Toronto mobster shot dead in his home
Son-in-law charged in death of Rocco Zito, whom police say was ‘retired’ from Mafia
The son-in-law of longtime underworld figure Rocco Zito turned himself in to police late Friday after Zito was shot dead in his home hours earlier.
Domenico Scopelliti, 51, of Toronto, reported to police to face first-degree murder charges. Zito, 87, was killed in his home on Playfair Ave., near Caledonia Rd.
Zito was considered a longtime senior member of the ’Ndrangheta, or Calabrian Mafia, with influence in New York, Montreal and Italy.
His old associates included Nicolo Rizzuto, a murdered Montreal mobster, and Tomasso Buscetta, a former Sicilian Mafia leader who became a turncoat in the 1980s, according to police sources.
A GTA police officer who specializes in organized crime said Zito was no longer considered an active player in the underworld. “He has been long retired,” the police officer said.
Antonio Nicaso, a GTA author and authority on organized crime, disagrees with that assessment. “Retirement is not an option in the ’Ndrangheta,” he said.
Police were called to Zito’s brick ranch-style home shortly after 5 p.m. Friday. Efforts to save his life failed and he was pronounced dead on the scene.
Zito, a grandfather to at least eight, didn’t look the part of a Mob boss or a powerful man, and a police officer who knew him described him as polite and respectful.
He stood just five-foot-two and drove a nondescript Chevrolet Malibu.
His unassuming, compact look belied the fact he was considered by police to have been a leader of the local governing body of the ’Ndrangheta, called La Camera di Controllo or the Crimini — and the belief he was once a strongarm for former Scarborough resident Alberto Agueci, who was tortured and murdered in 1961 after threatening to inform on the Magaddino crime family of Buffalo.
Zito was targeted by police in the mid-1980s project codenamed Otiz, his name spelled backward. Otiz was an attempt to catch Zito offering safe passage for Sicilian Mafia members fleeing crackdowns there in the 1980s.
Gathering intelligence proved a challenge for police, as Zito seldom spoke on the phone, prefering walk-and-talks on the street. He also often used hand gestures in place of words.
Zito tried for almost a decade to move to Canada from his native Calabria.
He was deported to Italy from New York City when nabbed as a stowaway in the late 1940s and then kicked out again when caught trying to sneak into Galveston, Texas, in 1949.
He was charged with murder in Italy in 1952, but that case was later dismissed.
Finally, in 1955, he was allowed into Canada, legally arriving in Montreal.
He worked as a waiter for a short time, settling into a home on Brock Ave. in Little Italy before moving to Playfair Ave. He later listed his occupation as a ceramic tile salesman.
Police believed he made his real money from gambling, drug trafficking and currency counterfeiting.
He was questioned by police about why he met in 1970 in Toronto with Paolo Gambino, of the Gambino crime family of New York City. A police source said he shrugged off the encounter, saying Gambino was the neighbour of a relative and that he needed some unspecified help.
He was also involved in moneylending and was sentenced to four and a half years in prison in 1986, after pleading guilty to manslaughter for clubbing a man to with a Millefio- ri liqueur bottle and then shooting him with a .38 revolver three times, all over an unpaid debt.
When he turned himself in for that crime, he refused to make a statement about the killing but did request medical treatment for a bullet wound in his leg.
He said nothing about the injury other than: “I, Rocco Zito, was shot on Monday, January 13, by persons unknown.”
In Canada, his roots in organized crime ran deep.
When police arrested former Mafia leader Paolo Violi in 1960 in Toronto for running bootleg liquor, they found Zito’s phone number on him. Violi was later murdered in Montreal after becoming head of the Cotroni crime family there.
In 1967, Zito’s name came came up when police bugged the tomato plants of Hamilton ’Ndrangheta leader Giacomo Luppino, who was Violi’s son-in-law.
In those tapes, Luppino said he constantly heard about Zito and understood that he was in the money.
Two of the other original members of the Camera di Controllo — Salvatore Triumbari and Filippo Vende-mini — were murdered in 1967 and 1969, respectively.