Finding peace over a father’s brutal murder

Police documents shed some light on 1952 killing in northern B.C.

The brutal, ultimately fatal assault on his father on a backwoods trail in remote northern B.C. has haunted Windsor businessman Joe Greco for decades.

But now, after years of pleading for information, he’s a big step closer to finding out what happened. Last month, in response to his request under the Access to Information Act, Greco received RCMP documents that describe how his immigrant dad, Lorenzo Greco, was attacked and robbed on July 7, 1952, while carrying groceries to the family’s hardscrabble farm near New Hazelton, B.C., after cashing a paycheque.

Well-meaning friends had urged 79-year-old Joe Greco, founder of a successful window and door business, to just let it go and get on with life because the killing happened decades ago and nothing is gained by picking at old scabs.

The fit, health-conscious Greco is indeed getting on with life. He has nice homes in South Windsor and on Lake Erie, spends his winters in Mazatlan, Mexico, and adores his six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

But there’s one image he can’t shake from his mind: the sight of his unconscious father in a hospital bed with a large bandage masking a crushing head wound, inflicted by a rock, that led to his death six days later. So, in the late 1980s, with his fortune made, Greco returned to B.C. to learn more about how his father was killed and why no one was convicted.

He walked the trail where the assault took place, met with police and locals and studied newspaper microfilm. His efforts were sidetracked for years when B.C. archives officials informed him, incorrectly, that files on the case couldn’t be found and must have been destroyed.

Now, thanks to helpful police officers, he knows better: murder files never see the shredder. The killing of the family breadwinner was the climax to a year of hell that had seen barns burn, a sow and piglets freeze to death, a work horse break a leg and have to be shot and brazen thefts of calves.

Lorenzo and Sallatta Greco and their five boys, with Joe the middle child, had left their Calabrian town of San Giovanni in Fiore in 1949 to start a new life with Lorenzo’s homesteader father Antonio, who years earlier had carved a farm out of the B.C. wilderness.

The dream was soon shattered. The farm produced little beyond potatoes and turnips, the winters were brutally cold and the isolation was overwhelming.

“We made a big mistake. We should have stayed in San Giovanni,” Greco remembers his parents lamenting. His dad found work with the B.C. public works department, but in cashing a paycheque for $181.91, and paying a bill at a cafe, he drew unwanted attention.

As an RCMP report put it: “He had his money in plain view and anyone in the cafe could see it.” Hours later, another police report stated, “Lorenzo Greco lying on the foot path, breathing hard, with the back of his head all covered in blood.”

A newspaper reported days later that a 25-year-old transient, Vernon McMaster, had been charged with murder and robbery. Just two months later, in what the media called a surprise move, a judge directed a jury to acquit McMaster over a lack of evidence.

The Greco family, dazed and confused by what they saw as a whitewash and miscarriage of justice, moved on. Joe, his mom and two younger brothers moved to Windsor where they built successful lives.

Meanwhile, the man they believe was the killer died years ago. It infuriates Greco to see witness names scrubbed from recently released police reports. Six decades on, privacy legislation wields a big eraser.

Still, there’s satisfaction that he’s done everything in his power to shed light on his father’s fate. “It’s like a load I had on my mind,” said Greco. “Like he was saying, ‘Why don’t you guys find out what happened to me?’

“Now that load seems much lighter. Maybe he’s resting in peace now.”