Jos Di Maulo
   Jos Di Maulo  was born in the early 1940s  and rose to the  top  of Montreal's  Italian  Mafia  with  unprecedent  speed. He first  came  to police attention in September 1960 when he was  arrested  with Frank Cotroni and Michel "The Penguin" Di Paolo in possession of restricted firearms.

     He was involved  in the organization's battle with French-Canadian gangster Richard "Le Chat" Blass and his small band of followers. One day in October 1968, Di Maulo and Claude Faber, Francesco "The Big Guy" Cotroni's  brother-in-law, opened fire on Blass as he  and Claude Ménard drove into  a Saint-Michel garage. Blass was shot once  in the back of  the head and twice in the  back. Blass survived but refused to identify his attackers to police.

     On March 12, 1971, at  the age of 28, Di Maulo was charged in a
Montreal Mafia
triple homicide  at the popular  night club he  owned, La Casa Loma. André Vaillancourt, the  club's director of  personnel, Jacques Verrier, and Jean-Claude Rioux were  murdered  and police  arrested Di Maulo, Julio Ciamarro, Joseph Tozzi, and Jean-Marc Morin in connection with the brutal killings.

     In November 1971, after a twelve week trail, the three accused were found guilty of first-degree murder. The men  appealed the  jury's decision  and, on February 1, 1973, Di Maulo, Ciamarro, and Tozzi were acquitted. In a seperate trail, Jean-Marc Morin wass also cleared of the murders.

     Jos Di Maulo was moving up in the organization. On November 11, 1973, he and his brother-in-law Raynald Desjardins  accompanied Paolo Violi  to New York City to participate  in the election of Phil Rastelli as the new boss of the Bonanno Crime Family.

     With  Frank Cotroni behind bars in Lewisburg  in the late seventies for drug trafficking, tensions arose between Di Maulo and Cotroni's brother-in-law Claude Faber concerning the control of  Local 31 of The  Hotel and Restaurant Workers' Union situated in downtown Montreal. Cotroni eventually settled the quarrel, from prison, through numerous telephone calls with his principal lieutenants.

     The Montreal  newspaper
La Presse reported in 1993 that  Di Maulo and Vito Rizzuto, the leader of the family, were trying to liquidate $3 billion worth of  gold belonging to the  late Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who died in 1989.

     Jos Di Maulo was  arrested along  with Valentino Morielli, Fernando De Francesco, Richardo Di Massimo, and  Micheline  Kemp-Di  Maulo on  August 17, 1995 on  charges of offering  an  RCMP officer $100,000 to destroy evidence  against Jos' brother, Vincenzo, who faced  a lengthy sentence stemming from a cocaine-smuggling and money-laundering operation.

     But the RCMP was forced to released Di Maulo  and Morielli for lack of evidence. The Montreal mobster  mocked  law enforcement when  he  told reporters "Two (days) in jail, in  a 10 foot by 40 foot cell, it wasn't pleasant but I love to follow the law."

     Police pulled over Di Maulo as he drove down Montreal's St. Lawrence Boulevard on September 22, 1998. The  agents suspected the  automobile was stolen (it wasn't) and, as they questioned him, smelled  alcohol on his breath. But Di Maulo refused to take  a breathalizer and he was charged with driving  while under the influence. Judge Pierre Gaston acquitted Di Maulo of the charge on in April 2001.
    
     Jos Di Maulo continues to be  one of the top mafioso in the Montreal underworld and is the head of  the organization's Calabrian faction. He maintains good relations with the Sicilian faction and has acquired almost a dozen businesses in downtown Montreal and Saint-Leonard.