How the Mafia murder case against Ontario man fell apart
HE WAS A RELATIVELY YOUNG MAN WITH NO CRIMINAL RECORD. HIS FAMILY WAS PUTTING UP EVERYTHING AND HE HAD A CLOSE-KNIT FAMILY LIVING IN CANADA, CANADIAN CITIZENS, HARD WORKING. ON PAPER, THERE WAS NO REASON FOR HIM NOT TO GET BAIL. — LEORA SHEMESH
On Jan. 11, 2018, Hamilton police held a news conference where Det. Sgt. Peter Thom revealed Angelo Musitano, the son of a notorious Mafia boss in Ontario, had been stalked by several people in different cars before he was killed.
Thom gave reporters photos of the cars used to spy on Musitano, including a black Honda Civic. He said anyone in the province who owned a black Civic “can anticipate” a visit from police.
It was a ruse, designed to tickle the wires — to nudge suspects to start talking while police listened — and also to give detectives an excuse to speak with Jabril Abdalla without showing all their cards.
Thom already knew exactly where that Honda was and who had registered it.
Five days after making his headline-grabbing announcement, Thom and Det. Sgt. Jason Cattle met with Abdalla at a Tim Hortons asking about his car, showing him a questionnaire as if it was used for every Civic owner.
Abdalla said he used to have one but sold it. The detectives showed him a photo and asked if it’s the man who bought it. It was of Michael Cudmore. Abdalla said it wasn’t, but that it looked like a guy he works out with at the gym.
Another police news conference, on Jan. 23, 2018, made an even bigger splash. Hamilton and York police had positively linked Musitano’s and Mila Barberi’s murders, officers announced, and were running a joint investigation called Project Scopa, the Italian word for broom.
The wires needed another tickle. This time, detectives released images of Daniel Tomassetti outside the spy shop, without naming him.
That evening, according to police allegations in court files, someone used a phone registered to a relative of Tomassetti’s to search for information on the news conference, as well as for a wellknown Toronto defence lawyer. The next day, the same phone was used to search for more news on the case, and for the definition of conspiracy, police allege.
Four days after the announcement, Tomassetti flew to Mexico and hasn’t been seen since.
Cudmore’s and Tomassetti’s disappearance put police in a bind. Two main suspects in a pair of high-profile, public murders were no longer within reach. They were left with only one.
Abdalla was woken at 5 a.m. by a loud crash. He thought one of his brothers dropped something heavy upstairs in the family’s home, but within seconds he was surrounded by police pointing guns at him, he says.
It was Feb. 6, 2018, nine days after Tomassetti left for Mexico.
Abdalla was handcuffed and brought from his basement bedroom to the main floor living room where his family were seated, watched by police. He says Thom explained he wasn’t being arrested, but Thom had a warrant to search the house.
“I was very confused,” Abdalla says. He figured it was about the Honda. He later realized it was about two murders. Police walked out with armfuls of electronics.
Officers raided Tomassetti’s house that day too, and the home of a friend of Cudmore’s who was storing his stuff. Among Cudmore’s belongings police found a photograph of Musitano, standing with six burly men.
Abdalla didn’t realize police had been secretly watching, tracking, and listening to him for months. Unlike the others, he didn’t leave because, he says, he was innocent.
Police thought otherwise and on Sept. 19, 2018, Abdalla was charged with two murders and an attempt murder. Cudmore and Tomassetti were revealed as wanted fugitives, with police naming Cudmore as the triggerman in both hits.
During hours of interrogation, Abdalla was asked about Musitano, Serrano, Barberi and others, he says.
“They mentioned those names, but I didn’t know who they were,” he says. “And they had mentioned ‘Project Scopa’ and I was like, Wow, there’s a project involved? So that was sort of, kind of the point where I was like, Oh man, what the hell is going on?
“They are mentioning names I’ve never heard before and playing videos, and just sort of accusing me of all these things.”
Then he was sent to jail, where he faced his bizarre reception.
“That was when I was scared.”
His lawyer got Abdalla moved from Hamilton jail to a facility further away. That was likely the easiest of her legal battles in his case.
