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This is going to be interesting..stay out of the bridge for a while TOTAs
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/art...-day-of-freedom
| quote: | It will likely be a bittersweet Thanksgiving for Canada’s top Mafia boss, Vito Rizzuto, who was whisked through Pearson airport late Friday evening by heavily armed tactical officers.
But just where he is headed is still a mystery with experts uncertain whether he will remain in Ontario to evaluate his enemies or go to Montreal to be with his family.
Author Antonio Nicaso, who has lectured police forces on organized crime, said he thought Rizzuto would quickly leave the GTA for Montreal.
Nicaso noted that Rizzuto’s family is grieving the loss of his father-in-law, who died of natural causes late last month.
Rizzuto also was unable to attend the funerals of his son and father, both of whom were murdered while he was in custody.
“He’d want to see his daughter, his son, his wife, his grandchildren,” Nicaso said Saturday.
“He’s going to grieve with his family,” said a police officer who’s very familiar with Rizzuto. “He’s not a heartless S.O.B.”
Before his arrest for his role in three gangland murders in Brooklyn in 1981, Rizzuto divided his time between Montreal and the GTA.
He frequently stayed in a GTA compound north of Vaughan that’s blocked from public view by a high hedge and steel gate, with a high-end security camera on it.
There was no sign of Rizzuto at the home on Saturday.
Police sources say it is too early to tell if Rizzuto will settle in Toronto or if he is just using Ontario as a way station to gather his strength and assess his enemies here.
Either way, he will likely maintain strong business interests in both Toronto and Montreal, a police source said.
“He’s like a general surveying his battlefield,” said the veteran GTA police Mafia investigator.
Police suspicion for some of the bloodletting against the Rizzuto clan fell on Salvatore (The Bambino Boss) Montagna, a Sicilian who rose quickly in the New York mob.
Upon his return to the Montreal area in 2009, Montagna made several trips to Toronto and Hamilton, apparently to gather support from local leaders of the Mafia strain known as the ‘Ndrangheta, who are based in Ontario and eager to wrest power away from Rizzuto.
By the end of 2011, Montagna himself was murdered. In the past two years, Montreal has also seen a wave of firebombings of Italian-owned businesses and gangland killings as the shakeup in the underworld continues.
While staying in the GTA might offer Rizzuto a brief respite, it also poses security risks — for himself and for his enemies, police said.
Mafia bosses know that right now they are under heightened police surveillance.
When police arrested four men as suspects in the slaying of Montagna, it emerged their investigation was aided in part by intercepted messages sent by what the accused assumed incorrectly were safely encrypted BlackBerry devices.
Police sources tell the Star that wiretaps and other surveillance of Montreal mob figures would also pick up conversations with their allies in Toronto.
A police source said he expects Rizzuto to soon appear in public. He has a taste for fine wine, high-end cuisine, golf and the company of attractive younger women.
“He’s gonna get cranky,” the source said. “He’s not going to hide out.”
With files from Julian Sher
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