Philip “Rusty” Rastelli did not look particularly healthy even before he was ravaged by cancer, so it was a surprise to no one when the Bonanno Family rank and file received orders to show up for the wake and funeral of their boss. Over three days, starting on June 25, 1991, New York gangsters of all stripes filed through to pay their respects to the emaciated corpse of the dead Bonanno boss as he lay at a funeral home not far from Sal Vitale’s Grand Avenue social club. Cadillacs and Lincolns clogged the roadway and a stream of gangsters, almost all of them wearing white shirts, ties and dark suits, wandered into the funeral home, chatted with each other, greeted Rastelli’s family and then crept outside for a cigarette.
It was a significant sign of respect, although much of it duplicitously given by gangsters who had long been begging for the boss to move aside so that Joe Massino could salvage the sagging fortunes of the family.
“Everyone showed up,” Vitale said. Everyone also knew that Rastelli had been a mere figurehead within the family for years, and there was little question over who would replace him. After the murder of Carmine Galante and the purge of the three captains, Rastelli’s power was only as secure as Massino wanted it to be. While Rastelli was in jail, Massino ran the show, Vitale said. Even members of Rastelli’s own administration took a back seat to Massino. Nicholas “Nicky Glasses” Marangello was the underboss and Stefano “Stevie Beef” Cannone was the consigliere, but neither stood up to Massino.
“I don’t think Nicky Glasses and Stevie Beef really wanted the position. They didn’t want to butt heads with a strong captain, a strong individual, like Joe Massino. Anything that Joe wanted to do, Joe could do,” Vitale said. “Phil Rastelli wanted to step down the day he got home,” Vitale said of Rastelli’s release from prison in 1983. “When he got out of jail, he really wanted to retire. He wanted to give everything to Mr. Massino. He just wanted to live his life out peacefully.” The signs of Rastelli’s impotence were everywhere.
“If Mr. Rastelli would have given me an order, I would have checked it with Joe Massino before I accepted,” Vitale said. Massino was in no hurry to have the boss stand down. There was little reason for him to move against Rastelli so long as he maintained his favored status in the family; he enjoyed the insulation it afforded him from federal agents. Massino knew a family’s boss was always the government’s top target.
When Rastelli’s death was imminent, however, Massino did not leave his succession to chance. The position, while bringing huge risks, also brought immense profit. Before Rastelli died, he mapped out exactly what was to happen.
“When Phil dies, make Anthony Spero call a meeting. Elect me boss. Have someone second the motion, whether it be you, Big Louie, whoever, make me boss,” Massino said to Vitale. It happened precisely as he ordered. After the burial of Rastelli, Spero called to order a meeting of Bonanno captains at a Staten Island home.
“Regretfully, Phil Rastelli has died. But it’s now time that we elect a new boss,” Spero said to the gathering.
“Why don’t we make Joe Massino [boss]?” one of the captains said, as if it were a spur-of-the-moment idea. There was no dissent. A new era in the Bonanno Family history had begun.
“At that time, most of the people were dead. There weren’t any people to challenge,” said Frank Lino, a Bonanno captain. Massino—and federal indictments—had cleared away some potential competition, particularly from the Zips. Sal Catalano, as street boss of the Zips in New York, had once been seen as a possible contender. At one point during Rastelli’s incarceration, Catalano had been elevated to the position of acting boss of the family, a move that probably drew considerable heat from other bosses, if not officially from the entire Commission.
“They were looking to make him boss and I think they were pushing Phil Rastelli aside, but he couldn’t be [boss] because he was already made in Italy,” Vitale said. “You can’t have allegiance with two—you are either all Italy or all United States.” The issue of how Sicilian Men of Honor would fit into the American Mafia was still causing problems. The rule Vitale spoke of, however, seemed to apply only to holding the top post, as boss, because plenty of Zips in America and Canada had been inducted into the Bonanno Family as soldiers and elevated to captain. Any remaining claim Catalano might once have had evaporated when he was sentenced to 45 years in prison for his part in the Pizza Connection case in 1987. Another Zip who had ambition, street smarts and charisma, Cesare Bonventre, had been killed in 1984, on Massino’s orders, on the eve of the Pizza Connection arrests.
