Cosa Nostra News

Undated photo of Desjardins. The RCMP launched a 16-month surveillance operation against Raynald Desjardins and seven associates one day after the murder of Salvatore Montagna, the former Bonanno crime family street boss. "The Iron Worker" had been shot three times, allegedly by elderly gangster Jack Simpson with whom Montagna was meeting, and died on a snowswept river bank outside Montreal. At the time of the murder, Desjardins was warmly ensconced in his alibi, eating breakfast with his daughter.

Joseph Mignacca fired a Glock at a man with an AK47 in an attempt to murder Raynald Desjardins, now in prison awaiting trial. The man who saved the life of Vito Rizzuto's mortal enemy was sentenced to seven years in prison for exchanging gunfire with at least one man firing an AK47 (presumably a Mafia shooter sent to kill Raynald Desjardins, then a major figure in the Montreal underworld). Quebec Court Judge Gilles Garneau added two years to the prosecution's recommended sentence. Jonathan Mignacca, 30, a St-Léonard resident, was found guilty in January for discharging a firearm while with Desjardins, who reportedly split with the Rizzuto organization after serving a lengthy prison sentence. Allegedly Desjardins (whose nicknames include "Old" and "China," both rather baffling) buffered Rizzuto from becoming ensnared in the drug trafficking case.