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Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Geesey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Night Stalker DTK.
Speaker 1: Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 1: and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with
Speaker 1: your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
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Speaker 5: to hire. Good evening. The year is nineteen seventeen, less
Speaker 5: than two decades into the new century, and already the
Speaker 5: Great War is occurring in the muddy fields of France.
Speaker 5: Soon there will be the Spanish Influenza, which will kill
Speaker 5: many more millions, an inauspicious start to a new millennium,
Speaker 5: to be sure. In one of Canada's largest cities, Toronto,
Speaker 5: there has been a murder of cab driver is found
Speaker 5: dead in West End, Toronto, stabbed multiple times. The cabby's
Speaker 5: name is Carmine Lapello aka Tony Lapello aka Tony Ross,
Speaker 5: an Italian Canadian. Inquests occur, but the murderer is never found.
Speaker 5: Now we take a leap forward to the year nineteen
Speaker 5: sixty four, when a ten year old Joe Lapello is
Speaker 5: going through some cardboard boxes in his parents' basement. He
Speaker 5: finds an old photo of a handsome young man. He
Speaker 5: takes the picture to his father and is told that
Speaker 5: the picture is of Joe's great uncle, Carmine Lapello. Joe's
Speaker 5: father was only seven years old at the time of
Speaker 5: the murder. Become entwined in a story of a young
Speaker 5: man's undying love for a woman, which would drive him
Speaker 5: to participate in illegal alcohol smuggling during the Prohibition era.
Speaker 5: Carmine was self employed taxi driver who became caught up
Speaker 5: with notorious people in a small immigrant community of Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
Speaker 5: known as the Ward. Circumstances were changed for the worse,
Speaker 5: turning this young man from a secretive life of crime
Speaker 5: to that of a police informant and eventually paying the
Speaker 5: ultimate price. In the early morning hours of July twentieth,
Speaker 5: nineteen seventeen, Carmine would be found brutally murdered in the street.
Speaker 5: Followed Joseph Lapello through his discovery of this mystery as
Speaker 5: he unravels the unsolved murder of his great uncle, Carmine Lapello.
Speaker 5: The book that we're featuring this evening is Murder Lost
Speaker 5: to Time, the true story of one of Canada's oldest
Speaker 5: unsolved murders, with my special guest author Joseph A. Lopello.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
Speaker 5: this interview. Joseph A. Lopello.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Dan.
Speaker 5: Hope, I didn't mispronounce your name. Well, thank you so
Speaker 5: much for joining me. Now, as we just alluded to
Speaker 5: in the introduction, this was spring of nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 5: You were asked to clean up the basement at your home.
Speaker 5: You found a small shoebox. You were ten years old.
Speaker 5: Tell us what you found in that shoe box and
Speaker 5: what this represented in terms of your investigation into your
Speaker 5: uncle's murder.
Speaker 4: Well, what I found in the shoe box was various
Speaker 4: photographs of aunts and uncles, people I all recognized. You know,
Speaker 4: I was ten years old. We used to visit every
Speaker 4: Sunday or weekends over at their houses. But I found
Speaker 4: this one picture. I knew the picture was a little
Speaker 4: bit older of a young man, and I had never
Speaker 4: seen him before. And like you said in the introduction,
Speaker 4: I showed it to my father and he explained to
Speaker 4: me who he was and what had happened to him.
Speaker 4: And I found it very curious when I found out
Speaker 4: that he was murdered, that it had never been solved.
Speaker 4: I found that particularly interesting, you know. And that's my
Speaker 4: introduction into the case. Was at that age, ten years old,
Speaker 4: and it was quite you know. I mean, I shouldn't
Speaker 4: even been looking. I was supposed to be cleaning up
Speaker 4: the chef in the basement and cleaning up the basement,
Speaker 4: and I had just my curiosity. I was opening boxes
Speaker 4: and seeing what was in there, and his photograph was
Speaker 4: in there with a bunch of other photographs.
Speaker 5: M you right too, that you said it was Your
Speaker 5: dad said it was a murder meant for someone else.
Speaker 5: And I didn't really want to talk about this at all,
Speaker 5: but your mother said Carmine was just in the wrong
Speaker 5: place at the wrong time. Now you write about ten
Speaker 5: years after finding this photo, you meet a person named
Speaker 5: Joseph pill. Now you're supposed to go to a bar
Speaker 5: with your friend, but you end up at a billiard's
Speaker 5: room at Young and Dundas and you're there about thirty. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so a man, How does Joseph pill come you to meet?
Speaker 5: How do you to come to meet Joseph Pill?
Speaker 4: Well, I came to meet him like I was in
Speaker 4: the billiard hall with my friend. We had arrived downtown
Speaker 4: a little bit early and to kill some time before
Speaker 4: we went to a bar, he suggested we go to
Speaker 4: a billiard room play a couple of games, which we
Speaker 4: did do. And we had been there half an hour
Speaker 4: forty five minutes and I could see the entrance of
Speaker 4: the billiard hall from where the table we were playing on.
Speaker 4: An elderly man came in. He was in his late seventies,
Speaker 4: and I really didn't pay any attention to him. But slowly,
Speaker 4: but surely, he had worked his way over to the
Speaker 4: way to the table that my friend and I were
Speaker 4: playing on, and he was staring at me. And I
Speaker 4: found this quite unusual. I didn't know this man. I
Speaker 4: couldn't recall him from anywhere. And my friend and made
Speaker 4: a remark, Jesus, Joe, you know, it looks like the
Speaker 4: old guy likes you, And laughing at it and everything.
Speaker 4: It was obvious he was staring at me, wanted to
Speaker 4: speak to me. But you know, maybe he was a
Speaker 4: little bit shy or intimidated, you know, twenty year old kid.
Speaker 4: Was I going to react to him saying something to me?
Speaker 4: So I said hello to him, and he introduced himself
Speaker 4: as Joseph pill and that he was and he asked
Speaker 4: me what my name was. He says, he's your name, Lapello.
