MONTREAL—A city awaiting the kingpin’s return had to wait yet another day.

Despite being released from a U.S. prison and flown directly back to Canada, the stately home belonging to Montreal mafia boss Vito Rizzuto sat mostly quiet Monday, three days after his six-year conspiracy and racketeering sentence came to an end.

It was expected the man nicknamed the Teflon Don for his ability to evade the law over so many years would return to his home if only to see his family, friends and what remains of his outlaw alliance.

Police here appear to be expecting the same thing. There was a steady parade of marked police cruisers driving slowly past the house, and officers asked reporters about any activity they had witnessed coming from inside.

Rizzuto was released from a Colorado prison on Friday and flown to Toronto. When he landed, he walked away a free man, but he re-entered the country knowing that his empire has been much diminished in the years he has been away.

Rizzuto’s son, Nick Jr., and his father, Nicolo Sr., have both been killed in suspected gangland hits, as have several other important actors in the Rizzuto crime family. Some speculate that Vito Rizzuto is considering a move to Toronto where he has several close underworld allies, while others expect he will return to the city he once ruled in order to avenge the string of deaths that occurred while he was behind bars and launch his enterprise anew.

If the latter is his plan, there were few signs that Rizzuto is back.

A black BMW with tinted windows was seen backing out of the garage of his home shortly before 5 p.m. with four men inside. A camera crew from Quebec’s TVA network, who had been staking out the residence all day, said no one had been seen entering the house earlier in the day.

Shortly after that, a woman dressed all in black with blonde hair who appeared to be in her late 50s walked out of the garage of the home that belonged to Nicolo Sr. before he was shot and killed in November 2010 by a sniper hiding out somewhere in the wooded area backing the houses.

“Are you lost,” the woman asked a Star reporter.

She shook her head in disgust when told of the stakeout in search for the mafia don, then passed into the garage of the neighbouring home on what has been dubbed Mafia Row, a string of four houses that served as the hub of the Montreal’s Cosa Nostra outfit.

Another resident of the street was Rizzuto’s brother-in-law, Paulo Renda, the family consigliere and financial advisor. Renda was kidnapped a few minutes’ drive from his home in May 2010 and his body has never been found.

But last December, the man suspected of plotting the attacks on the Rizzuto clan, Salvatore Montagna, turned up riddled with bullets in a Montreal river.

Another ill-fated former resident of the street was Giuseppe (Joe) Lo Presti, who was related by marriage to Rizzuto. Lo Presti was considered to be a friend of building contractors in the city. His name also appeared in police probes of irregularities in the boxing and kick-boxing business in Quebec.

He was also captured on tape on May 16, 1982 talking with an underling of the late John Gotti, the boss of New York’s Gambino crime family. In the tape, Lo Presti assured his associate that a drug shipment was on its way.

“He said he was 100 per cent certain our load is coming,” Lo Presti said on the tape. “It’s in Canada say, a week and a half before it’s here.”

Despite the tape, he was acquitted in trial, although there were allegations of jury tampering.

On April 29, 1992, Lo Presti drove his cherry red Porsche to a restaurant on Montreal’s Decarie Blvd. The car was still there late that night when Lo Presti’s body was found wrapped in plastic by the railroad tracks in northeast Montreal. All identification was gone, but there was still $4,000 found on the body.

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