Albert Iavarone’s wife, inside with two of their children, finds her husband on the doorstep and calls 911. But it’s too late. He’s already dead.
The murders occurred in what police and mafia watchers are calling a power vacuum. And Hamilton appears to be in the centre of the storm.
some say Ang was more vulnerable than a decade ago, as allegiances faded, and older heavyweights died.
The murders occurred in what police and mafia watchers are calling a power vacuum. And Hamilton appears to be in the centre of the storm.
“I call Hamilton a lot of big fish in a small pond,” says Stephen Metelsky, a criminology professor at Mohawk College who spent 21 years with Halton police, including specializing in organized crime.
He was an expert at cultivating informants and has turned his fascination with traditional organized crime into a website, underworldstories.com, where he chronicles local mafia.
“There is a lot of heavyweight organized crime (in Hamilton),” he says.
Mafia players are connected to each other, making it difficult for police to sort through motives when there is violence. Before his death, not only did Albert know Ang, he knew two of Ang’s alleged killers and a “person of interest” in the case.
Beyond the parallels in the deaths of Musitano and Iavarone, there are also parallels in their lives.
They were acquainted, their families were associates as far back as the ’90s. They’re believed to have done business together. They were seen publicly together.
But perhaps the most telling — they’re the little brothers of more powerful men.
Were they targeted specifically to send messages to their brothers? Little brother for little brother. Or perhaps they were just the easier targets?
THE MUSITANOS
are a household name in Hamilton — an infamous traditional mafia family with a history in this city that stretches back three generations.
Musitano’s big brother Pasquale (Pat) is the reputed Musitano leader — an old-school mafioso who politely, but unequivocally, refused police protection after his baby brother was gunned down and his own house in Hamilton shot up weeks later. The entire front of the house was sprayed with at least 19 bullets from a semiautomatic rifle as he slept in his bed — a warning.
The shooter ran back to an awaiting car that fled through the treelined boulevard.
Instead of hiding, on nice nights Pat can be seen sitting on the front porch of his St. Clair Boulevard home, looking out over his manicured lawn. Yet despite that bravado, Metelsky says, his position and the family is clearly weakened with the death of his brother and the violence since.
There are only a few options for traditional organized crime members to escape — prison, death or becoming an informant.
Pat Musitano’s body language suggests he’s “live by the sword, die by the sword ... if I’m going out, I’m going out as Pat Musitano,” Metelsky says.
Angelo Musitano was a baby-faced 21-year-old still living with his mother when his name made headlines for a sensational mob murder. He and Pat were accused of taking out a notorious mob boss, Johnny (Pops) Papalia, in 1997.
At the time, there were three big traditional Italian mob families in Hamilton — the Papalias, Musitanos and Luppinos. All originated from Calabria, a region in southern Italy, making them ’Ndrangheta crime families.
’Ndrangheta is one of two traditional Italian organized crime groups that spread to Canada. The other is the Sicilian crime families of Cosa Nostra, which included Vito Rizzuto, the notorious Sicilian mafia boss from Montreal who died of natural causes in 2014.
In the 1990s, Rizzuto was expanding into Ontario when he found a surprising ally in the Musitano family. This was bolstered by Papalia’s murder, which eliminated a rival. But the Sicilian boss’s Ontario power didn’t stick, in part because he was imprisoned for years in the United States for the 1981 murders of New York City mobsters. While he was in prison, one of his sons, his father and brother-in-law were killed, and Rizzuto continued to operate from prison and did return to power in Montreal after being released.
The Musitanos’ history in Hamilton stretches back to the 1930s, when another Angelo Musitano, nicknamed “The Beast of Delianova,” fled Italy after murdering his sister when she became pregnant out of marriage.
Angelo Musitano’s two nephews, Anthony (Tony) and Dominic Musitano, continued the family tradition