Speaker 4: And I was shocked that he knew my name because
Speaker 4: I didn't know him. I said, yes, it is, and
Speaker 4: he says, I knew. He said my uncle, well it is.
Speaker 4: In fact, Carmine was my great uncle, and he said
Speaker 4: I knew him. I grew up with Weir school school
Speaker 4: chums from a very early age, from about when they
Speaker 4: were six years old or something, and they didn't live
Speaker 4: too far away, and they went to the same school.
Speaker 4: And he said that he was a taxi driver and
Speaker 4: he was with my uncle the night that the murder happened.
Speaker 4: He was on a taxi stand in Toronto. They had
Speaker 4: both their cars parked. They're waiting for bears. And at
Speaker 4: the time I didn't have any preliminary knowledge on the case.
Speaker 4: So I didn't know what question to ask him about
Speaker 4: my great uncle except maybe his personality what had happened.
Speaker 4: And the recurring response I kept getting from Joseph Pill
Speaker 4: was they never found out who did it. They never
Speaker 4: found out they never caught the people that did it.
Speaker 4: And Heed he seemed very upset about that, like very
Speaker 4: personally upset about it. You know, he was close to
Speaker 4: Carmine and everything. And I often got the feeling when
Speaker 4: I look back at that meeting between him and I,
Speaker 4: that was the only person I ever spoke to who
Speaker 4: was alive about the knowing my great uncle or anything
Speaker 4: that he had carried some guilt about it, you know,
Speaker 4: some remorse about maybe the way he behaved or did
Speaker 4: back then concerning the whole murder. So that was one
Speaker 4: meeting I had with him, and I never saw him again.
Speaker 4: I had went down to that billiard room because he
Speaker 4: said he lived in the area downtown, he lived there
Speaker 4: all his life, and that he comes into the billiard
Speaker 4: room frequently. I didn't get a phone number or anything
Speaker 4: from him. I just thought i'd see him again. I
Speaker 4: never did. But he was an eyewitness to the events
Speaker 4: that happened on a taxi stand that night.
Speaker 5: You didn't know what the importance was, and you felt
Speaker 5: at that time, you write, that there was just something
Speaker 5: more he wanted to say, and there was certainly, as
Speaker 5: you just said, there was a certain amount of regret,
Speaker 5: it seemed. But you didn't know anything about the case
Speaker 5: really at that time, so you didn't have any reference
Speaker 5: for what he was saying, in any contact for what
Speaker 5: he was saying at that time. And of course you
Speaker 5: never got to speak to him again or see him.
Speaker 5: Your mother passes away in two thousand and five, so
Speaker 5: you have to go through these through boxes of mementos.
Speaker 5: What do you find in two thousand and.
Speaker 4: Five, I find Carmine's picture again in the same shoe
Speaker 4: in the same shoe box that I had founded it
Speaker 4: in nineteen sixty four, when I was ten years old,
Speaker 4: And again it just, you know, it rekindled some memories
Speaker 4: of when I was ten years old, speaking to my
Speaker 4: parents about it, when I was twenty years old and
Speaker 4: I met Joseph Pill, and in between, you know, two
Speaker 4: the time I met Joseph Pill was nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 4: and in between two thousand and five, I mean, it
Speaker 4: came to mind, the case came to mind a few times,
Speaker 4: but I was, you know, preoccupied with my own life,
Speaker 4: you know, and didn't really have any time to spend
Speaker 4: on it, delving into the case and doing more research
Speaker 4: on it.
Speaker 5: Right, you write that you didn't. You took another five
Speaker 5: years after this, twenty ten. You were more ready to
Speaker 5: delve into this mystery. Of course, you realize Joseph pill
Speaker 5: would be dead by that time. How did you start
Speaker 5: your investigation? Where did it start and.
Speaker 4: What did you point? The first thing I did was
Speaker 4: I googled his name into my computer, Carmine's name, the victim,
Speaker 4: and there was a website in Canada for murdered taxi drivers,
Speaker 4: and sure enough, his name was the first one on
Speaker 4: the list in nineteen seventeen. And it gave a brief
Speaker 4: outline into the case, and it detailed the date it happened,
Speaker 4: the time where the body was found and everything. But
Speaker 4: at the end of the article it also said that
Speaker 4: some guilt or blame for the murder was placed on
Speaker 4: a man, a sailor in Britain who had lived in
Speaker 4: Canada at the time. It didn't mention his name or
Speaker 4: anything like that, but I just thought in nineteen twenty
Speaker 4: three he was convicted of a murdering a taxi driver
Speaker 4: in London, England, and the newspaper here he was sentenced
Speaker 4: to death, but his death sentence was later commuted by
Speaker 4: an act of Parliament based on the flimsy evidence that
Speaker 4: convicted him, very shaky evidence, it was. I don't think
Speaker 4: he was guilty at all, but the newspaper here picked
Speaker 4: up on its Toronto Star. I think it sort of
Speaker 4: laid the blame for my great uncle's murder on him,
Speaker 4: you know. And then so I reached searched him as
Speaker 4: as well as I could, and founder and I had
Speaker 4: to eliminate him as a suspect. He just did not
Speaker 4: fit the profile of somebody that would that would be
Speaker 4: involved in a heinous murder like this.
Speaker 5: You found out that your uncle great uncle was owner
Speaker 5: of two cars, one driven by another employee and another employee.
Speaker 5: What did you find out about the registration for those cars? However,
Speaker 5: before we talk about the actual what you find out
Speaker 5: about Friday, July nineteenth, the day before all pardon me, yes, well,
Speaker 5: July nineteenth, just before midnight, eleven thirty and with fellow
Speaker 5: taxi driver Joseph phil sitting in Carmine's car, tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about just the what you found about
Speaker 5: the ownership of these cars before we talk about July nineteenth,
Speaker 5: eleven thirty at the taxi driver staff with Joseph Pilboms.
