https://quebec.huffingtonpost.ca/pi...iere-de-vincenzo-cotroni_b_5711181.html?The discreet godfather: life and career of Vincenzo Cotroni
Thirty years ago, September 16, 1984 to be precise, Vincenzo Cotroni died at the age of 73, following a cancer. He was one of the most emblematic figures of the Montreal mafia.
30 years ago, on September 16, 1984, at the age of 73, died of cancer, Vincenzo Cotroni, one of the most emblematic figures of the Montreal mafia. He had, it is said, in the days before his death, followed with interest on television the travels of Pope John Paul II, who was at that time making his first trip to Canada.
The death of Cotroni came the day after a bloody change of guard in the Montreal mafia, while the Sicilian clan, led by Nicolo Rizzuto, had eliminated the brothers Paolo, Francesco and Rocco Violi, who had vainly attempted, during the late 1970s, to dismiss Rizzuto and his cohort of the Montreal mafia leadership. Only Cotroni had been spared, because the Sicilians still had a certain respect for him. From then on, we talked about the disappearance of the Cotroni clan in the short or long term, since it was likely that the natural successor of Vincenzo, his brother Frank, would not live up to the expectations of the local underworld to assume Succession. Indeed, he had spent most of his life behind bars,
Born in 1910 in Mammola, Calabria, southern Italy, Vincenzo Cotroni emigrated to Montreal in November 1925, with his two sisters, Marguerita and Palmina, and his brother Giuseppe. His two other brothers, Frank and Michel, will be born in Montreal. The Cotroni family, who will become Canadian citizens in 1929, settled on Timothée Street in the Saint-Jacques district. Eldest son of a carpenter, and not knowing how to read or write, Vincenzo will do various trades before going into professional wrestling briefly under the name of Vic Vincent, with Armand Courville, himself a wrestler by profession. He abandoned the sport in the late 1930s to become the owner of nightclubs, including the famous Au Faisan Dore which will introduce the public to the great names of the French and Quebec songs of the time. But at the same time, Cotroni had begun to make a name for himself in the underworld, then run by the Jewish underworld. He became the owner of gaming houses and owner of cafes, some of which served as soliciting places for prostitutes who operated in the "Red Light" sector, whose reputation across the border made Montreal an "open city" for all vices.
Cotroni knows his first involvement with the law since 1928, when he is 18 years old. That year, in addition to being guilty of illegal liquor sales, he faces a rape charge against Maria Bresciano, her 14-year-old girlfriend. Vincenzo's parents opposed their idyll. The girl's father makes a complaint to the police. Cotroni pleads guilty and is ordered to provide a personal security deposit of $ 1,000 in cash, a considerable sum for the time. In addition, he must commit to keep the peace for one year, failing which he will be sentenced to six months in prison. Following the requirements of the social conventions of the time, and also to restore the honor of the two families, Vincenzo married Maria in May 1928.
During the 1930s, Cotroni would face various crimes ranging from forgery, possession of counterfeit money, use of a firearm causing injury to an election officer, sale of alcohol outside the opening hours of an establishment, offenses for which it will be paid, either a few months in prison, a fine or a conditional sentence. Later, he will face much more serious charges. In June 1966 he was charged with attempting to bribe an RCMP officer. At the end of a trial held in Joliette, the judge grants him the benefit of the doubt and he is acquitted. In 1976 he was charged, along with Paolo Violi, with attempting to extort two Toronto Mafiosos who had used their names to extort money. money to fraudsters. Cotroni will ultimately be acquitted.
It was only in the mid-1950s that Vincenzo Cotroni took the helm of the Montreal Mafia, thanks to the support of the powerful Bonanno family of Cosa Nostra in New York. It delegates its representative, Carmine Galante, an influential mafioso, who comes to the city in 1953 to take control of racketeering gambling, prostitution and protection in nightclubs. The famous Bonfire restaurant, located on Décarie Boulevard, serves as its headquarters. Cotroni is named capodecina (faction leader) of the Bonanno family; he becomes his official representative in Canada. But Galante, under constant pressure from the police, must abandon his application for permanent residence that he had submitted to the Canadian immigration authorities, and returns to New York, and without having laid the foundations for a heroin import network led by Corsican and Marseille traffickers, which network will supply the New York market for several years, making Montreal the main gateway and transit of heroin in North America. Vincenzo's brother, Giuseppe, was to be arrested in 1959 by the RCMP and the FBI, in connection with this network of heroin providers.
