Mobster may appear at Woodbridge funeral
Greater Toronto Area police are bracing themselves for what could be mobster Vito Rizzuto’s appearance at the highest-profile local underworld funeral in memory.
“Oh boy,” a local police officer specializing in organized crime said on Sunday when asked about the upcoming funeral for Leonardo Cammalleri, 92.
Cammalleri is the father-in-law of Rizzuto, 66, who is due for release from an American prison next weekend after six years in custody.
Rizzuto’s father, son and brotherin-law have all been murdered in Montreal over the past three years as Rizzuto served time in a Colorado prison for his role in three underworld murders in New York in 1981.
No date has publicly been announced for Cammalleri’s funeral.
The officer said it’s still up in the air whether Cammalleri will be buried in Woodbridge in York Region, where he lived much of his life, or in Montreal, where he died last week of apparent natural causes.
As the Star reported last week, there are strong suspicions that York Region mobsters played a major role in unrelenting attacks on Rizzuto’s family while he has been behind bars.
Whatever the case, it’s imperative that Rizzuto attend the funeral to maintain “power and respect” and serve notice that he’s not afraid, a police officer specializing in organized crime said. “I think it will be a must,” the officer said. The funeral is also important to gauge who is supporting Rizzuto and who is conspicuous by their absence, police said. Pierre de Champlain, a retired RCMP crime analyst and an author, said that police will be curious who attends Cammalleri’s wake and funeral home visitation. The reception Rizzuto receives if he attends the funeral, and the turnout by underworld figures to pay their respects, will be an indication of Rizzuto’s stature in the underworld, de Champlain said. Cammalleri was considered a member of the “cosca,” or crime group, of his father-in-law, Sicilian Mafia boss Antonio (Don Nino) Manno. Cammalleri was convicted in absentia in Italy of the 1955 murder of Giuseppe Spagnolo, one of at least 45 union leaders and leftist politicians who were murdered by in Sicily by Mafiosi between 1945 and 1955. Authorities suspected that Cammalleri was hidden by a local priest before he fled to York Region.