Speaker 1: With Lucky Land Slots, you can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 2: Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today. Has anyone seen
Speaker 2: the bride and broom?
Speaker 1: Or sorry, we're here.
Speaker 3: We were getting lucky in the limo when we lost
Speaker 3: track of time. No Lucky Land casino with cash prizes
Speaker 3: that add up quicker than a guess registered.
Speaker 4: But in that case, I pronounce you lucky.
Speaker 1: Play for free at lucky landslots dot com. Daily bonuses
Speaker 1: are waiting. No purchase necessary boid. We're prohibited by long
Speaker 1: eighteen plus terms and conditions APPLA. See website for details.
Speaker 3: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 3: gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess ah, in
Speaker 1: my dentist's office more than once.
Speaker 5: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 6: Yes? You do?
Speaker 5: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 4: Really?
Speaker 3: Yes, excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: I never win?
Speaker 2: And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 3: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot com.
Speaker 2: Play for free right now?
Speaker 3: Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 4: Nope?
Speaker 2: Not necessary boid.
Speaker 3: We we're gon be my low eighteen plus terms and
Speaker 3: conditions of.
Speaker 6: Plus saying details.
Speaker 5: Hey guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you
Speaker 5: know this about me, but I'm a bit of a
Speaker 5: fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but
Speaker 5: I like fun too.
Speaker 2: It's a thing.
Speaker 5: And now the truth is out there, I can tell
Speaker 5: you about my favorite place to have fun, Chumba Casino.
Speaker 5: They have hundreds of social casino style games to choose from,
Speaker 5: with new games released each week. You can play for
Speaker 5: free anytime, anywhere, and each day brings a new chance
Speaker 5: to collect daily bonuses. So join me and the fun.
Speaker 5: Sign up now at Chumba Casino dot com. No We're necessary,
Speaker 5: dapod where every boy lost in terms conditions of eating plus.
Speaker 3: Lucky Land Casino. Asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 3: gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: Lucky in line at the Delhi I guess ah, in
Speaker 1: my dentist's office more than once.
Speaker 5: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 4: You do?
Speaker 5: In the car before my kids PTA meeting?
Speaker 4: Really?
Speaker 3: Yes, excuse me, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: I never win?
Speaker 2: And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 3: You could get lucky anywhere playing at Lucky Landsloughts dot
Speaker 3: Com play for free right now.
Speaker 4: Are you feeling lucky? Nope, We're just necessary for.
Speaker 6: You.
Speaker 2: Are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers
Speaker 2: in true crime history and the authors that have written
Speaker 2: about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every week
Speaker 2: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 2: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 7: Good Evening. This episode is brought to you by square Space.
Speaker 7: Square Space is the easiest way to create a beautiful website, blog,
Speaker 7: or online store for you and your ideas. Squarespace features
Speaker 7: an elegant interface, beautiful templates, and incredible twenty four to
Speaker 7: seven customer support. Try Squarespace at squarespace dot com and
Speaker 7: enter offer COO True Murder at checkout to get ten
Speaker 7: percent off square Space. Build it Beautiful. Until Vito Risuto
Speaker 7: went to prison in two thousand and six for his
Speaker 7: role in a decade's old Brooklyn triple murder, he ruled
Speaker 7: the Port of Montreal, the northern gateway to the major
Speaker 7: American drug markets. A master diplomat, he won the respect
Speaker 7: of rival mafia clans, bikers and street gangs, and criminal
Speaker 7: business thrived on his turf. His family prospered, and his
Speaker 7: empire grew until one of North America's true Teflon Dawns,
Speaker 7: finally lost his veneer as he watched helplessly from his
Speaker 7: Colorado prison. The murders of his son and father made
Speaker 7: international head lines, the killings of his lieutenants and friends
Speaker 7: bills billed the pages of Canadian news, and the influence
Speaker 7: of Nadrangeta, the Calabrian mafia spread across Montreal faster than
Speaker 7: the blood of Rizzuto's crime family. In twenty twelve, Vito
Speaker 7: Risuto emerged from prison, a sixty six year old man
Speaker 7: who could carefully rebuild his criminal empire or seek bloody
Speaker 7: revenge and damn the consequences from the events leading to
Speaker 7: his imprisonment to his shocking death in December twenty thirteen.
Speaker 7: Business or Blood is the final chapter of Vito's story.
Speaker 7: The book that we're featuring this evening is Business or
Speaker 7: Blood Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto's Last War with my special
Speaker 7: guest journalist and author Peter Edwards. Welcome back to the
Speaker 7: program and thank you for agreeing to this interview Peter Edwards.
Speaker 6: Well, thanks for a green to have me. I really
Speaker 6: liked it last time and I'm looking forward to this one.
Speaker 7: Thanks very much, Peter. Now for the audience, I just
Speaker 7: want to make sure that people know that this is
Speaker 7: You've co written this book, and it's not the first
Speaker 7: time you've had another person assisting in with his books.
Speaker 7: And so this person's Antonio Nicaso. So tell us about
Speaker 7: a little bit about the background of Antonio Nicaso and
Speaker 7: your collaboration with him for this book Business or Blood.
Speaker 6: Antonio and I met around nineteen ninety. We did a
Speaker 6: book way back when called Deadly Silence, and we had
Speaker 6: a lot of I learned a lot working with him.
Speaker 6: That was when he just came over to Canada and
Speaker 6: he knew a huge amount about the Pure Mafia in Italy.
Speaker 6: He knew about its international ramification sort of how it
Speaker 6: intersected with a lot of places in the world, and
Speaker 6: he was curious how it fit in Canada. I knew
Speaker 6: things about local things, but I didn't really know, you know,
Speaker 6: what they meant when you got across the ocean or
Speaker 6: when you got to South America. And so we thought
Speaker 6: would be fun, you know, for both of us to
Speaker 6: educate each other and then work together on something. And i've,
Speaker 6: you know, since then, he's become a good, really good
Speaker 6: friend and someone I totally trust. And he also he's
Speaker 6: trained as a lawyer and as a journalist, and so
Speaker 6: he really knows how to access court documents and he
Speaker 6: has phenomenal sources in Italy, so that with him you
Speaker 6: can have an idea of what you'd like to know
Speaker 6: in Italy and you can actually find out. His connections
Speaker 6: are huge, and he travels the world lecturing on organized crime.
Speaker 7: Right now. We spoke just before, just before we went
Speaker 7: on to air, and you had mentioned that it was
Speaker 7: interesting and I would want to give anything away, but
Speaker 7: it was interesting. The this certain dynamic in that you
Speaker 7: felt that the subject of this book, Vito Risuto, should
Speaker 7: have known or could likely have known, that you and
Speaker 7: Nicaso were planning to write this book. So tell us
Speaker 7: about the plan to write this book and why specifically
Speaker 7: you felt it was you and the Caso felt it
Speaker 7: was the time to write this book.
Speaker 6: Peter Rosuto got out of prison in October twenty twelve,
Speaker 6: and at that time his father had been murdered right
Speaker 6: in front of his mother and his sister in the
Speaker 6: family home by a sniper, and so that was shocking.
Speaker 6: He could do nothing, and this is the guy who
Speaker 6: was a control freak, and to not be able to
Speaker 6: do anything when your family has, you know, is under
Speaker 6: attack like that is shocking. His eldest son was murdered
Speaker 6: on a street corner where he was obviously set up.
Speaker 6: His brother in law was kidnapped and never seen again,
Speaker 6: and so he was pretty obviously he was going to
Speaker 6: have to do something, either flee or go after the attackers.
Speaker 6: And a month after he got out of prison, someone
Speaker 6: who should have been a mediator in Montreal, a guy
Speaker 6: who I actually talked to, Joe Demalo, he was murdered
Speaker 6: and Demalo was the guy who would have brought peace.
Speaker 6: And so when Demalo was killed, and that was a
Speaker 6: really clear message that this is going to be a war,
Speaker 6: Antonio and I started thinking about what it would be
Speaker 6: like to have a book starting with FTO getting the
Speaker 6: news of his son being murdered and then just writing
Speaker 6: from that point on, and we we got kind of
Speaker 6: caught up in the idea, and so by December twenty
Speaker 6: twelve we were working on the book and we knew
Speaker 6: who the main characters would be, but we didn't know
Speaker 6: who would win the war, and so that was kind
Speaker 6: of fascinating for us to be trying to anticipate who
Speaker 6: would do what to.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it is a that's unusual for mob books. Certainly,
Speaker 7: he's a weird Joe, you know, when you're the author
Speaker 7: and you don't know the end. Yeah, Yeah, that's unusual
Speaker 7: for how many books you've written too now to be
Speaker 7: able to really understand this story. And I know you
Speaker 7: start off and you and it's very interesting how you
Speaker 7: lay out this book in terms of you have Veto
Speaker 7: in prison in Colorado in two thousand and nine at
Speaker 7: Christmas time when he gets the news, but just before
Speaker 7: we get into that, give us a little bit of
Speaker 7: a background for those people that don't know. And I
Speaker 7: think most people don't know the real connection between that
Speaker 7: do you cover in this book as well? And I
Speaker 7: guess Antonio Nicaso would have been instrumental in this too,
Speaker 7: is that you have the Sicilians, and we talked about
Speaker 7: and alluded in the introduction the Calabrasian, the Calabrian and
Speaker 7: the Sicilian. And you have the New York families and
Speaker 7: Montreal and we'll talk about South America and other places.
Speaker 7: But tell us about this a little bit of the
Speaker 7: background of Sicily and the Calabrians and Sicilians in Italy,
Speaker 7: and then we'll talk about North America and that situation
Speaker 7: as well in Toronto, Montreal and Italy. So it's all
Speaker 7: us just a little bit about that.
