CabriniGreen wrote: ↑Wed Dec 05, 2018 12:58 am
@antimafia
If you go back to that thread on Gbb, I flat out told everyone arguing over whether there is or isnt a Buffalo is a waste of time until more info comes out. I said FOCUS ON THE VIOLIS AFFILIATION, it will shed light on the structures in Canada. I said that, I did, lol
Dont lump me in with Fuckin Rooster, I never interacted with rooster, lol
You frustrated me only because you were VERY insistent the Violis were Bonnano members, Almost smug, even.... And you are still kinda insistent, THAT I dont understand. One guy is Buffalo, one isnt ed ven made yet,.. End o f.c Story, No? okay....
Business or Blood, it says the Musitanos had contracts on the Violis AND Luppinos, but the hitman didnt want to take the contracts.
If they were Bonnanos then, why would NY give a green light on em, THEN? What did they do?
If the Rizzutos were still answering to NY, why would they be putting hits on guys in thier OWN family? For another of their CREWS?
Business or Blood has Vito meeting with Buffalo people in 2001.....
I asked you guys, why the Violis never showed up on any of the well researched charts. Silence, Crickets....
I asked WHO from Canada was represented when the Bonnanos had that big family meeting at the restaurant. Did anyone come down? I even asked if the Bronx capo represented the Canadian interest. Silence, crickets again....
So to me, they had to have been made recently, like VERY recently....
Again, what's with hostility? It reminds me of Hairy cause it seems outta nowhere....
CabriniGreen, I choose my words carefully. I repeat them to another poster if I think the poster misread them the first time.
When I repeated "If you assert--I'm not pointing you out personally--that the Violi brothers were Buffalo Family members at the time they attended Morena's induction into the Bonannos, then you are either in one of two camps...," did you ignore the "I'm not pointing you out personally" part that I even highlighted in red?
When I wrote "Nor was the banned poster The_Rooster on the Gangster BB board, with whom you may share a certain perspective (see farther below)," did you ignore reading the word "may"? Thankfully, you are nothing like The_Rooster. You ask questions a lot because you are capable of entertaining possibilities; he on the other hand dismissed other posters' evidence, opinions, and information if these last three did not agree with his. He rarely asked questions because, you know, he has all the answers. I thought the longer part of his quote that I posted jibed with your impressions of the state of today's Italian
mafie, especially because you subscribe to John Dickie's Transatlantic Syndicate theory and you have been very curious about whether double affiliation exists--was I wrong?
After I posted a link here to the June 5, 2018 article by Anna Sergi in which she was the first person to publish information about the presence of the Violi brothers at the Bonanno induction ceremony, there was a lot of discussion here about their probable mafia affiliation to the Bonanno Family, especially because many of us were trying to parse what she meant by the "
Todaro syndicate," which she also wrote is no longer part of LCN. I did not and could not declare the brothers to be made Bonannos because of the information I was privy to that I received on June 1: the Violi brothers may not be on the same page. (I posted a link to Sergi's article here on June 12.) The research, theories, and opinions that posters are sharing now about the presence of made guys from one family at another family's making ceremonies weren't shared back in June but are now because of the details that emerged this past Monday. Incidentally, to address your comment that Domenico Violi is a made Buffalo member and Giuseppe isn't even made yet, please note that the details from the articles published this past Monday do not state that the latter isn't made
now--Giuseppe Violi could very well be a made member.
Before this past Monday, when I put forth the argument that the Violi brothers were made Bonannos, the best evidence I had was what I cited in Sergi's article--presence at a Bonanno making ceremony--the type of strong evidence that the FBI uses to determine whether someone is a made member of an American LCN group, with corroboration by witnesses at the ceremony of course being another very important criterion. The circumstantial evidence about the Violis' probable made-Bonanno status was the extent of their involvement, whether minimal or heavy, at various stages of the Montreal mob war--this involvement has been a topic discussed in numerous articles, a couple of books, lots of tweets, and many forum posts. When the Violis became the subjects of French-language articles almost two years to the day as a result of the presence of Domenico Violi and some Cotronis at a restaurant in Quebec in October 2016, I looked out for other articles about the Violi brothers and furthered my research into their presence in Quebec, as well as their relatives', since Rocco Violi's murder in October 1980. Like a very few posters on these forums, I sometimes prefer not to share my research, especially if I discover information that I consider, for example, to be a unique find, a treasure trove of new information, a base for building an important theory, or a pattern for constructing a timeline of events.
Long story short, the younger generation of Violis, whom we knew to have at least one criminal contact in Laval, Quebec since at least before October 1993, appeared to continue to cultivate such contacts in Quebec even after being arrested in 1995 in a major drug-smuggling case. The Violis have always had relatives in Quebec, and other reasons for visiting the province would have been to visit their father's grave. Since at least October 2016, I have catalogued more evidence of the Violis' involvement in crime alongside criminals in Quebec, especially those who, going back to at least the early 1990s, were either close to Frank Cotroni Sr. or in his circle.