Speaker 4: Okay, well, it had been said in the newspaper in
Speaker 4: a few articles, that Carmine was the owner of these
Speaker 4: two cars, but the cars were after registered in another
Speaker 4: man's name, a man at Edgar Bridges, I think Edgar Bridges,
Speaker 4: and the cars were registered in his name. What I
Speaker 4: thought that very odd, like, why would Carmine be the
Speaker 4: owner of two taxis and have them in somebody else's name?
Speaker 4: At first it made no sense to me, but later
Speaker 4: on I found out the reason for that, and it
Speaker 4: became very questionable to me whether or not Carmine was
Speaker 4: the real owner of these cars. Because one year prior
Speaker 4: to supposedly going into the taxi business, well, the price
Speaker 4: of those two taxi cabs the time might have been
Speaker 4: between twelve hundred and two thousand dollars. I knew Carmine's
Speaker 4: parents fruit were immigrants, they were laborers. They didn't have
Speaker 4: that type of money to be able to lend to
Speaker 4: Carmine so he could buy these cars. So I began
Speaker 4: to question, well, where did this money, where did he
Speaker 4: get this money to buy these cars? And were they
Speaker 4: even his cars? Were that I came to believe and
Speaker 4: conclude that they were not his cars? He said he
Speaker 4: was the owner. He had business cards written up with
Speaker 4: the number of his taxi cabs in case anybody wanted
Speaker 4: to call the dispatch to have him pick up a fare.
Speaker 4: But I mean, the only assets in the taxi business
Speaker 4: are the cars. Why would you put them in somebody
Speaker 4: else's name. The only reason to do that is if
Speaker 4: you were up to something illegal with them, and in
Speaker 4: the event you were caught, the real owner of the
Speaker 4: car would be able to come to court and say, well,
Speaker 4: you know, they're my cars, and they're my taxis and
Speaker 4: he was just working for me and I had no
Speaker 4: idea what he was doing. And then the court would
Speaker 4: have to release those those cars back to the original
Speaker 4: owner because they wouldn't be able to prove that he
Speaker 4: had knowledge that they were being used for an illegal purpose.
Speaker 4: That's the only thing I could conclude by that. But
Speaker 4: I mean prior to nineteen sixteen, one year before that,
Speaker 4: he was borrowing money from his estranged wife, Carmi, and
Speaker 4: I don't think he had paid it back. So if
Speaker 4: he was borrowing, and it was a very small amount
Speaker 4: by today's standards, only fifty or one hundred dollars, but
Speaker 4: back then that was a lot of money. If he
Speaker 4: couldn't pay that back, where was he getting in the money,
Speaker 4: you know, a couple of thousand dollars to buy these
Speaker 4: two cars and to go into business. It just didn't
Speaker 4: make You were getting it up to me, Dan, you.
Speaker 5: Know, yeah, you were getting a better clearer picture of
Speaker 5: what was going on with your great uncle and the
Speaker 5: business he was undertaking. Let's as you describe, describe for us,
Speaker 5: walk us through that night eleven thirty July nineteenth, close
Speaker 5: to midnight, nineteen seventeen, Joseph Pill is sitting in Carmine's
Speaker 5: car at Toronto Street near King Edward Hotel. What was
Speaker 5: today King Edward Hotel? Tell us about what Joseph Pill says,
Speaker 5: especially initially, about who he sees and what these people,
Speaker 5: this man and woman do that night.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, the man and woman approached the taxi stand
Speaker 4: from the east, walking along King Street, and right at
Speaker 4: the corner of King and Toronto Street is a taxi stands.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact that there's still a taxi
Speaker 4: stand there over one hundred years later. And as they approached,
Speaker 4: the woman went to the driver's side of the car
Speaker 4: where Carmine was sitting, because Joseph Pill and him was
Speaker 4: sitting in Carmine's car and Joseph Pill's car was behind.
Speaker 4: And the man who came with this woman went to
Speaker 4: the back of the taxi cab and he was he
Speaker 4: acted very very suspicious in so far as he didn't
Speaker 4: do any of the talking to try and hire Carmine,
Speaker 4: and he had he was wearing a cap which was
Speaker 4: pulled over his uh, pulled over his face, and had
Speaker 4: the collar of his jacket was pulled up to conceal
Speaker 4: his identity. And he never spoke a word all the
Speaker 4: time he was there. The woman did all the talking,
Speaker 4: and she said, I want to go out to Hyde
Speaker 4: Park in the green car with the white stripe. I
Speaker 4: was out that way two or three days years ago,
Speaker 4: and that's the car that took me out there. Well,
Speaker 4: Carmine's car was green and it had a white stripe
Speaker 4: on it. And Carmine said to her that you must
Speaker 4: have been out with my driver, because you know, I
Speaker 4: don't remember taking you. And at first Carmine did not
Speaker 4: want to take them, and Joseph Pill didn't want to
Speaker 4: take them either. For some reason, they were alarmed by
Speaker 4: this couple. You know, they were very shabbily dressed. They
Speaker 4: didn't look like they had the money for the taxi
Speaker 4: fair and Carmine and Joseph Pill, the man i met
Speaker 4: in the billiard room in downtown Toronto, argued about this
Speaker 4: for fifteen or twenty minutes till finally Carmine said, oh,
Speaker 4: that's fine, I'll take them. And at the precise moment
Speaker 4: that he was loading them into his car, another driver
Speaker 4: pulled up to the stand and offered to take them
Speaker 4: to their location, their destination out in the High Park
Speaker 4: and or the High Park area, and the man who
Speaker 4: accompanied the woman who was asking for to hire a
Speaker 4: taxi cab waved off the other driver and pointed to
Speaker 4: Carmines car. Then they both got in and Carmine drove away,
Speaker 4: which it was very shortly after midnight. It could have been,
Speaker 4: you know, twelve fifteen or something like that. And that's
Speaker 4: the last time Joseph Pill ever saw my great uncle alive.
