A year and a half after Frédérick Silva began collaborating with the police, the revelations of this former hitman in Montreal organized crime, very active for several years, resulted in a first major operation this week.
Wednesday and Thursday morning, investigators from Major Crimes and the Organized Crime Division of the City of Montreal Police Department, and their colleagues from Crimes Against the Person of the Sûreté du Québec, carried out a dozen searches in Laval, Rosemère, Mirabel, Notre-Dame-de-l’Île-Perrot, Vaudreuil-Dorion and in the Anjou, Lachine and Montréal-Nord boroughs, in Montreal, have just announced these two police forces in a press release.
The police announcement indicates that the aim of the operation is to elucidate several murders committed between the mid-1990s and today, within organized crime, some of which resulted in mistaken identity. .
The police do not specify that the searches carried out in recent days result from information provided by Frédérick Silva over the past 18 months, but everything indicates that this is the first major phase of this major joint investigation that the Montreal criminal community fears. since a long time.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE SPVM
Frederick Silva
Formerly a hitman in the employ of the Sicilian clan of the Montreal mafia and a contractor for other factions of organized crime, Frédérick Silva turned his jacket in the summer of 2022, after being found guilty of the murders of three people, including two linked to organized crime, committed in 2018.
According to our information, his revelations made to investigators from the two police forces could help to elucidate around sixty murders and attempted murders.
Important players targeted
According to our information, among the people visited by the police on Wednesday and Thursday, we find Pietro D’Adamo and Vito Salvaggio, whom the police consider to be two important players in the mafia, and the gang leader Jean-Philippe Célestin.
The latter was the right arm of Gregory Woolley, murdered in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu on November 17, and was present at his burial at the end of last week.
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, LA PRESSE ARCHIVE
On the far right, Jean-Philippe Célestin, last week, at the Loreto Funeral Complex, where the remains of Gregory Woolley were on display.
Célestin has several criminal histories. In 2017, he was sentenced to 70 months in prison for gangsterism, conspiracy, possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking, cocaine trafficking and money trafficking conspiracy.
Ally of the Sicilian clan of the Montreal mafia, Pietro D’Adamo was sentenced to eight years in prison following a plot to import 1,300 kilograms of cocaine uncovered during the Colisée investigation, by which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police decapitated the Rizzuto clan in 2006.
PHOTO ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Pietro D’Adamo
As for Vito Salvaggio, he is considered by the police as one of the decision-makers of the Sicilian clan of the Montreal mafia.
In the early 2000s, as part of an investigation called Océan, he was observed on two occasions going to a money cache controlled by the Hells Angels on rue Beaubien, where he allegedly delivered sums totaling 2, 5 millions. He was later sentenced to four years for drug importation and trafficking.
PHOTO ARCHIVES THE PRESS
Vito Salvaggio photographed by the police during the Magot-Mastiff investigation which took place between 2013 and 2015.
Last Friday, D’Adamo and Salvaggio were also observed by police at the Loreto Funeral Complex, where the remains of Gregory Woolley were on display.
Killed by mistake
This week’s searches are carried out as part of several murder investigations, three of which constitute mistaken identity, the police emphasize in their press release.
The first was the murder of Domenico Facchini, shot dead in a café on Boulevard Provencher, Domenica-In, on December 21, 2012. Already at the time, La Presse indicated that the attack probably targeted Giuseppe De Vito, a chef of a rebel clan that participated in an attempted coup against the Rizzutos between 2009 and 2011. De Vito – who died of cyanide poisoning in the penitentiary the following year – frequented this place, as did his associate, Alessandro Sucapane.
The second murder is that of Lida Phon, 32, killed in her car as she entered the garage of her Laval residence in August 2012. Mme Phon was the partner of Ziad Ziade, an individual that police link to Lebanese organized crime and who, according to investigators, was the person targeted that evening.
Finally, the 3e murder for which the victim was allegedly killed by mistake is that of Nicolas Lavoie-Cloutier, an 18-year-old young man, shot dead in the street, in Terrebonne, in June 2018.
Even at the time, his parents said they did not believe their son was the person who was targeted.
Last July, SPVM investigators searched the house of the co-leader of the Sicilian clan, Stefano Sollecito, in Blainville, as part of this major investigation called Alliance and built around the revelations of Frédérick Silva.
In September, still as part of this joint investigation, it was the turn of SQ investigators to conduct research in Carillon Bay in Saint-André-d’Argenteuil, in the Laurentians, to try to find the remains of Jean Raymond Claude, a former gang member who disappeared in 2015.
But this week’s operation is much more important and suggests other strikes to come.
With the collaboration of Mayssa Ferah, The Press
To contact Daniel Renaud, call 514 285-7000, ext. 4918, write to [email protected] or write to the postal address of The Press.