 Welcome back to the original gangsters podcast. I'm Jimmy Bucellato here in studio with my partner in crime and co-conspirator Scott Bernstein. Hey now intrepid Mr. Scott Bernstein. I just want to remind everyone please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please subscribe to our podcast. We're on Spotify, Pandora, Google, anywhere you find. Share it. Like it. Please. Yeah. It's really important. Amplify the word on social media and subscribe. It helps a lot in terms of getting making people more aware of what we do. And we're really happy, excited about today's episode. We've had a lot of audience members clamoring for us to do an episode on organized crime in Canada. A lot of hot news right now coming out of Canada. So we were just like always we're going right to the source. We're cutting through all the filler. We're cutting through all that fat and we're going right to the OG's OG when it comes to reporting on organized crime activity in Canada. Peter Edwards. Yeah. So we're happy to have Montreal reporter, writer Peter Edwards. He's the author of The Wolfpack. And this book came out recently. The Millennial mobsters who brought chaos and the cartels to the Canadian underworld. And another book that our audience is probably familiar with business or blood mafia boss Vito result those last war. So Peter, welcome to our show. Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah, we appreciate your time and your patience. We're having some technical difficulties getting started here, but we appreciate your patience. There's a lot we want to talk to you about, but I think we should just get right into right away the latest breaking news. Recently, what has been two weeks now? Yeah, Leonardo Rizzuto, the the heir apparent, the son to Vito, the boss of Rizzuto, right? There was an assassination attempt. I think it was eight shots, something like that. So let's start with that. Peter, tell us what went down there and give us your sense of what's going on in the Montreal underworld surrounding this assassination attempt. One of the names that's been mentioned a lot and there was a search warrant at his house on March 29th, along with warrants that a bunch of Hells Angels is a guy, Chip Dilbalso, Francesco Dilbalso. He had been a big deal in the old Rizzuto family. He went to prison for 11 year term. He tough guy with a very, very bad temper. And he's the same age as Leonardo Rizzuto. And the feeling is that those two just weren't getting along. There had been an attempt on his life in November, and he was kind of kind of a skittish angry guy to begin with. And he has been more skittish and more angry since the attempt on this life. And he's nowhere to be found now when police served his place to find him. The public was apparently confiscated in late March before the raid. And he's just taken off. So one of the rumors that he's in Amsterdam there are, there's talk about a huge bounty on his head. And it's really good again. And he's probably a lot more jittery now. So is this one of those things like if you take a shot at the king and you don't, and you don't make it and you miss, you better run in duck, right? Yeah, get up, let's get out of town. Or else use the second bullet on yourself. Yeah, like it's um, what's interesting about him is they were like the criminal tells in service of an ice crime report, they have him as being very close to really senior health angels and in fact, the the health angels are kind of the same level as the mob. Like they're, they used to be the guys who did the dirty jobs. And now they're, they're the decision making level. And so he's been considered very, very close to the bikers and moving away from the old mafia stuff a little more. Peter, excuse my ignorance here, but I don't remember news reports back in late 22 of Del Basso avoiding a hit. Was that something that got a lot of publicity? Not really, because they didn't hit anything like it was just you know, vehicle damage. And so that, that kind of surface later when he got back in the news again. So he, he kind of had faded away and then get like he was someone who was thought of as, you know, 2011 or before that back in, in around 2006, he was one of the considered the top six who are running things in on the mafia side of things. So he's mentioned in business or blood a few times. Do we know? I mean, what kind of ranking would he have? Was he was he a captain or I'm not sure what's going on in Montreal right now if they even use the same distinctions and categories that they use other cause of nostra families? Yeah, I don't think the titles really count for that much anymore in the but he would have been second tier, but then the six of the second tier guys all shared the first tier while they're waiting for Vita Rosito to get out. So he and that would have been when he was in his early 30s. So he was kind of a not a boy wonder, but kind of close. Then he he got in trouble. He's broke out in the States with more than 50 kilos of things. So that was partial and he just moved closer to that. The Angels are a lot more cohesive for our statement. Yeah, so if he's close to the Hells Angels is is law enforcement sense that politically they would be backing his move or is it too early to say? It's early to say and then that Hells Angels also I mean, there are a lot of division like they're there are a lot of little charters that sometimes work together sometimes don't and there's they haven't really had someone who's tried to be the lead here for 20 years and that didn't go well, like with mambush and they're they're not guys who take instruction all that well. So they'll work together when it makes sense. But it's like a lot of different sort of equal guys in BC. The Hells Angels are quite a big deal and some of them have popped up in Montreal kind of on their own little now in the past, the Rizzuto Mafia was aligned with the Hells Angels. So if you're reading the tea leaves here, as I think Jimmy was starting to drill down on it is this telling us now that Leonardo Rizzuto doesn't have the relationship with the Hells Angels that his father did and that possibly a former ally of him and his father has now somehow brought the Hells Angels over to you know, his side of the fence and is now going after the Rizzuto crown. I mean, would that be an accurate description of the things that are at play in this power dynamic? Yeah, I think that's a fair way to read it. And since in the last 20 years, since the hey, Dave of Peter Rizzuto, when he was at the top of the pyramid, things are a lot more horizontal to the power, like there's a lot more moving parts and you can't really point at one or two people and say they're on top. There are a lot of groups. And some of them are out of British Columbia on the West Coast, but there's the Wolfpack Alliance, there's the United Nations, and they're under 35 gangsters who are very impatient but have reasonably good ties to two cartels in Mexico. So they if you can make the connection to you can jump all this waiting your turn in line and you know, working your way up stuff, you can move up really quickly, you can be in your 20s and be a big deal. You don't have these larger than life bosses anymore like Mambo share Vito Rizzuto and things seem to really become decentralized. Things turned quick. Yeah. I mean, really quick. Yeah. Well, maybe speak to that. How things went from kind of the definition of stability, at least after the big Quebec Biker War, before Vito is extradited to the United States, it looked like, you know, Vito had created this blueprint of how to keep everybody happy and and have alliances that are, you know, checks and balances on each other. And then, you know, Peter, you've been out at the front lines in