As for Gerlando Sciascia, he, like Catalano, had been made in Sicily, apparently precluding him from contention. After helping Massino to orchestrate the purge of the three captains and becoming wealthy through the Sixth Family’s drug trade, Sciascia had also been sidelined for five years, the time between his arrest in Canada for the drug conspiracy and his acquittal on the charges in New York in 1990. After a jurer was bribed and Sciascia walked free, however, he tried to pick up where he had left off. Six months after his acquittal, an FBI report noted: “It is believed that Sciascia continues to be an active and influential figure in the narcotics trade.”
As long as he could ply Sixth Family drugs, Sciascia seemed content to remain near the top echelons of Bonanno Family power, having the ear of Massino and Vitale, while retaining his zeal for selling narcotics. Sciascia seemed to be a key supporter of Massino’s bid to take over the Bonanno Family, suggesting that the Sixth Family approved of where New York was going. Sciascia’s place in the Bonanno Family seemed secure under the new administration. The Sixth Family’s previous deal with Massino to topple the three captains and keep the drugs flowing remained in effect.
“He was well respected,” Vitale said of Sciascia. “I liked George. George was a good man.” And yet Sciascia seemed ill at ease.
In July 1991, just weeks after Massino was named the official boss, Sciascia, along with his wife and daughter, applied for permanent resident status in Canada, sponsored by his son, Joseph, who was a Canadian citizen. Sciascia seemed to be wearing out his welcome in New York.
“George would speak his mind, if he had anything on his mind. He believed in our life. If he felt something was wrong, he would tell you,” Vitale said. Sciascia, for example, had taken a dislike to Anthony “TG” Graziano, a Bonanno veteran who had served as captain and consigliere, because he thought Graziano was using illicit drugs.
Sciascia, Vitale and Graziano had a meeting to discuss family business in which TG appeared glassy-eyed, unfocused and unsteady on his feet. After Graziano left, Sciascia turned to Vitale, stunned.
“TG is a captain,” Sciascia said in alarm to Vitale. “You’re supposed to be representing your family and you’re walking around high? You’re going to other, outside, families and making a fool of yourself? It reflects on the family,” he said. “Every time I see this guy, he’s stoned,” Sciascia griped, an odd complaint from one of the biggest drug dealers in New York. Vitale said he would bring it up with Massino. Sciascia said he certainly would as well. Graziano, one of Massino’s favorite underlings, had a friend in the boss, however. Massino looked into it. Graziano said he was on prescription medication for a stomach ailment and not dipping into street drugs, swearing: “On my children’s eyes, I’m not getting high.” Massino bought the explanation. Sciascia still kept his distance, and their animosity festered.
Sciascia had also apparently found himself in a dispute with Marty Rastelli, brother of the old boss, Philip Rastelli. Marty felt that he was owed money by Sciascia, who refused to acknowledge the debt. When Marty pressed the matter, Sciascia spurned him in no uncertain terms, screaming: “You got nothing coming. I’m going to war tomorrow, if you want to.” Sciascia was making more people nervous.
The spring of 1992 brought yet another crisis to the Bonanno Family, and Sal Vitale reached out to Sciascia for help, although it looked more like a test of loyalty than anything else. The Bonanno Family’s long-term scams in the circulation department of the New York Post, a tabloid that enjoyed splashing sensational mob stories across its pages, were falling apart. Several Bonanno soldiers and associates had been on the payroll of the Post but did little or no work, an arrangement overseen by Robert Perrino, the newspaper’s delivery superintendent. When an electronic bug was found in Perrino’s office and the mobsters learned of a New York State Police investigation into their shenanigans, they feared that Perrino, who was more white-collar crook than hard-core gangster, would not hold up under the pressure.
“They felt that he would blow the whistle on the whole operation,” Vitale said. “He could do a lot of damage.” It was decided that Perrino had to die. Vitale and Anthony Spero met to discuss the situation while Massino was in prison.
