Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Son Laid to Rest After Being Gunned Down in Broad Daylight

The bells of an Italian Renaissance-style church in Montreal chimed softly Saturday as pallbearers carried the gold coffin of the son of the reputed head of Canada's most powerful Mafia family.

There was a heavy police presence in the city's Little Italy neighborhood at the funeral service for Nick Rizzuto, the son of Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto.

Nick was standing next to a black Mercedes last Monday when a gunman approached and fired several shots in broad daylight, killing him. Witnesses said the victim crumpled into the fresh snow. Police have not yet arrested the unidentified gunman.

Most of the mourners at Notre-Dame-de-la Defense church remained tightlipped as they filed out of the church, refusing to speak to reporters assembled outside.

Family friend Ricardo Padulo recalled the younger Rizzuto as "a gentleman."

"This turnout shows respect," Padulo said. "In the eye of God he's a great person. It was a beautiful service."

Henri Padulo knew Rizzuto from around the neighborhood, and recalled meeting him in local restaurants.

"He was a very polite boy, he never harassed anybody," he said. "Sometimes these things happen. Unfortunately, that's life. It's a sad day. He was young, 42 years old."

Some bystanders said curiosity brought them there.

"It's tourism," said Jean Fournier. "I'm here to see what it's like, who these people are."
During the packed service, the priest, dressed in fuchsia robes, addressed the somber crowd in Italian.

One burly man angrily ushered journalists outside after they entered the church to watch the funeral.

Vito Rizzuto, who is serving a sentence in Colorado for racketeering related to three Mafia murders, was not seen at the funeral. The victim's grandfather and namesake Nicolo Rizzuto Sr. was there, wearing a dark cashmere coat and his trademark fedora.

Nicolo Rizzuto began his Mafia career in Canada as an associate of the Cotroni crime family that controlled much of Montreal's drug trade in the 1970s while answering to the Bonanno crime family of New York.

Adrian Humphreys and Lee Lamothe titled their book "The Sixth Family" after the Rizzuto clan, saying it rivals any of the five mob families in New York, which includes the Lucchese, Bonanno, Gambino, Colombo, and Genovese mob clans.

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La Cosa Nostra Associates Plead Guilty in New York

Federal law enforcement officials in New York City ended 2009 by taking a big bite out of organized crime in two separate cases: one involving Gambino Crime Family associates, the other involving a captain with the Genevese Crime Family. There are five families running La Cosa Nostra ('our thing") organized crime in New York.

Two associates of the Gambino Organized Crime Family, Letterio DeCarlo and Thomas Dono, pleaded guilty on Wednesday in Manhattan federal court to participating in a conspiracy that resulted in the murder Frank Hydell on April 28, 1998. The defendants also admitted to their participation in a conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business in the late 1990s, according to documents examined by the National Association of Chiefs of Police's Organized Crime Committee.

According to the Indictment, other court filings, and statements made during today's guilty plea proceeding before United States District Judge Colleen McMahom: One of the goals of the Gambino Organized Crime Family was to protect its members and associates from detection and prosecution by law enforcement, by intimidating and seeking reprisal against individuals who provided testimony or other information to law enforcement. As associates of the Gambino Organized Crime Family, the defendants committed various crimes, including murder, assault, robbery, burglary, witness tampering, and obstruction of justice.

DeCarlo and Dono agreed with others to murder Hydell in order to maintain and increase their standing as associates of the Gambino Organized Crime Family. Hydell was murdered to prevent him from providing information to law enforcement about ongoing criminal activities of the defendants and other Gambino Organized Crime Family members and associates, including the January 1997 beating and murder of Frank Parasole.

DeCarlo, 47, and Dono, 34, each pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in aid of racketeering, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and conspiracy to operate an illegal gambling business, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison. Each count also carries a fine of $250,000 or twice the gross gain or loss from the offense. The defendants are scheduled to be sentenced on March 22, 2010, by Judge McMahon.

Co-defendant Edmund Boyle is scheduled to go to trial beginning on January 19, 2010, on related charges of racketeering conspiracy and murder in aid of racketeering.

In a separate organized crime case, Michael Coppola, a captain in the Genovese organized crime family of La Cosa Nostra, was sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment by United States District Judge John Gleeson following his conviction by a jury on racketeering and racketeering conspiracy charges.

The jury heard evidence of Coppola’s participation in a three-decade-long conspiracy to extort the leadership, and defraud the members, of International Longshoremen’s Association Local 1235, a union that represents port workers in New Jersey.

The trial evidence established that Coppola and others in the Genovese family controlled a succession of presidents at the union since the 1970s and extorted substantial tribute payments to the detriment of union members. The evidence included wiretap intercepts of calls in 2005 between Coppola and the son of Local 1235’s then-president in which Coppola was informed that tribute payments to the Genovese family had recently “almost doubled.”

In 1996, after being served with an investigative summons to provide a DNA sample to the state of New Jersey in connection with a murder investigation, Coppola fled and remained a fugitive for the next 11 years, using identification in numerous assumed names and traveling between residences in California and New York. The FBI captured Coppola on March 9, 2007, when a team of agents spotted him walking on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Thanks to Jim Kouri

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Tony Accardo - The Genuine Godfather

Anthony Joseph Accardo--aka Joe Batters and The Big Tuna--began his mob career as bodyguard to Al Capone. A triggerman in the St. Valentine's Day massacre of 1929, Accardo eventually became 'consiglieri' of the Chicago mob.

Related by William F. Roemer, the former senior FBI agent on the Organized Crime Squad in Chicago, "Accardo" is the story of the rise of the most powerful mob boss of all time.

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