Frank Cotroni (born Francesco Cotrone; ; 1931 – 17 August 2004) was an Italian-Canadian crime boss of the Cotroni crime family in Montreal, Quebec.
Cotroni was born in 1931, in Montreal. His family, including his brother Vincenzo, had immigrated to Montreal in 1924, from Mammola, Calabria, Italy. His brother founded and headed the Cotroni crime family. Cotroni's principle illicit businesses were drug trafficking and labor racketeering, while he also worked at various times as a restaurateur, boxing promoter, owner of strip clubs in both Montreal and Toronto, ceramic manufacturer, and owner of a vending machine company. Cotroni had connections with the Bonanno crime family, and in 1975, was convicted in the United States of smuggling cocaine and sentenced to 15 years in prison. In prison, Cotroni met fellow inmate French-Canadian Réal Simard, and Simard would become Frank's driver and eventual hitman upon their release in 1979.
During the violent Mafia war with the Sicilian Rizzuto crime family in Montreal, Paolo Violi (who was acting capo for Vic Cotroni) and his brothers were murdered along with others through the mid-1970s to the early 1980s until the war ceased. The Calabrian faction continued to operate with Frank as acting boss for his ill brother after the early 1980s. In the early 1980s, Cotroni ordered Simard to commit several murders. In 1983, Simard and associate Richard Clément killed Mario Héroux, but unknowingly only severely wounded Robert Hétu, in their Toronto hotel room after they conspired to kill Clément. Hétu testified against Simard and Simard was arrested and convicted, until he became an informant against Frank Cotroni and the family; this resulted in an eight-year sentence for manslaughter against Frank, his son Francesco, and two associates in 1987. In 1989, Cotroni lost his court fight against extradition on narcotics charges in Connecticut that dated back to 1983, on the condition that he serve his time in Canada. In 1997, he was again imprisoned on narcotics violations, and released from prison in 2002 after serving four years of a seven-year sentence. In the final two years of Frank's life, he released a cookbook, Cuisine des souvenirs et recettes (Kitchen of Memories and Recipes), published by a subsidiary of Quebecor Media. Cotroni died of brain cancer on 17 August 2004.
Early life Cotroni was born in Montreal in 1931. His oldest brother, Vincenzo, was 20 years older, born in 1911 in Mammola, Calabria, Italy, and immigrated to Montreal in 1924 with his two sisters, Marguerita and Palmina, and his brother Giuseppe; his other brother, Michel, was later born in Montreal like Frank.Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, pp. 245 Within Montreal, Cotroni was known to French-Canadians as Le Gros ("the Big Guy") and to Italo-Canadians as Il Cice (an Italian phrase for the soft center of a hard nut).Auger and Edwards The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime p.61. Cotroni was fluently trilingual, speaking Italian, French and English.Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada p.258 Unlike his older brother Vic who always spoke his French with a strong Italian accent, Frank spoke joual (Quebec French) like a native speaker. Cotroni was described as being more comfortable speaking French than Italian. Likewise, Frank married into a French-Canadian family and regarded himself as a Quebecois.
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. His older brother, Vincenzo, had become involved in organized crime in the late 1920s, and in the 1930s was involved 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.Auger and Edwards The Encyclopedia of Canadian Organized Crime p.63. As a result of Vincenzo's work in "baseball bat elections", the Cotroni family enjoyed the protection of Quebec politicians for decades afterward. Between 1953 and 1957, New York mobster Carmine Galante lived in Montreal, and during his time in Canada, Galante forged an alliance between the Bonanno family of New York and the Cotroni family of Montreal that cemented the Cotroni family as the dominant organized crime group in Montreal.
Criminal career
In 1950, Cotroni was convicted of the possession of stolen goods, serving a short sentence on the account of his age.O' Connor Montreal's Irish Mafia p.24 On 24 July 1956, he was arrested for taking part in a wild street brawl that left several men injured. Cotroni was first arrested as an adult in September 1960 for the possession of a deadly weapon, being found carrying a handgun. While on bail, in November 1960, Cotroni led 30 of his men into smashing up the Chez Parée Cabaret, for which he was fined $200.O' Connor Montreal's Irish Mafia p.24-25 On 4 November 1960, Cotroni and his men marched into the Chez Parée and smashed everything with baseball bats that caused $30,000 in damages. Cotroni was heard to shout in French, "They will pay me, even if I have to wait until I die". Cotroni and his men were arrested leaving the Chez Parée. A group of students from McGill University were being held in the Montreal jail following allegations of drunken behavior and throwing a beer bottle at a police officer. Cotroni and his men were placed into the same jail cell and the students were impressed with Cotroni's kindness as he gave his expensive fur coat to a student who had no coat. The students were later shocked to learn that the same man who behaved in a kindly fashion to them was the same man who destroyed the Chez Parée earlier that night.