“George is always volunteering shooters from Montreal. Let’s put him to the test and let him take care of it,” Spero said. Over coffee, Vitale put the idea to Sciascia.
“I will get you two shooters from Montreal,” Sciascia quickly promised. The reception to the plan in Montreal, however, does not seem to have been enthusiastic. One suspects that Montreal mobsters quickly dismissed taking such a risk when their drug franchise was not under threat. There seemed little interest in doing New York’s dirty work just to gain brownie points. At a subsequent meeting with Vitale at the Stage Diner on Queens Boulevard, Sciascia got around the awkwardness by presenting an alternative plan.
“Instead of me getting shooters from Canada, Montreal—it’s hard to come across the border—use Baldo,” Sciascia said, presenting Baldassare Amato, one of the Zips, who had been Cesare Bonventre’s right-hand man and who had come to New York through Canada. Amato was a Bonanno soldier but, according to the Bonanno Family structure, was in the crew of Louie Ha-Ha, who had assumed control of Bonventre’s crew after he was killed. Despite the breach in mob etiquette—Sciascia offering another captain’s soldier—Vitale approved of the replacement. (It was a breach that did not sit well with Massino, who later told Vitale off for letting Sciascia disrespect Amato’s captain that way. It showed how the Zips continued to work together outside the official hierarchy of the family, a situation that was increasingly upsetting to Massino.) The murder of Perrino was scheduled to coincide with Vitale’s son’s birthday party, and the underboss opted for fatherly, rather than family, duties, and asked another gangster to stand in for him at the murder. It fell to Michael “Mickey Bats” Cardello to walk Perrino to his death.
Perrino was the son-in-law of Nicky Marangello, a former Bonanno underboss, but if Perrino felt that pedigree protected him from Bonanno bloodletting, he grossly overestimated gangster sentimentality; he was last seen on May 5, 1992, leaving his daughter’s house and heading for a meeting with mob associates. Perrino was shot as planned; Frank Lino, however, was not impressed by the abilities of Amato, the shooter. When Lino and his crew came to clean up the body, they found Perrino was not quite dead, and another gangster had to stab him before the body was taken away for disposal, Lino said.
“Next time your shooter leaves a body,” an annoyed Lino later told Vitale, “make sure it’s dead.”
Although they took a pass on killing Perrino, the Montreal-based mobsters of the Sixth Family did get involved in one scheme Vitale put to them, although Vitale was only acting as a middleman for the DeCavalcante Family, a Mafia organization based in New Jersey. Vitale had by this time been inducted into the Bonanno Family after his work in the messy Bonventre murder, and Massino had made him his underboss. It was as the Bonanno underboss that Vincent “Vinny Ocean” Palermo—the acting boss of the DeCavalcante Family—solicited Vitale’s help in reaching out to the Bonanno men in Montreal. Vito Rizzuto, Gerlando Sciascia and Joe LoPresti had socialized with members of the DeCavalcante Family in the past. The boss of the family, John Riggi, his consigliere, Stefano “Steve” Vitabile, and leading captain, Giuseppe “Pino” Schifilliti, had all attended Giuseppe Bono’s 1980 wedding.
“He knew we had Montreal,” Vitale said of Vinny Ocean. “When the United States put embargoes on Persian rugs, Canada does not have an embargo. If we buy them in Canada, he had a buyer in Manhattan that would buy all of the rugs off us.” A cross-border rug pipeline was quickly set up.
“We send people to Canada to buy Persian rugs and smuggle them across the border,” Vitale said. An associate of the Montreal gangsters who was nominally involved in the carpet scheme said the perpetrators in Canada thought it hilarious to be involved in moving something so benign across the border. They developed an ongoing joke about it, a short skit that imagined one of them being caught red-handed at the border with the carpets: “I said I was a rug smuggler, not a drug smuggler,” the joke went. They drew great hilarity from simply replacing “rug” for “drug” in any number of ways: rug cartels, rug trafficking, rug mules … it was as if the puns alone were worth the risk. But, of course, it was the illicit profit that was the true draw. The scheme was surprisingly lucrative, as the appetite of Manhattan’s wealthy residents for the opulent rugs was nearly insatiable. Vitale’s cut as a middleman between the Canadian and Jersey gangsters was about $20,000, he said.
