Mafia leader Nicolo Rizzuto killed

The patriarch of Montreal's most notoriousMafia family Nicolo (Nick) Rizzuto has been killed in his home in a slaying that capsmonths of escalatingattacks against the embattled crime clan.

Rizzuto was inside his luxurious family mansionin northwest Montreal when he was shot around 5:40 p.m. ET Wednesday.

Police weren't revealing many details but saidone or several suspects were involved, and that the shots could have come from inside or outside the home, located on Antoine Berthelet Avenue in the city'sAhuntsic-Cartierville borough, near the Rivire-des-Prairies.

Rizzuto, considered the most powerfulfigurehead of Montreal's infamous Mafia, was 86.

Two women in the house witnessedhis shooting and someone called 911, police commander Denis Mainville said.

Rizzuto was taken to nearbySacr-Coeur Hospital, where doctors declared him dead.The women were treated for shock and are being held in an undisclosed location for security reasons, Mainville said.

Police blocked thestreet and investigators with the major crimes squad spent the nightcombing the area, where several members of the Rizzuto clan have homes.

Rizzuto family under attack

Authorities beefed up security across the city in preparation for any possible retaliation,but pinpointing the source of the attack on Rizzuto will take time because "every theory is possible," Mainville said.

Police have been preoccupiedfor months withthe apparent power struggle in the Mafia underworld,Mainville admitted, a tug-of-war marked by calculated hits on the Rizzuto clan.

Rizzuto's grandsonNick Jr.was shot deadon a Montreal street in broad daylight last December.Rizzuto lieutenantPaolo Rendawas kidnapped in Mayand is still missing.This summer,Agostino Cuntrera, another Rizzuto associate known as the "Seigneur" orlord of the St-Leonard borough,was gunned down with his bodyguard in front of his warehouse.

Wednesday's shootingheraldsthedemise of a long-dominant criminal organization that, for decades, lorded over the underworld with few rivals.

Nicolo Rizzuto was among dozens of suspected Mafiosirounded up in 2006 after anexhaustive police investigation, dubbedOperation Colise,which involved more than one million hours of wiretap. He and others arrested were charged with a litany of offences, fromdrug smuggling, money laundering to extortion and bookmaking.

But Rizzuto emerged from the court procedures with atwo-year suspended sentence and probation after he pleaded guilty to gangsterism-related charges.

Authorities were forced to admit that despite hundreds of thousands of hours of wiretap, they could not directly implicate Rizzuto to the majority of charges.

Rizzutolater pleaded guilty to tax evasion, receiving probationand a stiff fine.

His son Vito is serving a 10-year sentence in a U.S. prisonfor his role in a 1981 triple murder at a Brooklyn social club. Vito Rizzuto was extradited to the U.S. in 2006, and pleaded guilty to racketeering charges.

At his sentencing hearing, he admitted he was at the scene of the murder and was armed.

Mafia watchers believe Vito Rizzuto's extradition, and the 2006 dragnet against Montreal bosses, created a power vacuum that enticed rival families or crime ringstobid for their turf.

The lines are blurry in the criminal underworld, saidMainville, with many groups from street gangs to Mafia families maintaining complex "business relationships," even as rivals.