Vincenzo "Vic" Cotroni (; born Vincenzo Cotrone;Auger and Edwards The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime p.63. ; 1911 – 16 September 1984), also known as "The Egg", was an Italian Canadian crime boss and founder of the Cotroni crime family in Montreal, Quebec.
Cotroni was born in 1911 in Mammola, Calabria, Italy. In 1924, he immigrated to Montreal. In his early life, he worked as a professional wrestler under the name "Vic Vincent." By the age of 20, Cotroni had accumulated a lengthy record of minor offences, bootlegging with local bootlegger Armand Courville. In 1928, Cotroni was charged with rape against Maria Bresciano. The charge was dropped when Maria agreed to marry him in May 1928, and later had a child, Rosina.
Throughout his life, Cotroni kept a low profile. In 1974, he was subpoenaed to stand before a Quebec government commission inquiry into organized crime and was jailed for one year for contempt. The following year, Cotroni and his capodecina Paolo Violi, along with Hamilton, Ontario mobster Johnny Papalia, were convicted of extortion and sentenced to six years in prison; Cotroni's sentence was later reduced on appeal to just six months.
In the late 1970s, Cotroni transferred control of the day-to-day activities of the family to Violi, together with his brother Frank Cotroni, Nicolas DiIorio, and Luigi Greco. A power struggle between the Calabrians led by Violi and a Sicilian faction led by Nicolo Rizzuto soon broke out; in the mob war that followed the Sicilian Rizzuto crime family emerged as the preeminent crime family in Montreal by the early 1980s. Cotroni died of cancer on 16 September 1984.
Early life Cotroni was born in 1911 in Mammola, Calabria, Italy. The precise spelling of his surname remains unknown as Italian, American and Canadian records variously spell his surname as Cotroni, Controne, Coutroni, Catrino, Catroni, and Citroini. Cotroni was illiterate for his entire life and never gave a precise spelling of his surname. His tombstone gives his surname as Cotrone, but the Cotroni surname came to be the one most preferred by journalists and court officials, and this became the accepted spelling of his surname.
His family left Italy for the United States and later came to Canada. In 1924, he immigrated to Montreal, Quebec, Canada with his two sisters, Marguerita and Palmina, and his brother Giuseppe; his two other brothers, Frank and Michel, were later born in Montreal. Cotroni became a Canadian citizen in 1929.
Cotroni grew up in a house at the junction of Ontario and St. Timotheé streets in Le Plateau-Mont-Royal (now in Montreal), a poor neighbourhood that more affluent Italian immigrants avoided because of its high crime rate.Auger and Edwards The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime p.62. His father, Nicodemo, was a carpenter whose average weekly income was $35.
By 1924, Montreal had been a key centre in the business of bootlegging, forming a crucial link in the smuggling network running south from Montreal to New York City and the other cities of the American Northeast. Quebec was the only province in Canada that did not ban alcohol, and for much of the 1920s Quebec was the only place north of the Rio Grande where it was possible to legally drink alcohol. Members of the Cotroni family had moved to Montreal to take part in bootlegging and were repeatedly arrested during the Prohibition era for smuggling alcohol into the United States.
Rather than attend school, Vic Cotroni worked briefly as a carpenter and then as a professional wrestler under the name "Vic Vincent."Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, pp. 245La filière canadienne : Le grand classique de l'histoire du crime au Québec. Jean-Pierre Charbonneau p. 41 By the age of 20, Cotroni had accumulated a lengthy record of minor offences, including theft, possession of counterfeit money, and assault and battery,La filière canadienne, p. 42 as well as bootlegging with local bootlegger Armand Courville.
Criminal career Wrestler and hoodlum Montreal was notorious during the interwar period as one of the most corrupt cities in the world and for being a global centre of drug smuggling and prostitution. French police reports from the 1930s listed Montreal as the world's third most "depraved" city, after only Port Said and Marseille. In 1936, the mayor of Montreal, Adhémar Raynault, estimated that Montreal's vice industry was worth $200 million per annum, making the vice business one of Montreal's largest industries.
Cotroni flourished as a gangster in this climate. As an young man, Cotroni spent much of his time working as a guard and a bouncer in various gambling houses and bars, becoming involved in organized crime in the late 1920s. Courville served as a mentor to Cotroni, teaching him professional wrestling .
In 1928, Cotroni was charged with rape against Maria Bresciano, but the charge was dropped when Maria agreed to marry him in May 1928, and later had a child, Rosina. As an young man, Cotroni was deeply influenced by the 'ndranghetista subculture of his native Calabria, whose ethos stressed an ultra-aggressive, almost mindlessly macho persona for 'ndranghetisti, who proved their virility, strength and dominance over men through violence, most notably by castrating rival men. 'Ndranghetisti were expected to be just as sexually aggressive as physically aggressive and could never accept a refusal of sexual advances, which would question his sense of machismo. The Italian sociologist Pino Arlacchi wrote about the 'ndranghetista subculture, "Except among relatives, the two sexes represented qualities in constant antagonism: the uomo di rispetto ("man worthy of respect") had the task of demonstrating his virility at every opportunity, even if this meant committing violence against women or seizing them by force." Peter Edwards, the crime correspondent of The Toronto Star, wrote that Cotroni was almost certainly guilty of raping Maria Bresciano, who had rejected his offer of marriage, which he took as a humiliation that questioned his sense of machismo, which in turn required an act of extreme violence to prove his virility and strength as a man.
