The Code of the 'ndrangheta, analysed

The following appears in the book as an appendix.
This is not the Code of San Giorgio Morgeto however, but a Sidernese code found in Toronto. If anyone has a copy of the code of San Giorgio that Italian caribinieri discovered in the home of Giuseppe Mammomliti in Taura Nova in 1963 I'd be happy to receive it. The following is an attempt to understand the references in the code, and to make sense of the allusions. There are certainly strong elements of legend and fable inter-mixed in this. The version I am using here was published in Deadly Silence by Antonio Nicasso and Peter Edwards.


Three Spanish Knights
The story of the three Spanish knights is told in the Code of the Honoured
Society, a handful of which codes have been discovered over the years in
Calabria. This version is one that was discovered in Toronto 1972 in the home
of one of the Siderno Racco family's associates, Francesco Caccomo. As
mentioned earlier, one of the documents found in Calabria is known as the
Code of San Giorgio Morgeti, but a copy is not available.
According to the legend of the brothers as outlined in the Toronto Code, the
three were brothers who feld Spain after killing a nobleman who had
dishonoured their sister. The three self-exiled knights made their way to Italy.
Osso settled in Sicily and is regarded as the founder of the Sicilian Mafia (Cosa
Nostra,) Mastrosso settled in Naples and founded the Neapolitan Camorra, and
Carcagnosso settled in Calabria, where he founded the Picciotteria, precursor to
the Honoured Society, the 'ndrangheta.
The legend says that the three agreed to spend the rest of their lives
defending the weak against the arrogant and the overbearing. According to the
code Carcagnosso organized his Calabrian society in greater detail than did his
brothers and thus he elaborated both an extensive set of rules to govern the
society, and developed a mythopoeic language to describe it, ie. the society is a
flowering garden under a guiding star, governed by a capo bastone, the trunk of
the tree, while its treasurer or contibile represents its bark, its senior members
or camorristi are its branches, the piccioti/soldiers its twigs, and the young men
of honour, the giovanottini d'onore, the flowers.
For several centuries the society of the piccioti functioned in the
desperately poor lands of southern Calabria, operating as the arbiters of civil
society in a province governed by the agents of landlords from elsewhere,
especially after the Spanish Hapsburgs lost the region.
Allegorically Catholic, they declared themselves under the protection of the
archangel Gabriel. The morality of the Honoured Society appears to have more
in common with paganism than with Christianity, for it is culture of vendetta
and curse more rooted in the cult of Persephone as practiced in Morgantina,
than in the cult of Jesus as practised by St. Paul. A picture of the Virgin Mary
is in fact burnt during initiation ceremonies.
The Society's code gives its members 'Humility, Loyalty, Politics, False
Political Power, Paper, the Knife and the Razor'. Their sense of humility is not
spiritual humility but humbleness towards the Society. Likewise 'Loyalty' is to
the Society and not to the community. ' Politics' is the power politics of
Machiavelli, not the ideals of social equality. "False Politics" is the freedom to
lie to everyone but members of the Society.
The 'paper' is for counting money, 'the knife' is for punishment, and the
'razor' for the disfigurement of the Society's enemies. It is interesting to note
65 that the Ellis Island immigration records show that scores of Morgeti had scars
on their faces.
It is clear from the code that for members of the Society, Catholicism's
virtues are ceremonial rather than spiritual, while devotion to the society
governs every action. And so, as the centuries passed the Society kept a low
profile but seems to have taken root to greater and lesser degrees in the
villages, towns and cities of south Calabria. With their particular sense of
ancient rights, the clans of the Morgeti found power in the society.
The society's code ranges from the poetic to the historically explicit, at
least insofar as numerous real people and places are mentioned. For instance
the three Spanish brothers are said to have created their societies on the island
of Faviganna, off the coast of Sicily, where the knights are allegedly buried, "
in an honoured tomb covered with a door of finest white marble". It sounds like
an episode from the Discovery channel or an A&E Ancient Mystery episode.
Mention is also made in the code of the "ancient Duke of Faenza" who
possesses the keys " found at the ends of Spain." Faenza is an Italian city in the
province of Ravenna in the episcopal see of Emilia-Romagna. The Duke is
probably the young man whose people rallied around him when Cesar Borgia,
acting on behalf of his father, Pope Alexander I, was besieging ducal cities as
he moved inland from the Adriatic Coast with his corrupt papal armies. Borgia
forced the cities one by one under Borgia/papal command, breaking the hold of
the Hapsburgs of Spain who still commanded the Kingdom of Two Sicilies.
(Naples and Sicily) The Duke of Faenza stood firm, and so the keys "were not
lost".
The text goes on to say that the keys aren't lost between comrades "because
with a word of humility one forms and with a word of humility one dissolves."
But one key is gold, and the other silver, one to open one to close.
In the early years of Spanish rule in Italy, Amerigo Vespuci sailed from
Seville, and soon after he did, Spain became immersed in pillaged gold and
silver from the New World. There is 'a tower of Gold in Seville', but silver
from the New World also turned Seville into one of the most important cities in
Europe. Not surprisingly North and South America are the source of most of
the Society's gold and silver even today, only now it flows from cocaine sales.
Ravenna, Italy, home of the ancient Duke of Faenza, is where the Medici
fortunes were revived in the 1500's after the Spanish removed the French from
Italy, and destroyed the republic of Florence. Cardinal Giovanni Medici
became Pope Leo X, whom Machiavelli counselled in his book, The Prince.
The Spanish themselves came to be governed by Austrian Hapsburgs after
1516. Three years later the Hapsburg King Charles of Spain was elected
emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and from 1522 on Naples was ruled by a
Spanish viceroy. Which is around the time that the three brothers are said to
have come to Italy.
Whatever the code is talking about, one thing is clear, and that is that Italy,
divided among popes and dukes and kings and emperors and three Spanish
knights, was the spoil of many wars. The people themselves were no more than
cannon fodder for successive conquerors, unless they defended themselves.
By 1707 the Spanish, now themselves governed by the French, lost Naples
to the Austrians. Then they lost Sicily, although they got it back in 1713, after
which it flipped hands for a while until a son of the Spanish king claimed both
66 Sicily and Naples for the French Bourbons in 1738, which was not a happy
time for Italian patriots.
In 1783 southern Calabria was rocked by an earthquake so devastating that
San Giorgio was among the only places still standing. The village became a
"Sacred Case" and the people were allowed access to Church incomes,
properties and even access to the convents.
By Jan. of 1799, southern Italy was being run by the French Republic under
Napoleon Bonaparte. The Spanish court at Palermo Sicily sent a Cardinal to
Calabria to organize resistance and the whole population arose, including
brigands, convicts, soldiers and peasants, who entered Naples after a bloody
battle at the Ponte de Maddalena, after which they drove out the French
republicans and their Italian allies. Carcagnosso's society undoubtedly played a
role in reviving the fortunes of its Neapolitan and Sicilian brethren.
The Bourbon court returned to Naples from Palermo, Sicily in 1802,
although by 1805 they had to flee back to Sicily, after which Joseph Bonaparte
took over Naples, although his rule was contested outside the city by brigands.
The now 'Emperor' Napoleon Bonaparte made Joseph king of Spain after
Joseph was defeated by the British in Calabria.
Joachim Murat who was married to Caroline Bonaparte, was installed as
King of Naples, and filled his administration with Neapolitans, By 1814 he
declared himself separated from Napoleon and when Bonaparte was
incarcerated on Elbe, Murat allied himself to the British. When Napoleon
escaped from Elbe, Murat went back to his old allegiance, but after the
emperor's defeat at Waterloo the Austrians marched into Naples and once more
restored the Bourbons, who again crossed over from Sicily.
And through it all the secret societies fought their own causes for their own
reasons, and carried their various peoples with them.
In the meantime the Bourbon King Ferdinand and his wife had so alienated
the population of Sicily with their extravagance and police spy networks that
the British were able to force Ferdinand to abdicate in favour of his son. The
British also secured the creation of a new constitution for Sicily, although
Ferdinand came back into power in Naples, with the support of the Austrians
who commanded him not to give the Neapolitans a constitutional government.
Murat, making the mistake of thinking he had support in Calabria went
there only to find himself trapped by peasants, court martialed by police and
shot.
Ferdinand Bourbon proclaimed himself King of the Two Sicilys and by
1816 abolished the British-created constitution.
Meanwhile various members of the king's army were secretly being
organized into Carbineri lodges. The carbineri were a freemasonic
revolutionary society committed to forcing the king into granting a
constitutional government. Nobles, army officers, small landlords, government
officials, peasants and priests made up the ranks of the Carbineri.
King Ferdinand created his own secret society to destroy the Carbineri, the
Calderai del Contrappesso, which recruited its members from the brigands and
the lower classes of Naples. He was committed to the destruction of liberalism.
The Carbineri however flourished and spread throughout Italy. Lord Byron
joined their ranks. The Carbineri triggered the Neapolitan revolution of 1820,