Ground Zero reporting this, and I don't think the public would know as much as we know if it wasn't for people like yourself. It all unraveled pretty rapidly. So can you kind of take us through some of that? Like, what was the point in time that you that you saw or you read the tea leaves in your mind in your reporting? Was it early on when Vito was having his legal problems? Or was it when body started to drop? My feeling is that it was around 2010 when aggressors weren't afraid of the Hells Angels and weren't afraid of the mob and could pull some of them into their own own enterprises. And so a guy from a group called the Wolfpack Alliance, he brought the alcohol he moved to Montreal around 2011. And he brought with him a Hells Angel from DC. And he's a lot more internet based, a lot more multi estimate. And I just like the internet's changed all these other businesses, you know, the news business, it's changed that and measure bleak. It also changed organizing. And these guys are live off the internet and they very tight with Mexico and they bypass everything in between. So when you say they're really good with the internet, like, you mean in terms of communicating with each other or their actual crimes or both? I'm both and they don't need a geographic base that used to be you could point to a neighborhood and say which group controlled it. Now these guys don't care about the neighborhood. Like Al Khalil broke out of jail last summer and nope, nobody, nobody outside of his family, I think has a clue where he is. And it really doesn't matter if she can candidate on the dark web with everybody anyway. So, but wouldn't you say that the the rackets have changed like so to an extent so geography is less important, like, like with the old risotto family, they didn't just control narcotics, they had interest in construction rackets. And gambling, even local gambling prostitution, right. So what about those traditional rackets? Are these are these new age, new media gangsters? Are they able to get into those records? Or is that still more the maybe the Hells Angels and Italians? I'm they have to do something to wash their money. Like I've been talking to a guy in witness protection who is making all this money and he had to explain why he had it. So then he bought into tow trucks, he bought into cannings, onto into sports memorabilia, which kind of makes you wonder how authentic that stuff was. But he like they put it into a business. The old traditional mafia guys are once for construction. They're still better at corruption. The younger one don't don't have the person that City Hall, you know, they don't have the person in charge of zoning, but they do have lots of money. And so if the mafia guys can swallow their pride, they can they can work with them. Yep. Peter, if if you don't feel comfortable, ask answering this question, it's okay. But I want to throw it out there. How many personal interactions did you have with Vita Rizzuto? Like, to be honest, like he I hit them around him, but I didn't have him my head. Joe DiMallo, I talked to him before he got murdered. I get a bit of hearing, but he wasn't accessible talker. Okay. He talked a little bit when he was heading off to the airport with a with a friend of mine. But he was quite smart about it. I've had interactions with with guys in his orbit, guys who can't control their temper as well. Right. I had an interaction with Vita's brother-in-law, which wasn't, wasn't sort of friendly, but are you talking about them? Are you talking about DiMallo? No, DiMallo was actually quite friendly and quite, quite charming. There's a guy, Frank Tempoli, who has Vita's brother-in-law, who, you know, told me I was disgusting. I wasn't so crazy about my work. But smiling Joe DiMallo was one of the casualties in this war, and he was very close to resuming. Didn't he have some connection through marriage? Yeah, he's married into the family. And he, he was funny, because I just dropped in on his office. And I, he was an odd one, but I had a taxi that took me there. And I told the guy, you know, wait as long as you have to, I don't care. I was hoping I was getting through to him, but I didn't want to, you know, leave his office in a car waiting for me. But he was, he was friendly. He's a very, very confident guy. And he felt that he could talk his way out of things. He had a guy who looked like he's from the WWF in the background watching everything. But he, he was quite personable. I was actually sad when he got Sean. Do you believe that his murder was for betraying Vito, or was it for backing Vito? I, good question. I don't, I, I don't, I don't know, but I don't think it takes too much either way. Like I think once you think someone might be doing something, then it's, they're pretty quick up here now. And I think a lot quicker, I think pretty quick up here now. And I think a lot quicker in the last couple years to just accuse someone of talking and then shoot them. And then that way you, you have to ladder yourself. So it's sort of this honor among these that doesn't go all that far. So let me ask you something. This is something just I talk about casually with Scott and audience members and other people. I just think of the numbers that I think about so many guys getting whacked. It's so it's mind blowing. When you take a step back, what's happened in the last 15 years, I'm not trying to jump into Jimmy's point here. But I mean, it really is surreal to think in this day and age, no parallel in the United States that you have, you know, triple figures in terms of a body count. Yeah, can you unpack like just give us a sense of scale our audience members of the violence there. At one point, there was a biker war between the Hells Angels and something called the Rock Machine, which morphed into the Banditos. And at the peak of their war, about a little over 20 years ago, they accounted for 17% of the province of Quebec's murder rate. And at that point, there were I think 115 guys in the Hells Angels. So I mean, that shows how lively they were. I covered one trial where people were charged with 13 murder conspiracies, like they like that count was quite high. And it's, I forget who sang it, but there was a song a long time ago, Paranoia will destroy us. And and everybody got paranoid and started shooting at everybody. And, and it spread into Ontario, like there were eight Bandito bikers who were were murdered all one night. And and again, it was just paranoia. Once once you think someone's talking about you, you're in trouble. The guy I'm talking to, he said that he could accept it when his enemies wanted to kill him. But then when police showed up, the friends wanted to kill him too. That's when he snapped. Like they, and they now they're GPS in each other's cars. And so they're, they're kind of they know where people are. And that paranoia level is just ramped right up. How many would you say in the the Rizzuto Wars in the last, what has it been 15 years? Roughly 15 years. Yeah, how many, how many? What would you say? How many casualties roughly? I just don't to be honest, I just don't know because some of them. I wouldn't want to guess I know the this guy, Al Khalil, he was, by the time he was about 30, he was early 30s into the two murders, but he was picked up on intercepts is talking about his best hitter and is, you know, like it was a very business-like thing. And he the less stable it is, the more violent it is, like it's sort of odd. But with with Vita Rizzuto and his heyday, things were stable. And it was basically criminal shooting criminals for a logical reason. Now there's a lot of paranoia and there's a lot of contracting out to it's sort of odd. But a lot of these, like the fact that we've talked about two attempted hits