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Light bulb saves day for cop posing as electrician
Ex-undercover officer honoured in Italy; Wiretap information's importance became clear only after Menard's trip to Sicily in the autumn Soon after Robert Menard moved into an apartment above Paolo Violi's ice cream parlour in 1970, so did the Montreal police. They sneaked into the Montreal Mafia kingpin's business at night, placing listening devices in the gelateria, Violi's office and the adjacent Reggio Bar - even bugging the bathroom. "We wiretapped everything," Menard said, laughing. "So no matter if they were on the phone or they were having a conversation ... we could hear it and record it. That was a first." The wiretapped information went upstairs to Menard's apartment and was transmitted to the police intelligence section, where officers who spoke Italian translated the conversations. Everything that was said for the next six years was registered, recorded and handed over to the Quebec Police Commission inquiry into organized crime, Menard said. "They spoke freely about the inner workings of the Mafia." Violi and Vic Cotroni, the man he succeeded as Mafia godfather in Montreal - "and everyone else" - made calls to Calabria, Sicily, New York and Miami, Menard said. The damaging revelations from the wiretapping made Violi a liability to the mob. In 1978, he was killed by masked gunmen. Menard found out how important the information they caught on wiretap was only when he travelled to Sicily this fall. He was honoured by the mayor of Agrigento at an international conference on the Mafia. "What the Montreal police learned was the new structure of the Cosa Nostra in Sicily," said author Antonio Nicaso, who also attended the conference and has written several books about the Mafia. Nicaso said the information from the Reggio Bar recordings, which was included in court documents at the Mafia megatrial in Sicily in the 1980s, was key evidence in proving the existence of the Cosa Nostra. Menard rented the apartment on Jean Talon St. for six years, posing as Robert Wilson, an electrician from Toronto. He maintained an exhausting pace, getting up in his family home in St. Eustache at 4 in the morning to drive to the apartment. From there, he would head for work about 8 a.m., carrying a lunchbox and electrician's tools. He would return home to his family once Violi's business closed at night. "It was a hell of a life - hard on my family and sometimes it was hard on me," Menard recalled. "I'd be tired." Ezio Turrin, a retired Montreal police officer who listened to the wiretapped conversations and translated them, said Menard didn't tell Violi too much about himself. "He told him enough to calm Violi's suspicions," Turrin said. "But he kept everything kind of general and he was good at it. "He did a very good job at what he was doing. ... I wouldn't have had the guts to do it." Menard is convinced Violi tested him early on by asking his electrician tenant to fix a broken light. Menard called his brother, an electrician, in a panic. He followed his instructions the next day, but couldn't get the light to work. "They're all standing there. And I can see Paolo with his brown eyes staring at me - nobody is saying a word and I am sweating bullets," Menard said. Finally, he put in another bulb and the light came on. "My guardian angel came through after all," Menard said, smiling. |