which brought constitutional government to Naples and Sicily, although a year
67 later the Austrians marched in and put an end to parliament, leaving Ferdinand
free to hunt down the surviving Carbineri. Which in turn led to a reactionary
pan-European accord that allowed any European power to step in and quell
revolution in any other European nation. Only France and Britain were
uncomfortable with the Austrian-orchestrated accord.
Mastrosso's Camorra in Naples first became publicly known in 1820, when
it rose out of the Neapolitan prisons and struck at Bourbon misrule. The society
was originally a means for released prisoners to protect one another from
patrols, but they quickly turned into street gangs, and then they turned to
smuggling and blackmail, eventually infiltrating the entire social structure of
Naples. The Camorra made their profits from brothels, and from running
protection rackets on Neapolitan merchants.
By 1831 Carbineri revolutions were breaking out all over Italy, but the
Austrian army again suppressed them. The movement, having taking the brunt
of Austrian force, soon dwindled, only to be replaced by the Young Italy
movement of Giuseppe Mazzini. By 1836 independent members of the Young
Italy movement landed in Calabria thinking the population would rise to
support a revolution in support of constitutional reform, but they were captured
and shot instead.
And then came the revolutions of 1848, first in Sicily, then in Naples. The
Camorra became political. After the granting of a constitution in 1860, the
Camorra became all-powerful at elections, but Naples was soon in chaos and
by 1862 repressive measures were being taken to restore order.
At the same time the Carbineri, as constitutional revolutionaries, turned to
assist the Lombards against the Austrians. The Italian unification movement
began to gain momentum, but then parliamentary problems turned into a
reactionary response from the king leading to an end to constitutional
monarchy and the call for the army to return from assisting the Lombards
against Austria.
In Sicily however, the revolutionaries disavowed the court of Naples, and
declared themselves committed to a united Italy. Ferdinand sent an army,
which ravaged the island. With Sicilian freemasonry broken, the society of
Osso was the only game in town. The Bourbon king turned his attention to
Naples, and soon filled the prisons. Future British Prime Minister W.E.
Gladstone, who saw the conditions of the Neapolitan prisons, described them
as "the negation of God erected into a system of government."
The Toronto 'ndrangheta document also has this to say, "...let me know
where the Camorra was discovered.... In 1848 it was discovered. In 1852 they
wished to destroy it. Who was it that wanted to destroy it? Carlo Misiano and
Salvatore Imbalsamo."
Just who those two were I don't know, but the secret societies were, and
remained, defenders of an anti-constitutional movement.
The document also states that "Beautiful humility taught me, with roses and
flowers you covered me; in 1848 a war broke out in Calabria, Sicily, Spain and
the Neapolitan State. The blood lost by the Society was collected in a chalice
of finest silver and brought to Montalbano." The War in Spain in those years
was a civil war fought over succession to the crown.
In 1857, Calabrian peasants, along with local police put down yet another
constitutionalist landing in southern Italy, and only a intervention by Britain
68 saw the release of some of the many political prisoners, who then went into
exile. The Duke of Calabria in those days was the second son of the Bourbon
King, Ferdinand.
In 1859 King Ferdinand died, and his son Francesco II took over, but by
then Garibaldi had begun to wage a long and bitter battle for unification
throughout southern Italy. Garibaldi's small force fought the King's supporters
for nearly two years. By May of 1860, the forces for Italian unity landed in
Sicily. Garibaldi proclaimed the Sardinian king Victor Emmanuel king of all
Italy and a few battles later the Sicilians rallied to his cause. By August he had
landed in Reggio Calabria where he forced Italian unity on the reluctant heirs
of Carcagnossa. Garibaldi was wounded during that conflict.
By September of 1860 Francesco II and his queen sailed out of Naples. The
Sardinian King, Victor Emmanuel, now afraid of Garibaldi's purposes, met him
with a large army two weeks later, but Garibaldi's veteran troops defeated the
king's army. Garibaldi once more proclaimed Victor Emmanuel king of all
Italy, which was later confirmed by plebiscite after Garibaldi went home,
seemingly sick of Italian politics.
Following the establishment of the Sardinian supremacy in 1860, more than
two hundred and sixty arrests were made over the next months among the
Calabrian Picciotteria.
The secret societies rooted as they were in their loyalty to the ideologies of
three Spanish Hapsburg knights, remained outside the middle class and their
unification movement, and remained opposed to Sardinian control of southern
Italy. Historians regard the decades that followed the unification of Italy as a
period in which southern Italy paid for its opposition by paying off Sardinian
war debts.
King Victor Emmanuel renamed the village of San Giorgio, San Giorgio
Morgeto in 1864, to reconnect the village with its ancestry. Perhaps it was an
effort to make peace with its citizens. When the exiled Francesco died, his
brother Alphonso, still calling himself the Duke of Calabria, became King in
exile. There is a Bourbon Duke of Calabria alive in 2006. Those first thirty
years of Sardinian occupation of southern Italy were bitter ones.
On March 30 1911 while another Camorra trial was being held in Italy, the
Globe contained an editorial that began:
"For a variety of reasons, mainly political and historical,
Italy has been honeycombed with secret societies. Among
these the most notable have been the Carbonari, the Mafia
and the Camorra. They have to an extent a common origin:
the lawless condition of Italy during the middle ages,
which was perpetuated into modern times by the
subdivision of the country into Petty States - some under
independent rulers, some under the temporal jurisdiction of
the Papacy, some comprised in the Bourbon Kingdom of
the Two Sicilies, and some under Austrian rule through
military subjugation."
The editor goes on to say that unity would not have been accomplished
without the 'adroit and effective use of the societies" by political leaders. The
column continues by suggesting that the Carbineri, which had
69 "degenerated into an association of assassins, was by
Mazzini, who became a member of it, elevated into a
society with 'liberty, equality and humanity' for its motto
and the term 'assassination' was erased from its statutes.
The Carbonari had Northern Italy for its field of operations:
the mafia and Camorra were mostly confined to Naples and
Sicily."
Later the editorial notes that
"The municipal administration of Naples became so
scandalous under their sinister influence and operations
that the constitution of the city was suspended a dozen
years ago by the Italian Government, and a Royal
Commission was appointed to investigate the operation of
the Camorra."
On July 21 The Globe was reporting that the Camorra trial had degenerated
into "a violent scene" in which "in the tumult the lawyers fled the room" and
that "President Bianchi, helpless to maintain order, declared the session
adjourned."
While the Globe focused on the Camorra and Mafia in that editorial, they
were clearly aware of the Picciotteria in others.
The Honoured Society's ceremonial document concludes with the statement
that "A great swearing (occurred) which included the Knight of Russia and
Duke of Abruzzi who legally made of it (the society) their sister." Fiorentino of
Spain was also present, in fact he was in charge of the ceremony for the two
new arrivals into the Society.
The Duke of Abruzzi (1873-1933) was an Italian vice-admiral and explorer,
born Luigi Amadeo di Savoie at Madrid. He was the son of the Spanish King
Amadeus who abdicated his throne soon after Luigi was born and who became
the Duke of Aosta in Italy. Luigi was also a cousin of the Sardinian king of
Italy, Victor Emmanuel III.
Luigi Amadeo had a distinguished naval career, was a world traveller, and
mountaineer, with several climbed firsts to his name. He published a book
called The Climbing of Mount Elias, a peak in Alaska, which he was the first
to climb.
In WWI he commanded the Italian naval forces in the Adriatic. Later, in
the 1920's he carried out an Italian colonization scheme of Somaliland. It
seems significant however that the deed for which he is most remembered was
evacuating 100,000 Yugoslav refugees from Albania in 1916.
Who the Russian Knight might have been who took part in the ceremony
with the Duke of Abruzzi isn't clear, but the relationship between modern
Italian organized crime, Serbian crime groups and Russian mobsters is very
clear to modern mob watchers. Toronto mobster Paul Volpe had a brother
named Albert who ran casinos in Yugoslavia in the mid-1960's and again in the
1970's, and, according to James Dubro in Mob Rule, Albert was attempting to
get one going again in the mid-1980's.
In 2002, a conference held in London, England noted that pressure on Italian
mobsters had led them to form strong financial ties with the Russians, to the
point that Moscow was being called the "New Palermo." Both groups were
using the relationship to strengthen one another.
70 The connection between Italian crime groups, Spanish-speaking drug cartels
from South America and Russian and Serbian gangsters has a ritualistic unity
to it that is best accounted for through the evolving ceremonies of the
'ndrangheta.
While the ritual that brought the Russian Knight and the Duke of Abruzzi to
the society's protection refers to the high mountains of Spain where the family
of Montalbano and Fiorentino lives, the name Montalbano doesn't appear in
lists of Spanish mountains. Montalbano however does happen to be the name
of the ridge near Florence Italy, home of the Florentines. Which would suggest
that the meeting at which the Duke of Abruzzi and the Russian Knight made
the Society its sister may have occurred on the ridge of Montalbano and was
attended by someone representing Florence, the 'Fiorentino'. Curiously,
Veroni/Varone was originally a Florentine clan name.

