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A wedding guest list is casting doubts on a prevailing theory as to why a Canadian mobster was gunned down in 2012.
Hamilton, Ontario mobster Angelo Musitano was murdered in his own driveway on May 2 of 2012. His brother’s home was riddled with bullets just days later.
Both attacks remain unsolved.
The National Post offered up a rationale for the initial focus:
An appealing theory quickly emerged based on an important distinction in traditional Italian Mafia groups between mobsters with roots in the Calabria region and those with roots in Sicily.
The two areas, though geographically close, spawned their own organized crime structure: the Sicilian crime families of Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian crime families of the ’Ndrangheta. Both organizations spread to Canada and other countries to become global crime superpowers. Members have variously cooperated and competed but typically remain distrustful, even disdainful, of the other.
The Sicilian/Calabrian distinction has been one of the major drivers of Canada’s mob history.
Musitano’s slaying occurred nearly 20 years to the day after an Ontario Calabrian mob boss, John Papalia, was shot dead by a hitman. The hitman would later testify that he killed Papalia at the request of the Musitano family, from the Sicilian clan.
The Angelo Musitano wedding list, however, featured many guests considered deeply devoted to Papalia and Calabrian traditionalists for whom police initially thought to be seeking cold revenge against Musitano.
Underworld feuds and relationships are notoriously complicated, the National Post notes, citing a source: “These guys will be doing business with someone this week and then kill them the next. It’s crazy.”
It turns out police secretly monitored the wedding.
One of those witnessed in attendance, Giuseppe “Big Joe” Cuntrera, a leading member of the Caruana-Cuntrera clan and a significant Sicilian Mafia group allied with the Rizzutos. Cuntrera, based in Toronto, according to law enforcement. Cuntrera has had close business ties with senior Calabrian gangsters, authorities say.
Others on the wedding list have since met similar fates as Musitano.
Antonio Sergi, a Toronto gangster known as “Tony Large.” Sergi would also eventually be shot dead in his own driveway. Sergi was a big player in the medical marijuana industry.
- Jagajeet Chiba, Gambling911.com