Speaker 6: Sure. Vita Rizzuto was born into a mafia family. So
Speaker 6: his grandfather was a huge deal in western Sicily. His father, Nicolo,
Speaker 6: who became a huge deal in Canada. He married up.
Speaker 6: It would be like marrying into into royalty if you
Speaker 6: were in the crime world, and so they were something
Speaker 6: in Sicily, but they were ambitious and they wanted to
Speaker 6: be more, and so what they did was moved to
Speaker 6: Canada when Vito was eight years old. Later they moved
Speaker 6: to South America. What it meant was that by the
Speaker 6: time he was a young adult, Vito could function really
Speaker 6: well in four different languages, Like he could slip from
Speaker 6: English to Spanish to Italian to French with no problem,
Speaker 6: and he could get all the nuances of all the languages.
Speaker 6: And that really kind of informed the way he looked
Speaker 6: at the world, like everything was an opportunity to him,
Speaker 6: and everything was kind of laid out. He was the
Speaker 6: only son, so there's no doubt what he's going to do.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 7: You talked about his father, Nicolo, and his immigration to Canada,
Speaker 7: So tell us about his father and the kind of
Speaker 7: power that he wielded in his position. Tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit about his father, his father.
Speaker 6: When he came over, he very very quickly got going
Speaker 6: in construction, got a lot of different projects going, and
Speaker 6: within five years of setting foot in Canada, he really
Speaker 6: was as somebody. He was the person who people come
Speaker 6: in from Sicily would want to want to meet if
Speaker 6: they were going to go into that sort of a world,
Speaker 6: a crime world. He was the guy you wanted to
Speaker 6: meet when you got off the boat. Montreal was controlled
Speaker 6: mostly by Collabrians at that time, and he was Sicily,
Speaker 6: and he was very very arrogant. He didn't he didn't
Speaker 6: argue with him, he didn't even acknowledge them, really and
Speaker 6: so tech he was a member of the Banano crime
Speaker 6: family in Montreal. But he just did what he wanted,
Speaker 6: which which absolutely infuriated one guy above him who wanted
Speaker 6: to have him killed. When he there's a contract that
Speaker 6: this guy wanted to put out on him, Paulo Violi,
Speaker 6: and it was rejected by the New Yorkers who ran
Speaker 6: the family. When when the contract was rejected, and that
Speaker 6: meant that Vito had an absolute enemy and also that
Speaker 6: his enemy had appeared powerless, and so in time Vito
Speaker 6: killed that guy and killed his two brothers and then
Speaker 6: moved to the top himself.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about Paulo Rioli and this rise to
Speaker 7: power in terms of an earner, because that's really what
Speaker 7: the mafia and organized crime are really about, is money earning.
Speaker 7: What was Vito really like? What was he in terms
Speaker 7: of there's others involved in terms of like leadership skills,
Speaker 7: but how was he as an earner?
Speaker 6: That's a great question, and that really gets to the
Speaker 6: heart of the difference between the two. Paula Violi was
Speaker 6: kind of a neighborhood criminal who looked a bit to Italy,
Speaker 6: looked a bit to New York, but basically was a
Speaker 6: big deal on Montreal Island. Niccolo Russuto looked looked at
Speaker 6: things globally like he he counted in Europe. He was
Speaker 6: a very big deal in South America. He lived in
Speaker 6: Venezuela for quite a while, and what he did was
Speaker 6: have a direct access to cocaine, and he when others
Speaker 6: in his family were cautioning about getting too heavily involved
Speaker 6: in drugs, he was. He was in with both feet
Speaker 6: and so he very quickly was a just sort of
Speaker 6: an international force financially, while Paula Violi was doing well
Speaker 6: financially but in a very small area. It would be
Speaker 6: like someone with a very good union job versus someone
Speaker 6: who's a multimillionaire.
Speaker 7: Now you talked about Sicilian and Calabrian, and so before
Speaker 7: we get too far into this, let's talk about another
Speaker 7: thing that was introduced to and it's the the drong Gedda.
Speaker 7: So explain what the non Gretta is and it's allegiance
Speaker 7: to the Colabrian or Sicilian, and tell us about its
Speaker 7: position in Toronto.
Speaker 6: It's the Calabrian mafia. And for a long time it
Speaker 6: was underestimated that people called it the lunch bucket mob
Speaker 6: and and kind of ridiculed it or didn't take it seriously.
Speaker 6: It really rose up in the nineteen seventies with kidnappings.
Speaker 6: One of them was one of the Getty family, you know,
Speaker 6: the fabulously wealthy folks from the States, and so they
Speaker 6: got into a lot of drug trafficking. They moved north
Speaker 6: of Toronto, like first to Toronto and then a little
Speaker 6: bit north to Woodbridge, York region. They have a commission
Speaker 6: called a Camera Decontrolo, which is a governing body. And
Speaker 6: so they're a kind of an alliance of a little
Speaker 6: more than half a dozen families in Toronto and others
Speaker 6: across the province.
Speaker 5: And they.
Speaker 6: A lot of inner marriage and so they're very very
Speaker 6: hard to break because people are married into into the
Speaker 6: family and if you wanted to leave, you would be
Speaker 6: infuriating your blood family, also your in laws, like it
Speaker 6: would be a huge deal to to actually turn on
Speaker 6: the family. And also they're very Ontario based and Montreal
Speaker 6: was more Sicilian. Risuto's you know, very leaning towards the
Speaker 6: old ways with Sicily, and so there there was a
Speaker 6: natural gap between the two families. Vito Zzuto was was
Speaker 6: fairly good at developing allegiances with them, but they always
Speaker 6: remained something different from them.
Speaker 7: Now, what was the position with you say, the Banano family,
Speaker 7: not to go too far into the hierarchy of the
Speaker 7: American families, but where did they really where was their center?
Speaker 7: Was it Montreal or Toronto? And how did they deal
Speaker 7: with both factions. How did they deal with that dynamic?
Speaker 6: Their center was really Montreal, and Montreal it's just three
Speaker 6: hundred and eighty five miles up from New York City,
Speaker 6: and so Montreal was a logical place for a long
Speaker 6: time to bring in smuggle in people, smuggle in drugs,
Speaker 6: and a place to run off to when there's too
Speaker 6: much heat in New York, a fun place to go to.
Speaker 6: And so their natural poll was to Montreal. And then
Speaker 6: they just by extension, thought they deserved the rest of Canada,
Speaker 6: but they didn't really have the feet on the ground
Speaker 6: to really control it.
Speaker 7: Now, not in the beginning, but you could talk about
Speaker 7: the early metamorphosis of of organized crime at Montreal and Toronto.
Speaker 7: But by the time you start this story with Vito
Speaker 7: Rizzuto in prison in Colorado, organized crime the mafia has
Speaker 7: changed completely changed into Canada and you have this hierarchy
Speaker 7: of organized crime syndicates mafioso and then street gangs and
Speaker 7: Hell's Angels and Rock Machine and so tell us a
Speaker 7: little bit about the situation that evolved where there was
Speaker 7: an organized hierarchy of power with mafioso and then street
Speaker 7: gangs and vikers.
Speaker 6: A lot of that's because of the Rizzuto's Nicolo and Vito,
Speaker 6: where they were smart enough to be able to find
Speaker 6: common ground with other groups, and so instead of fighting
Speaker 6: for one thing, they'd try to develop three things. One
Speaker 6: guy from the Old Rock Machine By gang told me
Speaker 6: that he thought there was enough sun for everybody, you know,
Speaker 6: that why fight over one little thing when you can
Speaker 6: go for a big thing, And that was really a
Speaker 6: Vita Rizzuto idea. He would, rather than fight over drug turf,
Speaker 6: he'd try and get all the drug dealers to agree
Speaker 6: to keep the prices high, and so that way they'd
Speaker 6: all profit, you know, rather than losing resources and people
Speaker 6: losing their lives fighting for tiny little bits of turf.
Speaker 6: It was better to for the big players to force
Speaker 6: up prices and make a profit and then to punish
Speaker 6: everybody who undercut them. And so there was a always
Speaker 6: Vita Rizzuto finding a way to connect groups. The Hell's Angels.
Speaker 6: While they didn't have black members, they did have affiliated
Speaker 6: clubs that took in all sorts of different races, and
Speaker 6: so what that meant was that Vita Risuto could connect
Speaker 6: with them and then have a connection to Haitian street games,
Speaker 6: and so Even though you wouldn't think that Vito's group
Speaker 6: and the Haitian groups had much in common, there actually
Speaker 6: was a couple of people who were kind of lynchpins
Speaker 6: who pulled it all together and connected everybody.
Speaker 7: Now, at what point with Vito Rizzuto residing over this
Speaker 7: crime organization, of course he has to come to power.
Speaker 7: So tell us some of the characters that have to
Speaker 7: go by the wayside for Veto to rise to power,
Speaker 7: and that will set us up for some of the
Speaker 7: alliances that come to haunt Vito later on.
Speaker 6: I was pretty seamless with Vito and his father because
Speaker 6: Veto never embarrassed his father and never publicly tried to
Speaker 6: take the limelight from his father. But Veto would have
Speaker 6: assumed power, say easily by the mid nineteen eighties, and
Speaker 6: that's when he had killed three people or helped kill
Speaker 6: three people for the Banano family, giving him credibility down there.
Speaker 6: He he also basically wiped out the eclabriant wing of
Speaker 6: the Montreal mob. He killed the Violi brothers, three of them.
Speaker 6: That was quite methodical, and what that did was it
Speaker 6: gave him power, But it also meant that there were
Speaker 6: some enemies that just never would never possibly go to
Speaker 6: his side no matter what he did. There were people
Speaker 6: who loved the Violis and who fled to Ontario, but
Speaker 6: could never ever possibly think of being on Vito side.