Speaker 5: Now you're right to the next day, around five fifteen am,
Speaker 5: or so. This is July twentieth. A workman finds Carmine's
Speaker 5: body on Salisbury Avenue, fifty yards north of Queen Street
Speaker 5: area in the Humber Bay area on the western outskirts
Speaker 5: of Toronto. His car parked about twenty five feet from
Speaker 5: the body. He is stabbed fourteen times in the back,
Speaker 5: and police believe it's from a stiletto knife. When his
Speaker 5: body's found, he's still warm, and so they estimate that
Speaker 5: he was dead maybe only an hour and a half
Speaker 5: at that time. Witnesses heard two men arguing earlier that morning.
Speaker 5: They thought it was sounded Italian, and they had heard
Speaker 5: a scuffle and a car speed away around four or five,
Speaker 5: around four am or so. Now, once you found that information,
Speaker 5: you write that this little photo you had of your
Speaker 5: great uncle, you wouldn't need that on your computer anymore.
Speaker 5: This was you didn't need a reminder to deep dive
Speaker 5: into this investigation and find out who killed your great uncle.
Speaker 5: Isn't that true?
Speaker 4: Yes, it is the facts that you've laid out. Uh,
Speaker 4: maybe he'd conclude a couple of things that uh well, Uh,
Speaker 4: the the witness you're talking about is a was a
Speaker 4: man named George Rush senor. He lived at UH fifty eight, Salisbury,
Speaker 4: on the same street where the murder took place. He
Speaker 4: had been called out at three am to get a
Speaker 4: car out of a ditch. He went out, got the
Speaker 4: car out of the ditch. He returned back to his
Speaker 4: home at four o'clock. At that time, approximately sixty yards
Speaker 4: away from his house. It was very dark by the
Speaker 4: way back then, there were no street lights or anything.
Speaker 4: He had seen the figures of two two people, one
Speaker 4: man was quite a bit taller than the other one,
Speaker 4: and he heard them arguing in a foreign language. He
Speaker 4: was asked at a corner's inquest if it was Italian.
Speaker 4: While George Rush didn't speak Italian, he couldn't say for sure,
Speaker 4: he couldn't confirm it. But Carmine could only speak English
Speaker 4: an Italian, and so we have to conclude that the
Speaker 4: argument was an Italian, which meant that the killer, the
Speaker 4: man he was fighting with, and the fight that Rush witnessed,
Speaker 4: was with another Italian. But another observation George Rush made
Speaker 4: was that one man was quite a bit taller than
Speaker 4: the other. Now, the man from the taxi stand who
Speaker 4: accompanied the woman who hired Carmine, was approximately five foot six.
Speaker 4: The autopsy report puts Carmin's height at five foot seven. Well,
Speaker 4: at sixty yards, a one inch difference in height wouldn't
Speaker 4: be that noticeable. So I started to ask myself, you know,
Speaker 4: the man who was with the woman from the taxi stand,
Speaker 4: he couldn't have committed the murder because there was an
Speaker 4: eye witness and a discrepancy in the height that was
Speaker 4: very dis distinguishable. And so I knew then that this
Speaker 4: was a conspiracy. I knew that the primary job of
Speaker 4: the man and woman who originally hired him at the
Speaker 4: taxi stand, their job was to rure him out to
Speaker 4: that area, and once they got him there, at that time,
Speaker 4: I didn't know what they do. I later found out
Speaker 4: that they left him. I believe they were at a
Speaker 4: location there, and then the killer was brought out there
Speaker 4: and driven out there by somebody else. Once the man
Speaker 4: and woman left, Carmine the other men that the killer
Speaker 4: posed as a taxi fair wanting to go back to Toronto,
Speaker 4: so Carmine naturally picked him up and agreed to take him,
Speaker 4: and when they stopped on Salisbury Avenue, that's when the
Speaker 4: fight started. After the fight, not just George Rush, he
Speaker 4: saw the fight and went into the house. But there
Speaker 4: were two women who lived on Queen Street very close
Speaker 4: to that location that heard a car speeding along Queen
Speaker 4: Street going west. It stopped, it turned around, It was
Speaker 4: there for a little while, and then later off it
Speaker 4: sped back to Toronto. Well, obviously the man who murdered
Speaker 4: Carmine had a getaway driver. Once he finished committing the murder,
Speaker 4: he ran down to Queen Street, he was picked up,
Speaker 4: and then they both headed back to Toronto. So does that
Speaker 4: answer your question, Dan, And I didn't need any reminder
Speaker 4: of the case. I didn't need the picture in front
Speaker 4: of me anymore because it began to intrigue me as
Speaker 4: a real mystery. And what was unfolding in front of
Speaker 4: me was the makings of a plot, like a conspiration,
Speaker 4: see like this, of a plan. This wasn't you know.
Speaker 4: The police, originally and right to the end of their investigations,
Speaker 4: seized on the motive of sudden jealousy, as if my
Speaker 4: great uncle had offended this woman and the man went
Speaker 4: into a rage. They had a fight, and the man
Speaker 4: killed him like sudden jealousy, a crime of passion. But
Speaker 4: later facts that I uncovered just tore that theory, all
Speaker 4: the part apart.
Speaker 5: You talk about what police were led to believe, and
Speaker 5: we'll talk about that in a while, how they were
Speaker 5: led to believe and by who that misled by this
Speaker 5: person and misled the police with this kind of idea
Speaker 5: that it was jealous rage. Now why it also police
Speaker 5: thought that is because as you say that the your
Speaker 5: commine's body was staged, tell us how it was staged
Speaker 5: to look to accommodate this narrative that police later believed
Speaker 5: was true thanks to the guidance of the again, the woman,
Speaker 5: the mysterious woman in this case.
Speaker 4: Well, when the body was originally found, it was he
Speaker 4: was laying on his back. It was discovered later he
Speaker 4: had been stabbed fourteen times, which sent up a bit
Speaker 4: of a red flag to me. If this was a
Speaker 4: case of the I was considering everything even like a robbery. Okay,
Speaker 4: but I had to discount the robbery theory because nothing
Speaker 4: had been taken from his body.
Speaker 5: He had.