The Rocco Perri Excerpt: 1912 Murder trial

1912: The Veronis and Rocco Perri

"Death follows Shooting in Guelph's Little Italy."
Shot in Joe Carere's Alice St. home on Oct. 26, Michael Fazzari, 28 lay dying in hospital for four days. Joe Veroni (known then as Varoni) had been shot by the dying man, as was treated for cheek and arm wounds. Robbery was the alleged motive.
In King of the Mob, James Dubro and Robin Rowland note that after a 1926 arrest
"The Hamilton Police records show no further arrests of
Rocco Perri in that city, but a covering letter from Chief
of Police, William R. Whatley, attached to Perri's record, notes 'information was received that he had been in some serious trouble at Guelph under some other name, and that he had a criminal record prior to that."
The 'other name' was Giuseppe Rocco Portatelli; the serious trouble was the murder of Michael Fazzari. A photo published in the Guelph Mercury April 13 1913 proves it was Perri when compared with a 1926 photo of him.
After Fazzari died the chief crown witness was Fazzari's 49 year-old uncle. Uncle Michele boarded at George Carere's on Alice St. In the census of 1911 he is listed as a "father-in-law" living at Joe and Marie Carere's next door. The evening of the shooting Uncle Michele, Michael, Peppino Rasso, Joe Morabito and Rocco Portatelli walked uptown.
Uncle and nephew came back to the Ward at 7. They went to 'Jockimo" Carere's, where Uncle Michele stayed indoors drinking until 10. Returning home to George Carere's he went out at 11:30 to find his nephew. He found Michael quarreling with Joe Varone at Joseph Carere's, Rocco was with them.
Uncle Michele put his nephew in the next room and tried to intercede but 'Varoni' called the nephew a coward and told him to come out of the room. Michael did, firing as he came. Uncle Michele said six or seven shots were fired; his nephew escaped to the street.
When Uncle Michele got outside Michael was running down Alice and
Rocco was firing at him. Or least that was Uncle Michele’s story at the inquest and trial. Originally, he told the police that he’d been too drunk to remember what had happened. He later denied being drunk, and claimed the reason he’d lied was he was afraid. He was still afraid at the trial, six months later.
Joseph Carere was the first witness. He told the court that he'd known Michael Fazzari since he'd come to Guelph. He’d heard hollering on the street near morning and went out to see what was going on. He met 'Mr. Varoni" between his house and 'Jockimo's'. Varoni had been shot, he helped him over to Mike Valerioti's store to phone an ambulance. He said he’d heard no shooting the night before, although the police found a bullet hole in his door. He claimed the first he'd heard that Fazzari had been shot was when an 'Englishman' told him.
Matthew Adams found Michael groaning on a porch on Morris St., but couldn't understand what Fazzari was saying other than 'his stomach hurt'. Adams took Fazzari’s revolver from him, then went to Joseph Carere's and then to Frank Longo's; neither man seemed to understand what he was saying. No one went to Fazzari's aid.
Adams then met three young Italians and he gave them Fazzari's revolver. The man he gave the gun to was Joseph Morabito, who lived at Longo's. Morabito had heard shots the night before. It was Morabito who went with Adams to look at Fazzari, and together they took him to George Carere's. When they got there, Michael asked for his revolver and Morabito gave it to him. Morabito went for Uncle Michele.
Constable Greenaway, got to the Ward at 5 am, found a trail of blood leading away from Joseph Carere's and a bullet hole in the door from a .32 calibre revolver. Later, he returned to the house, the blood on the street had been cleaned up and the bullet hole filled with plaster.
Greenaway received a pistol from Mrs. Veroni in her house; it was the only gun he found. He couldn’t find Fazzari's. Apparently, Morabito had accompanied Fazzari in the ambulance, and had been given the gun again by the dying man. Morabito took it to Welland, then eventually gave it to Frank Longo who gave it to Charles Dunbar, a lawyer. Dunbar brought it to the trial.
Joe Varoni appeared in court as an innocent shop keeper/baker. He said he had returned to the bakery at about ten in the evening to put coal in the oven, after then started for home. When he reached the street, there were two men he didn't know, one shot him in the mouth. While he fell he saw the men take off down Morris Street; they fired two more shots as they went. He’d last seen Fazzari at his house at about six in the evening. He last seen Portatelli about nine that night, when Rocco was 'feeling pretty happy'.
Varoni says he sent Rocco to bed and swore that Rocco didn't go out again that night. Varoni also swore that he not only had not fired a pistol that night, but had never carried one. He also said that Peppino Rasso had gone to Toronto with him when Joe was trying to decide if he should sell a mine he owned. (The object of the defense was to present the missing Rasso as the shooter, despite the evidence of Uncle Michele.) Rasso, whom Joe had known ‘three or four years’ stayed at Varoni’s when they returned. He says he told Rasso that Michael Fazzari from 'his home town" was in Guelph, but Rasso said the Fazzaris they drank too much, bolstering the argument that Uncle Michele was too drunk to know what had happened.
Tommy Varoni and a baker named Domenic Cuccinatti were Rocco Perri's alibis, since they both claimed that Rocco had slept in their room that night. Cuccinatti originally told the police that Frank Cordi, another Italian boarder of Varoni’s, shared the room with him that night. (Cordi, along with Frank Longo was one of Rocco Perri's most important allies in later years. Cordi was also one of Veroni's 1922 pallbearers.) Cuccinatti claims he first lied about Cordi because the police chief pulled his hair and threatened to hit him. Chief Randall later claimed not to have even been at the house.
Cordi appeared and supported Cuccinatti's story, although he too originally told Greenaway that the only people home were Mrs. Varone, Cuccinatti, and the children.
Mrs. Varoni (Maria Calarco) then took the stand, she insisted Rocco had been drunk and she had got her husband to get him to bed, which is where he stayed. She also claimed that a few days after the death of his nephew Uncle Michelle told her he wanted to apologize to Rocco for the oath he had taken in court.
A 'missionary to the foreigners' named Alexander Salson says he spoke to Fazzari in the hospital but Michael didn't know who’d shot him.
And then a smiling Rocco Portatelli took the stand. Rocco, who’d known Varoni for a 'couple of years' came to Guelph a few days before the shooting. He testified he’d been drunk and woke up in Cordi's bed, and only then learned of the shooting.
Rocco first spoke to the police about the shooting when he and Mike Sorbara were at the post office. He claimed not to have owned a gun in two years.
A 'crack shot' named John Ogg testified that the bullet hole in Joe Carere's door was fired from inside the house, not outside.
In the closing statements, the gist of the Defense was that Uncle Michele was trying to protect Peppino Rasso.
Crown Prosecutor H.C. Gwynn, KC claimed that 'a veritable reign of terror existed in St. Patrick's Ward and that Varoni was the king." He also noted that Fazzari had been shot in the back. He said that while Varoni had claimed he was found on the sidewalk in front of the lane, Joe Carere said he’d found him outside his house. The blood patterns on the ground also contradicted Varoni's claim, since they showed a man had walked westward spitting blood.
The jury returned a not guilty verdict. Rocco was met outside the courtroom by "50 of his fellow countrymen… there was a great jubilation..." Presumably, the Fazzaris were not among the celebrants.

The winter before coming to Guelph Perri had boarded in Toronto
with Bessie Starkman and her husband Harry Tobin. Perri was jailed from early November 1912 until the trial in April 1913. Rocco then returned to Toronto to get Bessie, since he reappeared with her in St. Catherines later in 1913. In 1916 they moved to Hamilton, where they began their rise into legendry.

Desert Inn Stories: the tunnels

There is an urban legend in Guelph regarding tunnels and the old Desert Inn (originally the Paradise Gardens.) The Inn was built in 1946, right after WWW2 and the takeover of Ontario organized crime by the American Sicilian La Cosa Nostra. Guelph came under the sway of Buffalo's LCN boss Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino through the help of Guelph's Calabrian 'ndrangheta boss Tony Sylvestro and the Sicilian-Canadian Cipollas.
The Desert Inn/Paradise Gardens hosted some of the most important American jazz acts, many of whose careers were controlled by New York mobsters. The legendary tunnels were said to have run between the Inn and Imperial Tobacco, and between the Inn and the Woodlawn Cemetery mausoleum.
Magaddino was known as The Undertaker because he owned a funeral parlour in Lewistown, New York, and is credited with having invented the double decker casket as a way of getting rid of unwanted bodies that would never resurface.
The alleged Imperial Tobacco tunnel would have obviously been used for smuggling cigarettes, a completely feasible scenario given how much we now know about the role of Big Tobacco in recent cigarette smuggling activities, while the tunnel into the mausoleum would have allegedly been used to transfer bodies into one of Magaddino's caskets, desecrating the cemetery in the process.
Guelph Hydro crews are rumoured to have come across the tunnels in the mid 1960's; at which time the City Council allegedly ordered them closed. Since Tony Sylvestro died in 1963, the same year that Charles Cipolla went to jail on a heroin trafficking charge (he died in the Kingston Pen in 1969) the shift in the local balance of mob power would have occurred around the same time. Certainly the tunnel-rumours are known around Guelph, I've heard them mentioned in several quarters.
Presumably the recent road work would have turned up evidence of their existence.
The question is, did the tunnels actually exist ? Anyone who has stories or proofs is welcome to contact me privately via my gmail account above, or by commenting on this post.