Speaker 7: Now, let's talk about how Veto ends up in prison
Speaker 7: in Colorado in two thousand and we'll tell us when
Speaker 7: exactly he is sentenced, and how does he get sentenced
Speaker 7: and how does this come down?
Speaker 1: Wait, the Lucky Landslide. You can get lucky just about anywhere.
Speaker 4: It's your captain speaking. We've got clear runway and the
Speaker 4: weather's five. But we're just going to circle up here
Speaker 4: a while and get lucky. Oh, nothing like that. It's
Speaker 4: just these cash prizes add up quick. So I suggest
Speaker 4: you sit back, keep your trade table up right, and
Speaker 4: start getting lucky.
Speaker 1: Pay for free at Lucky Landslides dot Com. Are you
Speaker 1: feeling lucky?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: For just necessary void. We're prohibited by Law eighteen plus.
Speaker 1: Terms and conditions apply. See website for details.
Speaker 7: We can talk about the Charbonnel Commission, but let's talk
Speaker 7: about first about how Veto ends up in prison, the
Speaker 7: things that lead up to the circumstances of lead up
Speaker 7: to him being in prison.
Speaker 6: Finally, he took part in three murders in nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 6: They're actually there's a fictional version of them shown in
Speaker 6: the movie Donny Brasco. He was in a closet with
Speaker 6: a couple other men. The targets, who were in the
Speaker 6: same crime family, were led into a main room. When
Speaker 6: they were all there and there was time for the
Speaker 6: shooting to start, someone who's with the targets ran his
Speaker 6: hands through his hair and that was the signal to
Speaker 6: come out shooting. They killed those three guys. The reason
Speaker 6: they used montrealers was that they didn't want recognizable people
Speaker 6: like they won fresh faces to do it, and so
Speaker 6: Vito got away with it. He had a really charmed life.
Speaker 6: He stayed out of prison, he was driving around in
Speaker 6: extremely expensive cars, lots of girlfriends, that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: But he always had that hanging over his head that
Speaker 6: there's the possibility of a death penalty in the States
Speaker 6: if people figured out what was going on. And then
Speaker 6: with the Banano family started to collapse in the two thousands,
Speaker 6: where they were full of informers and it was just
Speaker 6: a matter of time until someone squealed on Veto and
Speaker 6: everything collapsed. And so he fought a huge battle to
Speaker 6: keep from being shipped to the States, but ended up
Speaker 6: down there in two thousand and six. The really bizarre
Speaker 6: thing about it is that he got what amounted to
Speaker 6: five and a half years in prison for three contract killings,
Speaker 6: which is amazingly light, especially in a country where there's
Speaker 6: a death penalty in some states.
Speaker 7: Absolutely was there. You talk about that five and a
Speaker 7: half year sentence and the climate that he could get
Speaker 7: a five and a year half year sentence in a
Speaker 7: death penalty state. Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 6: Part of it was that he you know, he had
Speaker 6: a huge amount of money for legal expenses. I that
Speaker 6: wasn't a problem, and he with the agreement was that
Speaker 6: he would allow them to extrad item but only if
Speaker 6: they took the death penalty off the table, and so
Speaker 6: that that was something there. Then there also just wasn't
Speaker 6: There wasn't a huge outcry to to do anything, Like
Speaker 6: he was an unknown in New York to the average American,
Speaker 6: and so it kind of I wouldn't say, fell through
Speaker 6: the cracks, but but they'd gotten the major public targets
Speaker 6: and so there wasn't a it was easy to kind
Speaker 6: of wheel and deal and and just get veto off
Speaker 6: the table, what he where. He's effort was that he
Speaker 6: got stuck in Colorado where he didn't know anybody and
Speaker 6: where his family couldn't come to visit, and all of
Speaker 6: his phone calls were monitored, so he couldn't really say
Speaker 6: all that much.
Speaker 7: Now, you say he goes in in two thousand and
Speaker 7: six in the and you start the story in twenty twelve,
Speaker 7: So the in before two thousand and nine, tell us
Speaker 7: about two thousand and six to two thousand and nine,
Speaker 7: and how the you know, the power struggle proceeded, and
Speaker 7: how did things change in Montreal and Toronto.
Speaker 6: It's pretty fascinating because when he was being driven to
Speaker 6: the airport, he went into a rent to police officers,
Speaker 6: saying that everything's going to fall apart. Now you're going
Speaker 6: to have more blood on the streets, that I'm the
Speaker 6: one who controls things. And it was odd because he
Speaker 6: was right. I mean he When Vito was at the top,
Speaker 6: it was the smart people could make money and the
Speaker 6: dumb people were shot and so things ran efficiently. When
Speaker 6: Vito was off the street, then everybody thought they should
Speaker 6: be the boss. Everybody thought they should move up. Also,
Speaker 6: some people in his group didn't just didn't have the
Speaker 6: leadership skills. One of them was very racist, and so
Speaker 6: all of a sudden he lost the Haitian street gangs,
Speaker 6: you know, the group that they had gotten along with, well,
Speaker 6: all of a sudden became enemies just through stupid comments,
Speaker 6: you know, with absolutely no gain. That's the sort of
Speaker 6: thing that Vito wouldn't have wouldn't have allowed to happen.
Speaker 6: And so you go from having one centralized group where
Speaker 6: there's a lot of money being made and where the
Speaker 6: people who feel who are upset either have to live
Speaker 6: with it or get shot. You go from that to
Speaker 6: a whole bunch of groups thinking that now it's my
Speaker 6: chance to move to the top. And so it was.
Speaker 6: It became chaos and extremely violent, and there was just
Speaker 6: a matter of time until Vito's family was targeted. I
Speaker 6: think the idea was that if you're going to go
Speaker 6: after them, you'd better get them all out of the
Speaker 6: way before Vito gets out, and kill his son, kill
Speaker 6: his father, kill his advisor, kill all the people around
Speaker 6: him who really count, and then when Vito comes out,
Speaker 6: he either finish him off or send him away.
Speaker 7: Now, talk about two thousand and nine and the assassination
Speaker 7: of his son, But tell us about his son and
Speaker 7: what kind of character he was, and was he a
Speaker 7: power at all? Was he anything like his father, or
Speaker 7: what was his position at all.
Speaker 6: I remember how shocked I was when Antonio phoned me.
Speaker 6: He was a little after Christmas and he phoned and
Speaker 6: we were both absolutely amazed. I mean, nobody had ever
Speaker 6: laid a glove on a Rizzuto. They didn't have fences
Speaker 6: around their houses, they didn't have guard dogs, they didn't
Speaker 6: nobody saw them carrying guns. I mean they were they
Speaker 6: were untouchable. And all of a sudden, his eldest child
Speaker 6: is shot to death on a street corner. So it
Speaker 6: was really and there was just no way that you
Speaker 6: couldn't have retaliation. I mean it was just too big
Speaker 6: of a thing. And so it came down to was
Speaker 6: it an isolated, stupid neighborhood thing or was it the
Speaker 6: start of something really big? You never really know when
Speaker 6: a mob war starts. You know it's you know, by
Speaker 6: murder number four, you can start to figure it out.
Speaker 6: But even there, sometimes when the killing starts, you get
Speaker 6: unrelated murders because it's a good time to settle your score.
Speaker 6: If someone's going to lump it into something else. You know,
Speaker 6: they won't know that you're the one who did it.
Speaker 6: And so his son wasn't wasn't really a force. He
Speaker 6: wasn't that big of a deal. He was competent, he
Speaker 6: was bright enough, but he wasn't there. There was no
Speaker 6: way he was close to leading the family, and he
Speaker 6: wasn't trying to lead the family. But he was the
Speaker 6: logical person to go after if you are going to
Speaker 6: eliminate the Rizzuto family.
Speaker 7: Now, as you talk about in this book, it is
Speaker 7: really the efforts of the authorities to bug and monitor
Speaker 7: organized crime, and that's where they get a lot of
Speaker 7: their leads, and that leads to pressuring these guys into
Speaker 7: giving up information. And so keeping with that, they were
Speaker 7: always monitoring a veto. So what do they find out
Speaker 7: after his son is assassinated in their monitoring of him
Speaker 7: in prison.
Speaker 6: The one thing that came out during this, and it
Speaker 6: was something that kind of gave us a bit of
Speaker 6: a jolt when we're working on the book, was that
Speaker 6: people thought that their encryption was a lot better than
Speaker 6: it was. They thought that their cell phone security was
Speaker 6: a lot better. They thought that if they keep changing
Speaker 6: the same cards and changing the phones that they were untouchable,
Speaker 6: and they weren't. And so there was a massive email
Speaker 6: trail that where you could follow who was with who,
Speaker 6: and who was setting who up, and who was where,
Speaker 6: and who was nervous and who was going by what name.
Speaker 6: And they didn't they didn't get it that, you know,
Speaker 6: there there was a new way of bugging them. They
Speaker 6: thought that the old ways, you know, the staying off
Speaker 6: a you know, a hardline of a phone was all
Speaker 6: they had to do or be being careful on their
Speaker 6: cell phones.
Speaker 7: And they.
Speaker 6: It was kind of fascinating that you quickly hit a
Speaker 6: three front war in Montreal and and authorities were able
Speaker 6: to to to get warrants, them get BlackBerry to agree
Speaker 6: and then to tap in on the whole thing.
Speaker 7: Interesting. You also talked about where the r I M. M.
Speaker 7: BlackBerry was. They thought that they had this again, like
Speaker 7: the encryption that couldn't be cracked. Another thing that they
Speaker 7: shared with a lot of say government officials and people
Speaker 7: with incredible wealth is that they and you talk about it.