where the guy wasn't killed. A long time ago, I talked to a guy named Raul Samard, who used to kill people for the patrolling family who were the big family before the Rizzuto's and he, he talked he killed five people and we're with convicted of five and he, he said he'd walk up to him and the guy would, like people would accept it when he walked towards them and then he chewed them in the, in the middle of the door. So, so they dropped and then you put one behind the ear and that was the way it was told to do it. And it was very traditional. Now, nobody trusts anyone enough to get out of their cars. And so you have all these drive-bys that, that don't really work. Yeah, it's really kind of cheaped out. Go ahead, Peter. I'm sorry. They kind of cheaped out on their hit teams too, like they contract out to 17 year old kids who don't get the job done. Wow. And it's really striking, Scott, the fact that Peter doesn't even know. Yeah. That, that, it's not like, oh, well, three or four, like the fact that he's not even confident to give you a number because there's so, there's so many moving parts here. I mean, you have, and then alliances that are bursting other alliances and, you know, kind of defining that axiom where your enemy's enemy is your friend. And I mean, Peter, tell me if I'm wrong, though, and I'm interested in, in your insight. And again, we kind of trace it back to the 2000s. And a lot of this, again, tell me if you're the expert. So I don't want to be speaking out of, out of school here. But a lot of this in, in my kind of amateur analysis of this from someone who doesn't consider myself an expert on Canadian organized crime, but has read all the books and has followed kind of the blow by blow here. But it seems like when Desjardins decided that it was okay to go against Rizzuto, it was like that opened up a floodgate almost where it was like, well, someone that was as close to him as Desjardins is going to turn on him and try to usurp his authority when he's in prison, then kind of all bets are off, right? You know, on the, on the, in the whole country. Yeah, it's almost like football in the US, I fell came in when the NFL was still, you know, strong, but you have people recruiting people to other, other groups, like, it's a, this will pack stuff. I mean, it sounds chat, it really is effective. And the United Nations and these groups kind of, they pop up as alliances and they do big things and then they get taught or killed and another one pops up in their place. And so the, the old patient mafia way of doing things just isn't the way it is now. And the mafia guys like to go home to a nice quiet dinner. You know, they like, they like their kids that go to pharmacy school, they like her law school, they like sort of non chaos. And the, the guy I've been talking to, he said that, and he's in his 30s, he said that everybody he knew was either in prison or like it's, once the paranoia takes off, it really takes off, like once you don't trust your friend. And once you, every time there's a bus, they assume there's some rat. So who's the rat? And if, if someone, if a Hell's Angel does something wrong, then who sponsored him? Are they guilty to like you get the paranoia really does take off? And I mean, even to your point, I mean, Leonardo Risotto, I don't believe 20 years ago, Vito Risotto would have said, I want Leonardo Risotto to go into the life and become a boss. He kind of became a, it was kind of like a Michael Corleone situation with you, Leonardo Risotto tell me if again, correct me if I'm wrong, is an attorney, right? You get to me for a loop because your sister is an attorney to you. And that threw me for a loop to realize, yeah, he's 53 years old now. I mean, he's not, he's not the little kid running around. And the Godfather, it is sort of that, you know, where, you know, that's Michael. And it is, it is kind of chilling. I mean, but Vito had to wait until he was 66 to get the top job. And it's funny, because there are a lot of old grudges out of that stuff is the families of the oldies and Hamilton, who the previous generation or two generations ago of Risotto's killed off the Viole men that these sons are now, some of them have gotten into a pretty fair bit of trouble. And so they're just a lot of, a lot of moving pieces and nobody really knows what's going on. And there absolutely is no one person at the top. There's not even five people at the top, I don't think you mentioned the Viole's. Are the Collabrians still players in Montreal? And by Collabrians, I mean the end, the end, and dragita. And they're, they're considered more Ontario and considered a little bit west of Toronto, Niagara region, going down towards Buffalo and then north of Toronto, which is a wealthy new development area. And there, there's a bit of mixture, but not that much. It's sort of odd because those ones don't mix that well. But some of the, there's one guy from, from the Sicilian group in Montreal, like with the Risotto group who gets along just fine with this Wolfpack Alliance, who gets along with multi ethnic criminals, you know, can get bossed around a guy from the mid east is bossing them around and he seems to deal to live with that. So, but they don't mix well with, with another group from Italy. It's, it's funny, the different level of grudges. Yeah, what do you, what do you make of the news that Viole is a Canadian guys, the underboss in an American, you know, US mafia family, specifically Buffalo? Yeah, that's, that's a, I dug around on that one that I just don't like, to be honest, I just don't know. I had a not experience where about 30 years ago, I was speaking and he was in the crowd and I didn't know he was in the crowd and his mother got really angry and, and then he was just staring at me. And he's, it was kind of a weird feeling because the person I was with speaking, he made some smart comments and I thought, you idiot, you know, like we, like, you know, who's in front of us right now. And it's a pretty serious thing. I mean, the whole generation of that family got shot and his mother, you know, really loved Paula Viole, her husband, and she never got over it. And so it's odd, but some of the, some people can work better with a total outsider than they can with someone from a couple hundred miles away in Italy. I know that's a roundabout way of saying it, but with, with Buffalo geographically, it makes sense. ethnically, it doesn't quite as much because Buffalo, the way I read it is more Sicilian. But on the other hand, Buffalo is a great place to bring things through. Everybody wants to bring drugs from Chicago and trucks with hidden compartments up through Niagara, winding through Buffalo and then Hamilton, Toronto, Montreal. It's a pretty lucrative corridor for, for organized crime. Now, are there any catronics left in Montreal? I believe so. Isn't there someone left in the residual organization? There's not big players like that family. He's kind of gone. And then the guy who was kind of flying the flag for them in Toronto was a guy named Eddie Mello, and he was a really good boxer who was, who was murdered about 20 years ago. And that was kind of the last gasp of the catronics being any kind of meaningful power. Let me ask you something. If you've paid attention here, you know about the, about what was it, around the same time that Vito Rosuto was sent to a United States prison to finish off his sentence for the three couples murders from the Bonanno crime family and, you know, that you saw in Donny Brasco back in 81. This coincides with the Salvatore of Montaña coming from New York, from the Bronx to Canada. And he aligns temporarily with Desjardins in their war against Rosuto. So there's an inherent American slice of this, but I'm interested