Despite the success of this penny-ante scheme, the deterioration in the relationship between the Bonanno administration and the Sixth Family leadership was becoming more acute. To head it off, Massino sent men north to talk with Vito.
It was agreeable weather in Montreal on Canada Day, 1991, with a cooling breeze, hardly a cloud and no hint of rain. As a day for baseball, it approached perfection. The bright sky, however, did little to lighten the sour mood of fans inside Olympic Stadium. Starting on that holiday Monday and continuing for most of the week, the New York Mets swept the Montreal Expos four games straight, the close of an 11-game losing streak. For a group of tough visitors from New York City sitting in the stands, the Mets’ victory was cause for celebration, another boost during a raucous trip to Montreal that included the city’s famously daring strip clubs and wild discos.
Despite the banalities of their itinerary, however, this was not the usual group of tourists and their convivial hosts in Montreal were also extraordinary: emissaries from the Bonanno Family, sent by Joe Massino, had come north to talk business with their Canadian friends. Anthony Spero, the Bonanno consigliere, headed the group of goodwill ambassadors for this visit north. Joining him was Frank “Curly” Lino, Frank “Big Frank” Porco and at least two other New Yorkers. The visit went unnoticed at the time, but when details the group’s alleged itinerary was revealed more than a decade later, it would cause a sporting scandal in New York and a political scandal in Canada.
The gangsters enjoying the baseball at the Olympic Stadium snagged their tickets from Mets pitcher John Franco, considered one of baseball’s great closers and a New York sports icon, said Lino. The Brooklyn-born left-hander even had the gangsters visit with him in the clubhouse, according to statements Lino made to the FBI. Several of the mobsters also went out on the town with members of the Mets, Lino said. Such a party would be memorable for the mobsters, as Franco was the standout player in the series. When news emerged in 2004 that Franco and his colleagues had socialized with gangsters, it was greeted with concern in professional baseball circles, where fraternization between professional athletes and those involved in bookmaking and illegal gambling is highly frowned upon. When the media went to Franco for comment, confirmation or denial, his response was ambiguous: He declined to address “the specifics” of Lino’s allegations but said he was “proud to be an Italian–American and have lived my life in a respectable fashion.” Later that year, the Mets did not renew his contract and he signed for a year with the Houston Astros. The gangsters met others in Canada, as well. When details of Lino’s other allegations later emerged, it made the brouhaha over John Franco pale in comparison.
This Canada Day weekend visit was not Frank Lino’s first visit to Montreal to speak with Vito on behalf of the Bonannos. More than a decade earlier, just a couple of months after the 1979 murder of Carmine Galante, Lino had been sent to Montreal along with his captain, Bruno Indelicato—the son of Sonny Red and one of Galante’s killers—and Thomas “Tommy Karate” Pitera, another soldier in Bruno’s crew.
“We went to see, you know, [about] a closer relationship with the Montreal faction,” Lino said of that first visit. The Bonanno administration seemed to recognize Montreal’s value and feared that the murder of Galante, who had retained close ties to Montreal and was often referred to in New York as the head of the Montreal crew, might have alienated the Canadian wing. One night in a restaurant during that trip, Bruno introduced Lino to Vito Rizzuto, saying Vito was a soldier in the Bonanno Family. He was also introduced to several other men, whom he described as “a crew” of members in “the Canadian faction of the Bonanno Family.” Bruno, Lino and Tommy Karate stayed in Montreal for several days and during their visit they saw Vito four or five times. While there, Joe LoPresti, who knew the New Yorkers through his work arranging heroin sales with Sciascia, told Lino that Vito “was very powerful in Canada.” (It was a curious delegation. Less than two years after this first visit, Indelicato and Lino would be the two survivors of the deadly ambush of the three captains at the hands Vito and his Montreal colleagues.)