Speaker 7: And I thought it was amazing that they went to
Speaker 7: the same vehicle dealers that would armor plate their vehicles.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that was really fascinating. Because I went to
Speaker 6: the and it just blew me away, because they'd have
Speaker 6: diplomats in in West Africa that this is where they'd
Speaker 6: get the car that would be able to withstand a
Speaker 6: machine gun attack. And it was it was really interesting
Speaker 6: that I was shown, you know, the levels of security
Speaker 6: you can put on different cars, and so if you
Speaker 6: were a diplomat, you could tell just how much you
Speaker 6: were valued by how much you know, how much how
Speaker 6: thick the glass was, and how how reinforced your car was.
Speaker 6: Like some levels of government official got a lot safer
Speaker 6: car than other levels. Vito's people caught onto this and
Speaker 6: they started getting the cars themselves. And these were incredible
Speaker 6: gas guzzlers, but they they meant that you could you
Speaker 6: could open fire on them, you know, with a machine gun,
Speaker 6: and they wouldn't touch the guy inside. You could. You'd
Speaker 6: have SUVs that have little gun ports at the back,
Speaker 6: really really really high end vehicles. And and as soon
Speaker 6: as the war really started then Veto's group was was
Speaker 6: driving around in those and you wouldn't have you wouldn't
Speaker 6: before Vita would be driving around in the convertible showing
Speaker 6: off you know, his car. He hit a ferrari at
Speaker 6: one point, you know, all that was gone. There was
Speaker 6: these big, big, clunky war vehicles.
Speaker 7: Interesting. We're going to pause just for a second to
Speaker 7: talk about the sponsor of this program, which is Squarespace.
Speaker 7: I don't know if you happen to see the recent
Speaker 7: Super Bowl with the Dude aka Jeff Bridges. He has
Speaker 7: partnered with Squarespace to bring his unique project to life.
Speaker 7: Jeff and his friends have created an album of soothing
Speaker 7: and relaxing sounds, guided meditations, and stories designed to lull
Speaker 7: you to sleep. Check out TRIPLEW Dreaming with Jeff dot Com. Now.
Speaker 7: Squarespace is simple, powerful, beautiful, twenty four to seven support
Speaker 7: via live chat and email, only eight dollars a month
Speaker 7: and you get a free domain if you buy Squarespace
Speaker 7: for the year. It's got a responsive design so your
Speaker 7: website scales to look great on any device. The commerce
Speaker 7: end of it is every website comes with a free
Speaker 7: online store and cover pages, a feature that allows you
Speaker 7: to set up a beautiful one page online presence in minutes.
Speaker 7: Start a trial with no credit card required, and start
Speaker 7: building your website today. When you decide to sign up
Speaker 7: for Squarespace, make sure to use the opera code True
Speaker 7: Murder to get yourself a ten percent discount off your
Speaker 7: first purchase. We want to thank squarespace for their support
Speaker 7: of this episode of True Murder. Squarespace, Build it beautiful now, Peter,
Speaker 7: we just talked about the war and dis impending war.
Speaker 7: Veto's son has been murdered. Now is it that Veto
Speaker 7: can retaliate or does the blood letting of his own
Speaker 7: organization occur? Tell us what happens in this ensuing period
Speaker 7: of time.
Speaker 6: The terrible thing from his point of view was that
Speaker 6: he was someone who always had control, who had phenomenal
Speaker 6: intelligence of what was going on right across society, government
Speaker 6: and police and criminals. And now he's stuck in Colorado.
Speaker 6: Nobody can visit him without being really obvious, and so
Speaker 6: he didn't have the visitors. His phone calls are monitored.
Speaker 6: He doesn't have a BlackBerry, obviously, and so all he
Speaker 6: can do is get the news people, phone them, listen
Speaker 6: to them, cry, listen to them, shout, not really say
Speaker 6: much because he can't be picked up, and then just
Speaker 6: hope that there's something left to build on when he
Speaker 6: gets out. And so he was someone who kind of
Speaker 6: controlled everything, a real puppet master and all of a sudden,
Speaker 6: he's stuck down in the States with people who don't
Speaker 6: know who he is or how important he is, and
Speaker 6: who frankly don't care what he does. And he has
Speaker 6: a family that really grieving, really upset, really frightened, and
Speaker 6: there's not a thing he can do about it, about
Speaker 6: helping them except plot and think and wonder.
Speaker 7: Who were some of the big characters that come to
Speaker 7: play right at the end and at this time as well,
Speaker 7: that emerge and become central characters to this tragic story.
Speaker 7: Tell us a couple of the people that emerge in Montreal.
Speaker 6: There's one RENW. Dejar Dan. This is someone who had
Speaker 6: gotten along with them, who Vito quite well, who'd been
Speaker 6: almost like a little adopted brother, who had risen up
Speaker 6: under Veto, who had gone from being a waiter to
Speaker 6: being phenomenally rich and a big deal in construction. But
Speaker 6: dejar Dan had grown away from him. They had been separated.
Speaker 6: There was one big drug bust where dejar Dan got
Speaker 6: fifteen years and Vito skated on it, and so dejar
Speaker 6: Dan became hardened in prison, became a force in prison,
Speaker 6: actually tried to have someone killed in prison. Had a
Speaker 6: jogging track built in prison, like he's a big, big
Speaker 6: deal in prison, and then when he got out, he
Speaker 6: was taking himself quite seriously and not one of Vito's
Speaker 6: men anymore, definitely separated from Vito. There was another guy
Speaker 6: who came up from the States, Salvatory Montagna. He was
Speaker 6: had been a Montrealer for a little while, gone off
Speaker 6: to Sicily, and then had risen up at a very
Speaker 6: young age to be head of the Banano crime family,
Speaker 6: which on paper is a really big thing. But when
Speaker 6: he became head of the family, they were torn apart
Speaker 6: by rats. They just didn't didn't have any cohesion. They
Speaker 6: were a bit of a joke. And so when he
Speaker 6: came to Montreal, he thought he'd be taken very seriously,
Speaker 6: and these guys were I didn't know what to make
Speaker 6: of him, but they definitely weren't bowing down to him.
Speaker 6: And so you had these two different forces and for
Speaker 6: a while it looked like Dejardin and Montagnan I'd get along,
Speaker 6: And then that that seemed to physicle. You also had
Speaker 6: people coming in from Toronto who are thinking, now is
Speaker 6: my chance, you know, now's my chance to get into
Speaker 6: this beautiful market, you know, with the big River, with
Speaker 6: the ocean access, with the easy access to New York.
Speaker 6: You know, it's way way better geographically than Toronto. And
Speaker 6: suddenly there was an opening. And so a lot of
Speaker 6: people were trying to decide, should I get along with
Speaker 6: dejar Dan, Should I try and get along with Montagna?
Speaker 6: Should I do it on my own? There were a
Speaker 6: lot of opportunities.
Speaker 7: Now you talk was interesting, is you there seems there
Speaker 7: is a separation regular or usually with the women of
Speaker 7: the mafia, but you talk about Libertina, and you also
Speaker 7: talk about Veto too, had a different relationship a lot
Speaker 7: of them to have the mistress, but talk about Libertina
Speaker 7: and the kind of power she wielded.
Speaker 6: And Libertina she was the daughter of a big mafia
Speaker 6: boss and she he'd be like being born to royalty,
Speaker 6: and they were also she didn't have to order things.
Speaker 6: There was just sort of expectations. You know, there are
Speaker 6: ways of acting. And Antonio being part Sicilian, part Collabrian,
Speaker 6: my co author, he really understood these things and it
Speaker 6: was a great education for me. He talked about how
Speaker 6: a woman could sit at the dinner table and just say,
Speaker 6: you know, here we are having a nice meal and
Speaker 6: the person I love is eating grass, is eating dirt,
Speaker 6: you know, was under the ground. And he would guilt
Speaker 6: everybody out, and everybody would think, you know, what do
Speaker 6: I do too to make her feel better? And so
Speaker 6: you could create a climate of you know, now we're
Speaker 6: going to do something. We have to do something without
Speaker 6: ever giving an order. And and she was a very,
Speaker 6: very not a shrinking violet at all. And her husband,
Speaker 6: you know, someone she'd been married to for more than
Speaker 6: a half century, who she genuinely loved, was was shot
Speaker 6: to death standing right beside her in the kitchen, with
Speaker 6: the daughter on the other side.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 6: You can't have a crewer murder than that. And it
Speaker 6: was also a lot like how how her husband had
Speaker 6: someone murdered a quarter century before, but when when that happens,
Speaker 6: Vedo's in the position where how he can't ignore it
Speaker 6: and and have his mother think that he's the you know,
Speaker 6: the man that she thought she raised. You know, he
Speaker 6: is the only son he's got a it doesn't take
Speaker 6: any words for him to know what he's supposed to
Speaker 6: be doing now. And so it's odd you've got this
Speaker 6: guy in his mid sixties and yet he still has
Speaker 6: to his to act the way he thinks his mother
Speaker 6: wants him to act, and he's still not really actualized adult.
Speaker 7: Now tell us about leading up to his release in
Speaker 7: twenty and twelve. Tell us about the state of the
Speaker 7: situation in Montreal, in Toronto and what Veto is going
Speaker 7: to eventually be walking out into.
Speaker 6: See that was fascinating because I was actually at the
Speaker 6: airport when Vito came in and in Toronto, and the
Speaker 6: big thing was does he take off to Montreal? Does
Speaker 6: he go hide in Woodbridge? Does he It turned out
Speaker 6: he went to somewhere in York region to a compound
Speaker 6: and sort of analyzed everything was around, a few trusted people,
Speaker 6: plotted what to do, and then then moved. He shook
Speaker 6: off the Mounties within within hours, and he had to
Speaker 6: decide and people some people were wondering if he's just
Speaker 6: gonna flee. I mean, if if he wanted to, he
Speaker 6: had enough money that he in enough language skills, he
Speaker 6: could go anywhere in the world. But then if he
Speaker 6: does that, it's very very public and it you know,
Speaker 6: it obviously is running. He'd be ridiculed. He was extremely proud,
Speaker 6: and so how does he handle it? If he stays
Speaker 6: in Montreal, will he get killed. Will that put the
Speaker 6: rest of his family in danger? Like? Will that be
Speaker 6: an incitement tomorrow war? And so it was fascinating to
Speaker 6: be watching and you know, trying to get an idea
Speaker 6: of where he was going. He ended up in a
Speaker 6: apartment in downtown Montreal with really really trusted security people.