in your research other than that, which as we know, if anybody's read your books that was a galactic miscalculation from probably both sides of it. Salvatore of Montaña ends up dead. Reynard Desjardins ends up in prison for that murder. But was there any other American mob bosses that were chiming in that were like sending word to people in Canada being like either what's going on or you guys need to calm down or do you need our help? Right now, the people from other the country that everybody sits up and behaves around are Mexican cartel people. And the Sinaloa cartel, the guy I've been talking to is in Witness Protection talks about how they go to Mexico and they, the Hell's Angels have condos there and they get tight with the cartel. And the cartel also brings up people here and there was a murder in BC where one guy looked, the Hell's Angels looked like he was going to die and he's a former Montrealer Larry Amaro. And then he didn't die, but when it looked like he was gonna die, the cartel had people up here trying to figure out who the shooters were because Amaro had a huge drug shipment and he hadn't paid for it. And so they wanted to know who's gonna pay for these drugs, they didn't want to lose millions because the guy who they had sort of allowed him to have the drugs kind of on credit, they didn't wanna get stiffed with it. So it's funny because when you talk about that Montana thing, Vittorio Mararchi who got into trouble on that one and I think he, his lawyer subpoenaed me to testify at his trial and Guy said I won't say anything. And so I was thinking that I'm gonna be losing some weight in jail and then he cut a deal and it all fell apart, but they were trying to find out where information was coming from which was kind of unique to subpoena reporter try to get his services. It's kind of weird too, when we're talking with Del Ball, so he tried to get a peace bond against a reporter, which is pretty fascinating. I have my understanding, I have some pretty good sourcing that when Montana, well, first even going back to when the old man Razooda was killed that the Bonanno zips were having sit downs to try to figure out, sort out how to make sense of it not necessarily that they were gonna do anything about it but it does, even though at that point the Razoodos had officially broken off, traditionally that was a Bonanno territory for 40 years. Right, and then their baskets whacked, Montana, so that again I hear that some of the Asaro, Grimaldi, some others were having sit downs to try to sort out and then there's the great quote from Asaro who says I don't know what the fuck's going on in Howard Beach. Right, how the hell am I gonna know if I'm on a Montreal? At least Howard Beach has got the same language. Yeah, so we know that the New Yorkers were at least monitoring it and discussing it, but I don't know how far that went. With the OG podcast, we love playing the What If game, but you think if Massino hadn't have flipped and was still in power through the 2000s that he would have been someone that might have stepped forward but if you think about when you line up what was going on in the Bonanno organization when the Razoodo organization started to fall apart, you had Mancuso, like you Mancuso who's the boss now rising, he was going to jail, people were his acting bosses, he was having issues with those acting bosses so it didn't look like everybody was, it doesn't look like everybody in the Bonanno was on the same page at that time, so if they can't keep their own house in order, how are you gonna be paying attention to what's going on across the border? When the cartels are playing head games with them, like they sell, if they sold something that's 90% purity they might charge you a different grade than they charge me because they don't want anyone to rise up too high, like the Razoodo's made a mistake in a way by allowing the Hells Angels to rise too high and the cartels won't, they don't wanna be challenged, like that's why these little young groups are doing well because they'll give a spunky up and comer a break to just to disrupt things, they just wanna sell their drugs, they don't wanna be challenged, they don't want anyone dissing to them, they wanna be the ones who set the tone of everything and so they're kind of playing games with everybody. Yeah and then, but also Messino had he, in a lot of ways, a lot of this destabilization goes back to him. Goes back to Messino. Killing George. Killing George. Right, because George was spreading his wings, if you will, with backing of the guys in Montreal, kind of being like, we don't really need to report to you anymore, they were making guys, the Razoodo's were making guys without the permission of Messino and that started to erode the relationship. Yeah and these new up and coming groups, they're copying the mob guys, they're making people, the United Nations, they give, it sounds odd that they give pearl bracelets when someone has done the right amount of hits and done, been efficient enough and the guy I'm talking to, he said, is the happiest day of his life when he got his pearl bracelet, which isn't what you expect out of a 260 pound guy, but if you get a pearl bracelet and get all teary-eyed about it, but they have levels too and a lot of that is copying what they've seen in movies or what they've read and copying them off here really. So you've brought up a number of times, the Wolfpack and you have the new book out, but you've talked about some of these multi-ethnic gangs, so if our audience is unfamiliar with that, give us a sense of the underworld landscape in British Columbia, which is on the west side of Canada. My understanding is it's a lot more common to see these multi-ethnic criminal partnerships where you even, in some cases, indigenous pop, That's why they're called the United Nations gang. For people that might be confused, that maybe don't know the landscape in British Columbia, but when we've said United Nations, that's literally, that's the name of their gang and it's a multi-ethnic organized crime syndicate. Right. Yeah, and it's odd because it's like, we're moving into the time of the Wolfgangster. Like, these are guys who they'll shoot people and brag about it, but they won't use a racial slur. The old guys used to be pretty quick with the ethnic slurs, but they, you know, they had a gun that had six bullets and they didn't waste them. You know, they were a little more surgical. And in the early 2000s, the Hells Angels and the mafia were both really brought down or humbled by authorities. And that created that big opening for these multi-ethnic groups that are very, very good on the internet. And they went right to the source with Mexico and cartels like that because they can manipulate them better. They can pick and choose who they're gonna deal with. They don't get challenged as much and they can make them and break them sort of thing. And so when the Hells Angels got out of prison and these mob guys, like Dilbaul, so got out of prison, they found the landscape had changed. And some of the ones from DC moved to the heart of Montreal and were, you know, wheeling and dealing there. And I'm guessing, you know, asking Scott and Peter here, I'm guessing that in the old days when Mamboucher and Vito were calling the shots, that was less common for some young buck from BC to just roll up in Montreal and try to play flag. I'm guessing that was less likely to happen. Is that, would you say that's correct? Yeah, and Mamboucher, a lot of Hells Angels, they wouldn't say it publicly, but they weren't so crazy about the guy. Like he brought a lot of heat on them. He allowed anti-gang legislation to be passed. I mean, that's a guy I worked with, Michel Loje. He worked with Monobox, he