Quebec provincial police make arrests in 4 Mafia killings
In what Quebec provincial police are calling a "major breakthrough" in its crackdown on organized crime, three men and a woman have been arrested in the deaths of four people with known ties to the Montreal Mafia.
"It's a major breakthrough because people think that we never end up solving murders related to organized crime," said Sûreté du Québec Chief Insp. Guy Lapointe at a Montreal news conference Wednesday.
As part of "Operation Préméditer," police conducted a series of raids in the greater Montreal region, including in Saint-Jude, east of Montreal, in Terrebonne, north of Laval, and on the island of Montreal itself.
They arrested Dominico Scarfo, Guy Dion, Marie-Josée Viau and Jonathan Massari. Dion is the fire chief of Saint-Jude, a village of 1,200, SQ sources confirmed to Radio-Canada.
Police also seized 19 long guns, six handguns, three automatic weapons, nearly 200 boxes of ammunition and two silencers, as well as materials to create explosives.
'Old conflict' as a backdrop
The three men and one women arrested in the raids are believed to have conspired to kill Lorenzo Giordano, Rocco Sollecito, who were both found dead in Laval in 2016, and brothers Giuseppe and Vincenzo Falduto, who were reported missing in Montreal the same year.
The primary motive behind the 2016 murders was the acquisition of power, Lapointe said.
He said the killings occurred against a backdrop of "the old conflict that persists between Sicilians and Calabrians involved in traditional Italian organized crime."
Lapointe alleges Massari led the conspiracy, along with a man named Salvatore Scoppa, who was himself killed in May.
"The murder of Salvatore Scoppa earlier this year is basically payback from the Sicilians, as revenge for these murders that were committed in 2016," Lapointe told CBC after the news conference at the SQ headquarters.
Lapointe explained that the "Sicilians" are part of the Rizzuto clan.
Experts say the death by natural causes of the Montreal Mafia's last known godfather, Vito Rizzuto, in 2013 created a power vacuum in Montreal, paving the way for rival clans to battle each other in the fight to come out on top.
But Lapointe said police hope these latest arrests — and future pending arrests — signal that investigators will continue to put pressure on the clans' criminal activities.
"We're making a very loud statement to organized crime that it doesn't matter what they do, eventually we'll catch them," he said.
