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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Mafia Wars Changes on Facebook

In case you've been taking a hiatus from your FarmVille, Mafia Wars, etc. over the holiday, you're going to notice some changes when you resume your regular Facebook gaming schedule.

The biggest difference? You might have problems sending in-game gifts to friends. However, it's not a problem at all, rather the result of Facebook setting limits on how many people you can send gifts to per game, plus an overall limit on gifting per day.

A Zynga rep had this to say about the changes, "Unfortunately since we do not control these changes we cannot provide "exact" details as there is no exact science as to how many requests you will be able to send on a per game/per day basis."

Of course, considering the millions of people who play these games (and send gifts), we're sure all of that activity taxes Facebook's backend resources, so we can understand why the social network decided to lay down the law.

Thanks to Libe Goad

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Vito Rizzuto, The Teflon Don, Seeks Attendance at Slain Son's Funeral

At Nick Rizzuto's wedding in 1995, RCMP and Laval police officers were so shutter-happy the guests might have taken them for official wedding photographers.

Now that the reputed Canadian Godfather's eldest son is about to be buried, all eyes — and lenses — will be focused on his funeral.

Gunned down Monday outside a real-estate developer's office in Montreal, no date has yet been set for Nick Rizzuto Jr.'s funeral.

Vito Rizzuto, the slain man's father, though previously known as the Teflon Don, is currently serving a 10-year sentence in the United States for racketeering, related to three murders that occurred in the 1980s. His sentence will end in 2012.

It will be up to the prison warden of a Colorado jail to decide whether he will be able to attend his son's funeral in the coming days. Rizzuto can request permission to leave the jail and cross the border, and if granted would have to pay for whatever travel expenses that would entail, as well as pass all security measures, said U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Felicia Ponce.

Ponce could not comment on whether the elder Rizzuto has made such a request, however.

Whether Rizzuto's grandfather and namesake, Nicolo Rizzuto Sr., will attend the funeral is also a matter of speculation.

He is the only one of six Mafia leaders arrested in Montreal in 2006 and sentenced for gangsterism-related charges who is not behind bars, but must obey the conditions of his probation — including not to associate with known criminals.

Whoever is able to attend the funeral will likely be under close scrutiny by both police and criminal elements assessing the strength of the once very powerful crime syndicate.

Adrian Humphreys, author of The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto— a Rizzuto biography — and an organized crime reporter for the National Post, expects the funeral to be a large affair with people coming from across Canada, the United States and Italy to pay their respects.

"The funeral will be a terribly sad affair featuring a large and loving family weeping for a young father cut down early in life," Humphreys said Wednesday. "It will also be seen as an occasion for criminal associates of all stripes to pay respects to a family who have dominated the criminal landscape of Canada for decades. Police will also be watching closely. Investigators look for signs of who is showing their respect to whom and who avoids whom."

Not since the murder of crime boss Paolo Violi in 1978 has someone as prominent as the son of the reputed head of the Mafia been the target of an assassination. Indeed, it was Violi's assassination that solidified the hegemony of the Rizzuto clan in Montreal.

Having immigrated to Montreal from Sicily in 1954 — when Vito was eight — Nicolo Rizzuto Sr. was a so-called "man of honour" among other Mafiosi until Violi was shot in the back of the head while having dinner at a restaurant.

Both Nicolo Sr. and Vito were out of the country when the killing occurred, but three men associated with the Rizzutos were later convicted of Violi's murder.

After the murder of three Mafia captains in New York — for which Vito Rizzuto was arrested in 2004 and pleaded guilty to racketeering charges in 2007 — Vito became known as the Godfather of the Canadian Mafia.

Nicolo Sr. and Vito both moved into palatial homes in the north end of Montreal that came to be known as "Mafia row" as other family members followed suit. But with Vito Rizzuto now behind bars, Nick Jr. has been said by police to be looking after the Rizzutos' financial dealings and allegedly acting as the point of contact between the Mafia and other criminal factions in Montreal.

He had no criminal convictions however, other than for impaired driving.

According to Humphreys, Nick Jr., as the eldest son of the reputed Godfather and the namesake of the family's patriarch: "was a tremendously powerful symbolic target. However, police did not believe he was next in line to lead the Rizzuto criminal organization. He was not the crowned prince."

Nick Jr. was revealed by construction company proprietor Tony Magi to have been involved with the real estate business of late.

Magi was the victim of an attempted murder last year.

Nick Rizzuto Jr. was 42 when he was shot dead just after noon on Monday not far from the offices of FTM Construction, owned by Magi.

Thanks to Catherine Solyom

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