Vito Rizzuto may miss another family funeral.
The reputed head of the Montreal Mafia is serving a 10-year sentence in the United States for racketeering, related to three underworld murders in Brooklyn in 1981.
Mr. Rizzuto is expected to miss Monday's funeral in Montreal for his 86-year-old father, Nicolo, who was gunned down in his home this week.
A spokesman for the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons says there exists a process that would allow Vito Rizzuto to seek permission to attend a family funeral, but that such requests are "very rarely" granted.
This would be the second time in less than a year that Mr. Rizzuto remains stuck in prison while a loved one is laid to rest.
He missed his son Nick's funeral last January after the younger Rizzuto was gunned down in a brazen daytime shooting in late December.
And barring a last-minute surprise, he won't be in Montreal on Monday.
"If an inmate's security level is such that they would require armed guard, and I can't speak to this case, then it would normally not be granted based on security," Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the prisons bureau, said from Washington, D.C.
"There are number of factors, security being the most important. . . It's not common that a request is granted, especially for an inmate that has higher-security concerns."
The warden at the medium-security prison in Florence, Colo., would have the final say, he said.
Monday's funeral will be held in the same church in Montreal's Little Italy where Nick Rizzuto was remembered in January.
The family will receive condolences over the weekend at an east-end funeral home they own.