Tony Silvestro/Sylvestro

Because Volume Two will have Tony Sylvestro as one of its main characters I am particularly interested in hearing from people who have stories about the man known to other mob writers as the Don Of Guelph. Anyone who would like to contact me via the email address at the top of the blog may do so, in complete confidence and privacy.
Thanks. Jerry

Google Mania - Raso-Albanese and Calabrian Land swindles

Calabrian Morgeti

The doctor Liliana Frascà, in charge of the CGIL for the comprensorio of Reggio Calabria, has said: “by now from years to Reggio Calabria we make a war with the companies of pulizie or the companies that manage the caterings in the jails or other centers for the respect of the laws and contracts. It has become a wearying war and we do not succeed to make to respect the laws neanche from the contracting out agencies, than a lot often they are Ministries, for which we find ourselves in the event of forehead to greatest difficulties of some companies”.
Also the world of agriculture perceives the symptoms of one aggression from part of the gangs. The presence of mafia elements has been marked in many agricultural and food- markets. Also the land property are object of particular attention from part of the gangs that in existence put one oculata strategy of “mafia expropriation” of some lands. Meant there are the case of the baroness Teresa Cordopatri who has had to fight in order to prevent that to the lands of property of its family from many centuries finissero in the hands of the Mammoliti and the case of mrs. Maria Giuseppina Cordopatri whose lands have been object of the appetites of the Raso-Albanese.
The provincial Federation of Reggio Calabria of the National Confederation of Small Farmers has sended a famous one to the Commission signaling that in the flat one of Tauro Joy and the Locride 'ndrangheta the “protection” has tax to the agriculturists on the cultivations, the harvest and the business patrimony generally. They are often taken place, to the aim to impose the “protection” to riottosi, fires, cuts of the plants, thefts, damagings, ruberie of varied type in the coloniche houses and the campaigns. The regional director of the Confagricoltura, dottor Lacquaniti, has remembered that the insurance agencies do not assure more the reserviors of the oil, the silos and often neanche he blots some to them agricultural. The cultivators come tax to you also in the period of collection of the commodities.
The presence of the mafia families comes perceived talora in the production and the confection of the olive oil. The mafia families have found the way to make to perceive their presence also in the field of the swindles in damage of the AIMA and the European Community.

La Cosa Nostra in Guelph

During the 1963 US Senate hearings into the American mafia, Joe Valachi named Guelph residents Charles and Frank Cipolla as two made-men of Buffalo's La Cosa Nostra. Charles and Frank were sons of Matteo Cipolla and Rosa Monreale. Wed in Hamilton on January 22 1910, their marriage record lists Matteo’s parents as Calagero Cipolla and Antonia Curta. April 23 1910 Ellis Island records show a Calagero Cipolla, husband of Antonia Curto, traveling from Racalmuto, Sicily to his son Matteo’s home at 280 Terrace St., Buffalo. By the 1911 census, Matteo and Rose lived in Hamilton. Their three sons, Antonio, Charles and Frank all played significant roles in Sicilian mob activities in Ontario. Antonio killed himself blowing a house up in an insurance fraud scheme in 1934 in Port Colborne, although he is buried in Guelph.
In 1969, Charles would die in the Kingston Pen of a brain hemorrhage while serving time for a 1963 sentence for large scale heroin trafficking. Three of Matteo’s children, Charles, Mary and Connie would marry Guelph Ferraros descended from San Giorgiosi.

Silvestro/Durso

Click on Photo to Enlarge
copyright Archives of Ontario

The Marriage record of Giovanni (John Durso) and Maria Teresa Grazia Silvestro, sister of Rocco Perri allies, Tony and Frank Silvestro, who in turn were cousins of Guelph's Michaelangelo Silvestro - the father of 1970's Guelph mob boss Frank Silvestro.

Maria Silvestro was born in San Giorgio Morgeto, Tony and Frank were born there, Michaelangelo was born there, although his own son Frank was born in Guelph.

An Ellis Island ship manifests notes that Maria and her 17 year old brother and another sister came to Canada with their mother Pasqualina Capra in 1914. Their father, also named Frank was dead, because Pasqualina is listed as being a widow.
They four were on their way to Maria's brother Angelo's home in Sault Saint Marie, which is where Durso marrried Maria the following year.

John Durso's car was pulled from the Welland canal in 1944, the day before his daughter was to be married. His body was never found.

Open Letter to Frank Valeriote (REVISED)

As the new Liberal Party federal candidate for Guelph, and as a descendent of Michaelangelo Valeriote, the first resident of San Giorgio Morgeto to establish himself in Guelph, I am calling on you to continue your family's legendary relationship with the Morgeti. As you know better than I, it was your ancient ancestor, the Roman Senator Valerius, who led the Morgeti out of the ruins of their Grecian captivity in Sicily and returned them to their homeland in Calabria.
The only Valeriote I've met is Puss and I liked him.

(REVISION) In talking to one of your liberal opponents, John Williams who appears to think highly of you, and upon learning that you left your lucrative criminal law practice fifteen years ago because you couldn't take having to tell anymore lies, I'm beginning to develop the feeling that if you have a sense of calling, you might well be the one to lead the Morgeti in Guelph and Ontario and throughout Canada out of the 'ndrangheta, and to help redeem alot of Italian-Canadians trapped in organized crime. Needless to say I have a proposal on how you might do that.

I also think you can redeem the Liberal party in the process. I'm not one of those who think the Liberals are the only party with links to organized crime, the Conservatives have all kinds of right wing gangsters as friends, just like Giuliano Andreotti did, whose Christian Democrats ruled Italy for decades with policies that were only a few degrees closer to the centre than Mussolini's positions, and whose links to crime groups were extensive.

Right wing Eastern European mafiyas are conservative. And of course labour racketeering gangsters have poisoned the NDP well more than once.

You can ignore me of course, I'm just one vote, but here's my suggestion on how to become the third pillar of the Valeriote legend, it's a proposal which you may have seen since it is the last appendix in my book.

CRIME FAMILY LAW

Under contemporary rights and freedoms the police must adhere to strict 'rules of evidence', and rightly so, which means that the police are incapable of stopping gangster capitalists. Equally, Royal Commissions which are created to investigate narrowly defined aspects of criminal activity like the construction industry et al, may shed light into a field of crime but they do little else than cause the darkness to retreat elsewhere, while creating problems for ongoing police investigations. I tend to agree with St. Paul that, "There is no salvation in law." The law cannot save society from the sins of its members, least of all from gangsters. All the law can do is to define right and wrong and create penalties for doing wrong.

A third way is required, one that makes use of generations of police work to support evidential trails that will allow communities to redeem families from criminal societies. My book traces the history of organized crime in Guelph via specific clans because I want to make the case that we need to create a legal definition of a Criminal Family. The designation would enable us to use the more pro-active tools of Family and Civil law, and combine them with the power of the Criminal Court. Public accessibility to court-administered Crime Family databases could be secured in Public and University Libraries, Archives and Museums and be available in hard copy and online. That way consumers would have the ability to know where there money is going to, and citizens could understand the way their communities have been run.

A Criminal Family designation would combine generations of investigations and convictions with the sweeping power of Royal Commissions to shed light on crime activities in not just Guelph or Canada, but in a system that could extend to Italy itself.

Italy has been begging for action from Canada lawmakers, because gangsters so easily hijack our rights and freedoms, and have turned us into a conduit for the global drug trade. We need a way out of the 'revolutionary/gangster' revenge cycle in which drugs are sold to buy guns to fight battles so that political issues can be addressed in places where democracy has little traction, like Afghanistan. Those vendetta cycles not only lead to the corruption of the global democracy movement but they ensure the vitality of gangster capitalism.

A Crime Family designation would allow communities to seize the assets of such families and put the seized properties and monies into two trusts. One trust would be designed to ensure the survival of future generations of the families as they attempt to redeem themselves from their pasts. The other trust would be used to restore the integrity of local economies while preventing opportunities for other criminal groups to step into vacuums left by dismantled crime families. Some of that second Trust's money must also go into drug rehab programs, both for users, and for the farmers in various parts of the world who make their hard-scrabble livings growing coca for cocaine, opium for heroin/morphine, marijuana etc. If you go to www.Libera.it, you can see some of the extraordinary things they are doing in Italy in this regard. (For any non-Italian speakers who want to go there click on the English flag and you will get the site in translation.)

Appeals processes would be available to ensure that innocent households of any given family can defend their innocence. A moratorium on prosecution, based on the confessions of any elder of any given Crime Family would also be made available. It is not condemnation but redemption we're after here, grace not law. Of course there are always the unrepentant who will not only choose to always live by the sword but to die by it, and for them we cannot pretend that grace or law will have much effect.

In recent years Italy has been redeeming itself from its criminal societies by the use of peniti - penitents who, for one reason or another, confess to the various crimes of their clans. Those confessions tend to be made on the basis of personal survival, but just as often, there is an undercurrent of genuine confession involved, rooted as it so often is in the horrific consequences of vendetta, the shedding of the blood of the innocent and guilty alike, often family members.

A Criminal Family designation is not designed to crush crime families; it is designed to free them, not without consequences, but responsibly, whenever possible.

So that's my challenge, but I only have one vote. So you don't have much to lose.

Hands Over the City

In 1963 Francesco Rosi, an Italian film maker, released Hands Over the City, starring Rod Steiger speaking Italian. It's the story of municipal corruption in the the land development industry in Naples. In 1992, Rosi released Neapolitan Diary, a documentary about going back to Naples and confronting the issues of Camorra control of that city.
These movies make explicit the role between politics and corruption.
The 1992 film was shot just weeks after two Italian judges, Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borselino were murdered by mafioso in Palermo Sicily. The tone of the Diary is angry and defiant: a kind of we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore. It is also part travelogue from the heights of Mount Vesuvius through old Naples, and among the hideous modern Camorra-built suburbs.
It is a superb primer for anyone who wants to understand just how money-laundering, construction, land development and mobs work (for themselves) and don't work (for everyone else.)
Both films and some other features were released on the Criterion Collection as DVD's, get them from your library, get them from your favourite movie rental spot, but get them.

