When Hitting The Head Saves Your Life: How Montreal Mafia Leader Marco Pizzi Survived Cousin’s 2014 Slaying

December 6, 2024 — Ten years ago this week, Montreal mob shot caller Marco (East Side Marco) Pizzi avoided death in an audacious mafia hit carried out in a local restaurant during the lunch rush on the afternoon of December 1, 2014 because of a bathroom break. His older cousin and fellow Rizzuto crime family lieutenant, Antonino (Tony Boots) Callocchia, wasn’t so fortunate. These days, Pizzi, 55, is a mafia capo and street boss, responsible for rackets on Montreal’s East Side.

Tapping its top sources and gaining access to recently-unsealed court filings and police reports, the JournaldeMontreal broke the news of Pizzi’s brush with death earlier this week:

Fifty-three year old “Tony Boots” Callocchia, a well-known drug trafficker and hit man in the Rizzuto clan, was gunned down at his table in the middle of a lunch with then-skipper-to-be “East Side Marco” Pizzi at the Bistro X0+ gastropub in the seconds after Pizzi left the dining room to relieve himself in a nearby rest room. Pizzi called 911 when he heard gun shots, ran back to his table and found Callocchia sprawled lifeless on the ground. Just a year prior, Callocchia was shot twice exiting his car in the parking lot of The Youlios restaurant in the northern suburb of Laval on February 1, 2013.

Callocchia’s killers were mobster Sal Scoppa and street-gang boss Arsene (BM) Mompoint of the Unit 44 crew, according to JournaldeMontreal’s reporting. Both Scoppa and Mompoint themselves were victims of gangland slayings in the coming years. Scoppa and Callocchia allegedly acted as the triggermen in the 2012 assassination of Montreal mafia underboss Giuseppe (Smiling Joe) DiMaulo.

For most of the 2000s and first couple years of the 2010s, old-school DiMaulo was the No. 1 word on the street when it came to the Montreal mafia. Briefly serving as acting boss of the Rizzuto mob through a bumpy transition phase (2013-2014), Scoppa turned against the Rizzutos and unsuccessfully attempted to seize control of the Montreal mafia before his own assassination which happened inside a hotel during a wedding he was attending in Laval.

“Smiling Joe” DiMaulo’s murder occurred less than three weeks removed from legendary Canadian mob Godfather Vito Rizzuto returning home to Quebec after almost a decade away in prison, his mafia empire in shambles due to an insurgence that 70-year old Smiling Joe became a part of in the wake of Rizzuto’s incarceration. Rizzuto was felled by an aggressive form of cancer, dying in December 2013, giving the reins of his crime family to Sal Scoppa.

Rizzuto’s son and mob-don successor, Leonardo (Leo the Lawyer) Rizzuto, escaped assassination on March 15, 2023 driving on a Laval expressway, igniting the Montreal mafia’s current war against the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. The same hit squad that failed to kill the younger Rizzuto in ’23, shot at and missed East Side Marco behind the wheel of his Mercedes in 2016 around the time, “Leo the Lawyer,” 54, took power in the historic Montreal mob organization.

Per the court filings obtained by the JournaldeMontreal, Rizzuto’s underboss Stefano (Little Sauce) Sollecito ordered the killing of Tony Callocchia. The SQ considers Sollecito the No. 1 suspect in the “BM” Mompoint murder, ordering Mompoint’s slaying in the summer of 2021, almost a decade following tapping him and Scoppa for the Smiling Joe DiMaulo execution, because he believed Scoppa and Mompoint were trying to kill him and Rizzuto in Scoppa’s takeover effort. Solleicto, 57, has been battling health issues the past few years, resulting in him and Rizzuto delegating routine shot-calling authority outside the official organization’s administration.

Pizzi is one of Leonardo Rizzuto’s most trusted captains right now and Rizzuto tapped him to look after day-to-day affairs for the crime family upon street boss Davide (Baldy) Barberio encountering legal problems in Ontario, according to exclusive GR sourcing. Barberio, 45, is Pizzi’s protege and former driver and bodyguard. Before becoming street boss, Barberio was the go-between for the Rizzuto mob and the Hells Angels, per court records and SQ intelligence.