Mar 17 2007
Spotlight on Canada’s ‘quiet don’
THE SIXTH FAMILY: THE COLLAPSE OF THE NEW YORK MAFIA AND THE RISE OF VITO RIZZUTO
by Lee Lamothe and Adrian Humphreys (Wiley, 386 pages, $34.99 hardcover)
A sensational mob trial will likely get underway in a New York City courtroom later this year and the leading figure in Canadian organized crime will be front and centre.
The defendant is Vito Rizzuto, the reputed “godfather” of the Canadian Mafia, who was extradited to the United States last summer.
He stands accused of conspiracy in the shooting and killing of three Capos in the Bonanno crime family in 1981, a massacre that was forever made famous in the movie Donnie Brasco (1997), about an FBI agent who infiltrates the Bonanno family.
The Crown’s star witness against Rizzuto is expected to be Joseph (Big Joey) Massino, the former head of the Bonanno crime family, who is now serving a life sentence for the same 1981 murders.
The Italian Mafia in North America was always headquartered in New York and for years was led by five infamous crime families — the Luccheses, Gambinos, Colombos, Genoveses and Bonannos.
This excellent book asserts that the Rizutto family of Montreal became so wealthy and powerful, thanks largely to profits made in heroin smuggling, that it came to constitute a sixth family, one that eventually eclipsed the New York families.
Vito’s father, Nicolo, was one of the big catches for Canadian police last November when a surprise takedown resulted in the arrest of more than 70 alleged members of the Rizzuto network, most of them based in Montreal.
Even veteran Mob watchers find it tough to believe that Vito, once a mere “soldier” in the Bonanno crime family, could work his way to the very top ranks of the Italian Mafia in North America.
But based on their investigative reporting, Lee Lamothe and Adrian Humphreys make the case for this assertion. Indeed, their book reveals it was the Rizutto family’s heroin-smuggling network that supplied drugs for the 1980s distribution network known as The Pizza Connection, so dubbed because the proceeds were to be laundered through a chain of pizza parlours.
Both authors come supremely equipped to tell this fascinating story.
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