Gunman in Mafia-linked killing likely waited in park
Security video captures suspect’s movements
Minutes after Cece Luppino returned to his Hamilton, Ont., house, a man followed him in through his open garage door and shot him dead, suggesting the gunman was watching and waiting for the scion of a well-known Mafia family, police said.
The suspected gunman’s approach — and hasty retreat — on Wednesday at 3:10 p.m. was captured on surveillance video.
His movements led investigators to believe the home on the edge of Hamilton’s Mountain was being watched, perhaps for several days, from a narrow park across from Luppino’s house that is often visited for its panoramic view of the lower city.
“From reviewing the available security footage, investigators do not believe the victim was being followed, but rather a static surveillance technique was being utilized,” police said in a written statement Sunday.
The suspect is described as male, black, average or athletic build, wearing a black waist-length winter coat, black pants, black boots, black tuque and grey shirt.
The modus operandi of the slaying mimics two other recent Mafia murders in Hamilton.
Luppino arrived home shortly before the suspect appears on the video. The suspect is seen on the east sidewalk of Rendell Boulevard, the nearest crossroad to the victim’s street, police said.
He is seen “milling about” for a bit before walking through the neighbouring property, also owned by the Luppino family, and into the open garage at 56 Mountain Brow Blvd., police said. He then flees in the same direction. The video has not been released by police.
Police do not know if the gunman was alone or had an accomplice. There is no confirmed vehicle description at this time, police said, but a dark-coloured, four-door sedan was seen in the area around the time of the incident and may be involved.
“Investigators are asking members of the public, who were in and around the area of the Bill Foley Parkette over the past week, and who may have noticed a male matching the suspect or any other suspicious activity or vehicles in the park, particularly in the parking lot, to contact them,” police said.
Luppino’s shooting was targeted and “close up,” said Det.-Sgt. Peter Thom, who leads the investigation.
Luppino, 43, who was married in June, is the son of mobster Rocco Luppino, who, in turn, was the son of Giacomo Luppino, one of the most influential and respected Mafia leaders in Canada throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Giacomo died of natural causes in 1987.
Giacomo was already steeped in the ‘Ndrangheta — the proper name of the Mafia that formed in Italy’s southern region of Calabria — when he emigrated to Canada and settled to raise his family in Hamilton.
Police have long alleged that Giacomo and his sons led one of the three prominent Mafia families in the city that made Hamilton an underworld powerhouse.
Recently, the family was again in the news when Rocco Luppino’s nephews, Domenico Violi and Giuseppe Violi, were caught in an RCMP police probe. A Mafia turncoat from New York agreed to work as a police informant and secretly recorded conversations with the two Violi brothers, according to police and Crown prosecutors’ documents obtained by the National Post.
According to the recordings, Domenico Violi said he had been made the Underboss of the Mafia family of Buffalo, N.Y., which is the second-highest rank within a Mafia group, and his uncle, Rocco Luppino, the victim’s father, was made a Captain, which is a leader of a crew of soldiers within a Mafia group.
Cece Luppino’s name was also raised during the meetings between the mobsters, according to transcripts and summaries of the police recordings.
Giuseppe Violi told the informant that Cece Luppino was asked if he wanted to become a “made member” of the Mafia family in 2015, according to the transcripts. Luppino told his father that if he could make money then he would be involved, but if there was no money in it, then he would pass.
“There are too many headaches,” he was quoted as saying. Luppino continued to say that he had watched his father struggle for 30 years as a mobster, and he didn’t want to face a similar struggle.
Both Violi brothers were convicted and sentenced for drug trafficking recently.
Luppino’s death is seen as a further signal of underworld unrest, if not open hostilities, as the country’s mob clans realign after the 2013 death of Vito Rizzuto, the Montreal Mafia boss.
Angelo Musitano, 39, whose father, Dominic Musitano, was a contemporary of Giacomo Luppino, was killed in Hamilton on May 2, 2017, after he returned to his house. A gunman who was waiting for him shot him dead inside his pickup truck in the driveway.
Similarly, a gunman was waiting outside the Hamilton home of Albert Iavarone, 50, who had links to the mob. Iavarone was shot dead when he returned home on Sept. 6, 2018.
Luppino’s death was the city’s first homicide of the year.
A STATIC SURVEILLANCE TECHNIQUE WAS BEING UTILIZED.