More Fun with Google Translation search "Morgeto 'ndrangheta"

Raid anti `ndrangheta
Reggio Calabria, 12 estorsori in throttles

of Mario Bonino
REGGIO CALABRIA
Twelve arrests, tens of searchs, seizure of thought material “interesting”. Practically it has been sgominato the mafia clan that, second the enquirers, reigned indisturbato from decades. The main result of an immense operation is this the antiMafia completed yesterday from the police, and that it has had like objective the gang Facchineri di Cittanova (Reggio Calabria). The accusations for the persons ended in jail, deductions affiliated to the clan, go from the crimes of mafia association to the racketeering, to the drug traffic. The raid, to which they have taken part beyond centocinquanta policemen of the police headquarters of Reggio Calabria, has made followed the emission of guard provisions to secure in jail emitted from the Jeep Alberto Cisterna, upon request of the district power of attorney the antiMafia. Between it arrests it to you figure also various young people members of the Facchineri family, Giuseppe, of 29 years, Salvatore Facchineri (to he the provision has been notified in jail) of 25 years. They have been locked up in prison also Franco Carere of 22 years, Small Andrea of 24,(PICCOLO TRANSLATES AS SMALL) Luigi Fazari of 23, Girolamo Fazari of 25, Gaetano Zangrà of 23, Donated Avati of 31, Giuseppe 30 Muscatello of and Domenico Naples of 40 years. It is escaped once again to the capture instead Luigi Facchineri, 32 years, chased from sends you of capture from 11 years, “record” that has made it to insert in the directory of the 30 more dangerous fugitives in Italy. Still searched also Andrea Sorbara, 22 years, of Saint George Morgeto (Rc). According to how much emerged from surveyings, one of the “specialties” of the gang was the racketeering to traders put into effect with a system that succeeded terrorizzare the victims. True and macabro a just rituale one. Before the demand for the money, in fact, it came placed the head stumped of a dog dinanzi to the room of the trader. Such violence to succeed to induce to Hush the all the victims. No denunciation, no story to the enquirers. “Nobody of the victims - the quaestor of Reggio Calabria Franco Malvano has said in the course of a press conference - has never introduced denunciation for the endured intimidazioni, to testimony of the climate of established terror”. Beyond to the racketeerings, the enquirers have contested to inquire also the commerce to you of crews, the cultivation of Indiana hemp, thefts and holdups. The Facchineri gang moreover would have been protagonist, in last the twenty years, to Cittanova, of one of cruenti faide of the mafia history. A war of being able, for the predominion on the comprensorio of the common one of Saint George Morgeto, against the adverse faction of the Shave-Albanian-Gullace, RASO-TRANSLATES AS SHAVE AS IN RAZOR) marked from tens of dead men kills to you, ambushes and woundings in true and just a climate from Make. Appreciation for the operation of the police has been expressed to the quaestor Franco Malvano from the president of the Commission the Antimafia Ottaviano Of the Turk.

Slightly off Topic ? Wayne Greavette

I went to the Wellington Water Watchers event last night, to help organize a fight against the extraction of billions of litres of irreplaceable water from the local acquifer in rural Puslinch. Every time I think about spring water in Puslinch I think about the 1996 murder of Wayne Greavette.

I'm not saying the stories are related, or that the Morgeti are involved, or that Nestle was involved (It was five years before they bought the Arberfoyle Springs) but both stories are circumstantially linked to the control of a multi-billion dollar water resource.

I urge you to go to the unsolved murder site linked above and think for yourself.
It may have nothing to do with water, but here's a bit of the site contents.

...Wayne and his wife started a small business of their own, in the same field, (the packaging machinery equipment industry ed.) which they ran out of their home in the rural Acton area until June 1996. In June 1996 they moved to a farm, located in Moffat (Puslinch Township), Ontario, just a half hour away from their previous home. From there, they continued to run their business, as well as developing a spring site located next to their property, until the time of Wayne's death in December 1996.

What is known about the murder:

A package addressed to Wayne was delivered to his home via Canada Post. When he opened the package, he was killed by the flashlight bomb contained inside. The package came with a letter, the details of which follow:

The letter was typed with a Smith-Corona typewriter using a daisy wheel font model 10/12 #59543. The daisy wheel used in this typewriter left a distinct anomaly in the letter, a slash after each period.

This anomaly is uncommon, and if you can remember seeing it in any of your correspondence at work or at home, you should contact the police. Please, check out the anomaly carefully.

It was clearly a hit of some kind, for some reason, and he did have enemies, but people have known for a long time how precious water was becoming to the world.

It just makes me think.

Speaking of Legends and Language

This site goes into some detail about linguistic origins and the interconnectedness of various Italian languages.
These are some of the selections that mention the ancient Morgeti to which my title alludes.

I would indeed distinguish between a Western Italic branch, which gave the Latins the Siculi and the Ausones/Opici, and this "Liguro-Sicanian" which I think included in the South the branch of the Oenotri (Morgeti, Sicani, Choni).

Peoples
The Sicani are reported by ancient authors to have been the first inhabitants of Sicily, at least among the historical ethnic groups. Thucydides and Diodorus say that the Sicani came from Iberia. Dionysus, quoting Hellanicus, says the Elymi (but likely he meant Sicani, since Elymi and Sicani merged later) were the first wave of Italian people to settle in Sicily. The second wave was that of the Siculi, which were Ausones escaping from the Iapygi. The same Dionysus says that among the Oenotri there were Siculi (possibly Sicani) and Morgeti.

Since King Morgezio's father was Enotrio, the Oenotri would refer to him, and the land that Morgezio's father conquered from the Ashkenazi, became known as Ausone during the father's reign, and then known as Morgezia in the son's reign. When the Iapygi invaded, the Siculi/Morgeti would have taken refuge near the site of the later Greek city of Morgantia, near Mount Etna in Sicily.

The Joys of Google Translation

This is what reading Italian is like for a non Italian speaker/reader
it's from a 2005 article on the arrest of Rocco Facchineri

Rocco Facchineri

REGGIO CALABRIA - Rocco Facchineri, 47 years, searched from 1989 and inserted in the list of the 500 more dangerous fugitives of Italy, have been arrested from the Police officers yesterday evening to Saint George Morgeto, in the reggino: it was participating to a banquet for the communion of the son of a its faithful, Francisco Corradino.

Facchineri carried with himself a stick of chestnut tree with one head of Aquila inlaid on the top, symbol of the commando. To the soldiers it has said: “You have been good. Just E' that pays my debit with the justice”.

Facchineri, thought “capobastone” of an operating clan to Cittanova, was fugitive in 1989 during a permission prize while she was in jail for the seizure of the manufacturer perugino Vittorio Garinei, happened in May 1983 to City of Castle. Against of he there is an execution order pain of 12 years and 4 months of confinement emitted from the Attorney General's Office of Perugia.

“The arrest - the provincial commander of the police officers of Reggio Calabria has explained, Antonio Fiano - has been the fruit of certosino a job of control of the territory”. According to the investigators, the fugitive had a prominent role in the within of the gang and maintained contacts with relatives and affiliates to you operating in Umbria and Goes them of Aosta.

In the period of the furtiveness, Facchineri has been married in church and has had four regularly recognized sons. The wedding was celebrated in the 1992 in one church of Saint George Morgeto. The priest asserted not to know that the spouse was searched.

In the February 2003 Facchineri was successful to escape to a raid of the police officers in Aspromonte. Put in guard barking of a dog, the man had thrown itself in a dirupo making to lose the own traces during one snow storm. In I brood, a hut of wood with the sheet roof hidden between the rovi, came found again of all: a pump gun Maverick 12 magnum, one scanner radio syntonized on the frequency of the police enforcements, giubboto a antibullet, but also spaghetti, schedine of the Superenalotto, specialized witnesses of criminal proceedings and legal reviews.

“To have captured Facchineri while he participated to a baptism - the vice president of the Commission has commented parliamentarian the antiMafia, Angela Naples - he demonstrates as the men of 'ndrangheta not only live the furtiveness in it accustom them territory of belongings, but also with the certainty of impunity”. “The fact that the furtiveness of Facchineri is begun during a permission prize - has added - the necessity evidences see again the norm in matter”.

(22 August 2005)

CSIS on Transnational Crime

"UN estimates place the cost of this transnational criminal activity in developed states at two per cent of annual gross national product (GNP). The potential transnational crime-related losses for Canada in 1995 would have been about $14.8 billion, based on a GNP of $742 billion. Figures like this led the 1998 G8 summit in the UK to label transnational criminal activity one of the three major challenges facing the world today."
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has this to say about transnational crime.

RCMP Money laundering Prevention Guide

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have a book too.

Money Laundering - A Preventive Guide

A Preventive Guide for Small Business & Currency Exchanges in Canada


FINTRAC
The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada

One of the RCMP's roles within Canada's Initiative to Combat Money Laundering is to inform the public. To most businesses, money laundering is something that happens somewhere else, involving only criminals. The truth is, it can happen anywhere, anytime, and you may not even be aware that you have been involved.

Money laundering is the process whereby criminals conceal illicit funds by converting them into seemingly legitimate income. While the term refers to the monetary proceeds of all criminal activity it is most often associated with the financial activities of drug traffickers who seek to launder large amounts of cash generated from the sale of narcotics.