Lino was asked to return to Montreal in 1991, a decade after the captains’ purge. The second visit, the one in which the New Yorkers enjoyed their baseball win over the Expos, featured a larger and more important entourage that carried a more urgent message. The New Yorkers seemed to be politely received in Montreal this time around as well. Vito and LoPresti escorted them around the city’s sites and famous nightlife, Lino said. Between the nightclubs and the baseball, however, there was serious business to be discussed and, as is often the case with mafiosi, much of it was done over dinner. As a formal welcome for the Americans, Montreal’s gangsters threw a feast in their honor.
“[Lino] remembers meeting with a group of Canadian Bonanno members at a catering hall,” says an FBI report prepared in December 2003 when FBI Special Agents Christine Grubert and Jay Kramer secretly debriefed Lino after he agreed to cooperate with the government. “At this meeting, the Canadian Bonannos were informed of Massino’s new position as boss of the Bonanno Family,” the report says.
The date of the visit to Montreal was a little fuzzy for Lino: “While we were there I saw Joe LoPresti. I didn’t pay attention what year it was, it was ‘91, ‘88, ‘89. It’s no big deal to me.”
Lino insisted LoPresti was at the meetings in Montreal. Lino would have remembered him since he was one of the few Montrealers Lino knew. LoPresti had been in Lino’s bar in New York many times and Lino recognized him easily when photographs of LoPresti were later shown to him. If the Bonanno entourage came with news that Massino had been made the new boss, and LoPresti was there at the time, it means the excursion to Montreal took place after Rastelli’s death, on June 24, 1991, but before LoPresti’s murder, on April 30, 1992.
This, in turn, means that—if Lino is to be believed—the visit likely occurred during the four-game series between the Mets and the Expos, from July 1 to 4, 1991. (There was only one other Expos–Mets series in Montreal between the time of Rastelli’s and LoPresti’s deaths, an April 17 to 19, 1992 match-up in which the Mets took two of the three games. This would have been almost a year after Rastelli’s death but only 11 days before LoPresti’s murder. This alternative date is tantalizing, since it is so close to LoPresti’s death that it leads to speculation that the Montrealer committed some indiscretion during the meetings, or that the New Yorkers brought news or a complaint against him that needed addressing. It is, however, likely too long after Rastelli’s death. It did not take a year for Massino to install himself in the job and he likely did not wait long afterwards to reach out to Canada.)
The Sixth Family’s party in a Montreal catering and banquet hall was quite an affair, with the closest of the Rizzutos’ friends and family invited. It was a dinner for “made members” only, Lino told the FBI in one of his debriefing sessions, meaning that outsiders and associates were not a part of the festivities. Lino also spoke of the Montreal visits, with less precision, under oath in a Brooklyn courtroom.
“We met with George [Sciascia], Joe LoPresti, Vito Rizzuto. We had a dinner with about 30, 40 people,” Lino said in court. LoPresti and Sciascia would have been busy during the dinner; as the only two who knew everyone from both cities, they would be preoccupied with introducing the diners to one another. Introductions are important to mobsters. They are carefully constructed and carefully observed. As a secret society, it takes three mobsters for any two of them to officially meet, according to Mafia tradition. A member cannot reveal his membership to anyone outside the fraternity, so he cannot announce to a stranger, even one he is pretty certain has also been made, that he is an inducted member. Only a third made man can formally introduce two other made members to each other; the third person must confirm to each that the other has also been inducted into the Mafia.
“When you say somebody is amico nostra [“a friend of ours”], you know he’s a made man. If you just say he’s a friend, he’s just a friend,” Lino explained. In accordance with that policy, it would have fallen upon Sciascia and LoPresti to do most of the introductions at the dinner party. They would have been among the few people in the room who could confirm that both people being introduced, from both cities, were, in fact, Mafia members.