Speaker 4: He had a gold hunter's watch. He had five dollars,
Speaker 4: which doesn't sound like much now, but back then it
Speaker 4: represented you know, you know, a half a week's pay
Speaker 4: or six dollars a bank account. He had a ruby ring,
Speaker 4: these things were still all present, so I ruled out robbery,
Speaker 4: and his body was left with the pants pulled down
Speaker 4: and his privates exposed. And I don't know if any
Speaker 4: of your listeners are Italian, but an Italian tradition of
Speaker 4: revenge against a man who has either insulted your wife
Speaker 4: or has done something to her to insult you, this
Speaker 4: is a very typical way to leave the body of
Speaker 4: the person who's done that, if you've killed them, it's
Speaker 4: like to leave them in a state of eternal disgrace
Speaker 4: for offending your woman. Okay, So, but the the police
Speaker 4: would have known that back then, because there was organized
Speaker 4: crime in Toronto, they had a bit of a glimpse
Speaker 4: into it, and they would know that this would be
Speaker 4: the result of a man who went crazy because you
Speaker 4: insulted his woman or made a path at her in
Speaker 4: front of him. And the amount of stab wounds too,
Speaker 4: it seemed like an overkill, you know. It was like
Speaker 4: it was deliberately done to make it look like, yes,
Speaker 4: somebody was in a jealous rage, uncontrollable jealous rage, where
Speaker 4: in fact, the coroner found out after the second stab wound,
Speaker 4: which had punctured his lungs, he had already died. He
Speaker 4: was deceased, so every stab wound administered after the second
Speaker 4: or third was useless, okay, And leaving his body with
Speaker 4: the pants pulled down, his private hanging out, you know,
Speaker 4: like you know, he had disrespected a man's wife. That
Speaker 4: was the motive. That's what it looked like originally at
Speaker 4: the scene, and that's the motive they seized on because
Speaker 4: they had no other motive.
Speaker 5: You right though, that you found right on this the
Speaker 5: very first thing that you found online the taxi driver's site,
Speaker 5: that Carmine had received an unsigned letter in February nineteen
Speaker 5: seventeen threatening his life. What was in that letter? Why
Speaker 5: were they threatening his life? What were they telling him
Speaker 5: not to do anymore?
Speaker 4: Well? What the what the letter was sent to is
Speaker 4: estranged wife, threatening his life and telling him to stop
Speaker 4: talking to the police. The letter didn't describe what he
Speaker 4: was talking to the police about. It just told him
Speaker 4: stop talking to the police or you know you're going
Speaker 4: to be kill.
Speaker 5: Right now? What what now? You found out in your investigation,
Speaker 5: If you found in your investige, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 4: Well, it seemed to me that if in February of
Speaker 4: nineteen seventeen, he received this letter telling him to stop
Speaker 4: talking to the police, and in July he ends up dead.
Speaker 4: Obviously he's still talking to the police or they who's
Speaker 4: ever killed him believes he is. And that's the real motive.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not a case of sudden jealousy the
Speaker 4: way the crime scene was staged.
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Speaker 5: Now we're at the point where in your investigation you
Speaker 5: find what you find is you believe is the real motive,
Speaker 5: and you're finding now you're putting together the plot that
Speaker 5: occurred here. This what had happened and who was involved.
Speaker 5: And it's fascinating in this investigation that you undertook as
Speaker 5: a basically an amateur sleuth, some of the things that
Speaker 5: you used to your advantage, some of the resources. You
Speaker 5: talked about this inspector from the Ontario Provincial Police, the
Speaker 5: equivalent of state police in Canada, this Inspector Boyd, and
Speaker 5: so you read his report and got a lot of information.
Speaker 5: You read this taxi driver site, and then you went
Speaker 5: to ancestry and did some interesting work to connect the dots.
Speaker 5: Tell us about some of the things, including with newspaper archives,
Speaker 5: how you came to find out who you believe are
Speaker 5: the suspects, were the perpetrators of this crime, this whole
Speaker 5: group that conspired to kill your uncle and why?
Speaker 4: Okay, well, I guess I should explain first that the
Speaker 4: problem with this case was not only its age, and
Speaker 4: there was nobody to speak to about it. But I know,
Speaker 4: because I was an amateur, didn't know anything about this
Speaker 4: and how to go about it. I kept running out
Speaker 4: of sources of research. Once I had had all the
Speaker 4: newspaper articles, I made a freedom of information request to
Speaker 4: try and get the police report from the Antaro Provincial
Speaker 4: Police Inspector Boyd, who was and there was actually three
Speaker 4: police forces working on this. There was Toronto Police, the
Speaker 4: Mimical Police and the opp but Inspector Boyd was put
Speaker 4: in charge of the case. Now, in his report, there
Speaker 4: was a few things that I found that weren't in
Speaker 4: any of the newspaper articles, but nothing in his report
Speaker 4: conclusively identified the man and woman. They were still a mystery,
Speaker 4: and that's later on I had to broaden my search
Speaker 4: to find out who they were. But I got names
Speaker 4: from that report. And there was one report as he
Speaker 4: was interviewing people at a location in Toronto's area known
Speaker 4: as the Ward. It was Saint John's Ward on a
Speaker 4: street called elm and I found that there was a
Speaker 4: boarding house, grocery store and residence there and it was
Speaker 4: a a bit of a notorious place. Most of the
Speaker 4: lodgers were very transient now, like they would stay there
Speaker 4: a week or two and they would leave. But a
Speaker 4: conversation had taken place there and this was reported to
Speaker 4: Inspector Boyd by somebody who was actually informing to him
Speaker 4: about the murder. And two of the lodgers were talking
Speaker 4: and one of them said, you know, they were talking
Speaker 4: about the murder, and he had heard that somebody was arrested,
Speaker 4: and the other one said, well, how can that be.