got shot. That's, that's the type of the press. We weren't criticizing tougher anti-gang laws. And so, and also Mamboucher just wasn't stable. I mean, he is the feeling that one guy was shot because he, a reporter, because he didn't like the way the guy smiled. Like he had a logo picture and he didn't like to smile. So people didn't want their lives ruined by a madman, basically. And yeah, it sort of hurt the brand. It's, the Ontario has a lot of Hells Angels, but one of them there told me, you know, if it's just me and you, we can talk, but if they're guys from Quebec, don't even look at me. And there was the feeling that they're, they're like your crazy cousin, you know, you're, you're not comfortable with them, but you're not going to make them angry. And the Quebec ones, some of them were sent to Ontario to kind of supervise and make sure things went smoothly. And it wasn't, wasn't fun and games for the Ontario guys. It was, they didn't like really being bossed around and being, they had a pretty soft life up to that point. And that's a good point that sometimes even the chapters within the same club don't necessarily see eye to eye on everything. And some guys shift from one to another because they don't get along with one or they, some are kind of older guys and some of the old guys when they come out of jail, they're, they can't stand the internet at all, let alone, you know, the dark web and all the stuff. And the young ones are treating them like they're idiots. And so there's a lot of this generation gap. You know, the guy from, the guy 65 doesn't want to take from a guy who's 28. In some ways it, it's consistent. And again, Peter, tell me if I'm wrong, keep on prefacing that because I don't consider myself an expert on this stuff. So I don't want to be spreading false information. But wouldn't you say that the most, you know, infamous biker murder in Canadian history was the Lennoxville massacre. And that was Hell's Angel on Hell's Angel slaughter. Right? Yeah. And the one that would rival it would be the Bandito massacre in Ontario, near London, Ontario, and that was Bandito on Bandito. And so it's, you know, the guy I'm talking to, sort of what he said, you really, really get, the thing that really sets people off is betrayal. If you think that someone in your group is turning on you, you're a lot more angry than if you think of someone's trying to elbow in on your business. Like you don't like the business stuff, but if you think I've had them into my house, I introduced them to my wife and now they're doing this, then you're really livid. Also, they know all your business, gotta get rid of them. So let me ask you both something, this hypothesis that, so not only does it seem like the Italian groups are more violent in Canada, but the biker groups are more violent. The main hypothesis that I hear is, the reason why is the criminal justice system, that in the US you get a murder, that's the worst charge you can get. You get a murder charge. They might even give you a fucking chair. They might even give you a capital case for murder. And that the laws in Canada are more lenient, which the correlation is that guys are more trigger happy, because you can whack a guy out and maybe do 10, 20 years as opposed to a life sentence in the US. So I wonder, Peter and then Scott, what do you make of that hypothesis? One thing on that one that would support it would be that if you hire a 16 or 17 year old to do it, then he's gonna get his record wiped clean in a little while anyway. And it's not being an astronaut to point again at someone in film, but it does take a certain amount of skill. And so I think that's why a lot of these hits aren't being carried out now because they kind of lowered the standard of the wolf pack. They had a guy that they paid 100,000 a hit and he used to get theatrical makeup and get right into it. And he did do the job. I mean, they paid way probably 20 times more than they had to, but he did get the job done. So what do you mean theatrical makeup? Like you got into a character. Yeah, can you expand on that one? You know, there's little plastic things that they put on their faces. Like the Shakespearean type of actors to make their nose big or whatever. Oh yeah, yeah. He did a hit in a very built up part of Toronto where a guy was watching a soccer game on an outdoor patio and he had on a wig. He had on the false face. He went right to town on it. And he actually kind of got off on putting on the makeup and he walked right up to the guy and shot him like the guy had no clue who was approaching him. And it was a soccer game for everybody who's staring at the screen. It was pretty easy to get close to the guy. Wow. And then it's sort of odd because he visited his grandmother and then he went back to DC. But that's the new ones who are, I mean, he was getting 100,000 a hit and that's what he did for a career. If you're gonna pay 5,000, 4,000 through a 17 year old here, the person might be shooting in one direction and running in the other direction. Yeah, that's the point of contracting out because usually old school, close to no stress, you just tell a guy, you push a button. Yeah, you ain't paying any money. You don't pay him, right? That's part of the, it goes along with the job that you signed up for. Job description, yeah. Right. Well, this guy, Ralph Simard, he considered Frank Petroni like his father or uncle like he thought there's nothing better than that guy hugging him and saying he's proud of him. I mean, he really looked for that sort of thing. And so it was an emotional thing to get close to the boss. These other ones, they wouldn't be able to sell the boss's name, let alone know what exactly they did. So, we mentioned the Wolf Peg, that's your latest book. Tell us about the Wolf Peg. Is that, would you say it's more of a network as opposed to a formal organization? Explain to our audience what that is. Yeah, it's like an association and it brings in what they consider the necessary part. And they, when there's no one at the top then you have to make friends on alliances. And so when there isn't a pyramid you have to reach out a lot more. And that's what this is. And so it's very multi-ethnic and it's very non-racist, which means like the Hells Angels, you had to be white. These guys, they're more going by who can get things done, who has power and it's connected through the internet rather than geography. And so people can be anywhere and they can move and it's not a big deal. Like they can, one family popped up in three different provinces and it didn't really matter. They also, they can just take off internationally. And so it gives them a lot wider scope. I mean, one of the things I was actually talking to someone yesterday about it from Australia is that if you can get drugs into Australia you're gonna make a bundle because everything's more expensive there. And so they can work these markets that it's not just like the neighborhood store. They can look pretty far afield to where they're gonna make the most money. It's very, very young, very violent and kind of needy, they sort of need to be in the gang. And there's no one's, the biggest person in this was the guy named Robbie Alcolio, but that's not true, a title. Even the name, the wolf pack, I had to decide how to spell it because they were spelling it two different ways. And so I went by what was on their jewelry, which was one word, but it's not like they have all these big codes of conduct and everything. It's a lot more fly by the seat of their pants but the money is huge and the violence is huge. And it's like an association. And so if you're, one of the Rizzuto guys got in with them caputo just because they are efficient, they will get the drugs into the country