Why Did Vito Rizzuto Take Out "Joe Bravo"?

The gangster once known
as "Joe Bravo."
In May 2013, the charred, bullet-riddled remains of two gangsters from Canada were found in Sicily. Italian police feared a trans-Atlantic Mafia war was brewing.

Actually, the battle was already raging. Vito Rizzuto, the Montreal Godfather who died last December, had taken care of business. Yet again. So far, the death count is pegged at more than 40, with law enforcement having recovered bodies in Montreal, Toronto, Mexico and Italy.

Wiretap recordings played at the trial of the suspected murderers explain something we've been puzzling over since May 2013: namely, did Rizzuto induct non-Italians into the Montreal Mafia?



According to published reports concerning wiretap recordings released following the discovery of the bodies in Sicily, Rizzuto had apparently permitted the "making" of men not of Italian descent, breaking a cardinal rule as old as the Sicilian Cosa Nostra.
One of the bodies found (after an anonymous tipster phoned police) was that of Juan Ramon Fernandez Paz, aka "Joe Bravo." He and his associate, Fernando Pimentel, were slain in a hail of bullets, then the assassins burned the bodies in an attempt to make them disappear.
"Fernandez was born in Spain in 1956 but grew up in Canada and earned a ferocious reputation on the streets of Quebec and Ontario," Adrian Humphreys recently wrote for the National Post. "When the Montreal Mafia took control of Ontario’s underworld in 2001, Vito Rizzuto, Canada’s top mob boss, sent Fernandez as his point man. Fernandez attracted and frightened people in equal measure. He once punched his 17-year-old girlfriend so hard she died. One gangster in Toronto shook so much when meeting Fernandez in a café that a ceramic espresso cup in his hand clattered against its saucer."

Fernandez slipped back into Canada several times after getting booted out for Mafia-related crimes. But in 2012, Fernandez had had enough and sought to stake his claim in Sicily, where he partnered with Pietro Scaduto, another Canadian gangster who also had been deported from Canada. Scaduto also was one of the men who is said to have murdered Joe Bravo.
Raynald Desjardins, arrested in December 2011 for the murder
of Salvatore "The Iron Worker" Montagna.
After arriving in Palermo, Fernandez regularly met with local Cosa Nostra bosses as he went about setting up his own criminal operation (drugs). Turns out, he never had a chance of escaping law enforcement, though ultimately he was murdered before Italian police nabbed him.  "... Fernandez went from unknown man of mystery to being one of Sicily’s most monitored residents. Police secretly wiretapped his phones, his friends’ phones, his car, home and even the street outside his apartment. Video cameras monitored his hangouts and all of it was watched from a wire room in the secure ROS headquarters," as the National Post story noted.
He was caught laughing while voicing moronic phrases like: “This is the Mafia’s city. I’m in a completely Mafia city." 
Fernandez used Rizzuto's name left and right all over Sicily when it benefited him, a May 2013 National Post story noted: "Most perplexing, to both police and mobsters, was Fernandez’s insistence on being treated as a “man of honour” in Sicily. As a non-Italian, he could not be a “made” member of the Mafia according to the mob’s centuries-old tradition. But Fernandez claimed he was an exception; along with his long-time friend, Quebecer Raynald Desjardins, he claimed Vito Rizzuto had inducted him into the Mafia."
One conversation caught on tape:

Declaring that Mr. Rizzuto “makes the f–king rules” regardless of what Mafia bosses in Sicily thought, Mr. Fernandez asserted his right to sit at the table with other “men of honour.”

“Vito ‘made’ me and my compare, Raynald,” Mr. Fernandez is heard saying on a wiretap, a reference to being officially inducted into the Mafia, a right previously reserved for Italians.

“You’re not Italian,” said the surprised man he was speaking with.

“No, no. Me and my compare,” Mr. Fernandez insisted, were “made” men despite their lineage.

The revelation that Rizzuto was inducting non-Italians is pure fiction; Fernandez had talked his way to a seat at the same table.
Reportedly, his undoing was caused by his friendship with Raynald Desjardins, one of the leaders of the faction that sought to take control of Montreal's underworld from the Rizzuto Cosa Nostra family.
Fernandez only attained his mob status in Canada because of Desjardins, who was part of Rizzuto's inner circle. The French-Canadian and the Sicilian mob boss even lived near each other.

Fernandez's key role was serving as emissary to outside groups associated with the Rizzuto Cosa Nostra family; the Hells Angels motorcycle club was among the criminal affiliates.
A few short years after Rizzuto's imprisonment in the U.S. open warfare had bloomed in Montreal's streets as Desjardins and others, including Salvatore "The Iron Worker" Montagna, vied for control of Montreal's underworld. Something happened though -- relationships soured and Montagna, former acting boss of the Bonanno crime family, allegedly tried to have Desjardins executed. Desjardins survived and extracted revenge. He remains in jail for the Montagna murder.

Bravo served as emissary to the Hells Angels for the Montreal
Mafia, then run by Vito Rizzuto.

Once Rizzuto was released, he tested the loyalty of his men. As the Montreal mob boss organized his revenge against those disloyal to him as well as key members of the rival faction, Joe Bravo in Palermo expressed his “love” for Rizzuto, according to wiretaps.

But to his close friends, he sang a different tune. Desjardins was his “compare," as Humphreys wrote, "who first brought him into the upper echelons of crime..."
“I know both sides, you know? I’m stuck in the middle of these guys,” Fernandez lamented

The bodies started to pile, and Fernandez reportedly grew uncharacteristically afraid.

As noted in a recent story, How Rizzuto Got His Revenge, Mafia-Style, Rizzuto sent for various members of his family to meet him in Cuba and the Dominican Republic; those who were invited but failed to attend wound up dead.

Fernandez frequently spoke with a man identified in court as Frank Campoli, 58, a Toronto businessman who is related by marriage to the Rizzuto family. Mr. Campoli said Rizzuto was planning a trip to Cuba on Nov. 22 and asked Fernandez to come, court heard. 

“Yes, I’ll come, I’ll come,” said Fernandez. 

Fernandez then immediately called a friend in Toronto, identified in court as Rosario Staffiere, 55, owner of a limousine rental firm, and told him of his conversation. 

“He wanted to put me to the test,” Fernandez said. “He wanted to know if I still want to see him [Rizzuto], and I said ‘Yes, of course.’” 

Then, he added with a laugh: “Take a shot in the f—ing head? Of course I’m going to see him.”

But he didn't see Vito; he didn't accept the invitation, we now know.

So he died because of his "friendship" with Desjardins.

Or was it possibly because Joe Bravo knew that Vito may have heard about the bullshit the Spaniard was spreading across Palermo?

We admit this is a question only we ask.

One thing all can agree on: Fernandez certainly had every reason to be afraid.

Very afraid.