Lino told the FBI that he was formally introduced to a Montrealer who bore a special distinction, one worth bragging about. LoPresti said the man Lino was meeting was both a Bonanno soldier and a politician, according to the FBI documents. Lino said the man was Alfonso Gagliano, an allegation the veteran former Canadian politician vehemently denies.
“[Lino] was shown a picture of Alfonso Gagliano,” says an FBI debriefing report. To protect their identities, informants’ names are not used in these reports, and the word “Individual” replaces the informant’s name. It is clear from the notes, however, that it was Lino making the statements, a point confirmed later in court. “[Lino] stated that he recognized Gagliano from his trip to Montreal, Canada, in the early 1990s. [Lino] advised that Gagliano was introduced to him as a soldier in the Bonanno Family by Joe LoPresti, another Bonanno member in Canada. At a dinner, LoPresti bragged to the individual that the Montreal Bonannos had such extensive connections, including that of Gagliano, a politician,” the report says. Lino also “socialized with Gagliano when he was hanging out with Vito Rizzutto [sic].” The statement is shocking. Alfonso Gagliano played an important and prominent part in Canada’s political life for two decades. He was first elected to Parliament to represent the people of Montreal’s Saint-Léonard neighborhood in 1984 and held the riding through four straight elections, a tenure during which he became a powerful politician. He was in charge of the important Liberal Party caucus for the province of Quebec and was named to Cabinet in 1996, and to the post of Minister of Public Works in 1997. He later said his move into the federal Cabinet was delayed because of an RCMP investigation into his past associations. After leaving politics, he was named Canada’s ambassador to Denmark, but was recalled in 2004 amid the scandal of a damning report by the country’s Auditor-General documenting inappropriate government expenditures in a $332-million sponsorship program that Gagliano oversaw for a time. A monumental inquiry headed by Judge John Gomery found that the program amounted to “an elaborate kickback scheme,” that funneled money to the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party of Canada and to Liberal-friendly advertising executives. Judge Gomery’s report said that $147 million in public money went directly from the sponsorship program to the agencies as commissions and fees.
Lino’s allegations about Gagliano, first reported in the New York Daily News, created a furor in Canada. On the day the allegations became public, it was raised in Parliament by Stephen Harper, then the leader of the Opposition and now the Prime Minister.
“The report claims that in the 1990s he was a ‘made’ member of the Brooklyn-based Bonanno crime family. My question is simple: Since Mr. Gagliano was in Cabinet and ambassador during this period, was the government aware of this information and when did it become aware of these allegations?” Harper asked. The then prime minister Paul Martin replied: “Let me simply say that these are very serious allegations and everyone should be very careful about accepting or repeating such allegations.” The Opposition was unsatisified with the response, and Peter MacKay, a senior Opposition member said: “It is a very serious matter… . Prior to his appointment as ambassador to Denmark, Mr. Gagliano filled a number of Liberal Cabinet positions until the year 2002. Again, my question for the government, for the prime minister, for the minister responsible, is what steps did the Privy Council Office and the Department of the Solicitor General take to ensure that proper security clearances were obtained prior to Mr. Gagliano being admitted to Cabinet?” This question was responded to by Anne McLellan, the deputy prime minister at the time: “I have no intention of commenting on these allegations. If the honorable member is asking about the operational activities of the RCMP, I suggest that the honorable member more appropriately direct his question to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” she said.
For his part, Gagliano has firmly denied Lino’s allegations explicitly and repeatedly.
“I was a very popular member of Parliament,” Gagliano told reporters, saying he might inadvertently have met some of the gangsters named by Lino in the course of glad-handing and politicking. “As a politician I might have—in social events, in public events, during an election campaign going door-to-door—I might have met some of those people. But really, it doesn’t mean that I know [them] personally.” He said he never attended a dinner with mafiosi and was never involved in criminal behavior.
“I’m not a member of a Mafia,” Gagliano said. In the annals of things that politicians feel they have to say to defend themselves, this surely ranks above even the famous denial by Richard Nixon, the former U.S. president: “I am not a crook.”