and then you get them off to your distribution group. Yeah, that's my understanding from your book is that there's actually other dudes from other organizations that are also part of this wolf pack association, including a big Hell's Angels guy and then including some of the Italians. And a West End guy. Oh, Irish mob. Irish mob. Yeah, wheels, Maloney. Yeah. Is that correct, Peter? Am I reading that correctly? They're right. And that's right about the wheels, Maloney, the West End gang guy in the wheelchair. And there might even be a woman. I mean, the guy I'm talking to now talks about a woman who shot somebody and just got on the elevator with them and shot them, you know, between floors. Well, this is the wolf mob. The wolf mob. Equal opportunity. Equal opportunity. Hit women. Yeah. And so I know we've been jumping all around, but it's really exciting talking to an expert about Canadian OC and trying to make sense of it. Back on the British Columbia though, is that where the wolf pack, is that where they started though on the West side of the country? Yeah. And there's a kind of a suburb of a Vancouver called Surrey and then there's a neighborhood in Surrey called Wally and that would be a lot of them could trace their beginnings to there. And the guy I'm talking to, he lived like one high rise away from Robbie Alcalio when he was growing up. And so there's, they know each other and there's a lot of crossover and old dredges. There's also, not from Alcalio, but with some of them there's a fair bit of drug use. Like it's sort of Vita Rosuto drinking wine, but you never heard of him using drugs. With these guys, there's a pretty fair opiate problem. And so that makes them more violent, more, the guy I'm talking to now, now that he's off drugs, he's shocked at the things he did when he was on drugs. And are the triads active in British Columbia, the Chinese organized crime groups? They don't have them all the way, but they'll have a little bit. Like if you're in a triad and you're smart, then why not back the source too? Like if they can get the drugs in for you, why not? And so there's one kind of massage parlor place they went to that was triad run that the guy running it who looked like the towel boy was actually a very big deal, like extremely big deals in real estate, but they didn't know, but there's a lot of odd little crossovers and kind of kids who grew up together in the same neighborhood and then they went off to different groups. It's sort of like if you played football with someone and then you went off to play for a different team, you know, you still have something in common. What ethnicity is Al Khalil? He's a Palestinian. He considered stateless. Now he had five, there were five boys and three of the boys were murdered. The other ones are fugitives as well. And he, he just, he don't joke around with him. There was one inner city conversation where someone suggested that someone working for Al Khalil that he don't even joke like that. And if he, I thought he was, he'd be dead. And if you joke around like this, you know, you could be too. Like he's, he's only before 35 and he put in big, big things in his late 20s, but he was the youngest of five brothers. And so he, and one of his brothers was murdered in Mexico. So they, they were, they got in with cartels and they're just not afraid to move, move around. When he got arrested for one murder in Toronto, he was in Greece, like he'd have multiple passports. And he, he walked out, walked out of maximum security, awaiting trial for murder, walked out under the cameras in a uniform and who knows how they got the uniform in. Who knows how he knew where to stand. But that was last July and they still haven't arrested anybody for it. I mean, he, you're not even close to know who the contractors are in the jail and they were dressed up as them and they showed up to do a job and the job was to walk the alcohol out and look great cameras. It's kind of amazing because you have to be buzzed from, from hallway to hallway and it's all under cameras. And he went right out the front door. He would have been out of the country before they announced it. And the picture they put of her pictures, they put up of the suspects who broke out were false pitchers. They were just stock images from the internet. They weren't the guys who got them out. And so it's just next level organization. What's the political fallback? I mean, are people outraged there? I mean, it strikes me as either keystone cops or corruption in terms of how that can happen. There's big cases that are falling apart because the Canadians are, it's sort of odd because we're really, really big on the civil liberties. So we get really outraged when police is falsely information to get a wiretap. But then that, on the other hand, that means that these guys can go free more. So we had a record drug case that fell apart last month and it was huge where they got like 61 million in drugs. We had a couple of years ago, a record gambling case that fell apart again. And one of them, they were listening in on wiretaps and they picked up someone talking to his lawyer and that's when you should just shut off your recording and instead it looked like or there's the feeling that they didn't. And it's an odd one so that the public outreach, someone that's ordered the police for breaking the rules even when they don't catch the guys. So the police are getting sort of double outraged. Are you, and again, Jimmy already mentioned this that we're jumping all over the place, but a mind such as yours, it deserves to be picked by people like us. What do you make of what's going on in Hamilton? So this war started in Montreal, Quebec in the 2000s and then by the mid to late 2010s that made its way into Ontario and you had the two biggest bosses of the Hamilton mafia, the Musatano brothers assassinated within a year of each other. Yeah, that's a funny one because they actually got to, had quite a few interactions with that family and Pat was very, very at tempered. And he went, he said, thank God your mother loves you because nobody else does. He had a real, real anger problem. They're certain people they just can't blend with, like the Rizzudos when they killed the Dioli brothers, the women in the family were so upset. It was such a deep horrible thing for them that they can't just start working with that group. Hamilton is kind of a training ground too for a lot of criminals. Like one of the guys when we're talking about the wolf pack, their big rivals were the United Nations and there was a guy from Hamilton who worked with the mob who went off to BC and worked for the United Nations. He's since died, but he was one of the big muscle guys in Hamilton and he was a suspect in the murder of a lawyer and her husband. And so Hamilton is always proudly not Toronto. Like they're proud that they kind of make their own rules. They're also right on a great drug point when, like if you're bringing up drugs through the Niagara region into Toronto, Hamilton's there. And so it's a good transportation city. It's got a lot more to it than like the Diolis are a big deal in the past, but there's also Guy Walsher Stadnick who, Hell's Angel. Hell's Angel's head of Canadian. Yeah, if they had a Canadian president, it would have been him and he's extremely smart and he just doesn't talk like that. Nobody even knows how he got his nickname. His nickname is Nurgut. Nurgut. Yeah, nobody knows what Nurgut means. Like it might be that he mumbles or it might be what you get when you boil syrup down and you little nugget, you know, it might be nugget, but he won't tell anybody that. And I sat about maybe five feet from him and look when he was charged with I think 13 murder conspiracies and he looked extremely