Mob boss Frank Santos Cotroni was known in Mafia circles as Le Gros, French for big shot, and Il Cice, Italian for the soft, life-giving core at the heart of a hard nut. As the youngest of Cotroni’s six children, the Montreal-born mobster was certainly a stickler.
He has spent more than half his adult life in prison, partly for ordering the underworld murders of five gang rivals in the 1980s, including one at the Seaway Hotel on Toronto’s waterfront.
The Cotroni boys grew up in a spooky neighborhood in downtown Montreal where the smuggling trade, casinos and brothels thrived.
He published a cookbook that combined his favorite cookbooks with what his publisher called his culinary memoir. Moviegoers saw an actor play a Cotroni grilled steak in the 1990 film “Goodfellas,” based on his time spent with mobster Henry Hill at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