The RCMP Proceeds of Crime (POC) program's mandate is to identify, assess, restrain and forfeit illicit and/or unreported wealth accumulated through criminal activities. Most of the POC sections work under an integrated model. These Integrated Proceeds of Crime (IPOC) Units bring together the skills, knowledge, and abilities of a diverse group of experts, including RCMP, provincial and municipal police investigators, lawyers from the Department of Justice, forensic accountants, representatives from Canada Revenue Agency, and customs officers from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

It is important for businesses of every kind to be informed about how they can be used to launder money, and how they can help to make it more difficult for criminals to prosper. We recommend you review this booklet to ensure that you are aware of the problem.

Index

* Foreword
* Why criminals want to "launder" money?
* Money Laundering Methods
* What is "wilful blindness"
* Preventive strategies for small and medium businesses
* Record keeping requirements for small and medium businesses
* Impact of money laundering on society
* If you suspect money laundering
* What we need from you
* Partners in identifying the proceeds of crime
* RCMP Proceeds of Crime Units

Mexico, Narco States and drug law

On the CBC's The Current today (March 30 2007) they interviewed Charles Bowden, author of Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family. (Bowden lives in Tucson, Arizona.)
After discussing the fact that Mexico is essential a narco state governed by drug cartels supported by the military, he suggests that the only solution to the problem is the legalization of the sale of drugs. Making them illegal has turned a health issue into a legal issue, created an enormous burden on the state, and made the cartels rich.
I tend to agree with him. As I have said before, "there is no salvation in law". The Ontario Temperance Act of the 'nineteen teens' helped turn secret Italian socio-political extortion societies into modern organized crime in this Province. Money sent back to the old country helped the development of Crime in Calabria and Sicily.
Drug laws aid and abet organized crime at home and abroad the ensure the creation of narco states run by people with drug money they use to buy off badly paid police, soldiers etc.
Since America is the largest consumer of illegal drugs in the world, American anti-drug laws are especially useful to international organized crime.
If the drugs were made legal, and the regulated and taxed, the prices would remain considerably lower, the tax money could go directly to the health care system to deal with drug abuse, the budgets of police and national security now being focused on fighting organized drug dealers could be refocused, the connection between arms dealers and drug dealers could be dissolved.
Sure problems would still exist, and murky ethical issues would have to be addressed, but not only is what we're doing not working, the only people it benefits are organized criminals. Without their drug profits, their toxic influence on local economies is considerably lessened, which limits the damage they can do elsewhere. Illegal drugs are expensive because they are illegal, make them legal and the margins shrink, leaving more money for the legiti8mate economy: qualities of life for the non-users in the family will improve, especially if drug abuse becomes a health/mental health issue, in which an open an honest policy of concern is made central to our drug policies.
The only people who benefit by attempts to legislate morality are those without any morality.

Another Reason I Wrote this Book

Guelph is a small city, not much more than a town surrounded by sprawl.
Rumours abound here about the city's Italians and which of them are mobsters and which aren't. The longer you live here the more rumours you hear, the more facts you hear, the more hypocrisy you sense, the more uneasy the whole mess makes you.
The police know who the gangsters are, and I don't just mean the local police. In fact the local police for the most part consist of recruits who come and go. It's a university town, Guelph's police force is a kind of Police Academy graduate school-practicuum campus. The Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Combined Special Forces Units, and the Canadian Security Intelligence Services all know who the gangsters are, they've been following their activities for decades. However, Canadian rules of evidence are necessarily strict about bringing cases to court.
And so next to nothing happens. Especially now that money-laundering is the favoured activity of Canadian mobsters. The veneer of business respectability and the depth of local rumour and unease over the town's mobsters combine (in this case) to cast a shadow over business in Guelph. Consumers aid and abet criminal organizations in laundering the proceeds of crime every day, making us accessories during the fact.
I already find it hard to buy products from companies that treat third world sweat shop workers like slaves, and so avoid shopping in places like WalMart. Helping businesses that are laundering the proceeds of drug misery money makes me equally uneasy.
The only way I can help is by trying to distinguish rumour from fact, cause from effect, context from events, individuals from communities, secret society members from non-members.
If enough people become aware of the need to do the same, something can be done.
The world is headed for an environmental cataclysm, I don't want to get there and discover that the water and the food and every aspect of our surviving economy is controlled by gangsters, by extortionists and bullies who have friends in high places and friends among the arms dealers and the prostitute makers and the Third world resource sector slave trader, people who will be fully prepared to put me and my loved ones into their 'business plan.'
It's not that gangsters are immoral, it's that they are amoral, they may have a code of behaviour, but whatever it has in common with community standards of what is right and what is wrong arises only from the fact that they have amoral allies in all walks of life.
And what about the ethical Italians whose honesty and integrity is tainted by the existence of gangsters in their midst, in their families. They need community support, we need to give them our business, and stop giving it to their corrupt 'cousins'.
In order to do that we need to separate rumour from fact. And one of those facts is that it is not just Italians who are involved in organized crime.
In a way the truth is the smallest part of the process, the point of the fulcrum on which this whole edifice can be levered off its foundation once there is a community will to do so, a national will to do so.
But this is more like a Truth and Reconciliation process. This is not a witch hunt, this is about redeeming society, not condemning families or individuals.

Jimmy Giovinazzo

I suspect one of the areas where I'm being accused of authoring false information relates to the execution of Jimmy Giovinazzo. Back in December of 2006, the Mercury carried an article that essentially suggested that Jimmy was executed for a crime he didn't commit, a crime that his relatives have always maintained that Jimmy did not commit. Their case is based on a letter that Jimmy sent to his mother in San Giorgio in which he told his mother that he didn't kill anyone.
The following letter is one that I retrieved from the archives of Ontario, and is in fact the witness statement of John Zezare taken by the police and used at Jimmy's trial. The pencil notes on the letter appear to be those of the crown attorney written during the actual trial. In the statement Zezare explicitly states that he saw Jimmy shoot Alex Dutki.
Click on Photo to Enlarge


The last hand written words refer to Constable Greenaway pointing out where Dutki stood in relation to Giovinazzo.

Archives of Ontario Series RG 22 392
Box 172 Giovinnazo, James

Jimmy (Vincenzo) Giovinazzo was hung on John Zezare's sworn testimony, not on my falsification of history 81 years later.

The book is dedicated to the following

These volumes are therefor written in honour of:
Antonio Silvestro, who was knifed in Sudbury in 1905;
and to Michael Fazzari, murdered on Alice Street in 1912;
to Big John Barr hit over the head with a rock on Essex Street in 1914,
Giorgio Verni, killed by a shotgun in 1915 behind his Alice St. home,
Tony Legato, who took his own life in 1916 on the morning he was to
have been executed,
Domenico Luberto, a former resident of Guelph who was gunned down in Welland in 1916 a day before he was to have married the daughter of Guelph's Joseph Tedesco,
Domenic Paprone, who was shot on the streets of Hamilton in 1919 after having killed a mobster who was an ally of Guelph mob boss Domencio Sciarroni,
Fortunato (Fred) Tedesco, son of Joseph Tedesco who was murdered outside his parents' house on Morris Street in 1919,
Alex Dutki shot on Alice Street in 1919,
Jimmy Giovinazzo executed for Dutki's murder in 1919,
Nunzio Corruzzo, Domenico Sciarroni's driver who was murdered near Welland in 1921, Tony Leili, a Sicilian who was blood kin to Sciarroni, and who was found in ditch near Oakville in 1922;
Mike Lobosco, who was murdered in the front door of his Welland barbershop in
1922,
Domenic and Joe Sciarroni, both murdered in 1922,
Welland police constable John Trueman, murdered while investigating Joe Sciarroni's murder that same year,
David Ray, who died of bootlegged alcohol poisoning in the Ward in 1928,
Anthony Cipolla who blew himself up in 1934;
Sam Sorbara, who was found in a culvert outside of Guelph in 1938;
Joe Nasso, who disappeared in 1939 and whose body has never been recovered;
Giovanni Durso, who disappeared in 1944,
Angelo Fonti, who was found in a ditch in Etobicoke in 1947;
Frank Silvestro, who killed himself in Hamilton in 1949;
Charles Cipolla, who died of a brain hemorraghe in the Kingston Pen in 1969
and many others, known and unknown.

A comment I wanted to bring forward to the main page

Anonymous said...

a question that few have regarding your work is why would you want to rehash guelph's mafia history and exploit many family names? why anyone would want to read this book on things that happened over 70 years ago just baffels me. why you would want to publish these things in a book is completly disrespectful to the families of the people mentioned in your book. The things that happened 70 years ago should stay 70 years ago, the families of the people written in the book do not want to have to deal with the backlash that they may face and have to deal with the deaths and shady history of their families. this book is a disgrace to all italians and guelphites, its completely biased, not to mention HALF of your information IS FASLE. if your going to publish a book, get your facts straight. shame on you and mind you own business.