It was not the first time Gagliano had had to brush aside allegations of questionable ties to known mafiosi and organized crime figures. When it was revealed that he was the former bookkeeper for a business owned by Agostino Cuntrera, who helped to kill Paolo Violi in 1978, he said it was “an error in judgment.” Cuntrera and Gagliano shared another link. The Association de Siculiana, a cultural group in Montreal founded and presided over by Gagliano, was later run by Cuntrera, who was named president a few years after Gagliano gave up the post. Another bookkeeping client of Gagliano’s was Dino Messina, who was found during court proceedings over a stock fraud to be a financial representative of Vito Rizzuto’s. Another man with unsavory links, Filippo Vaccarello, a drug trafficker linked to the Sixth Family, was under surveillance when officers watched him walk into Gagliano’s bookkeeping office a year after he was first elected into federal office. Gagliano told police he did not know Messina or Vaccarello. And in 2001, Gaetano Amodeo, an accused Mafia assassin from Cattolica Eraclea who was wanted for murder and attempted murder in Italy and Germany, was arrested in Montreal, where he had been living for almost five years. Several Canadians had traveled back to Cattolica Eraclea for Amodeo’s 1986 wedding to Maria Sicurella. One of the crimes Italian courts blamed on Amodeo was the shooting of a Carabinieri officer who was probing the Mafia in Agrigento province. The Canadian public was outraged that the government knew Amodeo had been in Canada for two years before he was arrested; the RCMP had even sent Italian authorities a surveillance photo of Amodeo meeting with Nick Rizzuto. Indeed, Gagliano’s office had sent a letter to Canada’s immigration department seeking information on behalf of Maria Sicurella di Amodeo, Amodeo’s wife, who was applying to become a landed immigrant. She later sponsored her husband for entry to Canada. Before he was sent back to face justice in Italy, Amodeo made a statement that would later be echoed by Gagliano: “I was never part of the Mafia.”
Another mobster has also secretly suggested to police that the Montreal Mafia had direct access to a friend in the Canadian government. These statements, never before revealed, add to the allegations of the Montreal Mafia’s political ties.
Drug trafficker Oreste Pagano agreed to cooperate with authorities after he was charged alongside Alfonso Caruana for conspiracy to import drugs. During one of Pagano’s secret debriefing sessions, he spoke of the value to the mob of having contacts in the government. In Italy, he said, the Mafia was well entrenched in political circles.
“You have to realize that the Mafia in Italy, let’s say, in the last 40 years, were much supported by the politicians. By important politicians,” he said. The cooperation in granting huge government public works contracts was immensely profitable for both sides, the only illicit scheme that could compete with drug trafficking in terms of its financial return.
“The most important investments where they can profit are the government investments. So then there was a strong connection between the Mafia and the government. For every investment of, for example, $100 million, the profit on $100 million was $30 million in profit. Fifteen million dollars would go to the Mafia and $15 million would go to the government,” Pagano said.
He was then asked by an officer with the RCMP’s Integrated Proceeds of Crime Unit in Toronto if the Mafia had a similar relationship with the government in Canada. Pagano was not as sure.
“I couldn’t tell you. I was not living in Canada,” he answered. But, Pagano was asked, did Alfonso Caruana ever speak to him about such relationships?
“We spoke once about it, that there was a person who was going into the Canadian government and was from the same village as Alfonso [Caruana]. From Siculiana,” Pagano said in a September 21, 1999, interview.
“He was from the same village as Alfonso [Caruana]… . I don’t know this person,” Pagano said. This was the kind of information that the Sicilian Men of Honor liked to keep secret from outsiders. And, although Pagano was one of Alfonso Caruana’s closest business partners, he was neither family nor a Sicilian and that made him an outsider.
“They don’t talk about it. It’s like I told you, these are things they keep to themselves,” he said. Investigators could not help but note that Alfonso Caruana’s family was based in Siculiana, a small Sicilian town in Agrigento province. Alfonso Gagliano is from Siculiana as well.
Mobsters are certainly more likely to claim access to a politician than an elected official is to acknowledge an association with gangsters. It may have been only an empty boast.
