The feds still had Buffalo on their list through the 1990s. It was only a few years before that article that LIUNA Local 210 had to be taken over.Slumpy wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 7:15 am Couple'a tree tings I've been reading lately I thought were interesting about the Ontario situation back in the late 90s.
Regarding the Johnny Pops / Barillaro hits in '98, Stephen Schneider in his book "Iced" wrote this:
However Law enforcement in Canada followed another line of reasoning, believing that the Johnny Pops hit had been called from MTL:Lee Coppola, a former reporter from western New York who covered the Magaddino Family for more than two decades, told the media in 1998 that a Buffalo-sanctioned hit “is a very unlikely scenario. I don’t think there is enough organization, structure, power or authority in the Buffalo mob to have any input or sanction into a murder in Canada.” Coppola, who was the dean of the journalism school at St. Bonaventure University in New York State when he made these comments, was adamant that “for all intents and purposes, the Buffalo mob — as it once was when Magaddino actually ruled that part of Toronto and the Papalias and Violis were under him — is all diminished and has been diminishing over the last couple of decades to a point now where there is no leadership, there is no structure, and there certainly is not power. Coppola believed that if the Musitanos were responsible for the killings of Papalia and Barillaro, they were probably acting on their own. ---Schneider, Stephen. Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canadaa
Which sounds reasonable, right? That Buffalo was on the way out, the Musitanos start cosying up to the major drug suppliers in the Rizzutos and start thinking it might be great to clean out the competition in The Hammer (or the Rizzutos tell them to).Another plausible theory is that Vito Rizzuto ordered Papalia dead to pave the way for a full-scale invasion of Southern Ontario. The Montreal mafia, under Rizzuto, was already carrying out gambling operations in Eastern Ontario and had aligned themselves with the Musitanos, who were expanding across the more populous southern and western parts of the province. On October 23, 1997, Pasquale Musitano and his cousin Giuseppe Avigone met with Vito Rizzuto in Toronto, lending credence to this theory.--Schneider, "Iced"
But here's something else, that throws a monkey wrench into that particular theory:
Grant Lafleche wrote and article in the St Catherine Standard on August 21, 1999. It was titled: "Bikers now married to the mob: New Mafia crime lord rules Golden Horseshoe, says CISC report" The article indicates the Todaro crime family may have been much stronger than recently thought. Here are some items of note from the article which uses Detective Sergeant Peter Polcetti, organized crime expert with CISC (Criminal Intelligence Service of Canada) as its main source:
- A new mafia boss was put into place in the Niagara region.
- He couldn’t be named because he had never been arrested.
- He replaced Buffalo’s John Papalia and Carmen Barillaro and had been one of their “close associates.”-. He is linked to the “Powerful Todaro Buffalo crime family.”
- He was forging relationships with outlaw biker organizations. (Particularly the Hells Angels and Paradise Rollers. I presume the relationship was
formed to work together in the lucrative drug trade the Bikers had been working with Rizuttos in Montreal for a while.)
- This transpired as a result of Papalia/Barillaro hits and subsequent Musitano arrests. (Papalia is on record being against working with the Bikers--may be why Buffalo wanted him gone!)
- As a result Lafleche writes that the CISC believes: “the Todaro family now controls Niagara, Hamilton, Toronto and Montreal."
(note: article called them "Paradise rollers" it is actually Paradice Riders)
SO here we have conflicting reports on the status of Buffalo in the late 90s.
However, that said, we have the benefit of hindsight looking at the next 20 years following that article - including the relative lack of cases that would come with a "powerful" LCN family.