Speaker 6: I'm not appearing in public. And then a month after
Speaker 6: he arrived, the big mediator in Montreal was murdered. Joe Demalo.
Speaker 6: I actually met him, and he was quite a It
Speaker 6: sounds sort of odd, but he's quite jovial. He's a
Speaker 6: guy who liked to joke around. He was a guy
Speaker 6: who hit a really good sense of humor and he
Speaker 6: was the natural one to calm things down. But Vito
Speaker 6: didn't want things calm down. His dad had been murdered,
Speaker 6: his kid had been murdered, his mother had been shocked,
Speaker 6: and he was going to going to set things right
Speaker 6: as far as he thought, as far as he thought
Speaker 6: the world should be.
Speaker 7: What did the authorities think that he was coming back
Speaker 7: to Montreal to do to as you put in the
Speaker 7: in the introduction, was he going to re establish himself
Speaker 7: or was this pure in outright vengeance? And what did
Speaker 7: Antonio Nicaso, And what did you think the odd thing was?
Speaker 6: You know, we we all were their theories, and in
Speaker 6: the end they all meant nothing because everything that had
Speaker 6: been all this Vedo sitting alone with no one to
Speaker 6: talk to in the States, not being able to talk
Speaker 6: on the phone, not being able to He's a very
Speaker 6: sociable guy who liked to have drinks late at night.
Speaker 6: All of a sudden he's stuck, you know, making furniture
Speaker 6: in a an American prison where nobody knows them. And
Speaker 6: so it was all what's going on between this guy's ears,
Speaker 6: and he wasn't sharing it with anyone they were there.
Speaker 6: I thought that he might end up in Toronto, Like
Speaker 6: I thought that he had a pretty good power base
Speaker 6: in Toronto, that things are spread out a little a
Speaker 6: little wider, that there's no one big person to fear,
Speaker 6: or in Toronto, that he's got enough connections with supposedly
Speaker 6: respectable people. I thought that the safe thing to do
Speaker 6: would be to go to Toronto. But he pretty quickly
Speaker 6: ended up back in Montreal, and he went right into
Speaker 6: the eye of the hurricane. You know, he went right
Speaker 6: into the center of the battle. He was and it's
Speaker 6: hard to think of now, But at the time people
Speaker 6: were telling jokes, like people thought that he was easy pickings.
Speaker 6: And his family owned a funeral home in Montreal and
Speaker 6: that had been firearmed by idiots, you know, like people
Speaker 6: didn't think he was that big of a force.
Speaker 7: What I found fascinating too, is just a slight detour,
Speaker 7: was that this funeral home owned by the family, the
Speaker 7: authorities could tell really quite a bit about who got
Speaker 7: buried there or how they got buried there. So tell
Speaker 7: us a little bit about how that worked.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it was a good kind of barometer. Were a
Speaker 6: good way of telling telling where things stood, if if
Speaker 6: different bodies went through the funeral home or if they
Speaker 6: if they didn't. You could tell, obviously, if you were
Speaker 6: a criminal's family and you thought that Vito had killed you,
Speaker 6: you're not going to give them the business of bearing
Speaker 6: the body at the end of it. And so, and
Speaker 6: they had a pretty they've got a pretty good website,
Speaker 6: So it was kind of a natural thing for people
Speaker 6: like me to whenever there's a killing, you quickly go
Speaker 6: on the website and see if they're going to be
Speaker 6: buried out of there or not. And you could get
Speaker 6: some gossip about who was in the in the funeral
Speaker 6: home at the service. One thing they had that was,
Speaker 6: even if it wasn't Veto's home, that made it good
Speaker 6: for criminals was that you could drive in underground parking
Speaker 6: without ever being seen. So if you had tinted windows,
Speaker 6: you didn't have to worry about the press and the police.
Speaker 6: You could you could just drive right in there and
Speaker 6: go up the stairs or elevator and not be seen
Speaker 6: by the public at all.
Speaker 7: And with these funerals as well, in terms of against
Speaker 7: the authorities, but also for again anyone like yourself that
Speaker 7: may be watching it journalists, attendance pardon me, attendance at
Speaker 7: these funerals or non attendants was telling and important, wasn't it.
Speaker 6: Oh, it's huge, And even what groups showed up and
Speaker 6: how were they treated, Who acted like an usher, who
Speaker 6: who acted like they were in charge. It's very interesting
Speaker 6: that a very senior Hell's Angel towards the end started
Speaker 6: to seem like a big deal at the funerals, and
Speaker 6: so that was a, you know, a sign that there
Speaker 6: there was a new a new alliance really between the
Speaker 6: Rezuito people and some of the Hell's Angels. Because the
Speaker 6: Hell's Angels had been shaken up quite a bit by
Speaker 6: police action, so you're wondering are they are they crushed
Speaker 6: or where do they stand? And then someone knew, not
Speaker 6: really new, but someone who'd been in the States in
Speaker 6: prison and had been out of the scene for a while.
Speaker 6: All of a sudden he had reappeared as a as
Speaker 6: a very big deal. And so it was a way
Speaker 6: of who's standing next to who's been taken seriously, who
Speaker 6: doesn't show up, From who sends a wreath who doesn't,
Speaker 6: you could really gauge who mattered and who didn't.
Speaker 7: Now, Vito Rizzuto, the authorities are all over him, and
Speaker 7: the authorities have learned that when there's this vacuum or
Speaker 7: when there's this war, there's going to be bloodshed, so
Speaker 7: they're trying to contain it. And you have numerous examples
Speaker 7: in your book where mobsters are informed by the police
Speaker 7: that their life is in danger. So tell us about
Speaker 7: that climate of informers and the domino effect that that happens.
Speaker 7: And then the change when you talked about Vito being
Speaker 7: in a condo for a little while, what is his
Speaker 7: behavior afterwards?
Speaker 6: The police are kind of obligated if they know someone
Speaker 6: is under threat to let them know. And then also
Speaker 6: it's a great opportunity, you know that maybe the person
Speaker 6: will turn, maybe you'll get an informer out of it.
Speaker 6: Nobody really seemed to be be counting on the police
Speaker 6: too much in this, like none of their really heavy
Speaker 6: duty people. The police would go around also and try
Speaker 6: and it sounds odd, but encourage them not to do
Speaker 6: things in public places that they don't need. Bystanders shot.
Speaker 6: You don't need things like you're shooting at the Eaton
Speaker 6: Center in Toronto or the Luis Russo shooting where an
Speaker 6: innocent woman is paralyzed. And so there was a police
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say pleading but almost pleading with them to
Speaker 6: control themselves and not in danger of the public, like
Speaker 6: not make a bad situation worse.
Speaker 7: And what was Beatle's behavior after you say he was
Speaker 7: when he first was released, he was pretty guarded his
Speaker 7: bodyguards and he was careful. He was basically hiding out.
Speaker 7: But at some point he emerges and used to love golf.
Speaker 6: So how does he behave I mean, it's very very confident,
Speaker 6: and he walked through an airport in the winter and
Speaker 6: he had a T shirt on because he had gotten
Speaker 6: in very good shape and he was almost showing off
Speaker 6: his muscles. And this wasn't a guy who fought like
Speaker 6: he wasn't someone who was you know, came up beating
Speaker 6: up people. But he was sort of showing off. He
Speaker 6: started to appear in public. He and that was when,
Speaker 6: you know, the war looked like it was one. Towards
Speaker 6: the end, he was out drinking at night. He was
Speaker 6: becoming the old veto again. He he also was it
Speaker 6: was golfing quite a bit. Some of it was in
Speaker 6: the Dominican and he this is a guy likes to
Speaker 6: play golf one hundred times a year, and so he
Speaker 6: the Dominican was great for him because it was out
Speaker 6: of the eyes of Montreal police and also a good
Speaker 6: you know, close to big drug pipeline things, but also
Speaker 6: the drug the golf was fantastic and so he could
Speaker 6: invite criminals down to play golf with them and plot things.
Speaker 6: It was interesting too, because some of the montrealers got
Speaker 6: into the whole golf thing, and so they'd be playing
Speaker 6: in charity tournaments. It's kind of odd that in Montreal
Speaker 6: you'll have a nice charity, but it'll be supported partly
Speaker 6: by gangsters who want to look respectable and who on
Speaker 6: a golf course. It's a good place to talk to people.
Speaker 6: That's reasonably hard to bug for police, and so you'd
Speaker 6: have people talking about murders, but they'd be heading off
Speaker 6: to a golf course to do it.
Speaker 7: What we've also kind of not spoken about in which
Speaker 7: is a really one of the more fascinating aspects of
Speaker 7: your book, is the Charbonneau Commission into corruption into construction.
Speaker 7: And anybody that's a watcher of mob stories has heard
Speaker 7: about the mob owning a certain percentage of all the
Speaker 7: cement used in New York City will say, And anybody
Speaker 7: whoever watch the Sopranos knows their ties to construction. So
Speaker 7: tell us about the Charbonneau Commission ties the construction and
Speaker 7: the entrenchment of government and mafioso in Montreal.
Speaker 6: It's huge, and it's if if they're they're talking about concrete.
