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.
With only last-minute notice, Cammalleri’s funeral rites were performed on the morning of Friday, October 5, at almost the same moment that the Colorado prison doors finally opened for Vito. His release date had been moved up a day, with no explanation. The timing of the funeral averted the media circus that would certainly have accompanied Vito’s attendance. Leonardo Cammalleri had largely managed to avoid the media and police in life, and now he had done so in death.
Shortly before midnight, Vito Rizzuto stepped off a direct commercial flight to Toronto, amidst speculation that he planned to settle there. His five-bedroom home in the Ahuntsic–Cartierville region of Montreal was up for sale. It was certainly an appealing property. The stone-faced house had only one owner and the 1,300-square-metre lot backed onto green space, albeit the same wooded area that had provided cover for the sniper who killed Vito’s father. Cabinets in the kitchen were mahogany, all of the bedrooms had bidet-equipped ensuites, and the granite and stairway in the front entranceway were worthy of a Gone with the Wind remake. Press accounts of the mob war certainly didn’t help the real estate agent trying to move the mansion, nor did the media’s affection for the nickname Mafia Row. The asking price had dropped from almost $2 million to $1.5 million, showing the seller was clearly motivated. It went without saying why Vito didn’t want to resume his life there.
If Vito chose to move to the Toronto area, he would have to do so without the muscle of Juan Ramon Paz (Johnny Bravo) Fernandez. Vito’s lieutenant had been deported to his native Spain for a third time months before, after being paroled for plotting the murder of former pro football player and Panepinto crew member Constantin (Big Gus) Alevizos, as well as conspiring to import a tonne of cocaine. Big Gus survived the initial murder attempt that put Fernandez in prison. He was finally slain in January 2008 while walking across the parking lot of a Brampton halfway house. His enemy Fernandez had a rocksolid alibi: he was in prison at the time.
No one doubted that Fernandez was capable of murder. A parole board panel wrote to him in May 2011: “Several correctional officers witnessed death threats you made to another guard who was attempting to search you. During this incident, you seemed to flaunt your well-established ties to traditional organized crime in an effort to further intimidate the guard; this implies you remain connected to the same criminal lifestyle that enabled your considerable drug dealing activities.”
The letter also cast suspicion on his connection to a lawyer who routinely visited organized criminals like Fernandez in prison. “Your ongoing visits from a lawyer who has worked for persons identified as being part of organized crime further reinforces your continuing involvement with this criminal subculture,” the letter states. The parole review board lamented his “considerable lack of progress” on rehabilitation while behind bars. “Your lack of treatment in this regard is especially relevant in the context of your involvement in an inherently violent drug subculture.”
The letter added that Fernandez would be a better than average bet to reoffend quickly when finally released: “A statistical risk evaluation places you in a group of offenders where 60 per cent will commit an indictable offence within three years of release. This predictor is concerning in light of your significant criminal history, which includes a variety of serious drug offences and violent crimes.”
Vito was himself now legally free to fly anywhere in the world without restrictions, save the USA, where he would be on probation for three years, and Italy, where he was facing massive money laundering charges. The latter were a nod to Vito’s considerable reach. Italian authorities claimed that, while awaiting extradition in the regional prison reception centre in Sainte-Anne-des-Plaines, a forty-five-minute drive north of Montreal in an area replete with maple sugar shacks and petting zoos, Vito somehow helped direct a massive fraud that led to a series of arrests across Italy and France in 2007. Police moved against twenty-two companies and arrested nineteen people, while freezing nearly $700 million in assets. Part of the evidence was wiretap recordings of Vito talking to another suspect in Europe. How Vito managed that was hard to fathom, since it goes without saying that inmates aren’t supposed to be placing overseas calls to plot crimes. The calls from custody notwithstanding, the fraud itself was a particularly audacious one: mobsters were trying to scam their way into a six-billion-dollar contract to build a bridge across the Strait of Messina between the Italian mainland and Sicily. The scheme represented what was possible when criminals worked together, as it involved both the Sicilian Mafia and the ’Ndrangheta on the southern mainland.
Italian investigators were determined that Vito Rizzuto was somehow the puppet master of the whole operation. “We believe that even from jail they are able to control the organization,” Silvia Franzè, an investigator with the Direzione Investigativa Antimafia, told the press in Rome. For the Italian media, Vito Rizzuto gained a new title: “Godfather of the Bridge.”
Vito certainly had the money to retire somewhere warm where he could indulge his passion for golf year-round. His enormous wealth and ability to speak four languages gave him plenty of options. He had always liked the Dominican Republic, and his friends in the Quebec Hells Angels had recently set up a charter there. Perhaps Vito would float between Montreal and York Region. Wherever he travelled, it would be with the realization that he would never again share a smile or a word with his father or his eldest son. No amount of money or wine or female companionship was going to change that. All he could hope for was the dull satisfaction of revenge. Perhaps that would also give his mother some cold comfort.
As Vito headed back to Canada, he appeared robust enough for the challenge. During his sentencing, he had made mention in court that he might have a spot on a lung, but apparently this fear had passed. His prison records contained no mention of cancer, although he remained a cigarette smoker, and Canada Border Security records make no note of serious health concerns. Indeed, he wouldn’t even bother to reactivate his government-issued health card.
On his flight home, Vito got a taste of the attention that lay ahead. A Radio-Canada journalist at the back of the airplane began to pepper him with questions, as a camera zoomed in tight on his face. Vito was stuck in his seat and had nowhere to go, like a zoo animal in a cramped cage. People with cameras and microphones clearly weren’t afraid of him now. What might he expect from people with pistols and rifles?
Once on the ground, it took less than an hour for Vito to shake the RCMP surveillance team and journalists following him. The reporters then filed news items that alternately portrayed him as the most powerful man in the Canadian underworld and as a dead man walking. Both theories could be supported, up to a point. Meanwhile, embarrassed police made hopeful plans to pick up his trail the next morning as Vito disappeared into the Toronto night.