Musitano crime family
[2] The killings of Johnny Papalia and his lieutenant Carmen Barillaro in 1997, ordered by brothers Angelo and Pat Musitano, had effectively wiped out the family's remaining leaders in Canada.
In 1937,[nb 1] Angelo Musitano, known as the "Beast of Delianova", fled illegally from Delianuova, Italy to Canada, after killing his sister Rosa and injuring her lover in the belief that she had disgraced the family by becoming pregnant out of wedlock.
[11][8] Dominic Musitano, described as "short, rotund and with grey-green pop eyes" was notorious for his rage issues and once shot and wounded a motorist for repeatedly honking his automobile horn at him.
[10] The Musitano family employed the Wild Ones biker gang, led by Walter Stadnick, as subcontractors to build and plant the bombs.
[10] Bertulia D'Agostiono, who opened her automobile repair shop, Alba Collision, was visited by two members of the Musitano family who told her that it was in her best interest to sign over 50 percent of her business to them.
[16] In October 1980, the Hamilton police charged Anthony Musitano, Douglas Cummings, Elizabeth Wala, and Leslie Lethbridge with the bombings.
In January 1983, Tony Musitano was sentenced to life in prison (later reduced to 15 years on an appeal) for bombing a number of businesses in Hamilton, including the bakeries.
[19] At Millhaven Institution in Kingston, Tony Musitano befriended inmate Billy Rankin who was due to be released in December that year.
On December 10, Racco got into a car in front of his Mississauga apartment with Rankin, Dominic Musitano and Peter Majeste, thinking it was to discuss potential drug trade, but was taken to a railway track and killed.
[25] In 1992, Pat Musitano was found guilty of failing to make his Mount Hope tire dump conform to the Ontario fire code.
[28] According to John Ross who was a Hamilton police sergeant, Pat Musitano was "a decidedly blue-collar mobster who loved cars, hung out in restaurants, wore dark sunglasses and dressed up in suits ...
"[29] The Musitano brothers' ideas about what a gangster should be like were considerably more influenced by how Mafiosi were portrayed in American films and television than by the traditions of Calabria or Sicily.
In April 1997, Pasquale Musitano met with Gaetano "Guy" Panepinto, the Toronto agent of Montreal's Rizzuto family, in Niagara Falls.
[42] On 22 and 23 October 1997, Rizzuto met twice in a restaurant with his Toronto agent Gaetano "Guy" Panepinto and Pasquale "Fat Pat" Musitano.
[7] In a later interview with journalist Peter Edwards, Murdock claimed that Pat Musitano had "ordered" him to enter a coffee house with a machine gun to shoot all of the leaders of the Luppino-Violi group; that would probably have included Dominico and Giuseppe (Joey) Violi.
[57][58] Before his death, Angelo wrote a faith-based book called I Found Him, claiming that starting a family and finding religion "changed him.
[61] On January 23, news reports from a press conference indicated that police believed that Angelo's murder and a Woodbridge, Ontario killing of veterinary technician Mila Barberi while she sat in her car with her boyfriend, two months earlier in March 2017, not previously considered to be related, appeared to have been carried out by the same individual based on footage of the shooter and the car used from surveillance cameras at the two locations.
[66] On 13 September 2018, real estate agent Albert Iavarone was shot outside his home in Ancaster, Ontario, a similar fashion as in the Musitano murder.
[69] A Toronto Star summary added that the latest hit came in "the midst of a dispute between two Niagara Region groups of mobsters who are both tied to the New York State (Buffalo) mob.
[73] On June 15, 2021, Jabril Abdalla Hassan pleaded guilty to participating in a criminal organization was sentenced to time served — 46 months, and fined $500.
"[81] On April 25, 2019, Pat Musitano was shot four times outside his lawyer's office in Mississauga, sustaining life-threatening injuries; he was taken to Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
"[85] Criminology professor Stephen Metelsky of Mohawk College provided this opinion to the Spectator:[86] "Given all the extenuating circumstances leading up to this, not just his brother's death, but his house being targeted twice, his uncle passing away ...
Court records from a 2018 matter against Domenico and Giuseppe "Joe" Violi of the Luppino crime family discuss a claim that the Musitanos were supporting the Cuntrera-Caruana Mafia clan who have roots in Montreal and Toronto.
"A 2019 CBC News report later quoted a Mafia expert as stating that "[Vito] Rizzuto's death paved the way for upheaval in the underworld.
"[81] Although Pat Musitano survived the 2019 attempt on his life, "He was a dead man walking," according to Queen's University professor Antonio Nicaso, "In the world of the Mafia, revenge does not lapse.
"[92] On March 2, 2020, Giorgio Barresi, a former associate of Pat Musitano who had pleaded guilty to bookmaking in 1999, was shot to death in his Stoney Creek driveway.
[93] On July 10, 2020, Pat Musitano was shot to death beside his armour-plated SUV in broad daylight in the parking lot of a Burlington shopping plaza on Plains Road East, at the age of 52.
"[97] Since the deaths of his protectors (Vito Rizzuto in 2013 and Tony Musitano in 2019), Pat had been "living on borrowed time", former Hamilton police detective Paul Manning told the Toronto Star.
[95] Manning also said that at the time of Pat's murder, he had made enemies due to a scam that involved attracting investors to a gravel business.
"[102] The company's principal pled guilty to fraud in March 2020 but Norton failed to attend court and a warrant was out for his arrest at the time that his body was found.