Speaker 4: The person who did it was just here a little
Speaker 4: while ago. This was on a Sunday afternoon and those
Speaker 4: two lodgers had an argument and the next day they
Speaker 4: left that lodging house and nobody knew their names. They
Speaker 4: were never identified. But there was also a man wanted
Speaker 4: in Hamilton the police. He was one demand from Hamilton, Ontario,
Speaker 4: which is about thirty miles away from Toronto, and he
Speaker 4: was hidden out there. So it made this location and
Speaker 4: the people running it very suspicious to me, and I
Speaker 4: broadened my search on them find found out as much
Speaker 4: as I could about them, which gave me a lot
Speaker 4: of information that helped me find the information of the
Speaker 4: people who planned this and who committed this murder. Later on,
Speaker 4: there was a private from the Canadian Army. His name
Speaker 4: was Arthur Colin Kilner, and nine days after the murder,
Speaker 4: he was on a train coming from Montreal. He was
Speaker 4: on leave, so he went to Montreal to visit his mother.
Speaker 4: On his way back to Toronto to rejoin his regiment,
Speaker 4: he was approached by a woman on a train who
Speaker 4: by the way, matched the description of the woman from
Speaker 4: the taxi stand the night of the murder, and she
Speaker 4: started a conversation with him and asked him where he
Speaker 4: was going and everything, and he told her he was
Speaker 4: heading back to Toronto, and she asked him if he
Speaker 4: would pick up her suitcase for her down in Toronto.
Speaker 4: She had left it there and when he asked why
Speaker 4: she didn't pick it up herself, why she just didn't
Speaker 4: go and pick it up herself, she explained to this
Speaker 4: young private from the Canadian Army that approximately nine days
Speaker 4: or earlier, her and her husband were out in a
Speaker 4: taxi cab around the Humber Bay area and the taxi
Speaker 4: cab driver and her husband got into an argument. She
Speaker 4: left and the next day she doesn't know, She doesn't
Speaker 4: know what she's explained to him. She didn't know what happened.
Speaker 4: The next day, the taxi driver was found murdered, and
Speaker 4: she didn't want to go back to the location where
Speaker 4: her suitcase was. He agreed to pick up her suitcase.
Speaker 4: They had a drink, a cup of coffee or something
Speaker 4: which she bought, and shortly after taking this drink, having
Speaker 4: this drink of coffee with her, the private got very
Speaker 4: he got violently ill to his stomach. He went into
Speaker 4: a cold sweat, he was vomiting. He was so sick
Speaker 4: that when the train stopped halfway between Montreal and Toronto
Speaker 4: and a town called Belleville, he had to be removed
Speaker 4: and hospitalized. He was in the hospital for nine or
Speaker 4: ten days before Inspector Boyd, who was in charge of
Speaker 4: the case, was notified and he went to see this
Speaker 4: private and sure enough, the description of the private gave
Speaker 4: Inspector Voyd of this woman matched up with the woman
Speaker 4: from the taxi stand. Also mentioned that she was from
Speaker 4: Montreal and she would only be in Toronto a couple
Speaker 4: of days. She actually went to the effort of showing
Speaker 4: Private Kilner her return train ticket back to Montreal, so
Speaker 4: for all intents and purposes, everybody thought she was from Montreal. Well,
Speaker 4: sure enough, Inspector Boyd secures leave from the Canadian Army
Speaker 4: to take Private Kilner to Montreal and look for this woman.
Speaker 4: But I mean, obviously this was just another act of deception,
Speaker 4: because what had happened before all this took place. Inspector
Speaker 4: Boyd had been at one twenty four Elm Street, this
Speaker 4: residence where there was a grocery store, hideout for criminals,
Speaker 4: lodging house, and it was in the middle of the Ward,
Speaker 4: which was riddled with crime at the time, and the
Speaker 4: crime was all around down there. He had questioned the
Speaker 4: people that owned this grocery store, lodging house and residents
Speaker 4: about the murder. I believe that the man and woman
Speaker 4: from the taxi stand had made their way up to
Speaker 4: Northern Ontario. From there they separated. The men came back
Speaker 4: to Toronto and the woman went on to Montreal where
Speaker 4: she was hiding out. After Inspector Boyd went to the
Speaker 4: Ward to this address at one twenty four Elm Street
Speaker 4: questioned these people. I believe these people got frightened because
Speaker 4: they did know the murder. They didn't know the murder
Speaker 4: and their grocery store. They had a truck that used
Speaker 4: to go out to the area where the murder was
Speaker 4: committed because there was hobby farms out there, and that's
Speaker 4: where they used to buy their vegetables and fruit and
Speaker 4: bring it back to the grocery store and sell it. Well.
Speaker 4: The two women on Queen Street that witness the car
Speaker 4: speeding by the getaway driver, I think the getaway driver
Speaker 4: the lights were on in their house, and I think
Speaker 4: the getaway driver saw them, and he thought that they
Speaker 4: saw him and the killer driving back to Toronto. So
Speaker 4: when they got back to Toronto, they told this woman
Speaker 4: who owned the truck in the grocery store which they
Speaker 4: had used her truck as the getaway vehicle. If anyone asked,
Speaker 4: were you out that way near the murder scene, you
Speaker 4: tell them you were out there buying vegetables. When the
Speaker 4: police questioned missus Coelo from one twenty four Elm Street,
Speaker 4: she said, yes, I was out there buying vegetables. I
Speaker 4: saw the car and the body, but I thought it
Speaker 4: was somebody sleeping off a drunk. Well, I thought that
Speaker 4: very suspicious. Why would Carline's body was found in a ditch?
Speaker 4: Why would somebody sleep a drunk sleep a drunk off
Speaker 4: in a ditch when they had the back of the
Speaker 4: car to sleep. And I knew she was lying right away,
Speaker 4: So this became a very suspicious address to me in Toronto.
Speaker 5: You you continued too, as well, with a report that
Speaker 5: you pieced together that there was a witness that said
Speaker 5: something about a car leaving one twenty four Elm Street
Speaker 5: the night of the murder.
Speaker 4: Well, I don't know that was in Inspector Boyd's report,
Speaker 4: but he doesn't say who said that, so I don't
Speaker 4: know who actually said that, but it's in his report
Speaker 4: that somebody said to him that a car was left
Speaker 4: that left that address in the Ward one twenty four
Speaker 4: Elm Street at three am in the morning, and in
Speaker 4: the car was a man who was wanted for stabbing.