Speaker 6: In Canada, you could talk about fixing potholes. It's very,
Speaker 6: very hard to have a pothole fixed in in Quebec
Speaker 6: and not support a gangster. It was very tough to
Speaker 6: to have just basic repairs. It was tough to have
Speaker 6: things like ridges built in a safe way. At there
Speaker 6: was some environmental clean up stuff where a company got
Speaker 6: a permit or people got a permit before they hit
Speaker 6: a company, and so you're supposed to have all this expertise.
Speaker 6: Some gang connected people actually hid the permits to run
Speaker 6: the business before they hit the business. So just an
Speaker 6: extremely high level of corruption and kind of dizzying. But
Speaker 6: it was uh and a lot of and I mean,
Speaker 6: I'm I'm a union member and I'm happy to be one,
Speaker 6: but there's some pretty dirty labor stuff going on there,
Speaker 6: and the Vitos group and his rivals. We were pretty
Speaker 6: deep into.
Speaker 7: That interesting fact that you'd throw in there too, just
Speaker 7: for American audience. Percent of Quebec workers are union as
Speaker 7: opposed to twelve percent in America.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and that's that's a lot of dues and it's
Speaker 6: a lot of cloud One thing to do with the
Speaker 6: Charbonneaux Commission. So it showed a huge amount of things
Speaker 6: going on in Quebec, but it never it never reached
Speaker 6: out of Quebec into Ontario. And right at the start
Speaker 6: of the Charbonneaux Commission, a police officer came from York
Speaker 6: region and said, the stuff is very, very big in
Speaker 6: our province and talked about it was very very on
Speaker 6: the money when he described he was I wouldn't say
Speaker 6: it was a plea for his government, for the government
Speaker 6: to do something, but it was pretty close and the
Speaker 6: premier didn't do a thing with it. Kind of it
Speaker 6: quickly dismissed it. It wasn't theked up at all. And
Speaker 6: what I hear a lot from from my colleagues in
Speaker 6: Quebec is that at least in Quebec they work to
Speaker 6: clean things up. In Ontario they just bury it. And
Speaker 6: it's kind of amazing that you have the same people,
Speaker 6: the same money, the same businesses being done in Ontario
Speaker 6: and Quebec. And for some reason, Ontario authorities seem to
Speaker 6: think that everybody becomes a virgin when they cross the
Speaker 6: border and get into Ontario, and everybody becomes clean and
Speaker 6: nobody's a crook, and it's it's kind of it's kind
Speaker 6: of laughable really when you look at it. And that's
Speaker 6: why they have such a good power base. You know,
Speaker 6: you can always go somewhere else if Quebec squeezing you
Speaker 6: to her.
Speaker 7: Interesting, but you know, to not their credit. They had
Speaker 7: two mayors in a row embroiled in scandal. So for that,
Speaker 7: you know, people looking on the outside.
Speaker 6: There's that joke about how when it's a tough time
Speaker 6: for the mafia they have to lay off a couple
Speaker 6: of politicians. Yeah, there's always somebody else.
Speaker 7: Now, on a less slight note, tell us about the
Speaker 7: unraveling at near the end here we're talking about this
Speaker 7: war as it progresses. There are some people that are
Speaker 7: obviously being killed in this fight in this war, So
Speaker 7: tell us before his demise and won't give away what
Speaker 7: happens to Veto, but tell us about what's happening all
Speaker 7: around him in terms of this war.
Speaker 6: It's kind of amazing because there were people who would
Speaker 6: be on our radar and then they'd leave the country
Speaker 6: and we would think they're probably safe. Now. I mean,
Speaker 6: one guy went to Akapoco, and so he had been
Speaker 6: he had been rumored to be a force in Montreal,
Speaker 6: that he might be trying to rise up against Veto,
Speaker 6: that he might have encouraged some of the people who
Speaker 6: rose up against Veto. But then he he took off
Speaker 6: to Acapoco, and so you he just think he's out
Speaker 6: of the picture. And then Vito had him killed on
Speaker 6: the anniversary of one of the murders that hit his family,
Speaker 6: and so it showed that even when he went to
Speaker 6: a Collabrian mafia stronghold in Mexico, which should have made
Speaker 6: him extremely safe, he was killed at his favorite restaurant,
Speaker 6: and they knew his patterns and they got him and
Speaker 6: got away with it. There were a couple other guys
Speaker 6: who went to Sicily and they just didn't want to
Speaker 6: take sides. Like they liked Vito and they thought the
Speaker 6: world of him, but they also liked someone who Vito
Speaker 6: was fighting, and so they thought that sooner or later
Speaker 6: they'd patch it up and in the meantime they'd get
Speaker 6: along with everybody. That didn't work, and they made the
Speaker 6: mistake of telling a lawyer what they thought. They didn't
Speaker 6: realize that the lawyer who's not a member of the
Speaker 6: Rizzuto family.
Speaker 7: Who's.
Speaker 6: Just someone they know, that that person passed it on
Speaker 6: to the Rizzutos, and then one of them was invited
Speaker 6: to three meetings with Veto. One of them was a
Speaker 6: golf meeting. He found excuses for avoiding all the meats,
Speaker 6: and then he was just murdered. He was if he
Speaker 6: turned Veta down three times the first time, you're going
Speaker 6: to be a mean event to the funeral.
Speaker 7: MM hmm uh. What I found interesting too is all
Speaker 7: of the I mean, these guys got a wicked sense
Speaker 7: of humor. Some of these guys. Uh, one guy goes,
Speaker 7: I think it's his anniversary, him and his wife go
Speaker 7: to a showing of the Godfather, and they kill him
Speaker 7: right outside the film theater. Tell us just a couple
Speaker 7: of these antidotes. They're just you can't write this stuff,
Speaker 7: you know, you can't write fiction like this.
Speaker 6: Well, there there's one where these guys went went to
Speaker 6: a stag and they joking around, walked out to the
Speaker 6: to the car by people who they think are friends.
Speaker 6: Friend beat the shaking hands to say good night, and
Speaker 6: then kaboom they bow shot. And so it was a
Speaker 6: whole night of joking around and drinks and then you know,
Speaker 6: let me walk you to your car. And that was
Speaker 6: done right right across the street from a police station,
Speaker 6: and it was there's sort of a joke or not,
Speaker 6: I don't even know it's a joke, but the idea
Speaker 6: that in him off your murder, you know, start by
Speaker 6: looking at the friends and then work out from there.
Speaker 6: It's generally the ones that you trust that there are
Speaker 6: the ones who sell you out, and there was another
Speaker 6: guy who and it's odd because I was trying to
Speaker 6: find him and talk to him, and I went to
Speaker 6: his bakery in Woodbridge, and I'd heard he was kind
Speaker 6: of nervous and ended up buying all these canolis that
Speaker 6: actually were extremely good, but he had high tailed it
Speaker 6: out of the country and was running around with a
Speaker 6: bullet proof vest on. There's another guy went on a
Speaker 6: extended vacation, like he must have toured every part of
Speaker 6: of southern Europe, and then when he came home, the
Speaker 6: war was still on. The people sort of dyeing their
Speaker 6: hair and running and hiding. And it was odd because
Speaker 6: when they eventually popped up, if he wanted them killed,
Speaker 6: he had them killed. And there he was odd too
Speaker 6: that they would plan. People be invited to weddings and
Speaker 6: they wouldn't know if they're if they were like a
Speaker 6: value guests, or if they're going to be shot in
Speaker 6: the parking lot. And if you were invited to something,
Speaker 6: we knew who was having a stag when, and it
Speaker 6: was fascinating because we'd want to know who showed up.
Speaker 6: And so on Saturday morning you'd be checking who showed
Speaker 6: up at the stag because if someone didn't go, and
Speaker 6: they didn't have a good excuse. It meant they probably
Speaker 6: were guilty of something, and they probably knew that the
Speaker 6: other side knew they were guilty, and so they thought
Speaker 6: they'd be shot at the stake, and so it was.
Speaker 6: It was interesting just the attemtive. Being invited to their
Speaker 6: stuff didn't mean that they liked you. It could mean
Speaker 6: that they were getting ready to shoot you.
Speaker 7: Now, I don't want to give this this too much away.
Speaker 7: I don't I don't know if this is or not,
Speaker 7: But what was the reason? Like we anybody watch the
Speaker 7: Sopranos sees the last episode where they think they're safe.
Speaker 7: They have this conversation about being safe, that they won't
Speaker 7: get hit. There was at one time some unwritten rules.
Speaker 7: I guess that you wouldn't do the kind of murders
Speaker 7: of the Rizzuto family. But of course you talk about
Speaker 7: Polo Violi and revenge. So tell us how this all
Speaker 7: really occurred. Why did they murder his son and his
Speaker 7: father in such as a spectacular way.
Speaker 6: The Risuto is in a way talking more about Nicolo
Speaker 6: Vito's father. He broke a lot of rules and that
Speaker 6: came back to haunt him as well like he when
Speaker 6: he wiped out the Violi family, he shot one of
Speaker 6: them when he was eating eating breakfast in front of
Speaker 6: his kids, you know, in front of his family. He
Speaker 6: had the guy shot to death by a sniper, and
Speaker 6: they just they just don't use snipers. I mean, snipers
Speaker 6: are how you kill a farmer on the farm, or
Speaker 6: how you kill a deer. It's not not the way
Speaker 6: you're supposed to kill a human being. You're supposed to
Speaker 6: have the nerve to walk up to the person and
Speaker 6: do it. And so that was considered godless and very
Speaker 6: cruel to the family. But that was done. There was
Speaker 6: another guy who was killed who was in the same family,
Speaker 6: and he hadn't really done anything, but they just thought
Speaker 6: since they'd killed two of his brothers, he's probably going
Speaker 6: to want to do something, so they better kill him too.
