of Agostino Cuntrera and his bodyguard in Montreal, and two months after the murder of Nicolò. It had been widely assumed that the Sicilian and Calabrians mobsters were at war in Montreal, but that was clearly not the case in Toronto.
There had never been impenetrable divisions between the ’Ndrangheta and the Sicilian Mafia, nor its American cousin, La Cosa Nostra, especially when the Cuntrera–Caruana family was involved. The flow of money has a way of washing away even the most rigid barriers. Criminals who weren’t touched personally by vendettas remained open for a deal. Business was business when blood didn’t cry out for revenge.
If the men at the anniversary party could form a working relationship with the Desjardins–Mirarchi group, they would have a death grip on the Port of Montreal. In a new power alliance between them, the Coluccio–Aquino Calabrian ’Ndrangheta faction and the Caruana–Cuntrera Sicilian Mafia group, Vito would be the odd man out.