Speaker 4: But his name wasn't meant to either though, because there
Speaker 4: were no names mentioned either of the driver or the
Speaker 4: passenger who was wanted for stabbing. The only thing, the
Speaker 4: only benefit that was to me was the timeline. At
Speaker 4: three am that car was seen leaving the ward in Toronto. Well,
Speaker 4: that gave them plenty of time to get out to
Speaker 4: the Humber Bay area, get situated, you know. And wherever
Speaker 4: Carmine I believe Carmine was being babysitted by the man
Speaker 4: and woman from the taxi stand. They might have been
Speaker 4: out at a roadhouse or a rest all night restaurant something,
Speaker 4: or they might have been somewhere somewhere what they were
Speaker 4: together and once they left, this man came in and poses,
Speaker 4: then the murderer came in and posed and as a
Speaker 4: taxi fare right, But the timeline was the thing that
Speaker 4: made me very suspicious. It fit perfectly. At three o'clock
Speaker 4: they left the ward at four o'clock the murder occurred.
Speaker 4: Didn't have taken them half an hour to get out
Speaker 4: to the Humber Bay area. Gets go to where Carmine
Speaker 4: was being babysitted, and then the murder would pose as affair,
Speaker 4: commit the murder, and he'd be out there with his
Speaker 4: getaway driver, and then they'd be back in Toronto before
Speaker 4: five am before the body was found. They were probably
Speaker 4: back in Toronto and the man and woman from the
Speaker 4: taxi stand were long on their way before the body
Speaker 4: was discovered. As a matter of fact, they were seen
Speaker 4: at an area around four point thirty in Toronto that
Speaker 4: was near a train station, the Grand Trunk Railroad station.
Speaker 4: From there they could have caught a train to northern Ontario.
Speaker 4: I checked with the with the records department of the
Speaker 4: train company, and yes, there was a train that left
Speaker 4: there at the Parkdale and went up to North Bay,
Speaker 4: where they were seen the next day by an insurance agent,
Speaker 4: a man named Winters, who had an insurance company up there.
Speaker 4: He after he read the newspaper, he had a very
Speaker 4: sleepless night because the man and woman that he met
Speaker 4: up there that asked him for a ride to an
Speaker 4: area out there called Trout Lake up in northern Ontario,
Speaker 4: that their identities tallied up so exactly with that of
Speaker 4: the newspaper that he phoned the Crown Attorney, which in
Speaker 4: the United States you'd call it the district attorney to
Speaker 4: tell him because there was already a reward put out
Speaker 4: for five hundred dollars for any information leading to the killers.
Speaker 4: So the report of Inspector Bully was very useful to
Speaker 4: be because it had had brought to the surface a
Speaker 4: lot of details that weren't in the newspaper that the
Speaker 4: newspaper wasn't even privy to, Like this attack on the
Speaker 4: Canadian soldier appeared in no newspaper, but it was in
Speaker 4: the police report. I should mention too that Joseph pill
Speaker 4: three days after the murder, got a threatening note to
Speaker 4: his house, but they knew where he lived and told
Speaker 4: him you'd better stop helping the police, because his original
Speaker 4: statement to the police the day after the murder was
Speaker 4: that he saw this woman before in the war. He
Speaker 4: didn't know the man, he didn't really get a good
Speaker 4: look at him, but if he saw this woman again
Speaker 4: he would recognize her right and shortly after getting the
Speaker 4: threatening letter at his house, all of a sudden, his
Speaker 4: story chartered to change. Well, I don't know if I
Speaker 4: saw her before. I don't know if I could recognize her.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure now if it was the same woman
Speaker 4: I'm thinking of. So now the reason go ahead dance now.
Speaker 5: Now the reason for his trepidation to get a threat
Speaker 5: like that was Joseph pill was there the night his
Speaker 5: friend was taken away, abducted, murdered. And then he gets
Speaker 5: a warning that he shouldn't talk to police either, so
Speaker 5: he changes his story. But when you went through ancestry,
Speaker 5: when you went through Ancestry dot CAA, you made some
Speaker 5: connections with organized crime, and you took it all the
Speaker 5: way back to again Italy, in the Collabria area of Italy,
Speaker 5: and you found out took some of these names and
Speaker 5: did further research into their families and they're also their
Speaker 5: criminal careers. So you and one of those people you
Speaker 5: researched heavily was Frank Lombardi. Tell us Frank Lombardi two
Speaker 5: months before his interaction with Karma, and then what you
Speaker 5: found out about Frank Lombardy.
Speaker 4: Now Frank Lombardi. He was a taxi driver and he
Speaker 4: also lived in the ward. Actually he was a neighbor
Speaker 4: of the people that the Coelos, that lived at one
Speaker 4: twenty four Elm Street. He lived at one thirty Elm Street,
Speaker 4: and they knew each other, the families knew each other,
Speaker 4: and he was a taxi driver. He had come to
Speaker 4: Canada at a very early age. Frank Lombardi, he was
Speaker 4: educated here. He could speak English very well, and he
Speaker 4: Carmine and him had in May of nineteen seventeen had
Speaker 4: an argument, a pretty bad argument, and Frank Lombardi said
Speaker 4: at a coroner's inquest that the argument was over a fair,
Speaker 4: a dispute over a taxi fair that Frank Lombardy thought
Speaker 4: it was his fair and Carmine thought it was the
Speaker 4: fair belonged to him, and supposedly this is what this
Speaker 4: bad argument was about. But I had spent day down
Speaker 4: at the Archives of Toronto and I got the police
Speaker 4: record book from nineteen sixteen in nineteen seventeen, and I
Speaker 4: spent the whole day reading there. I didn't even know
Speaker 4: what I was looking for. I was just trying to
Speaker 4: find something that would I could see as recognizable. That
Speaker 4: might give me another lead on what was going on. Well,
Speaker 4: I read through quite a few pages that day and
Speaker 4: I came upon my great uncle's name. He had been
Speaker 4: charged with the illegal shipping of alcohol. No, I didn't
Speaker 4: know what that charge was at the time, but he
Speaker 4: had been charged. And Frank Lombardi very close to the
Speaker 4: date that Carmine was charged, he was charged with the
Speaker 4: same thing. They obviously were in the same business, and
Speaker 4: the argument over the fair wasn't true at all. What
Speaker 4: they were argued was over I believe that. Oh I
Speaker 4: also found out that Carmine had been arrested a second
Speaker 4: time for the same charge. I believe it was then that,
Speaker 4: either through coercion through the police or he made his
Speaker 4: own decision, he became an informer for the police. I
Speaker 4: think Frank Lombardy knew this, and this is what the
Speaker 4: argument was over. That was that will, that will, That
Speaker 4: is what the letter was all about in February sent
Speaker 4: the Carmine from Montreal. Stop talking to the police or else. Well, Carmine,
Speaker 4: I don't think, realized the seriousness of the people he
Speaker 4: was dealing with, and he probably kept informing on them
Speaker 4: and and you know, like you said at the introduction.