relaxed. Like, and he actually knew the name of the sketch artist that the, who we were hiring, he knew her name or his name and he called the guy over and checked out the picture. But he's a very, he's an odd character because he's very, very calm and he's, I think five, four, maybe five, five. He, the only person who's really threatened him was a priest who ran a red light during a papal visit and crashed into him. Otherwise he's kind of one of these untouchable people and it's sort of odd because you don't know if he's retired or if he's just way in the background, but he's a very, very bright guy. And for some reason, he was a big, big force in Quebec even though he didn't speak French much. I asked someone in Quebec how did he run things when he didn't speak French and the guy said he didn't speak much English either. I think he just didn't speak English. He just waved his hands around and went. It's smart. That's smart. Scott asked about Hamilton. I get confused and someone on social media is probably gonna yell at me about this. I get confused. The mustatanos are their own crime family with connections to Calabria. They're not Cosa Nostra. Is that correct? Definitely they'd be in Grandin and then they're not. And they, there was Dominique and there was Tony and then the two kids and I actually knew Tony quite well and got along with him, which is kind of an odd thing because Tony would talk to me when Pat was screaming at me and it was an odd thing, but it wasn't as cohesive as you might think from the outside and Tony was about 20 years younger than the parent, than the father of Pat and then Angelo. And he wasn't gonna say anything publicly against them, but he didn't like their way of doing things. He married a woman who ran for city council and she wanted to get on the police services board, which is how I met him. Like I said, I'll interview her if you bring Tony along. And then I started talking to Tony and he had a pretty good sense of humor and he could interview, he could imitate Robert De Niro and analyze this, analyze that, which was actually pretty funny. Tony was kind of a, it's a different character and he moved off to Peru, I think just to get away from all the Canadian craziness. And then the daughter of his housekeeper was kidnapped by some sort of gorillas and somehow he worked with police to get the kid back. And it was an odd sort of thing because he was able to work with authorities when he thought it was a real reason. He went to prison for a murder conspiracy, but he wouldn't talk about that, but he talked a fair bit about growing up in the 50s and that there was such an anti-Italian feeling and he was a little guy and so you had to be part of something tough, but he didn't want the big money, big craziness of his nephews. And I think also if he was gonna be a gangster, he was gonna be a smarter gangster. He wasn't gonna be screaming at people all the time. For people that aren't familiar with Canada, Hamilton is like Detroit or Pittsburgh or Cleveland. Rust Belt. It's a Rust Belt working class, a lot of ethnic melting pot. Like I think Peter said earlier in probably 15, 20 minutes ago that they're proud that they're not Toronto. Toronto is like more cosmopolitan and we're okay being the tough guys, the hard scrabble, other side of the tracks. Yeah, and when Hamilton plays Toronto in football up here, that's the game that matters. They want to beat up Toronto. Everybody else is sort of optional, but you've got to beat Toronto. It's taken pretty seriously like it's sort of suburb, suburb, suburb and then Hamilton. And then Hamilton definitely wants to, it doesn't consider itself part of Toronto at all. Even though they're both Ontario. Right, and they're the same province. And so, but there are, it gets confusing because you've got Masatano who are connected to the Klamarines. But you do have Cozzanostra guys in Hamilton too. We had Johnny Pops. Right, and Johnny Pops. Right, who was a Buffalo guy. Right, who got killed by the Masatano's. Right. Yeah, and here's a real classic one. I went once to, he was sort of out because he was born and died on pretty much the same street. And once I went in to talk to him about something and I mean, it wasn't like there was some big introduction. I just thought I'll give it a try. And he said, take a walkie parasite. And it sounded like you walked onto a movie set. It's like you're looking around for the camera. Like that's the way he talked. Like he talked like a gangster. And the rest of his family was just, you know, not really that rough, but he did some rough time in prison in the States. And he's like the opposite of the wolf pack. In Hamilton, if you say Railway Street, people think you're talking about John Papalia. Like if you say Railway Street says, that means John Papalia, the wolf pack, nobody knows where Robbie Alcalio lives and it doesn't even really matter. And the Lepinos, are they still, they were in Cozanostra too, right? And they were married into Violi. One of the families. Yeah, they were married into the Violis. And so there you had them. And that's the woman I was talking about who was so upset when I was speaking once. So her dad was the big family or the big girl for Violi, her husband to marry into that family. And then he killed and she has to go back and live with them. And they were a huge court case because the police put listening devices in the tomato plants of the old guy, Jack Molopino, and they caught him talking about hockey and kids today and organized crime. And that's how police and prosecutors were able to convince people that this stuff actually exists. Like it was, I was talking about with Buffalo getting along with Magadino and his conversations when he'd walk around with people with his tomato plants, it really helped a lot. And it was a working class, but not flashy part of town. It was on the kind of the industrial side of town, but you know, nice house, but nothing to stop and share it. So doing the what playing the what if game again, let me ask you this, if the Rizoodo crime family doesn't implode, are the must-a-tunnels still alive today in the spring of 2023? No, they're out of it now. The power coming from Hamilton, it's pretty dormant. And Walter Staten, he hasn't been seen for a while. So I mean, maybe he's just had enough of it. Like he got sent to prison for quite a while, even though he wasn't really, it was just guys around him talking. And so maybe he's just had enough. I think, Well, I guess what I'm saying is, was the Rizoodo, was the Rizoodo crime empire in some ways shielding or protecting the must-a-tunnel brothers? And then once the, you know, once Rome had burned, did that leave the must-a-tunnels exposed for these people to come and attack them in the late 2010s? I think some of it too was just that Pat's temper was just, it just made him an easy target. It also made people afraid of him, like he sort of that paranoia will destroy a thing. Pat, he had either two or three murders and he, if he got mad at you, you really had to take it seriously. When he was angry at me, it wasn't something I took lightly. And I actually got a razor blade and a crazy letter in all caps sent to the newsroom when he was mad at me like he was the sort of guy who he had that feeling he got mad at a lot of people and they were working day. And so sooner or later, one of them is going to come back and shoot him. Well, I had a Godfather, Jack Tocco from Detroit take a meeting with all of his nephews and grandsons around Christmas time and he dispatched them to all the borders and Barnes and Noble's around Detroit to take my book and hide it. Which is better than him sending a letter to my newsroom with the razor blades. I'll take that. There was a bookstore that's not there anymore, New Horizons. Someone went in there and gave them a hard time. And Bomoritos, Jack Tocco went to the owner which is a bakery around here, Bomoritos. And when you're waiting for your baked goods you can read like books. And they had my book there which had a picture of Jack Tocco's dad on the cover. And one day it wasn't there anymore. And I went to the, I went to the, I didn't tell them who I was, but I was like, why don't you have that book anymore? He said, oh, a long time patron of ours came in and asked us if we do him a favor to remove it. I said, who was that patron? They said Jack Tocco. Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. That's a great bakery on the outside of town. So before we wrap up, Peter, I think we need to acknowledge that Bad Blood became a well-known television show. So congratulations on that. He's living the dream and I recommend it. I give it four stars. If you're someone that's into OC and the mob, Bad Blood, you can get it on FX, I believe. I would guess some of the other streaming networks you'd be able to get it. Anthony, LaPaglia, Kim Coates from Sons of Anarchy, Paul Sorvino before he died. It's a retelling of a lot of this stuff that we've talked about today and the war that broke out within the Rizzuto Crime family. And they take some dramatic license, but I think as a general rule, I think this to me passes the test with flying colors in terms of a good adaptation of an organized crime story, because it can be a real crapshoot. I've lived it. I've experienced it firsthand with my white boy Rick project that went to Hollywood and got all messed up and you don't get a second bite at the apple. And you're lucky you have something to look back on and be proud of. And I recommend all of our audience to go stream it. Oh, thanks. And the guy who deserves the real credit is the guy named Michael Conyzees who put it together as a showrunner. I had no idea what they were and why they got paid more than everybody else, but now I do. I mean, it's amazing how he was essential and everybody else was in the background really. Let me ask you just to get in the weeds here about your experiences because I know it started to open up some old wounds here, Scott. But I know like on the white boy Rick project that the director tried to marginalize Scott and anybody like in terms of like the historical accuracy. I was hired by Sony, the studio. The director was hired by the production company. So it became this tug of war between the studio and the production company, which was making the film and I was for all intents and purposes, I was kind of kicked off set because they were bothered by the fact that I was told by Sony to give them notes on historical accuracy. I'm guessing that I'm hoping for your sake when they were shooting Bad Blood, you had a much more inclusive relationship with the makers of that project. Did you have a better experience in other words, Peter? Yeah, and part of it was that I took a run at screenwriting and realized that's not what I do. Like it's sort of like if you're a soccer player and you decide you're going to go play hockey, it's not the same thing. And so I knew my role and my role was consulting, making a grill, telling them a real situation that they could draw from. And this guy, Michael Connie, he looked like a surgeon, but it was like, you know, when he was focused, he was like super focused. And I was lucky because we had a way smaller group than what you're describing. We had one big producer, one big writer, and then we all kind of huddled and agreed on what we should be doing. And so there was a real agreement before we got rolling at all that we were doing. And so there wasn't, there weren't, there was big decisions you're talking about. That was all washed out before. Yeah. I had another experience. Yeah. I had another experience like that where someone, the producer at the start said, what can you lose? What can you lose? And you know, there's seven siblings. I said, I don't care if it drops to three, but we can't have their motivation different. And like the real things that you're not bendable on, they got those, they identified those quickly. Yeah. So that, that was, that's sort of what I looked for now. Like it's, it's so easy for things to blow up. I just have a, I have a really high bar for these type of, you know, true crime stories that I learn about and research. And if I'm, and I'm going to sit in a movie theater or in the, in the case of bad blood, you know, go to my television and stream it. You know, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to, you know, go to my television and stream it. You know, I'm going to, I'm a tough critic. And I think that bad blood did the story justice. And yes, for, for people that haven't watched it, uh, Kim coats from sons of anarchy is kind of, you kind of see the story through his eyes. And he's the, tell me if I'm again, correct me if I'm wrong. He's kind of a composite. He's kind of a Desjardins, but not quite Desjardins. Exactly. You read it perfectly. Exactly. And he, in his background is, is a Shakespearean actor, believe it or not, the first sons of anarchy. Oh, he's great. He makes it. Yeah. He makes it great. Yeah. And he, yeah. And he wasn't shy about, about things like you. He was great. He was a really, really smart find. And, oh, and Paul Cervino was there for a little bit. Kim coats, made sure that everybody was, had their brothery game when Paul Cervino was there. Cause he didn't want the, the older guy to have to work too hard and have to do more multiple takes. And so Kim coats, he kind of ruled the worst in a way. And get the record, you know, show him some respect. And everybody really did. I like that. So Cervino is like the Don. Yeah. He's the, oh yeah. That's a huge get for that. Yeah. Yeah. That was, that was cool. So any, any, any news on the Wolfpack and we expect to see that on TV or film anytime soon, or are you not at Liberty to discuss that Peter? There's stuff that I hope I'm at Liberty to talk about soon because, I mean that's, there's, so I, I mean, definitely that's where things aim. It's just, my agent, kind of my manager and kind of my boss. I understand. No, I, believe me. I understand it, but we're, we're your biggest fans here and we want to see more Peter Edwards adaptations of true crime stories in Canada that make it to either the big screen, big screen or the, or the streaming services. Cause you are an amazing storyteller and it really was Peter. I'm not dumb. I'm not just saying this cause you're, you're on the, on the show and this is really the first time we've ever spoken in person. But authors like yourself and Antonio that, that wrote business or blood, you guys and some of your colleagues, you know, here in America that were writing in the, in the 80s and 90s and into the 2000s. I got my start in the late 2000s with my first book came out in 07, but it was really reading guys like you that inspired me, that put me on this, on this track of telling stories from the, from the underworld and, and giving it perspective and insight that you probably won't get in a, in a small little, you know, mention on a, on a television news broadcast or a small article in a newspaper. So I think, I thank you. I really appreciate that. And let's stay in touch. That's the way we could work together and something. Yes. Yeah, that'd be great. Well, thank you for your time, Peter. Please, our audience, check out the Wolfpack, check out business or blood, check out Peter's other work. You can find, you know, his work on the internet as well. Please subscribe to our stuff, follow us. Peter, thank you again for your time. For Jimmy Bucciolato, Scott Bernstein, Scott Bernstein, we're out.