I made a quick assessment after reading a few articles about the restaurant meeting in Quebec and, of course, the torching of the restaurant later on. For a number of reasons, I didn't think there was anything ominous or significant about the meeting. I didn't picture a group forming that would be Cotroni-Violi v2.0; for example, Paolo Violi and Frank Cotroni Sr. didn't like each other very much, and someone like Frank's son Michel had been inactive for many, many years. I felt that Domenico Violi was trying to network with these hapless Cotronis. Once some of us started making connections between Montagna's visits to Hamilton shortly after April 2009 and the evidence of the Violis' presence at the Bonanno induction ceremony, I then thought that Domenico met with the Cotronis to possibly recruit and groom some of them into becoming made Bonannos--just like the Violis--the idea being that if the New York Bonannos had the goal of making people in Canada and still had plans in place to take back control of Montreal, the Violis were some of New York's main men for accomplishing both goals.
With the details that emerged this past Monday, now of course I wonder whether Domenico Violi, whose mafia affiliation hasn't been confirmed by the FBI or the RCMP, was trying to recruit and groom the Cotronis for membership in the Buffalo Family. Earlier this year I was rereading the 2002
Bloodlines... book by Lamothe and Nicaso, and in it is a sidebar (p. 30) that references a 1985 U.S. Justice Department report that mentions that Frank Cotroni Sr. regularly met with Joe
Todaro Sr.--makes you want to do more research about the interaction between the Buffalo Family and the Bonanno Family's Montreal crew after 1985, as there were many articles about this interaction in the 1960s and 1970s but then the information kind of almost stopped.
I often find it hard to explain to other posters that while my main area of research is the Canadian 'ndrangheta (in particular the Siderno Group), I have known for years that its structures, organizations, activities, and membership have been overestimated because of the overwhelming media coverage of the Italian 'ndrangheta, which in my estimation eclipsed the Sicilian Cosa Nostra as early as 2003 and does not appear to be losing the top spot anytime soon. Hypothetically speaking, even if I were to agree with you that one or both Violi brothers are made into Buffalo or you were to agree with me that one or both are made into the Bonannos, would we agree that the Violis are not 'ndrangheta members anymore? never were 'ndrangheta members? Over the years, a number of posters on various forums have listed Musitanos, as well as their relatives with different surnames, as Buffalo Family members--if the Musitano crime group members are also under Buffalo, do we say that they are not 'ndrangheta members? never were?
Because I can tell you right now that if we have evidence that there are currently no 'ndrangheta members in Hamilton (as well as Waterdown, Ancaster, Burlington, Beamsville, Guelph, and some other cities and towns in southwestern Ontario), there are going to be forum posters living in all corners of the globe who are going to slit their wrists upon learning that Hamilton is not a centre of 'ndrangheta power in Ontario because, well, there is no 'ndrangheta there.
The hitman you referred to is Ken Murdock. In the 1990s, before going to jail, Pat and Angelo Musitano plotted the murders of Buffalo Family members John Papalia and Carm Barillaro; Murdock killed the targets within months of each other in 1997. Numerous theories have floated around since then as to why Papalia and Barillaro were killed, and there has even been new information that came out this year that Buffalo was aware of the Musitano brothers' intentions and even authorized the killings. Only after November 2010 did I read an important article by Adrian Humpheys that was published June 1, 1998 in the
Hamilton Spectator, which is where Humphreys was working at the time. In the article, the evidence about Domenico Violi's made status may appear to be scant--Pat Musitano was seen giving Violi a quick peck on each cheek--but that evidence is sometimes all a researcher like me has to go on. When
Mafia inc. was first published in November 2010, it mentioned that Domenico Violi was very well respected in the Italian underworld in Ontario. For the most part, then, I had always been assuming and continued to assume that the Violi brothers and the Luppinos were 'ndrangheta members in the orbit of the Buffalo Family. So if Violi stated on tape that he was made into the Buffalo Family in January 2015, was he a made man before then? If yes, into what secret society was he made when Pat was seen initiating the kiss on the cheeks?
Because there are no proper organized-crime charts for Italian crime groups in Ontario, I have questioned the size of the Luppino-Violi group a number of times ever since the theory was floated that Paolo Violi's sons were seeking revenge for the murder of their father and uncles at the hands of the Rizzutos. I started to question the size even more when the Project OTremens bust was first reported--did the two brothers constitute the entire Luppino-Violi group as of November 2017, especially because their surviving Luppino uncles were quite old? But as often happens when Calabrian mafia members have been arrested, their power and influence only grows on these types of boards (not this one, thankfully), whereas when mafia members with Sicilian ancestry or loyalty to the Rizzutos had been killed and arrested in Quebec a number of years ago, there was always much discussion of the weakened state of the Rizzutos (very fair point) and the end of their dominance in Quebec (a fair point to an extent). While I have posted for many years about the internal friction within the Siderno Group in the Greater Toronto Area, I did not predict that the violence in the GTA, which has seen a number of criminals with Calabrian ancestry killed in the last five years, might have spilled over into Hamilton. Details from Monday's articles reveal that Rocco and Natale Luppino are still kicking around, and if Rocco has a sizable crew, I underestimated the involvement of the older Luppinos in organized crime.
I'm not sure whether I addressed your question about why the Violi brothers Domenico and Giuseppe never showed up on any organized-crime charts, but if you want to follow up with me, please don't hesitate.
Remind me again about which Bonanno meeting at a restaurant saw no Bonanno rep from Canada--I might have missed the post and, if I did, I'll try to answer.
I'm not hostile, CabriniGreen. Just trying to figure out how elaborate you want my answers to your questions to be and whether I have to sugarcoat my words in case you don't like my answers.
