‘He knew he was a dead man walking’: The final days of Hamilton mobster Pat Musitano

In the last few years of his life, Hamilton mobster Pasquale Musitano all but dropped off the map.

A loud and portly man who was known as Pat," Musitano had for years craved attention. Then, suddenly, he was nowhere to be found in the city where he had always lived.

His sworn enemy, Domenico Violi of Hamilton, was certainly curious about Musitano's whereabouts.

A hidden police bug picked up Violi talking about Musitano with a police agent who was posing as a mobster from the Bonanno crime family of New York in September 2017.

Violi had no clue where Musitano was staying, except that he was somewhere close.

He told the undercover police agent that Musitano was around, but that he was in hiding; that he was not in Hamilton, he was outside," according to documents filed in a court case against Violi and his younger brother Giuseppe in the RCMP-led investigation dubbed Project Otremens."

Years before his shooting death in Burlington earlier this month, Musitano was the Niagara Region lieutenant of Vito Rizzuto, Canada's most powerful mobster - and the hatred between the Sicilian Rizzutos and the Calabrian Violis was epic and enduring.

Violi's uncle, Rocco Violi, was killed at his kitchen table in Montreal by a sniper's bullet in 1980.

Rizzuto's father, Nicolo (Nick) Rizzuto, 86, was shot dead by a sniper in front of his wife and daughter, through double-paned glass in the kitchen of his mansion on a pricey cul-de-sac in Montreal dubbed Mafia Alley" in November 2010.

The Violis moved back to Hamilton after Rizzuto's family had wiped out Violi's father and two uncles back in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Montreal.

Musitano's former hit man Ken Murdock told the Star in 2010 that Musitano ordered him to wipe out the top level of the Violi-Luppino crime family by machine-gunning them in the coffee shop where they met on Thursday mornings in East Hamilton.

But the balance of power shifted when Rizzuto died in December 2013, apparently of natural causes.

Murdock balked, Violi lived, and the hatred between the two groups simmered.

In the secretly recorded conversation with the police agent, Violi referred to a group - only identified as they" - that clearly didn't want Pat Musitano alive.

They had told D. Violi that before Christmas (Pat Musitano) would be gone; that that would be one headache out of the way," the transcripts of the conversation state.

Musitano and his younger brother Angelo had plenty of enemies besides the Violis.

The brothers were each charged with first-degree murder in the 1997 gangland murders of John Papalia of Hamilton and Carmen Barillaro of Niagara Falls.

Murdock shot Papalia in the back of the head in the parking lot of Papalia's vending machine company in downtown Hamilton.

Barillaro was shot dead at the doorway of his suburban Niagara Falls home on the eve of his 53rd birthday, while his family shopped for his presents.

The Musitano brothers were eventually convicted of conspiracy related to Barillaro's death.

Police said Angelo kept a low profile after he was released from prison in 1997; friends and family said that was because of a religious conversion.

His uncle Tony Musitano told the Star he thought his nephew had changed his ways, just like he himself had after serving prison time for an arson spree that had some headline writers referring to Hamilton as Bomb City" in the 1970s.

While a maximum-security prisoner, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder in the December 1983 shooting death of Domenic Racco, the only son of former Ndrangheta boss Michele (Mike) Racco, who ran a bakery on St. Clair Avenue West.

Tony Musitano said he became a better man once he got out of prison and that Angelo changed too, with the help of religion.

I can say that because I've been there and done it," Tony Musitano said in an interview. My life has turned around as well."

But not for Angelo.

At 4 p.m. on May 2, 2017, Musitano pulled into the driveway of his home in the suburban Waterdown area of Hamilton.

His wife and children were waiting inside when a man with a pistol walked up to Musitano's white pickup truck and shot him dead.

Shortly after the shooting, Tony Musitano told the Star it didn't feel real.

I say and feel that he did see the light," he said. It's just a tragedy. He was a good boy. He was a good man. A good husband. The father of three children. He saw the light. He was on the right path."

Meanwhile, the undercover police agent told Domenico Violi in the September 2017 recorded conversation that he was surprised by the timing of Angelo Musitano's murder.

According to the court transcript, the agent told Violi he would have thought they" would have got to Pat Musitano before his brother. To that, D Violi stated that they' wanted to show (Pat Musitano); that it was a message," the transcript reads. (The Violis were later convicted of drug trafficking.)

Pat Musitano inherited a number of properties in 1995 when his father Domenic died of natural causes. That meant he had plenty of places to hide out while doing business in his hometown.

Former Hamilton undercover police officer Paul Manning said he heard from sources that Musitano floated between homes in nearby Burlington, Oakville and Peel Region.

While he was often on the run, Musitano kept the four-bedroom, two-bathroom single-family home on St. Clair Boulevard in a comfortable, tree-lined residential area where he had lived for almost half of his 52 years - even after someone fired at least 19 shots into it in the middle of the night with a military-style rifle in June 2017. The windows of the front door, apparently bulletproof, didn't shatter.

In April 2019, uncle Tony Musitano died of a heart attack at 72. Pat wasn't seen at the funeral, and any protection he might have had from his uncle was gone.

The day after the funeral, Pat Musitano met with his lawyer early in the morning in Mississauga - he'd been involved in a bitter dispute with gravel truck drivers, who said they were not paid by a paving and construction company connected to him.