On 1 July 1966, he rented a house at 5146 Trans-Island Street, which was directly opposite a branch of the Decarie Boulevard City and District Savings Bank.O' Connor Montreal's Irish Mafia p.80-81 A group of men consisting of Paul Désormier Sr.; his three sons, Michel, Paul Jr. and Pierre; and Joe Horvath of the West End Gang started to dig a tunnel from the basement of the house that Cotroni rented to the vault of the bank across the street.O'Connor Montreal's Irish Mafia p.81 On 31 March 1967, the five men were arrested in their makeshift tunnel as they were preparing to break into the bank vault. Shortly afterward, Cotroni was charged with conspiracy to commit robbery under the grounds that he must had known that a tunnel was being dug from the house he rented to the vault of the Decarie Boulevard City and District Savings Bank. However, Cotroni's associates refused plea bargains offered by the Crown for lesser sentences in exchange for naming him as the mastermind behind the robbery attempt, leading to Cotroni's acquittal at his trial in 1971.
In the late 1960s, the Cotronis had violent feuds with French-Canadian mobster Richard Blass, with Cotroni associate Joe Di Maulo doing much of the enforcing.Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada, pp. 270 On 7 May 1968, Blass and Robert Allard attempted an ambush of Frank outside his home; two of his bodyguards were killed, but Frank escaped.
Cotroni's principle illicit businesses were drug trafficking and labour racketeering, while he also worked at various times as a restaurateur; boxing promoter; owner of strip clubs in both Montreal and Toronto; ceramic manufacturer; and the owner of a vending machine company. Cotroni had links with known drug traffickers in New York, Cali, Lima, and Miami. Cotroni also imported hashish from Lebanon, and was so well connected in that country that in 1975 the police discovered that he had called President Suleiman Frangieh several times.Schneider, Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada p.534. In 1969 and 1970, Cotroni was seen by the police talking several times with Tommaso Buscetta of the Sicilian Mafia, which was believed to marked the beginning of his career smuggling heroin. Besides smuggling heroin, Cotroni was also involved in human trafficking, smuggling in illegal immigrants from the Mezzogiorno (the south of Italy). The illegal immigrants consisted of two classes of people. The first group were criminals unable to enter Canada because of their records, who were brought over to continue their gangster activities. The second group were brought over as ultra-cheap menial labor to work in such occupations such as construction workers, garbagemen or dishwashers in restaurants. The ultimate destination for both groups tended to be the United States with Canada just a stopping point along their journey.
In 1970, Cotroni along with his brother Vic attended a crime summit in Acapulco to meet with gangsters from Canada, the United States, France, and Mexico to discuss plans to take over the soon-to-be-legalized casino industry in Quebec. The chairman of the Acapulco summit was Meyer Lansky who represented "the Commission" of New York. The plans turned out to be moot when Robert Bourassa reverted on legalization of casinos in response to the October crisis of 1970. The Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) in its manifesto of 8 October 1970 that was read out on national television and radio following the kidnapping of the British trade commissioner James Cross accused Bourassa of being the puppet of "the election riggers Simard–Cotroni", which was clearly a reference to the support offered by the Cotroni family to the Parti libéral du Quebec.
On 18 February 1971, with his lawyer Sidney Leithman at his side, Cotroni called a press conference to discuss his arrest in Mexico the previous month. This was the first press conference in Canada ever called by a Mafia leader, which reflected Cotroni's personality, as he was more "audacious" and less bound by the traditional rules of the Mafia as Cotroni enjoyed media attention in a way that his brothers did not. Cotroni made a point of stressing that his arrest in Acapulco for the possession of stolen jewelry was a case of mistaken identity. Cotroni did not mention that he was in Mexico to discuss setting up a pipeline for smuggling heroin into the United States and Canada. The scholar Steven Schneider noted that Cotroni's "reckless abandon" led to him being arrested more times than his brothers Vic and Pep had been combined.
In 1972, Cotroni was charged with extortion. A Greek immigrant, Dionysus Chionis, testified that three men had entered his restaurant and told him he would have to pay $250 per week to Cotroni because otherwise, "...they would break everything and demolish the restaurant...They said they were killers and if I didn't pay they would cut off my head with a knife". After making three payments, Chionis was told he had to sign over half of his restaurant to Cotroni in exchange for being allowed to continue to live. On the second day of the trial, Chionis, who was notably nervous on the stand retracted his previous day's testimony as he maintained he could not remember if he was the victim of extortion or not. The judge dismissed the charges and congratulated Cotroni on "two victories on the same day". At the same time, Cotroni came into conflict with the Dubois brothers. After Cotroni's brother-in-law, Richard Desormiers, had threatened to kill a Dubois gang member inside a Dubois-owned nightclub, Claude Dubois contacted Cotroni to tell him that Desormiers had "better stop horsing around or somebody will fix his clock". Desormiers, whose sister Pauline was married to Cotroni, dismissed the threat. On 22 July 1973, Desormiers, was gunned down in a bar.