Implicated in the assassination of Paolo Violi: an uncle of Vito Rizzuto dies at the age of 89 The landmark murder in 1978 allowed his clan to take over the leadership of the Montreal mafia
One of the uncles who helped Vito Rizzuto become the head of the Montreal mafia died in the last days, at the venerable age of 89.
Domenico Manno passed away on July 22 and his funeral was celebrated today in Montreal.
"He was a remarkable man and a wonderful friend too," read his obituary.
However, Manno had a rather eventful life, marked by various convictions.
He was one of three men convicted for the assassination of Paolo Violi, the predecessor of Vito Rizzuto, then at the top of Italian organized crime in Montreal.
On January 28, 1978, Violi, leader of the Calabrian clan, was shot dead in his Saint-Léonard café, the Reggio Bar.
Manno — the brother-in-law of Vito Rizzuto's father, patriarch Nicolo Rizzuto Sr — had convicted on a conspiracy charge and was sentenced to seven years in prison.
Beginning of the reign of the Sicilians
This attack marked the beginning of the reign of the Sicilian clan over the Montreal mafia. A reign that is the subject of a deadly power struggle after Vito Rizzuto was sentenced to eight years in prison in the United States for his role in three murders committed in 1981.
One of Manno's accomplices was Agostino Cuntrera, sentenced to five years in prison for the same crime. Cuntrera, who later became an influential mafioso, was murdered by a gunman on June 29, 2010, in Saint-Léonard.
Five months later, Vito Rizzuto's father was also shot dead in his Cartierville home.
Drug trafficking
In 2012, Manno was released from a US penitentiary in New Jersey, where he had been incarcerated since 1998 on charges of importing cocaine and heroin into Florida.
He also had to pay a fine of $250,000, an amount he tried unsuccessfully to have reduced.
In recent years, he has been involved in transactions involving land, presumably for real estate development, according to reports published by our Investigation Bureau and in La Presse .
