MONTREAL -- The head of the once-powerful Rizzuto crime family was likely cut down by a single bullet from a professional hitman as he prepared dinner with his wife and daughter nearby.
A lone bullet hole through a glass wall at the rear of Nicolo (Nick) Rizzuto's luxury home leads investigators to believe that the gunman waited in a stand of trees for the right moment to get a clear shot at the 86-year-old kingpin at suppertime on Wednesday.
"The impact of the bullet was able to pierce two windows to hit Mr. Rizzuto," Cmdr. Denis Mainville, head of Montreal's organized crime squad, told QMI Agency on Thursday.
He said the high-profile murder has all the hallmarks of an assassination.
"These were targeted acts," said the commander. "Now, were they targeted acts from within organized crime or even within factions? We are studying different links, different situations and different information."
Mafia analysts and a police informant tell QMI Agency that the killing was likely ordered by rival mobsters trying to finish off the crumbling Rizzuto clan, which has been rocked by 12 months of killings and disappearances.
Rizzuto and his grandson and namesake, Nick Rizzuto Jr., have both been killed, leaving jailed son Vito as the only remaining leader of a family that has controlled Canada's mob scene ever since the murder of gangster Paolo Violi in 1978.
If the Sicilian Rizzutos are in fact on the way out, say experts, it clears the way for Calabrian mobsters in the Toronto area to take over traditional rackets of gambling, loansharking and drug trafficking.
