A lot of criminals wanted GTA mob boss dead
Notorious scamster Volpe was found dead in trunk of his wife’s car in 1983
There was no doubt that it was a pro who shot mob boss Paul Volpe and left him in the trunk of his wife’s grey BMW, curled in a fetal position.
“A professional murder is always the most difficult to solve,” Supt. Barry King of Peel Regional Police said hours after the body was found in the second level of the Terminal 2 parking garage at the thennamed Toronto International Airport. Police immediately flooded the investigation with 60 detectives.
It was clear a myriad of criminals — and some legitimate business people — wanted Volpe dead. He was notorious for scamming people, from home renovators to fellow mobsters.
The trick for police was to determine which professional criminal ended Volpe’s life on Sunday, Nov. 13, 1983.
Perhaps it was Réal Simard, a hit man who worked for Frank (Le Gros) Cotroni of Montreal. Simard had moved to Toronto that summer and lived in a 30th-floor apartment suite at the Sutton Place Hotel on Bay Street, where he had the walls painted pink.
The Cotronis were the preeminent Mafia family in Montreal, before the rise of the more wellknown Rizzuto crime family.
Simard was known as “David” in Toronto and was often seen in the GTA at the wheel of his Mercedes. He’d killed at least five people for Cotroni and later said the mob boss instructed him to destroy his clothes after a murder to get rid of powder burns and make sure his victim was truly dead. He quoted Cotroni as saying: “You never leave a body without giving it a bullet in the head.”
It was an open secret that Cotroni was interested in moving west from Montreal, and that killing Volpe would help clear the way.
Roy McMurtry, then Ontario attorney-general, was told in a report from southern Ontario police chiefs just before Christmas 1983 that Cotroni was a man to watch. “By far our greatest concern must be the Cotroni family of Montreal ... Needless to say, we consider (Frank) Cotroni our most serious threat.”
That said, Volpe seemed to get along well with the Cotronis.
Cotroni’s older brother Vic (The Egg) Cotroni also appeared on chummy terms with Volpe, and the two were spotted sharing pastries and pleasantries at a restaurant in the BayBloor area.
Frank Cotroni had also unwittingly introduced Volpe to an undercover police officer who claimed to want in on Volpe’s multimillion-dollar real estate dealings in Atlantic City.
Perhaps Volpe was put in the trunk of the BMW by someone working for Johnny (Pops) Papalia from Hamilton, who was considered by police to be connected to that city’s Magaddino crime family.
Volpe was also considered under the Magaddino umbrella, but he and Papalia were longtime bitter rivals. Papalia had ambitions of expanding from Hamilton into Toronto and Volpe was clearly in the way.
Volpe’s independent ways had brought the Magaddinos heat from the Philadelphia mob, who were upset that he was actively involved in Atlantic City real estate deals.
The Philadelphia mob considered Atlantic City its turf and expected some sort of tribute payment, which it never got.
Perhaps Volpe was killed by Papalia on orders from the Buffalo mob.
That would explain why Volpe’s body was left at the international airport, which could be a sign that he upset mob interests outside the country — namely, Atlantic City.
Volpe was loathe to hand away what he considered his money. He knew what poverty was like, having grown up poor in downtown Toronto, one of six children of a tailor who lived in a house on Walton Street where the Chelsea Inn now sits.
His father died when he was young, leaving his mother to raise the children on her own.
Now, Volpe was rich and he planned on keeping it that way. He lived 40 kilometres northwest of Metro Toronto in Schomberg in a gated, floodlit mansion with a turret that he bought for $300,000 in 1979 from a county court judge.
The mansion featured German Shepherds to guard the grounds, a tennis court and a large Canadian flag on a pole. He called the estate “Fox Hill” — “volpe” translates to “fox” in Italian.
Perhaps Volpe was put in the BMW’s trunk by his old enemies in the Commisso crime family of York Region, who were among the many who felt cheated by Volpe.
Just a year before — in May 1982 — police had foiled an effort by brothers Rocco Remo, Cosimo Elia Commisso and Michele Commisso and their associate Antonio Rocco Romeo to kill Volpe, by paying $20,000 to biker Cecil Kirby.
Kirby became a police agent instead and the Commisso brothers went to prison. That would have made it tough — but not impossible — for them to organize the Volpe hit.
In order to catch the Commissos, police faked Volpe’s murder and hid him and his wife Lisa out in the RCMP mess hall in the old Toronto headquarters on Jarvis Street, at the site of the current Grand Hotel Redevelopment.
As part of the police scam, Kirby lied to the mobsters that he had killed Volpe and Lisa.
For all of his faults, Volpe cherished his wife, a former model who was an executive with the upscale women’s clothing store, Creeds, on Bloor Street West.
“He protected her,” retired RCMP Staff-Sgt. Larry Tronstad of the elite Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU) said in an interview. “He didn’t want anything being done to her.”
“She was his ticket to righteousness,” Tronstad said, as if Volpe could tell himself: “I can’t be a mob guy because look who I’ve married.”
Volpe was also incensed by how the CFEU listened in on his phone calls at home. Ironically, Volpe had a criminal conviction for possessing wiretapping equipment.
Volpe had trouble comprehending that fellow GTA mobsters associates wanted him dead, despite his lifetime of scams. He was a high-end scammer — not a killer.
“Who would want to kill me?” the mobster asked a police officer who was guarding him during the operation against the Commissos. “What have I done that somebody would want to kill me?”
On the last day of his life, Volpe told Lisa that had an early lunch meeting planned in the Woodbridge Mall with his driver, Peter Scarcella.
He told her he had a brief stop planned near the airport to meet with some people “from over there,” apparently referring to the United States. Whoever killed Volpe acted quickly.
The punch-in time on an airport parking ticket found in the car was less than half an hour from when he left the mall, which is about how long it takes to drive there from the Woodbridge Mall.
Volpe was shot in the back of the head, suggesting that he had trusted his killer or killers enough to turn his back on him. His murder remains unsolved.