Free The Sixth Family by Lee Lamothe Page B

considerable privileges of citizenship in his adopted homeland.

    In accordance with Sicilian tradition, the groom, his family, friends and supporters traveled to the hometown of his bride and her family, in this case Toronto, for the wedding ceremony and reception. Those friends and supporters apparently included the six-man Bonanno contingent from New York.

    The day before leaving for Toronto for their wedding, however, Vito and his bride-to-be signed a prenuptial marriage contract in Quebec, witnessed and notarized by Gaétan Reid, stipulating that each spouse remains the exclusive owner of his or her property, administers that property alone and assumes responsibility for their own debts. Should their marriage fail, each retains their own property, providing they can prove ownership, the contract states.

    Vito’s bride was Giovanna Cammalleri, his first cousin once removed, on his mother’s side. The Cammalleri family had made their home in Toronto after leaving Cattolica Eraclea. The Cammalleri family, like Vito’s, has a long history of outlaw behavior and Mafia involvement, police say. Officers have tracked at least two generations of Cammalleri family members. Along with others, they formed what police dubbed the “Toronto Sicilian Group,” a Mafia organization suspected by police of running illegal gambling, extortion and drugs. One RCMP report notes the group’s ties in New York, Detroit and Montreal.

    The newlyweds were young. Vito, who had grown into a tall, lanky man just shy of 6-foot-1 with brown eyes and hair so dark it appeared to be black, was 20; Giovanna, who was four inches shorter than Vito and slim, with chestnut hair, was just 18.

    Organized-crime investigators often refer to Vito’s nuptials as a “marriage of convenience,” suggesting the sanctity of his vows and love for his bride are secondary to his family’s larger interests. But who is to say it was not both love and good sense? Certainly, photographs of the couple show them engaging each other and seemingly happy in each other’s company. Nonetheless, good sense it was, since it built an important bridge between the Cammalleri’s Toronto base and the Rizzutos in Montreal. The two most populous cities in Canada were crucial hubs for the country’s economic activities and its illicit enterprises. What is more, Vito’s wife was a bright and lively woman with a good head for numbers and finance, who was often ready with investment advice for both sides of her family.

    One facet of Vito’s wedding that was almost pure diplomacy, however, was the selection of the men he asked to stand with him on this important day. There was Frank Dasti, then 52, one of the most respected figures in Montreal’s underworld. He was one of its oldest active members, but was far from preparing for retirement. (A few years after Vito’s wedding, Dasti would step up his efforts to move narcotics through Canada into the United States, only to be caught in 1973 and sentenced to 20 years in a U.S. prison. He has since died.) Also standing up for Vito was Angelo Sauro, 30 at the time, a Montrealer whose lengthy criminal record was peppered with minor convictions through every decade, from the 1950s to his most recent in late 2002. Orlando Veri, a friend of Vito’s, was the youngest, at 23, and the least involved in criminal activities, although he, too, would later be convicted for a drug conspiracy. Most strikingly, Paolo Violi, then 34 and a Calabrian mobster being groomed for Mafia success by Vic Cotroni, was also included in the wedding party, according to a Montreal police report.

    That Vito would invite Violi to assist in his wedding is a clear sign that, although there were tensions between the Cotroni-Violi faction and the Greco-Rizzuto faction, the relationships had not yet so seriously deteriorated that they could not at least pretend to be civil and respectful to each other. However, the fact that Bill Bonanno would meet separately with both