With a frail, short stature and a slightly arched back, Cotroni still had the respect of his principal lieutenants, Nicola Di Iorio, Angelo Lanzo, Paolo Violi and William Obront, whom he met regularly at the Moishe Steak House on boulevard Saint-Laurent, a restaurant he loved for the quality of his meat, to discuss the affairs of the organization. The membership of the Cotroni clan consisted of about twenty members of Italian origin, according to the country's police authorities. However, a large number of individuals, mostly French Canadians, Jews, Irish, Hispanics, gravitated around the leaders of the Mafia of Montreal, without being inducted members.
The Cotroni organization is at its peak in the 1960s; it exerts its influence on the entire Montreal underworld. In November 1969, a report by the Prévost Commission on the Administration of Justice in Quebec identifies Vincenzo, and his long-time colleague, Luigi Greco, as the leaders of organized crime in Quebec, who have close ties to the mafia. US. In 1963, he sued Maclean's magazine for more than $ 1 million for portraying him as the "mafia boss." Cotroni won his case in 1972, but the judge only symbolically gave him one dollar in compensation for his bad reputation.
Cotroni had a very hectic career during the thirty years he led his organization. Although he was never charged with serious crimes, such as murder or drug trafficking on a large scale, the leader of the Calabrian clan found himself immersed in conflict or in an explosive situation where he could have been leave your life. But thanks to his negotiating skills, his legendary phlegm and above all at his discretion, he has always managed to do well.
Thus, during the years 1964 to 1966, he was involved in a territorial jurisdictional dispute between Stefano Magaddino, the leader of Cosa Nostra in Buffalo, who was already in control of organized crime in Ontario. Magaddino had decided to extend his supremacy over the Montreal area, controlled by his cousin Joseph Bonanno of New York. Bonanno and his son, Salvatore, had, during a stay in the metropolis, enjoined Cotroni not to yield to the pressures of Magaddino. The stakes were of paramount importance, as it was for the Buffalo family to appropriate the lucrative pipeline of drugs between Montreal and New York.
The other delicate situation that Cotroni had to resolve was when he had to decide whether or not to expel, on his own initiative, the leader of the Sicilian faction, Nicolo Rizzuto, from the Montreal family. A dispute arose in 1972, when some leaders of the Sicilian mafia, as well as Paolo Violi, complained about the conduct of Rizzuto, who for a number of years had distanced himself from the Cotroni-Violi clan. . He was criticized for being a separate band and for engaging in drug trafficking, without being accountable to Cotroni. After numerous meetings and discussions with American and Sicilian emissaries, Cotroni suspends Rizzuto. But the Bonanno family overrules his decision and orders the reinstatement of Rizzuto within the clan.
Vincenzo Cotroni has been called to testify many times before various commissions of inquiry on organized crime. In 1952, he appeared before the Caron Commission, which was investigating the actions of the Montreal police's morality squad on gambling and prostitution. Cotroni was already perceived at the time as an important figure in the field of gaming and cabarets. In 1973 and 1974, he made several appearances on the witness stand of the famous Commission of Inquiry on Organized Crime (CECO), which highlights for the first time the criminal activities of the Cotroni clan. He denies being the leader of the Montreal Mafia, arguing instead that he is a businessman who makes pepperoni and sausage. The Commission's prosecutor goes so far as to accuse him of conspiring to derail the work of the investigation. Cotroni would, indeed, have sought to convince some witnesses to tarnish the reputation of judges and politicians. Commissioners sentenced him to one year in prison for contempt of court for his evasive answers.
Weakened by the disease, Vincenzo Cotroni gives the command to his dauphin, Paoli Violi. He died a few years later taking with him the secrets of three decades of undisputed domination of the Calabrian mafia, faithful to the precepts he has cultivated throughout his life: namely the absolute silence (omertà ) and discretion.
![[Linked Image]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/08/01/15/4EB062B400000578-6007643-One_of_Frank_Jr_s_favorite_stories_he_recounts_on_the_tour_is_ab-a-8_1533133253099.jpg)