Rizzuto 'Suspected' of Ordering Montagna Hit: Law Enforcement

Sal 'The Iron Worker' Montagna.
While he didn't pull the trigger,Vito Rizzuto, the once-powerful Montreal mob boss now sitting in an American prison, is suspected of being behind the murder of Sal "The Iron Worker" Montagna late last year, reports The NYPOST.com.

According to the article, Jailed mob don: I’ll take over the world!: "Rizzuto, who for years ran the Bonannos’ Canadian branch, is said to be the biggest mobster north of the border, and US investigators suspect he was behind the hit of rival Sal “The Iron Worker” Montagna, a former New York Bonanno boss, in Montreal in November.
Raynald Desjardins, Rizzuto confederate,
was jailed for Montagna's murder.

"They think the murder was part of Rizzuto’s power grab."

[Ed. Note: Is the Montreal Mafia family really the Canadian branch of the U.S. Bonanno family? We thought so, but some have disagreed with this, saying the Mafia groups in Canada are separate from those in the U.S.]

Rizzuto is near the end of a 10-year sentence for participating in the 1981 murders of the three Bonanno capos who challenged Rusty Rastelli's leadership. He gets out in October, we've read.

Vito Rizzuto, US-jailed one-time
mob boss of Montreal, will be
back on the streets this year.
Since Rizzuto's arrest, the Canadian mob has been in deadly disarray, with several gangland hits taking place in the past few years, including the murders of Rizzuto's father and brother.

Montagna, a former acting Bonanno boss who was deported from the U.S. to Canada back in 2009, was killed as part of a power play for control of the Montreal Mafia -- apparently following the collapse of a fragile coalition of which Montagna had been part. The man believed to be behind the hit on Montagna is a confederate of Rizzuto, according to published reports.

Police said at the time of Montagna's murder and the arrest of his alleged killer that they have "destabilized the already volatile world of organized crime in Montreal with the arrest of five men [reports vary regarding the exact number of those arrested] in the slaying of a major Mafia boss," referring to Montagna, reported the Globe & Mail.

Raynald Desjardins, a convicted mobster linked to the Rizzuto crime family, who himself survived an attempt on his life in September, was among the arrested and is believed to be the prime mover and shaker behind the assassination of Montagna.

Desjardins is to face first-degree murder charges in the shooting death last January of Montagna, who was found murdered in the L’Assomption River off the northeastern tip of Montreal.

According to the Montreal Gazette: The two men were believed to have been part of a small group that had tried -- and, obviously, failed -- to reach a consensus over who should assume control of Montreal.
"The fragile collective apparently fell apart when someone tried to kill Desjardins near his home in Laval on Sept. 16," the Gazette reports.

The GuelphMercury.com noted that Montagna’s slaying is one of the latest in a series of Mafia-related killings and disappearances amid an ongoing power struggle that has intensified since Rizzuto was jailed in 2007.

"Several killings and disappearances in late 2009 and early 2010 have robbed [Rizzuto] of many of his closest family members and allies," the GuelphMercury.com reports.

Desjardins was not injured in the ambush, which occurred prior to Montagna's killing.

Montagna was shot to death on Nov. 24 inside or as he exited a home that belongs to Jack Arthur Simpson, 69, who is serving a 28-year sentence for trafficking cocaine.

The  NYPOST.com  article contains some rather bizarre claims supposedly made by Rizzuto according to a "jailhouse source" that we at Cosa Nostra News simply find difficult to believe.

“I don’t just want to be godfather of Canada — I want to be godfather of the world,” are among the words this source puts in Rizzuto's mouth in the Post story. The former mob boss also wants revenge -- for the murder of his father and brother. Well, anyone could assume thoughts of vendetta are on his mind.

"He’s got little to live for, so while locked up at a maximum-security pen in Florence, Colo., he’s been eating vegetarian, staying fit, sharpening his mind with games of pinochle — and plotting his coup, the source said."

From the way things are going in Canada, he'd be better off studying to enter another profession, one in which he is less likely to get whacked. And we hope the jailhouse source enjoyed his plate of penne or whatever reward he got for speaking obvious smack about Rizzuto.

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