My reply
Certainly you raise important questions. The simple answer to those who question the writing of history is of course that those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it, and clearly that has been going on in Guelph. I can certainly understand that families are discomfited by the actions of their ancestors, the only problem is, without knowing the history and those who were involved there is no way to know what is going on in the present, or what events mean that occur in the present.
The feud in San Giorgio Morgeto between the Facchineri and the Raso-Albanese has claimed 100 lives since 1963, the Guelph Morgeti cannot be unaffected by that war, and therefore neither can public life in Guelph. At the same time, this is not just about Italians. There are other ethnic organized crime groups at work in Guelph in 2007, and what happened once, is happening again, in different ways, but for similar reasons.
I'm not sure in what way this book is a disgrace to Italians, from my perspective what was dis-graceful - what was without grace - was the way that certain individuals from certain families behaved towards certain other individuals and certain other families. How it is a disgrace to Guelphites in general is even less clear to me. The disgrace to Guelphites is that they refused to tell the story of their community for so long.
If there are FALSE facts in the book I would certainly like to know what they are and what your evidence is that proves your facts to be true.
I actually have no axe to grind in this, I am not anti-Italian, and I refer you to my post on the Italians involved in the Libera project to help assure you that there are a great many Italians who know all too well that historically, their fellow countrymen were their worst enemies.
Mob apologists have a long history of crying racism, and in some case racism is real, but you have to understand as well that the over riding sense of pride that British-Canadians took - and take - was and is in their institutions: they firmly believed that however badly Italians had been treated by the many foreign rulers who had governed them, that British law would actually prove itself superior to all others in its capacity to deliver justice. The fact that Italian Canadians are now among some of the most respected communities in the country proves the case for British-Canadian law. The secret Italian societys may have been semi-legitimate protection rackets defending peasants in the old country and in the old days, but they became nothing but extortion rings victimizing other Italians in Canada.
That's why so many Italian Catholics joined Pope John Paul in his call for an end to the mafias.
As for my sense of shame, I actually have an over-developed sense of shame in general, and felt the only way to avoid it while writing this book was to do as much to honour the dead as I could. This book is dedicated to their memory, to all their memories, the good and the bad, because they were as much victims of their times as they were of their own choices or the choices of others.
As for minding my business, as a citizen of Guelph I listen to the business of Guelph on a daily basis, and since a portion of that business is founded on secrets and murders and lies, then it is the business of all citizens to discover as much of the truth as they can.
So, again, if you have proof that HALF the book is false, what is your evidence, prove it to me and I will print it.

You chose to post your comment anonymously, obviously people would recognize you if you gave your name, and they would be able to develop an opinion of your real purposes for themselves. Presumably that's why you chose to post anonymously. For my part I suspect I know who you are, I even think we've met. I could be wrong.
Your one concern, however, that of a backlash because of the actions of ancestors, I do share. If my book is about nothing else, it is about finding a new way forward. Vendetta and the cycles of revenge breed tragedy for everyone, and that is the lesson of Guelph's mafia history.

A very Interesting Italian Project

This is quite a fascinating idea. Libera appears to be an Italian anti-mafia organization that is using education, economic development on seized mob lands, and sports as a means of transforming Italy's organized crime culture.

Libera, click on the English flag for English language

Interesting List

I can't read the site because I don't read Italian but there is an interesting list of feud victims dated by year, that includes some of the Facchineri, who have been fight a war against the Raso-Albanese for control of San Giorgio Morgeto since 1963.

http://leonepaziente.blogspot.com

San Giorgio Morgeto families who settled in Guelph

According to Pat Bowley's Guelph Historical Society essay The Italian
Community, in St. Patrick's Ward, Guelph Ontario, 1900-1939, a Mrs. C
Ferraro had a photograph of the village of San Giorgio Morgeto, beneath which
she had made a list of the families who had settled in Guelph. It is that list I use
when I speak of the Morgeti and the San Giorgiosi who moved to Guelph.

Those clans according Mrs. C. Ferraro's are:
Addario Agostino Albanese Alviano Ammendolia Belcastro Bellantoni Anselmini Bombino Cacciatore Capra Cassone Collura Cardillo Consiglio DeMaria Fazzari Furfaro Giovinazzo Carere Consentino Ferraro Cotrone Fonte Leo Luccisano Macri Magnoli Longo Lieto Mammoliti Marchesano Morabito Muscatello Raco Maugeri Monteleone Nasso Pezzano Raso Rao Scarfo Seminara Sorbara Sorrenti Silvestro Simonetta Tedesco Varamo Valerioti

The names are not a complete list of San Giorgiosi and Morgeti who came
to Guelph, Tony Legato for instance, who was executed for a murder
committed in 1915 was from San Giorgio, Domenic Luberto is another
instance, as are the Spataros, the Zezares, the Vernis and the Varone's.

Guelph Mercury

Rocco Perri Excerpt
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This item is now available only by subscribing to the Mercury sorry.At some point I'll post the article.

Bestselling Author

I've never been a best selling author before, but now I'm just that at the Bookshelf in Guelph, I'm a one store hit. It's lonely at the top, waiting for the next Harry Potter Book to come along and topple me.
Jerry

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Newspaper Editorial - see Previous Post below

It is hard not to appreciate the enthusiasm with which the editor of the Guelph Mercury embraced my work and the efforts it took me to research the book.

There is however an intensity that I'm not entirely certain I share, or at least, my own intensity is tempered by the tragedies in the stories I recount in the book.

It could be that journalists in Guelph have for years found themselves frustrated by knowing pieces of the truth about this city but not being able to write about it because all the evidence available to them was anecdotal, rumours with substance but no seeming entry point for an 'objective' story. That frustration may have found an outlet in my book, like an opened door through which the journalists now seem prepared to enter.

And in some ways I can't blame them. I began with a similar emotion, but my emotions got subjugated to spiritual necessities even more than socio-political ones the longer I worried my way into the subject.

In the book I constantly make a distinction between the mobsters from San Giorgio Morgeto - whom I call Morgeti, and the non-mobsters, the majority of the villagers and their Guelph descendants, the Sangiorgiosi.

The spiritual necessity that informed the book and resonated into the tone of the work, is that the two distinctions nonetheless constitute one people. What Northrup Frye through Coleridge explained as the necessity for distingiushing that which cannot be divided. These aren't just stories about crime families, they're stories about families, uncles, brothers, cousins. The book is dedicated to the victims of vendetta. It's for their loved ones in some ways.

But decide for yourself what you think of the editorial, it follows this post below, and the online original can be accessed through a direct link by clicking on that post's title.

Jerry

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Editorial in the Guelph Mercury

Editorials

We need to remember all the history

(Mar 10, 2007)

Guelph's Jerry Prager may well agitate some local residents with a book he's just released. Good on him.

Prager has dared to revisit in minute detail some of the most sordid tales and times in Guelph's past in his Legends of the Morgeti, Volume One 1900-1922. It's a book described by its publishing house as one that confronts some "uncomfortable" truths about Guelph and delivers on that promise.

Prager's book was officially released this week with a public reading at a downtown Guelph church. The affair sparked animated discussion. Most who attended are connected to family trees that have maintained through oral tradition some of the tales Prager dissects in the book. So vigorous was the discussion about this infamous aspect of Guelph's past Prager subsequently established a blog to continue the forum. It's at morgeti.blogspot.com.

An excerpt of Prager's book appears in today's newspaper as the cover of our Here section. We hope to contribute to the review of Guelph's yesteryear that the book is inspiring.

Many -- but not all -- Guelph residents are aware of the community's mob town reputation. This effort explores the validity and the roots of that reputation. It revives knifings, shootings and other crimes that some would wish left as closed cases. But doing so would be to lose something valuable. This community -- any community -- is a product of its history. And, history books do an injustice when they only celebrate great moments, people and hallowed accomplishments.

If you're unaware or under-aware of the story of how clans of Calabrian mafia arrived here from the Village of San Giorio Moregto and helped establish organized crime in Guelph and elsewhere, consider becoming a student of the subject as Prager has -- or through Prager. This work is the result of three years of digging through decades-old newspaper accounts, obscure genealogical records and other documents.

Prager is seeking to teach and perhaps also to provoke in this effort. We applaud him for trying to do both. A citizenry is richer when it is informed about its roots. Legends hold the potential to enrich us about local heritage -- albeit one several locals might want muted.

copyright Guelph Mercury

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Crime Family Law

Under contemporary rights and freedoms the police must adhere to strict 'rules of evidence', and rightly so, which means that the police are incapable of stopping gangster capitalists. Equally, Royal Commissions which are created to investigate narrowly defined aspects of criminal activity like the construction industry et al, may shed light into a field of crime but they do little else than cause the darkness to retreat elsewhere, while creating problems for ongoing police investigations. I tend to agree with St. Paul that, "There is no salvation in law." The law cannot save society from the sins of its members, least of all from gangsters. All the law can do is to define right and wrong and create penalties for doing wrong.

What this book is designed to show is that a third way is required, one that makes use of generations of police work to support evidential trails that will allow communities to redeem families from criminal societies. This book traces the history of organized crime in Guelph via specific clans because I want to make the case that we need to create a legal definition of a Criminal Family. The designation would enable us to use the more pro-active tools of Family and Civil law, and combine them with the power of the Criminal Court. Public accessibility to court-administered Crime Family databases could be secured in Public and University Libraries, Archives and Museums and be available in hard copy and online.

A Criminal Family designation would combine generations of investigations and convictions with the sweeping power of Royal Commissions to shed light on crime activities in not just Guelph or Canada, but in a system that could extend to Italy itself.

Italy has been begging for action from Canada lawmakers, because gangsters so easily hijack our rights and freedoms, and have turned us into a conduit for the global drug trade. We need a way out of the 'revolutionary/gangster' revenge cycle in which drugs are sold to buy guns to fight battles so that political issues can be addressed in places where democracy has little traction. Those vendetta cycles not only lead to the corruption of the global democracy movement but they ensure the vitality of gangster capitalism.