Speaker 6: And so again a cruel thing, and you end up
Speaker 6: with kids being raised where the Rizzutos were especially nick
Speaker 6: We're hated. There's one of the neighbors who they lived
Speaker 6: on the small little street where they basically had it
Speaker 6: all developed themselves, and so everybody he moved onto that
Speaker 6: street with someone who they were friendly with. But then
Speaker 6: they had one of those guys whacked because he basically
Speaker 6: became inconvenient. He didn't do anything disloyal to them, but
Speaker 6: he became hated by John Gotti, and so was more
Speaker 6: convenient to have him killed than to argue with John Gotti.
Speaker 6: And so you have that guy's kid growing up who
Speaker 6: idolized his father. Suddenly he thinks the Risutos are his friends,
Speaker 6: and then he thinks they're his worst enemies in the world.
Speaker 6: And you know, these are people who you can count
Speaker 6: on for revenge.
Speaker 7: Now Vito Rizzuto, everyone believes that he's out for revenge,
Speaker 7: and there are people on that are in his way,
Speaker 7: that are in his path to this completion of this vengeance.
Speaker 7: So tell us about again what the authorities were trying
Speaker 7: to do to contain this war, and then, finally, without again,
Speaker 7: tell us what happened to Vito Rizzuto.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's hard to you know, in a way, they
Speaker 6: just wanted them to not do it with a whole
Speaker 6: bunch of people around. There was one Toronto shooting I'm
Speaker 6: not directly connected to Vito, where the shooters didn't get
Speaker 6: out of their car, where they just sprayed a sandwich shop.
Speaker 6: They didn't kill the people they wanted to kill, and
Speaker 6: they shot an innocent woman, and so that's bad for everybody.
Speaker 6: I mean, that brings a big public crackdown, It makes
Speaker 6: people's wife upset, It doesn't even get the guy you're
Speaker 6: trying to get, and so they didn't want that sort
Speaker 6: of sort of wildness veto the kind of the amazing
Speaker 6: thing was how surgical he was. I mean, he didn't
Speaker 6: use bombs, he didn't shoot from a distance.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 6: It was very, very precise what he was doing, and
Speaker 6: there was a certain logic to who was being killed
Speaker 6: when it was interesting to watch because it never really
Speaker 6: got wildly out of control. I know someone my previous
Speaker 6: book was on bikers, and I know someone who saw
Speaker 6: Vito Risuto in this time, and the idea was that
Speaker 6: this was a guy who was absolutely totally focused and
Speaker 6: that you just didn't want to argue with, Like even
Speaker 6: tough people didn't want to run across him because he
Speaker 6: was sort of on a mission, you know, very a
Speaker 6: real tunnel vision, very focused.
Speaker 7: So can you tell us or do you want to
Speaker 7: you want to keep this?
Speaker 6: Uh, what happened to Vito in the end?
Speaker 7: Yeah, tell us what happened to him?
Speaker 6: Oh, sure, you know. That was a part that shocked us.
Speaker 6: And Vito was doing very well. He was, he actually
Speaker 6: put on some weight, he was starting to relax. People
Speaker 6: were afraid of him. He sent out the message in
Speaker 6: Toronto that he doesn't want anyone's money, he does want
Speaker 6: their loyalty. What that meant was that he wasn't going
Speaker 6: to tax them for crimes, but if he thought anyone
Speaker 6: was disloyal, he'd have them killed. And so for if
Speaker 6: you were a criminal, that was a golden age. It
Speaker 6: meant you could make all the money in the world
Speaker 6: and as long as you're loyal to Vito, you didn't
Speaker 6: have to worry about it.
Speaker 7: And so it was.
Speaker 6: It was just the extremely smart way of taking Toronto
Speaker 6: out of the equation. And the people who weren't loyal
Speaker 6: to Vito had to run and hide because there was
Speaker 6: an economic reason for having them killed or for not
Speaker 6: working with them. So Vito was prospering. He was socializing.
Speaker 6: Bit he did like to drink, He did like a
Speaker 6: beautiful woman. He actually had a bodyguard for one of
Speaker 6: his mistresses, and so he did like the high life,
Speaker 6: and he was getting back into that again, and then
Speaker 6: suddenly he was dead. I mean, and he put on weight,
Speaker 6: he was looking in shape, and then he was suddenly
Speaker 6: dead and the story that quickly was created was that
Speaker 6: he had died of cancer. But Antonio and I had
Speaker 6: really good antenna at that time, and nobody had hinted
Speaker 6: even a bit that he was sick. He was out laid,
Speaker 6: he was younger than him, and I couldn't have kept
Speaker 6: that social pace. And it was interesting because very very
Speaker 6: shortly after his death, and like within hours, it was
Speaker 6: announced there wasn't going to be an autopsy, that he
Speaker 6: was just going to be buried and that's it. His
Speaker 6: death was very, very similar to the death of a
Speaker 6: guy who a very tragic figure in the whole thing,
Speaker 6: who had turned against Vito and who was poisoned into
Speaker 6: a con apenditentiary. And there's a guy killed with cyanide
Speaker 6: in there who had turned on Veto. This guy had
Speaker 6: a huge personal tragedy where his wife snapped under the
Speaker 6: pressure of him I'm running from the loss. She murdered
Speaker 6: their two kids, and then the guy couldn't get back
Speaker 6: to even go to the kid's funeral because he's on
Speaker 6: the run, and he basically blamed Vito for how everything
Speaker 6: went wrong. That a Vito had been better to him
Speaker 6: than his world wouldn't have collapsed. And so he was
Speaker 6: a huge enemy for Vito, and he was fearless because
Speaker 6: he really didn't care if he lived or died. And
Speaker 6: that guy was murdered by what looked like Vito's people
Speaker 6: in prison, and it was interesting that Vito's own death
Speaker 6: was a lot like his. And Vito had been drinking
Speaker 6: a fair bit, and so it would have been extremely
Speaker 6: easy to slip something into one of his drinks, and you.
Speaker 7: Talk about the poison that might have been the choice
Speaker 7: of the killer.
Speaker 6: Cyanide would have been, you know the thing views and
Speaker 6: by drink number three, drink number four, it would have
Speaker 6: been pretty easy. It's pretty fascinating because a lot of
Speaker 6: people just bought the cancer theory because Veto had said
Speaker 6: that he had a spot on his lung back in
Speaker 6: two thousand and six, but nothing was done. He didn't
Speaker 6: get any medical treatment. And this is a guy who's
Speaker 6: fabulously rich, and if he had any kind of a
Speaker 6: medical problem when he's in prison, it was a good
Speaker 6: excuse to get back to Montreal. So it would have
Speaker 6: been a great way he could have played it up
Speaker 6: and got back to Montreal and saw his family and
Speaker 6: maybe got a little more control of his family and
Speaker 6: so his crime family. So that it just is incredible
Speaker 6: at all that you've got this guy partying, laid into
Speaker 6: the night, drinking quite a bit, looking fit, putting on weight,
Speaker 6: and then suddenly he drops dead of cancer. And it
Speaker 6: wasn't a rumor at all. There was nothing at all
Speaker 6: to suggest that. I mean, there's nothing in prison records suggesting.
Speaker 7: He had the And do you think it's based on
Speaker 7: your research too? I know it's unusual, but how unusual
Speaker 7: is it for autopsy not to be conducted.
Speaker 6: They're supposed to be done when there's a suspicious death,
Speaker 6: And when you have the suspicious death of the top
Speaker 6: mafia person in Canadian history, I think that rates a
Speaker 6: Look the you know that isn't suspicious?
Speaker 7: What is?
Speaker 6: And but there there's no law you don't have to
Speaker 6: and if you're people close to Vito, you can have
Speaker 6: your own private autopsy. You don't have to have to
Speaker 6: have a public one. You don't have to share it
Speaker 6: with the world. How the how the guy died? And
Speaker 6: but I mean, if that wasn't suspicious, then you know,
Speaker 6: what do we consider suspicious?
Speaker 7: How did the media report his passing?
Speaker 6: People were pretty stunned, And it was right around Christmas,
Speaker 6: so you're not there's a quick acceptance that he must
Speaker 6: have had cancer. But you know, we'd really been following
Speaker 6: this thing, and we had been both of us were
Speaker 6: talking to people who would know a lot about him,
Speaker 6: and we wanted to know who's he socializing with, where's
Speaker 6: he going, how out in the open was he, what
Speaker 6: kind of car did he have? You know, all this
Speaker 6: sort of thing. And in all of that, never a
Speaker 6: hint about Vito being tired, Vito staying home, Vito feeling sick.
Speaker 6: For a guy in is who's sixty seven years old
Speaker 6: to be keeping up that sort of pace and then
Speaker 6: suddenly to be written off as a sickly old man
Speaker 6: when he just hadn't been acting even close to that way.
Speaker 6: It's pretty passive by the media.
Speaker 7: Really interesting, And what kind of timing was his death
Speaker 7: in terms of relation to this book and it's it's
Speaker 7: writing and come.
Speaker 6: He died about I guess thirteen months or thirteen months
Speaker 6: before the book came out, And so there were a
Speaker 6: couple more murders after his death, and it seems that
Speaker 6: the family is being run now by kind of a
Speaker 6: concertium that that you have about four or five people
Speaker 6: who are fairly powerful, but none of them is his
Speaker 6: the chrisma or the or the control that Veto had,
Speaker 6: and so it's almost a mafia by committee thing. And
Speaker 6: there were some some kind of logical murders that that
Speaker 6: were carried on after that. There were some There's one
Speaker 6: guy who bragged about about shooting Vito's father. That guy,
Speaker 6: I mean, there's no way they're going to let that
Speaker 6: guy live.
Speaker 7: There.
Speaker 6: There was another guy who I thought would get murdered
Speaker 6: who wasn't. And I'm sure he I'm sure he's still,
Speaker 6: you know, not sitting by the window for a while.