Likewise, Edwards wrote that it was the same need to dominate others that led Cotroni to work as a professional wrestler under the ring name of Vic Vincent, as he wanted to prove his machismo by demonstrating his strength and fierceness as a brawler who apparently won victories over other men in front of thousands of people. The fact that the matches were staged in the pseudo-sport of professional wrestling was not widely known in the 1930s, and many believed that the wrestling matches were authentic bouts.
In 1938, Cotroni retired from professional wrestling, but he remained fond of his Vic Vincent persona as he continued to use Vic Vincent as an alias as late as the 1960s. Cotroni was uncle by marriage to professional wrestler Dino Bravo, believed by authorities to be involved in his organization for some time.
Cotroni was involved in the 1930s in "baseball bat elections", where he served as "muscle" for the Quebec Liberal Party and the Union Nationale, beating up supporters of rival parties and stuffing ballot boxes. As a result, the Cotroni family enjoyed the protection of Quebec politicians for decades afterwards, while Cotroni and Courville acquired reputations that were to last for decades.
As the 1930s went on, Cotroni became increasingly prosperous, as his taste in clothes became more and more expensive. As Cotroni aged and he became the uomo di rispetto he always aspired to be, he became more quiet, modest and introspective as he sought to avoid the limelight. However, though Cotroni presented himself as an illiterate pepperoni salesman to pizzerias, he still maintained the reputation of being a terrifying figure capable of extreme violence. Cotroni's unofficial title of Le Parrain de Montreal ("the Godfather of Montreal") guaranteed him the respect that he felt was due to him.
In 1940, Cotroni escaped internment despite being born in Italy. During the interwar period, i Figli d'Italia ("the Sons of Italy"), a group linked to the Grand Fascist Party, attempted to mobilize support for the Fascist regime in Montreal's Italian Canadian community. Unlike the other provinces, where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) interned all Italian immigrants, only those who belonged to the Sons of Italy group were interned in Quebec. As Cotroni had never belonged to the Sons of Italy group, he was allowed to remain at liberty.
In 1941, Cotroni and Courville bought a bar and nightclub, "Au Faisan Doré" and the "Café Royal". Au Faisan Doré was the most popular nightclub in Montreal between the 1940s and 1960s, due to a charismatic emcee, Jacques Normand, alongside the galaxy of European stars who performed shows, with the most popular being Charles Aznavour, Tino Rossi, Charles Trenet and Luis Mariano. Au Faisan Doré was moreover the nightclub where numerous future French Canadian stars such as Roger Baulu, Raymond Lévesque, Denise Filiatrault, Fernand Gignac and Monique Leyrac began their careers. Though Courville and Cotroni both had thuggish reputations, the ownership of Au Faisan Doré and their sponsorship of la chanson française gave them the reputation of promoters of culture.
Cotroni had a gangster, Harry Ship, rent an office next to Au Faisan Doré, which was a 24-hour center for gambling. Ship's office was equipped with ticker-tape machines reporting the results of sports events and horse races while bookies took bets from anyone willing to phone in.
Decina boss
In 1953, Carmine "Lilo" Galante, an influential member of the New York City-based Bonanno crime family, arrived in Montreal and worked with Cotroni. Galante planned to make Montreal a pivotal location in the importation of heroin from overseas for distribution in New York City and across the United States in the French Connection. Police also estimated that Galante was collecting gambling profits in Montreal worth about $50 million per year.
Cotroni was close to Galante, with whom he was constantly seen. Edwards wrote that in the early 1950s Cotroni "...was a significant but not a dominant force in the Montreal underworld and an éminence grise of the arts scene who was credited with launching the careers of several Québécoise folk singers." When the owner of a nightclub, Solomon "Solly" Schnapp, refused to allow prostitutes working for Galante in his nightclub, Cotroni and his associates destroyed Schnapp's club with sledgehammers and baseball bats, causing $30,000 in damage.
Cotroni's association with Galante elevated his importance in the underworld and gave him the connections with New York that he always wanted. Galante formally established the Bonanno family decina in Montreal and made Cotroni his chief lieutenant.
Montreal became a key smuggling point in the French Connection smuggling ring. Opium grown in the "Golden Crescent" nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran was smuggled via Turkey to Marseille, where the gangsters of le Milieu converted the opium into heroin. From Marseille, the heroin was smuggled into North America with Montreal being one of the chief entry points. Cotroni's nightclub, Au Faisan Doré, was listed as the mailing address for Antonio D'Agostino, a French Corsican gangster known as one of France's most powerful heroin smugglers.
In 1954, Cotroni tried to prevent the election of the reformist candidate, Jean Drapeau, as Mayor of Montreal, using violence and stuffed election boxes full of false ballots. Drapeau still won the election and one of his first acts was to appoint an incorruptible policeman Pacifique Roy "Pax" Plante as the police chief of Montreal. Plante in return pressured the federal government to deport Galante, as he noted that Galante had no official source of income or a job.