Ex-cop thinks realtor’s murder linked to mob

‘Smells like a power play’ in Hamilton’s Mafia underworld, he says

HAMILTON— The murder of a Hamilton realtor with several relatives in traditional organized crime signals a violent restructuring of the city’s underworld, according to a former undercover officer who infiltrated organized crime in southern Ontario.

Cece Luppino, 44, was shot shortly before 6 p.m. Wednesday at his father’s upscale Hamilton home in a killing investigators are calling “targeted.”

“This smells like a power play,” said Paul Manning, a former Hamilton undercover police officer. “I would imagine we see more moves from others on territory which has historically belonged to the Luppino crime family,” he said.

The home where Luppino’s body was found is owned by his father Rocco Luppino, 81, son of Giacomo Luppino, who was considered by police to be a major force in southern Ontario’s underworld before his death in 1987.

Rocco Luppino’s cousins, Domenico and Giuseppe (Joe) Violi, both of Hamilton, were recently sentenced to prison for fentanyl and cocaine trafficking.

According to documents filed in Hamilton court in the trafficking case, Domenico Violi, 52, is an official member of Buffalo’s Todaro crime family.

Cece Luppino’s killing is Hamilton’s third recent murder with apparent ties to organized crime, following the deaths of Angelo Musitano and Albert Iavarone.

Musitano 39, was shot dead outside his suburban Waterdown home on May 2, 2017. Iavarone, 50, was slain outside his home in Ancaster’s quiet Scenic Woods neighbourhood on Sept. 6, 2018.

The lead investigator in the Luppino homicide is Det. Sgt. Peter Thom, who is also investigating the Musitano and Iavarone murders. Thom told the Hamilton Spectator Luppino was clearly “targeted,” but the investigation is in its “early days.” Police have no indication he knew Musitano or Iavarone, Thom said. Thom would not say where Luppino was shot or how many times, but said the shooting happened “up close.”

Luppino’s grandfather, Giacomo Luppino, was considered by police to be a long-standing associate of the Buffalo mob and a founding member of the Crimine, a governing body for criminals in the ’Ndrangheta crime group.

Rocco Luppino was acquitted in 1983 on charges that he was part of a group that used extortion to take over Ontario’s dump truck industry.

After a five-year legal battle, a judge in Hamilton ruled Rocco Luppino and his associates stirred up labour unrest in an attempt to get better pay for dump truck drivers — not as part of a Mafia extortion plot.

Cece Luppino’s uncle was Paolo Violi, a one-time Toronto resident who was murdered in a Montreal in1978 in a war with the Rizzuto crime group.

A crime commission in Quebec in the 1970s said Violi was a boss in the Montreal underworld.