The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto
by Wiley

	The Sixth Family: The Collapse of the New York Mafia and the Rise of Vito Rizzuto
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Book Description

 From <i>The Sixth Family</i>, according to witness testimony: <p> <b><i>BROOKLYN, MAY 5, 1981</i></b> <p> "We were in the closet. We all had our weapons loaded. We sat there and waited for the doorbell to ring," said Salvatore Vitale, a slender New York mobster known as Good-Looking Sal. "We left the door open a smidge to look out." <p> The ringing of the bell at the private social club’s entrance signaled the arrival of the first of the invited guests. Vito Rizzuto crouched low, peeking out from his vantage point. Through the swelling crowd and loud chatter from tough men all accustomed to having their say, Vito kept his eyes on one man, Gerlando Sciascia, a fellow Sicilian who was a long-time Rizzuto family friend. <p> Breathing deeply beneath his mask, Vito watched for the secret signal that would draw him from the closet, a signal that came when Sciascia slowly ran the fingers of his lean, right hand through the silver hair on the side of his head. That simple act of preening brought mayhem to the social club and radically changed the balance of power. <p> "Don’t anybody move. This is a holdup," Vito said as he confronted the roomful of powerful mobsters, his words muffled by a woolen ski mask pulled down over his long, thin face. Despite those words, this was not about robbery. Nothing would be taken but three lives and the rights to an underworld throne.

Reader Reviews

This is a well written and brilliant book which comes from two accomplished, experienced journalists who are experts on the global history of organized crime and the Mafia. The amount of research and analysis that has gone into this book is amazing and it fully enjoys a 5 star review. The book is very detailed and can be dense at times to wade through the facts and absorb the international and national ramifications of this book. Hang in there and read it carefully, l sometimes read some chapters two or three times to grasp fully the international links of Mafia clans based in North America, South America and Europe.

A branch of the Sicilian mafia has planted cells in the North and South America that have been active since the 1940's and have slowly grown into powerful criminal cartels with links all over the world. In particular Canada which is the home of the Sixth Family with clever and powerful Vito Rizzutto as first among equals. Drugs are the main game for the Sixth Family, but according to this book they are also active in counterfeiting, stock fraud and was even involved in a bizarre search for some lost gold ingots in the Philippines that used to belong to ex President Marcos, l would not even be surprised if they even made a buck out of this book too.

The Bonanno mafia family from New York sent its feared enforcer Carmine Galante to Montreal in the 1950's to setup an offshoot of its own in that city. Galante succeeded so well that for years tribute flowed from Montreal to New York and that city was used to traffic drugs into the USA from the French connection and later Sicily. The Sixth Family bloomed in Montreal from the 1950's onward and gradually became the Montreal crime power in its own right as the New York influence dwindled away to nothing. This book also contains much information about the Bonanno crime family and its operations and how it tried to handle an influx of Sicilian born wise guys into its midst from the 1970's. Eventually there was much suspicion on both sides and some wiseguys ended up whacked. This is a great read for the true crime history buff