Speaker 6: And so we actually had a list of logical suspects
Speaker 6: to be murdered and he got between half and then
Speaker 6: say two thirds of their way through when he died himself.
Speaker 7: Wow, incredible.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they would have known they're on the list. It
Speaker 6: wasn't like we had any inside thing on.
Speaker 7: It, right, right, So is there was there a you say,
Speaker 7: that's sort of run by a consortium now, so there
Speaker 7: is a sort of a piece at least not getting
Speaker 7: civilians involved in their business seemed to be a relative piece.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and in the crime family still exists, and in
Speaker 6: an odd way, they're almost more dangerous because if you
Speaker 6: have five people with a fair amount of power and
Speaker 6: other people who are getting out of prison, like they'd
Speaker 6: been hit pretty hard with court cases in the early
Speaker 6: two thousands. Now a lot of those guys are getting
Speaker 6: out again. Then in a way it's kind of interchangeable.
Speaker 6: If someone attacks one of them, then they have to
Speaker 6: worry about the other four, and so it in an
Speaker 6: odd way almost makes them them more dangerous.
Speaker 7: I guess it's not rising to some people, and I'm
Speaker 7: sure it's not surprising to you, but your book is
Speaker 7: filled with murder. I mean, these guys sell drugs, they
Speaker 7: do other uh, they do other rackets. But really, these
Speaker 7: guys they kill a lot, don't they.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it was. It was really odd doing a
Speaker 6: book where we kind of had the premise of you know,
Speaker 6: what's Vito gonna do? And and it was sort of
Speaker 6: like in real time where people would keep getting killed,
Speaker 6: like you'd be introducing a character in chapter four and
Speaker 6: then chapter eight, the guy's been killed and you haven't
Speaker 6: written chapter eight yet. Like it was sort of odd too,
Speaker 6: and there would be a certain logic to them, like
Speaker 6: it would it would they'd all kind of make sense,
Speaker 6: you know, like they weren't real random things and there
Speaker 6: were surprising things. But then when you thought about him,
Speaker 6: it all sort of fell into place and you could
Speaker 6: I mean, this is something that Veto had a lot
Speaker 6: of time to think about. You know, he had five
Speaker 6: and a half years, very smart guy fitting alone in prison.
Speaker 6: You knew that he was running through everybody in their world,
Speaker 6: you know, what did you think of them? And you
Speaker 6: also knew that mercy wasn't one of the big options here.
Speaker 6: You know that if he was angry, he was going
Speaker 6: to act on it.
Speaker 7: And you do, you really do capture to his anger
Speaker 7: because he really there is an option for these guys
Speaker 7: when they are in prison to be able to go
Speaker 7: to a funeral. Again, you would want to be with
Speaker 7: your family. Everyone would want to be with their family,
Speaker 7: but he didn't do that, and you really sort of
Speaker 7: intimate that that would really not help a guy's disposition
Speaker 7: when he got out either.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that was an interesting one because his his family
Speaker 6: told him that you really don't want to be the
Speaker 6: center of a freak show. You really don't want to
Speaker 6: to be you know, stared at like some animal in
Speaker 6: the zoo. You don't want to be there in handcuffs
Speaker 6: and everybody jostling to get a picture of you, everybody
Speaker 6: jostling to get a look at you. And so you
Speaker 6: have this extremely proud guy who likes to think he's
Speaker 6: the big protector of the family. And then women in
Speaker 6: the family are saying, why don't you just stay home
Speaker 6: or not stay home, stay in prison, And it does
Speaker 6: make sense. He did acquest to them and he did
Speaker 6: agree not to go when at first he really wanted
Speaker 6: to go. It was the women who were close to
Speaker 6: him that talked him out of it.
Speaker 7: Yes, well, it's an incredible tale of vengeance as well
Speaker 7: to beato Risuto. If anybody had any doubt what he
Speaker 7: was going to do, they soon found out what his
Speaker 7: real mission was. Once he was released.
Speaker 6: You anew with you with an odd one because you know,
Speaker 6: in the end we started thinking about how he kind
Speaker 6: of played the role that he was raised to play,
Speaker 6: and then when he really did it, well, it all
Speaker 6: exploded on him. I mean it just was a you're
Speaker 6: sort of odd that that everything he sought to do
Speaker 6: came back to Burnham. You know, he sought to become
Speaker 6: like his father, and by him making the family stronger,
Speaker 6: it made them more of a target in a way
Speaker 6: that people were worried his son was going to turn
Speaker 6: out like him, so they murdered his son as well.
Speaker 6: You know, you think you're passing something on to your kid,
Speaker 6: but you become so feared that people kill your kid
Speaker 6: because I think he's going to be like you. That's
Speaker 6: got to be a terrible feeling.
Speaker 7: But the way you describe as character, it wasn't like
Speaker 7: he was ashamed of what had happened with his father
Speaker 7: and with his son. He was really one of those
Speaker 7: people that are captured in books and movies. He was
Speaker 7: of the life, wasn't he.
Speaker 6: Oh definitely. I Mean it's interesting to use the word
Speaker 6: shame because that's a word that a couple of years
Speaker 6: of both of us researching the book, we never heard
Speaker 6: it once. We never heard of him being ashamed of anything. Yeah,
Speaker 6: this is someone who who didn't really have the boundaries
Speaker 6: the rest of us have, or even close to them.
Speaker 6: But we never once ever heard of him saying sorry.
Speaker 6: We never heard of him saying he's ashamed. We never
Speaker 6: heard of him, you know, any of those kind of
Speaker 6: emotions at.
Speaker 7: All incredible And with this book, what has been the reaction,
Speaker 7: I would say internationally in terms of people that watch
Speaker 7: and write these kinds of the authorities of organized crime,
Speaker 7: What has been the reaction so far to this book.
Speaker 6: I've been really happy with it. Like Jerry Kapisi, who's
Speaker 6: a huge deal in this sort of world, writing about it.
Speaker 6: I had a guest column for him last week, or
Speaker 6: actually three of them, and that was something where they
Speaker 6: approached me to just talk about Veto. There's a fascination
Speaker 6: with him. We've gotten quite a bit, you know, from
Speaker 6: California to New York and across Canada. We have been very,
Speaker 6: very happy with it. I think some of it is
Speaker 6: because it's almost Shakespeare, you know, the idea of have
Speaker 6: a control freak all of a sudden losing control when
Speaker 6: he needs it the most. I mean, there's something there
Speaker 6: that you just can't make it up. You know, this
Speaker 6: guy who through his entire life has always been the
Speaker 6: guy in charge, and then he he becomes so impotent
Speaker 6: he can't even go to his kids funeral and he
Speaker 6: can't do a thing about it. And his mother is
Speaker 6: in shock because her husband's been killed and he can't
Speaker 6: even give her a hug. I mean, it was some
Speaker 6: of the stuff. As much as you don't like what
Speaker 6: Vito did, you can't help, but on a human level
Speaker 6: feel sorry for him.
Speaker 7: Well, it's incredible that these people choose his life. I
Speaker 7: mean I always thought, and this just reinforces it. You know,
Speaker 7: these guys get again, an armored car, a bodyguard, and
Speaker 7: a nice suit, and that's about what you get. I mean,
Speaker 7: there are some perks, but it's incredible. The life that
Speaker 7: these guys live in paint a really vivid portrayal of
Speaker 7: these guys and this life. I don't think anybody is
Speaker 7: going to be motivated to join the mafia after reading
Speaker 7: this book.
Speaker 6: So absolutely. I mean, I drive a car that nobody
Speaker 6: on the street is jealous of me when I drive by.
Speaker 6: But I'm a lot happier than Vito was, you know,
Speaker 6: in his Ferrari. So you don't you know that At
Speaker 6: first you might be think, Wow, they have all this money,
Speaker 6: But after a while, when you take a hard look
Speaker 6: at him, you think this is a life I wouldn't
Speaker 6: wish on the worst enemy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and all the connections too, from the street gang
Speaker 7: guys that get murdered to the Hell's angels that get
Speaker 7: involved with again in prison, so it's nothing but prison
Speaker 7: and or murder, or and or misery. Like you say,
Speaker 7: the guy that his wife flipped out and killed the
Speaker 7: kids and again sitting in prison. There's nothing more helpless
Speaker 7: than somebody sitting in prison. So even these guys that
Speaker 7: are used to the power realize the impotasy that they
Speaker 7: face in prison. There's a joke I heard a long
Speaker 7: time ago from a bad guy who said, help them
Speaker 7: being chased by paranoids, and is kind of true. They
Speaker 7: get such a paranoid world that that it is. It's realistic,
Speaker 7: not paranoid to be worried about the paranoid people chasing
Speaker 7: after you. Yeah, incredible. Well, Peter, I want to thank
Speaker 7: you very much for those that may want to find
Speaker 7: out a little bit more information. Do you have a
Speaker 7: website or how my people contact you? Have more about
Speaker 7: business or blood?
Speaker 6: Got a website? Peter Edwards, author dot com and people
Speaker 6: can also email me p Edwards at the Star dot
Speaker 6: ca A. I'm always happy to talk to people, so
Speaker 6: I've and I talked to an extremely wide range of people.
Speaker 6: So you know, any of your listeners, I'd be happy
Speaker 6: to talk to them.
Speaker 7: Sounds great. Well, I want to thank you very much,
Speaker 7: and I want to thank actually Antonio Nicaso for helping
Speaker 7: you and collaborating with you on this fine book business
Speaker 7: or Blood the Beadle, Rizzuto's Last War. Thank you very
Speaker 7: much on your well, it's always a pleasure speaking with you, Peter,
Speaker 7: and I hope you have a great evening and hope
Speaker 7: to talk to you again soon.
Speaker 6: Right, another one so I can get back on in
Speaker 6: a couple of years.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, thank you, Okay,