These scandals over Gagliano and John Franco, the ball player, that would later emerge from the Bonannos’ visit to Montreal were never envisioned by the gangsters at the time. The troubles stemmed, after all, from allegations of mere social—non-criminal—interaction. Of more importance to the Bonanno representatives at the time was the message they had for Vito from Massino, who continued to watch in dismay as the Sixth Family distanced itself even further from the Bonanno Family.
What was the purpose of their visit to see Vito?
“Well, to make them understand that they still had ties with New York,” Lino said. “That you [need to bring] the family closer together because, I guess, they might have lost ties.”
Despite the warm reception in Montreal extended to the New York gangsters, relations between the Sixth Family and the Bonanno Family were growing chilly. Montreal continued to withdraw from Bonanno affairs. Accordingly, life for Sciascia in New York was becoming similarly unpleasant. Increasingly at odds with the Bonanno Family leadership, he also had to contend with the notoriety of the drug case he had faced with LoPresti. Even with his acquittal, the charges and the Angelo Ruggiero tapes had given him an unwanted high profile among American and Canadian police. Although he often visited Canada while carrying out his drug-trafficking schemes, he had never obtained Canadian citizenship, remaining both a citizen of Italy and a permanent resident in the United States. His application to legally relocate to Canada was a tough sell. The process dragged on until February 1995, when Susan Burrows, an official at the Canadian Consulate in New York, notified Sciascia’s lawyers that she wanted to interview Sciascia in person.
Burrows had been well briefed on the Sixth Family and their business associates, and if Sciascia thought he was to face a test of his knowledge of Canadian history or to recount his investment potential as an immigrant, he was in for a surprise.
“Do you know Salvatore Ruggiero?” Burrows began.
“Yes,” a cautious Sciascia replied. “We met in the pizza place. His seven children used to hang out there,” he said of his California Pizza franchise at the Green Acres Mall. “We were friends. He was always ordering pizzas … that’s where my problems started.”
And, Burrows asked, how about Cesare Bonventre?
“I may have met him a few times,” Sciascia said, “through [Sal] Catalano.”
“Baldo Amato?” Burrows continued.
“I am the godfather of Mr. Amato’s daughter. I knew his father in Italy,” Sciascia said. “I see him once in a while—at his daughter’s birthday, etc.”
“Do you know Giuseppe LoPresti?”
“We were friends in Italy,” Sciascia responded. “He was a godfather at my daughter’s confirmation. He passed away.” No mention of murder; no mention of his involvement in it.
“Okay, Mr. Sciascia,” Burrows continued, “do you know Giuseppe Bono?” Again he nodded.
“Yes, he lived near my house. He asked my daughter to be his flower girl. I haven’t seen [the Bonos] since they were married and went back to Italy,” he said.
“Do you know Nicolò or Nick Rizzuto?”
“Yes, he was my paesano in our town of 5,000 in Italy. He lived on the same block, about 10 houses away from me. I met him once in Canada when my niece got married, then I used to see him at weddings. I haven’t seen him in a long time.” Burrows asked him about the circumstances of Nick being stopped at the border by U.S. Customs agents with documents for Sciascia’s Peugeot in his possession. Sciascia said it was “a mistake” that Nick had the papers.
Moving on, Burrows next asked about Vito Rizzuto.
“I know all the family,” Sciascia answered. “I have nothing to do with him. I see him at weddings and funerals.”
What about Paolo Renda?
“He lived across the street,” Sciascia said, adding that Renda was Vito’s brother-in-law. “I saw him a few times at family gatherings, nothing else.”
Six months later, Burrows notified him of the decision: “Having investigated further the responses to the questions which you gave me at your interview, I must confirm that I do consider you inadmissible to Canada.” She said she believed that Sciascia was a member of the Mafia and a danger to the public. On September 8, 1995, Joseph Sciascia, on his father’s behalf, appealed Burrows’s decision. Six weeks later, the immigration department certified that Sciascia was a danger to the Canadian public.
“George from Canada” remained in America.