Joe Di Maulo's luck finally runs out: Top Mafioso shot dead

Joe Di Maulo as he might've
looked in his last moments.

   Longtime Mafioso Joe Di Maulo, 72 -- popped twice in the dome Sunday Nov. 4, 2012 at 9:30 p.m. at his home in Blainville --had  lived a charmed life until yesterday.
   The homely Mafioso was long considered second-in-command in the Rizzuto clan and yet managed to avoid major legal trouble for his entire life in spite of being involved in some seriously punishable offenses.
   One source told me that among the many businesses he owned was a bar on St. Lawrence, on the east side (across from the old Cafe Shed - Di Salvio's building). In the early '90s weapons and briefcases full of drugs would routinely pass through the bar. The booze was not legit but he didn't get nailed because he made the cops happy.
   Di Maulo and his older brother got onto the front lines of the local mob in the late sixties by fighting in a streetwar against the loose cannon Richard "The Cat" Blass and his one-man anti-Mafia spree.
   Di Maulo became publicly known in 1971 after he and two others killed a guy in a bar at 94 Ste.Catherine E. The trio slashed the guy's throat because the man's friend had just shot two people in the bar and gotten away. The three were originally convicted but key witness Paulette Gingras, 19, the girlfriend of the dead man, changed her testimony entirely, leading the three to be released.
   By this time Di Maulo had already married Raynald Desjardins' sister. The two of them would rise in the ranks apace, reaching the apex of Mafioso glory. Both of them made it to near the top in spite of neither being Sicillian.
   Di Maulo, unlike the Rizzutos and other local Mafia, was not Sicilian. The ruling Rizzuto clan was, of course, Sicillian, having wiped out the Calabrian Cotroni-backed Violi faction years earlier.
   Di Maulo was from a village of 500 called Montorio in the province of Campobasso. But he was aligned with the Calabrian clique, having earned his stripes under Cotroni.
   Di Maulo jumped to the frontrunning Sicilian Rizzuto clan when he felt the winds of change were blowing. He made the switch just in time to prosper.
   In 1993 Di Maulo was among a bunch of Mafia members accused of to trying to score a $450 million commission to help liquidate $3 billion of gold taken stolen by the Philippine government and stored in vaults in Hong Kong and Zurich. The gold disappeared from dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ palace when he was overthrown in 1986.
   By the mid-90s Di Maulo was said to be the number two man in the local Mafia. He spent two days in jail in August 1995 on charges of trying to bribe an RCMP officer with $100,000 in exchange for destroying evidence against his older brother Jimmy, a multi-millionaire who had been imprisoned for 12 years after confessing to laundering $10 million over four years. The bust was the result of a money-exchange sting the cops set up at Peel and de Maisonneuve in 1994. Over 50 people were busted in that deal.
   Once again, the bribery charges didn't stick. Joe Di Maulo was released in August of 1995 for lack of evidence.
   He was also acquitted of a drunk driving charge after being pulled over on the Main on September 22, 1998. He had refused to take a breathalyzer but he was acquitted three years later.  (You might want to get the name of this guy's lawyers, they seem to be pretty good! - Chimples)

  Alleged Montreal Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto recently returned to town after being released from prison.    

  Some will connect the dots. The crime could either be interpreted as part of the ongoing attack against the Rizzuto clan, or perhaps some internal housecleaning within the Rizzutos for possible past transgressions.
   There is some consensus that he sided with Sal Montagna's anti-Rizzuto uprising (along with Arcuri and Desjardins) but others suggested that he remained loyal. All four would-be rebels are out of the picture now.