For most of his adult life, Musitano had frightened and angered area residents with environmental frauds and dumping schemes.

In 1990, the Star obtained documents under the Freedom of Information Act that showed he and his father created a fire hazard with an illegal tire dump in Mount Hope and then tried to get $3 million to $5 million of tax dollars to clean it up.

There is always a potential danger of somebody going to light a match to it, isn't there?" Musitano told the Star at the time, describing himself as the president of P & L Recycling Inc. (Their bid for millions in government money was dismissed soon after the Star's story ran.)

Two years later, Musitano was charged but not convicted after someone tried to burn down the historic Collins Hotel in downtown Dundas on March 5, 1992.

There were eight people, including a child, living in the hotel when firefighters arrived in the early morning after reports of the smell of gasoline.

The hit happened as Musitano was leaving the meeting with his lawyer. He was walking to his armour-plated SUV when he was shot at least four times - including in the head.

Somehow, he survived. He was released from hospital a month later.

Two months after that, in July 2019, a Mercedes with Quebec licence plates and three strangers inside appeared outside Musitano's St. Clair Avenue house.

One of the strangers was wearing a mask.

Unannounced visits from strangers with Quebec licence plates tended to make people in Musitano's world jumpy as it was widely believed that some Ontario mobsters were now outsourcing their hits from Montreal.

Musitano had a 76-year-old visitor at the time. When his guest saw the Mercedes with the Quebec plates, something spooked him and he rammed it with his Buick. The three strangers ran off down the streets.

Within weeks, Musitano had put the home up for sale. He and his wife had bought it 1994 for $165,000 when he was 27 and a newlywed. They had no children.

The 2019 listing cheerfully described the home: Love big old homes? You've definitely found your dream home on a beautiful tree-lined boulevard. Filled with character and charm."

The house's listing noted that its furniture was negotiable in the sale, including leather couches and a jumbo-sized TV.

Longtime organized crime investigator Larry Tronstad said he wasn't surprised to hear Musitano decided to go into hiding full-time.

It makes perfect sense that he'd move away," said Tronstad, who was a staff sergeant with the elite Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit in Toronto. It's self-preservation. The days of standing in the doorway and saying, Come get me,' are long gone, if they ever existed."

Months later on March 2 of this year, Musitano's former associate, Hamilton realtor Giorgio Barresi, 42, was shot to death in the driveway of his home. Barresi had pleaded guilty in 1999 to bookmaking in a case in which Musitano was also charged. (The charges against Musitano were later withdrawn.)

Musitano's house finally sold in March 2020 for $664,000 - $35,000 under asking. It had languished for seven months on the market amid talk it was a hard sell because of the Musitano name and the fear of a mistaken attack.

Only his most trusted associates knew where to find him after the sale.

He was on the run, his crime family a diminished force on the Hamilton streets after the deaths of Vito Rizzuto and Domenic, Tony and Angelo Musitano.

Meanwhile, the rival 'Ndrangheta was thriving.

Once nicknamed the lunch-bucket mafia" by Canadian police, the 'Ndrangheta had overtaken the Sicilian mafia and American mob by 2008 with earnings from drug trafficking, extortion, arms trafficking and prostitution that were worth more than the revenues of some small nations, according to Eurispes research group. A Eurispes report calculated the 'Ndrangheta's income was then equivalent to 2.9 per cent of Italy's gross domestic or the same as the GDP for Slovenia and Estonia combined.

The Figliomeni clan was a major player in the 'Ndrangheta world, including in York Region, police said.

They've just been below the surface but they've always been there," Tronstad said. They're part of the old guard. They're a power."

Criminologist Anna Sergi of the University of Essex agreed.

The Figliomeni are the capo-societa. This means everything goes past them when it comes to killing and conflicts," Sergi said.

Musitano had to know a hit man was coming for him but he had no idea what the killer would look like, Tronstad said, as murders were now often contracted out to other groups, like Montreal street gangs.

They got out of the idea of using Italian hitters," Tronstad said.

Musitano was due to meet with a trusted 77-year-old man who had worked with his father in a Burlington parking lot at around 1 p.m. on July 10.

He arrived in his armour-plated SUV with Giuseppe Carmelo (Pino) Avignone, 59, a longtime associate, who was also trusted.

With COVID-19 restrictions, coffee shops were now off-limits for meetings, but there were advantages to meeting in a parking lot.

Car parks are great," Manning said. They're hard to surveil."

Halton police haven't said anything about what happened next, except that Musitano was shot dead and his killer fled in a newer-model grey four-door sedan with a sunroof, perhaps an Infiniti Q50, with fresh damage to the driver's side.

Police also haven't said if there was more than one person involved in the attack.

No description of the shooter has been released.

The 77-year-old was seriously injured in the scuffle while police reported Avignone was not injured.

Early on Friday, July 17, a week after Musitano's assassination, two vehicles in the driveway of Avignone's Hamilton area home were torched, with the word rat" written on the garage door.

Tronstad said he thinks Musitano was betrayed on the last day of his life, although he's not sure by whom.

Otherwise, how would the killer know where to find him?

Somebody is setting this up," Tronstad said.

Tronstad said he thinks Musitano wouldn't have been surprised if he saw the killer's gun come out.

He knew he was a dead man walking for a while," Tronstad said.

Peter Edwards is a Toronto-based reporter primarily covering crime for the Star. Reach him by email at pedwards@thestar.ca