A Crime Family designation would allow communities to seize the assets of such families and put the seized properties and monies into two trusts. One trust would be designed to ensure the survival of future generations of the families as they attempt to redeem themselves from their pasts. The other trust would be used to restore the integrity of local economies while preventing opportunities for other criminal groups to step into vacuums left by dismantled crime families. Some of that second Trust's money must also go into drug rehab programs, both for users, and for the farmers in various parts of the world who make their hard-scrabble livings growing coca for cocaine, opium for heroin/morphine, marijuana etc.

Appeals processes would be available to ensure that innocent households of any given family can defend their innocence. A moratorium on prosecution, based on the confessions of any elder of any given Crime Family would also be made available. It is not condemnation but redemption we're after here, grace not law. Of course there are always the unrepentant who will not only choose to always live by the sword but to die by it, and for them we cannot pretend that grace or law will have much effect on them.

In recent years Italy has been redeeming itself from its criminal societies by the use of peniti - penitents who, for one reason or another, confess to the various crimes of their clans. Those confessions tend to be made on the basis of personal survival, but just as often, there is an undercurrent of genuine confession involved, rooted as it so often is in the horrific consequences of vendetta, the shedding of the blood of the innocent and guilty alike, often family members. A Criminal Family designation therefor is not designed to crush crime families; it is designed to free them, not without consequences, but responsibly, whenever possible.

It should also be stated for the record that just because a family was involved in criminal activities during the period covered by Volume One (1900-1922) does not mean those families are still involved in organized crime. Vendetta itself has a way of demoralizing a family and that leads them to seek their own redemption.

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Reading Launch

Just had a launch reading at the Dublin Street United Church, wasn't sure anyone was going to be there but twenty or so came, majority were San Giorgiosi. This is the second reading I've done with similar material from the book. And something curious always seems to happen when I end the reading with the dedication to the dead, with the reading of their names. I've done it at both readings and at both, a solemnity seems to take over, and a natural moment of silence ensues.
I wrote a play once called the Wake of the Asia about the worst marine disaster in Georgian Bay history, 120 people lost their lives (in 1882.) We actually performed the play in a tent alongside the Bay in Collingwood and the run coincided with the date of the tragedy so we invited descendants of the lost to attend a wreath ceremony, at which we read out the names of the 120 people who had died. Their names hadn't been spoken aloud in generations it seemed. There is something about memorializing the forgotten that opens the sacred into the ordinary.
The great difficulty of writing this book was to get the tone right, to make it something other than a True Crime book, to make it about family, to honour the survivors of vendetta, to show respect to the dead whose stories I can only tell as fragments, whether those men were cold blooded killers, or passionate unfortunates or unlucky opportunists.
I talked about how I hoped healing would come to the community by telling the stories but at the end of the evening two Sangiorgiosi asked me about that, about how some they've talked to felt that healing had already come about through forgetting. It's certainly one way to do it, and it's not a way I can condemn, and yet, I guess I believe that redemptive healing requires light to reach into the darkness in order to separate the shadows of human action from the darkness itself. So I suppose I'm talking about spiritual healing rather than just emotional scarring over. I think forgetfulness leads to a certain kind of hardness maybe, whereas spiritual healing is more like being released from prison, like the Orpheus story where he rescues his wife from Hades, only to lose her in the shadow of the rock opening to the outer world because she couldn't separate herself from her past.

Anyway,
To the man who left his scarf, I have it. Contact me via the gmail address above and I'll arrange to get it back to you. To everyone else thanks for coming. And thanks for buying the book.

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The Source of my Research

Bibliography

Blood Brothers:
How Canada's Most Powerful Mafia Family Runs its Business
Peter Edwards, Toronto, Key Porter Books 1990

Bloodlines: The Rise and Fall of the Mafia's Royal Family
Antonio Nicaso, Lee Lamothe

The Canadian Connection: An Expose of the Mafia in Canada
and its International Ramifications by Jean Pierre Charboneau,
translation James Stewart ,Optimum Publishing 1976

Deadly Silence: Canadian Mafia Murders
Peter Edwards, Antonio Nicaso, Toronto: MacMillan Canada 1993

Encyclopedia Brittanica, Wm. Benton Publisher, 1962

The Enforcer: Johnny Pops Papalia A Life and Death in the Mafia
Adrian Humphreys, Harper Collins Publishers Ltd. 1989

King of the Mob: Rocco Perri and the Women Who Ran His Rackets
James Dubro, Robin F. Rowland, Penguin Books 1987

Mafia Assassin:
The Inside Story of a Canadian Biker, Hitman and Police Informer
Cecil Kirby, Thomas C. Renner, Toronto: Methuen 1986

Mob Rule: Inside the Canadian Mafia
James Dubro, A Totem Book, MacMillan Canada 1985

Rocco Perri: The Story of Canada's Most Notorious Bootlegger
Antonio Nicaso, John Wiley & Sons Canada Ltd. 2004

Yours in the Struggle: reminiscences of Tim Buck NC Press, Toronto 1977

The Lucky Immigrant: the Public Life of Fortunato Rao
Nichaolas DeMaria Harney & Frank Sturino
Multicultural History Society of Ontario, Toronto 2001

The Mafia in Canada, a Five Part Series
Alan Phillips MacLeans Magazine, Aug. 24 1963 to Mar. 7 1964

The Guelph Mercury on microfilm, 1905-2006

The Toronto Star, Pages of the Past website

The Globe and Mail, Canada's Heritage from 1844, wesbite

Palmers London Times Online

Proquest Historical Newspapers, The New York Times

Senato della Republica Camera dei Deputati (commisiion Parliamentare D'Inchiesta
Sul Fenomneo dell Criminalita Organizzata Docv. XXIII n.8)

http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/ Canadian Intelligence Security Service

www.oldlapdania.com mob watcher website

www.Ancestry.com genealogy

http://www.wikipedia.com/ Saint George

http://www.sicilia.idettaglio.it/ Morgantina ruins

http://www.ellisisland.org/ ship manifests

http://www.sgiorgiomorgeto.it/ San Giorgio Morgeto village website

http://www.carabinieri.it/ Italian paramilitary/ Giuseppe Musolino

Archives of Ontario series RG 22 392

Box 172 Giovinazza, James

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Allies of the Morgeti

As the first commentator on my posts observed, Rocco Perri was from Plati, the same village that the Papalias of Hamilton were from... a fact I was not unaware of, but should have clarified in my post (clauses within subclauses within parentheses et al.) I was focused on Perri's allies not on Perri himself, however, but Plati born he was.
It is my contention that the three main Calabrian 'locales' ('ndrinas) at work in Ontario are those from Plati, Siderno, and San Giorgio Morgeto. The Sidernese factions don't seem to have arrived in force until the 1950's. While the Morgeti were here at the turn of 20th century and the Plati immediately after. I mentioned the Raso-Albanese because the Silvestro's of both Hamilton and Guelph were closely related to the Rasos.
Domenic Sciarroni was from Calanna, his wife, Maria Calarco was from San Alessio, both villages a few miles west of the Grand Captain's hometown of San Stefano d'Aspromonte.

My book (Volume One) covers the arrival of the Morgeti in Guelph and ends with the death of Domenic Sciarroni (known as Joe Veroni in Guelph) in 1922. I cover events inside this city, which are placed in the context of events in the province and in Calabria. The death of Fred (Fortunato) Tedesco mentioned in other works on the mafia in Ontario (Dubro and Rowlands, Antonio Nicaso) is gone into in some depth, as are the related murders and attempted murders of more than half dozen other Morgeti and their associates. The Morgeti spread from Guelph to the Niagara frontier, settling in Welland, and moving east of Guelph to Woodbridge and of course to Toronto. I use extensive newspaper sources (the old Globe and Mails, Toronto Stars, and the Guelph Mercury) as well as Ancestry. com; the Ellis Island immigration & transit records, and the Canadian census of 1911.
I think you will find that I've done my home work.

Jerry

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Meet the Morgeti

The people of the Calabrian village of San Giorgio Morgeto call themselves Sangiorgiosi, I call the criminal element of that village Morgeti. Morgezio was an ancient king of southern Italy. There is currently a mob war going on for control of that village between the Facchineri clans of nearby Cittanova and the Raso-Albanese. More than one hundred people have been killed since 1963.
1963 is also the year in which the so-called Code of San Giorgio Morgeto was discovered in the home of the boss of Taura Nova, Giuseppe Mammoliti.
Most of the Calabrians who settled in Guelph, Ontario are Sangiorgiosi; a significant number are Morgeti. Many of the allies of both Domenic Sciarrone (the first Calabrain don of Ontario circa 1911-1922) and the King of the Bottleggers (Rocco Perri - boss from about 1922-1944) were Morgeti. Tony Silvestro, one of the 'three old dons of Ontario' was a Morgeti, as was Domenic Longo, also know as one of the 'three old dons.' (The third was Giacomo Luppino from Hamilton.)

Visit My Current Blog!

welcome

I have set up this blog to give those who have read my book on organized crime in Guelph somewhere to contact me. At the moment the books is only onsale at the Bookshelf in Guelph, or through me personally. If you want to buy a buy or order several you can order them from by via jerryprag@gmail.com. I would also urge people who might wish to discuss rumours and anecdotal history to email me first. If I find the material pertinent and can confirm your facts I will be happy to include it on the blog, with whatever personal credit you desire.
I will be checking into the site regularly.
Thank you for joining me.

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