Toronto defence lawyer Leora Shemesh was once branded by the press as “the police force’s enemy No. 1” because of her fierce advocacy. Her website’s splash says, “Let me make your court case my battle,” and it seems more than marketing; she once faced perjury and obstruction of justice charges for exposing police lies in a case. The charges were later withdrawn.
She started pushing for Abdalla’s release on bail.
“It wasn’t a strong case against him, it just wasn’t,” Shemesh says. “He was a relatively young man with no criminal record. His family was putting up everything and he had a close-knit family living in Canada, Canadian citizens, hard working. On paper, there was no reason for him not to get bail.
“Instead, every door was closed, and not just closed, but firmly closed.”
The Crown’s case against Abdalla was circumstantial.
That was especially true once the owner of the spy shop who sold the trackers, Amir Kayvan, said at the preliminary hearing the buyers were white men, which excluded Abdalla.
Kayvan claimed on the stand that a prosecutor had pushed him to say he was uncertain if it was a white guy, which led to a highly unusual court hearing seeking the removal of a Crown attorney on allegations of witness tampering and conflict of interest, which was denied.
Prosecutors saw the bail issue differently.
The Crown argued Abdalla was a flight risk and a danger. They pointed to his past lies to his parents, who were asking to supervise his bail, the most surprising of which was Abdalla not telling them he had a child.
After a five-day bail hearing, Abdalla waited five months for a decision that came in July 2019, denying his release. That triggered an inordinate back-and-forth of motions, appeals and counter appeals.
“He was their fall guy,” Shemesh says. “I truly believe that. I believe that Jabril became the fall guy for this investigation.” She burned through 12 judges of the Court of Appeal to get others to see that.
At another bail hearing in April 2020, a judge found the Crown’s case was not as strong as they had first said. Justice Andrew Goodman, admitting it was a “close call,” decided to release him. It was then the Crown’s turn to appeal, and they won in a split decision, returning Abdalla to jail.
“I started losing faith in the justice system,” Abdalla says. Shemesh fired off a motion to appeal to the Supreme Court, but it wasn’t needed.
On June 15, 2021, back at the Hamilton courthouse, a block around the corner from where Cudmore had been living, Abdalla again appeared before a judge.
It was a different sort of hearing. Rather than sparring over evidence, and prosecutorial conduct, or cross-examining witnesses, everyone gathered with common purpose.
With the spy shop owner’s testimony that Abdalla didn’t buy a tracker and with a judge ordering the two murders be separated for trial, prosecutors, Shemesh and Abdalla all agreed Abdalla was guilty of something, but not of mob murders or murder plots.
On the bench for the plea was Tony Leitch, a former Hamilton Assistant Crown attorney who became a judge after prosecuting one of the city’s highest profile cases, the grisly murder of Tim Bosma by serial killer Dellen Millard and Mark Smich. Leitch never lost a homicide case as a prosecutor.
He was presented with an agreed statement in which Abdalla admitted he did errands for Tomassetti and Cudmore, driving them around, including when trackers were purchased, when a tracker was placed on a vehicle, and to houses they were keeping an eye on. He also registered the two cars for them. He did it knowing they were involved in crime but not knowing what they were up to.
Leitch accepted his plea and sentenced him to 46 months, the calculated equivalent of his pretrial custody, meaning he was free.
“The pain of the Barberi family and Mila’s friends is real and profound, the pain at the loss of a young, innocent, and important life,” Leitch said in his verdict. “I truly hope Daniel Tomassetti will face trial, and that justice will be done if he is found guilty of those murders.”
Abdalla agrees.
“I know now the consequences of every action and decision I made,” he says; “small decisions” lead to an “outcome of the highest level.” It was “a mess I put myself in.”
Abdalla says there are lessons in his odyssey.
“How I got into it obviously, I can just say the choice in friends that I made over the last few years ... I trusted people that I shouldn’t have trusted. And that’s obviously an error in my judgment.
“The biggest lesson,” he says, “is picking the right circle and being careful of who you surround yourself with.”
He hopes to return to the sort of work he did as a volunteer in high school, helping kids, some of them a lot like he was, and to push them to make good choices. Better choices than he did.