MONTREAL — A coroner’s report into the death of Giuseppe De Vito, a drug trafficker with Mafia ties found dead in a federal penitentiary this year, has confirmed he died by cyanide poisoning.



De Vito’s body was discovered in his cell at the Donnacona Institution, a maximum-security penitentiary near Quebec City, on July 8. He was serving a lengthy sentence for his role in a plot to smuggle more than 200 kilograms of cocaine into Canada. The conspiracy was unearthed during Project Colisée, a lengthy investigation into the Mafia and its associates.



While De Vito was not part of the Rizzuto clan, the main target of Colisée, he did business with the same people they worked with. Wiretaps later revealed he blamed the people who worked for the leaders of the Rizzuto clan for his financial losses in the scheme. Other evidence revealed in Colisée showed De Vito also resented the Rizzutos because he believed they were behind the 2004 murder of his former boss, Paolo Gervasi, the head of a rival Mafia clan.



But the motive behind De Vito’s death is still not clear.



On May 8, De Vito testified at the murder trial of his wife, 47-year-old Adele Sorella. She killed the couple’s two daughters — Sabrina De Vito, 8, and Amanda De Vito, 9 — while De Vito was on the lam from the drug-smuggling charges filed against him in Colisée.



During his testimony, De Vito expressed what appeared to be genuine regret over not having been there for his family while his wife tried to deal with a great deal of stress produced by knowing her husband was wanted by the RCMP and had a mistress. She was also raising two daughters on her own and suffering from health problems.



“I blame myself, I guess — yes. Maybe I could have been there. I could have done something, like a father should,” De Vito said during the trial when asked, by a prosecutor, if he had any role at all in his daughters’ deaths. Sorella, De Vito’s high school sweetheart, was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder on June 24.



Given De Vito’s situation — serving a 15-year sentence while his family had been destroyed — investigators were considering the possibility that he took his own life. After his body was found in July, sources told The Gazette suicide seemed to be the more plausible explanation if natural causes could be ruled out.



The coroner’s report, made public Monday, simply states that a toxic level of cyanide was found in De Vito’s body. The coroner, Luc Malouin, wrote at the end of the report that the circumstances behind De Vito’s death will have to be determined by an ongoing police investigation. The death is also being investigated by Correctional Service of Canada.



pcherry@montrealgazette.com