Speaker 4: He ended up paying the ultimate price for his bad decision.
Speaker 4: You know, But Frank Lombardi, he had been involved in
Speaker 4: shady dealings, illegal activities. The only thing is it was
Speaker 4: mostly theft and things like that. I've got his criminal
Speaker 4: record going back to uh I believe, eighteen ninety eight.
Speaker 4: The one thing that's absent from his early criminal record
Speaker 4: is any violence. He was just a man. I believe
Speaker 4: he dealt in stolen goods. And later on in our
Speaker 4: discussion we'll talk about what else he was involved in
Speaker 4: and and so. And he had tithe t to organized crime.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he was an actual member or
Speaker 4: an associate. I you know, at this uh at ninety
Speaker 4: three years after the murder and everybody being gone, it
Speaker 4: was it's it's hard to uh, you know, to determine
Speaker 4: that for sure, but he sure knew everybody.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about Rocco Perry and his wife Bessie.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well, Rocco Perry was an immigrant from Collaborate, Italy,
Speaker 4: and he had originally landed in I believe Ellis Island,
Speaker 4: New York, made his way to Canada to Montreal. From Montreal,
Speaker 4: he came to Toronto, and he was a laborer and
Speaker 4: he was a border at the the Tobin house Bessie
Speaker 4: when she was married, she was married to a man
Speaker 4: named Harry Tobin, and at their house they had some borders.
Speaker 4: Rocco was one of them. Well, in nineteen nineteen eleven,
Speaker 4: I guess nineteen eleven, Bessie and Rocco began an affair together,
Speaker 4: and shortly after the affair, well, well, wait a minute now.
Speaker 4: In nineteen twelve, Rocco was charged in a small town, Guelph,
Speaker 4: just west of Toronto, about fifty miles west of Toronto,
Speaker 4: of murder. So he was in jail for a year
Speaker 4: awaiting trial. By the way, he got off on that
Speaker 4: charge and he went back got Bessie. Bessie had two
Speaker 4: small children. She abandoned them and her husband and ran
Speaker 4: off with Rocco. And Rocco was worked on the wellon
Speaker 4: Canal out by the Niagara region. It was just being built.
Speaker 4: It was a big project and he was a laborer.
Speaker 4: But after that, you know, he had murdered a guy,
Speaker 4: for he had actually murdered somebody who had disrespected a
Speaker 4: mob boss out in Gwelph.
Speaker 5: Right, and.
Speaker 4: The mob boss's wife was a relative to a man
Speaker 4: who was married to a daughter of the Kolos of
Speaker 4: one twenty four Elm Street. So this is how I
Speaker 4: started to piece together the family connection and the organized
Speaker 4: crime family connection between all these people.
Speaker 5: It was instrumental. We haven't mentioned too the Black Hand.
Speaker 5: Most people will listening to this program will be familiar
Speaker 5: with its reputation and its history, but also you talk
Speaker 5: about some of that tradition coming to Canada and these
Speaker 5: guys employing that as well and being involved with black
Speaker 5: Hand and also working on the common goal of bootleg
Speaker 5: and a unique situation where in Canada the manufacturer magnufacturing
Speaker 5: of alcohol was legal. However, it was able for these
Speaker 5: criminal organizations, along with the legit manufacturers of alcohol, to
Speaker 5: be able to export that alcohol to the US, which
Speaker 5: would be incredibly lucrative and also, as you say, the
Speaker 5: springboard for all the murder and Mayhemond crime that ensued
Speaker 5: after that.
Speaker 4: Well, in the United States, prohibition the Volstead Act was
Speaker 4: passed in nineteen twenty, but in Canada, our prohibition alcohol
Speaker 4: prohibition was passed in nineteen sixteen. Now this made the sale,
Speaker 4: the commercial sale or the consumption of alcohol illegal except
Speaker 4: one's own cell stock. Like if you made enough wine
Speaker 4: to drink at dinner for yourself, which there was a
Speaker 4: limit to how much you could you could have in
Speaker 4: your basement, you know, maybe ten bottles of wine, twenty
Speaker 4: bottles of wine to last a year. It didn't. Now,
Speaker 4: the Volstead Act in the United States, the United States
Speaker 4: made the manufacture of alcohol illegal. In Canada, it wasn't
Speaker 4: illegal to manufacture it, it was illegal to sell it here.
Speaker 4: If you manufactured it and exported it, you could you
Speaker 4: could make as well. You could brew as much alcohol
Speaker 4: a beer and alcohol as you wanted, as long as
Speaker 4: it got shipped offshore. So what the what the organized
Speaker 4: crime people found out that there was a flaw in
Speaker 4: this law the way it was written in Canada. Now,
Speaker 4: what they did is they placed orders with breweries, say
Speaker 4: somebody that manufactured whiskey. They would have a phone call
Speaker 4: come from say New York State, and they would place
Speaker 4: an order for say a thousand cases of whiskey to
Speaker 4: be delivered to somewhere in New York, Upper New York State. Okay,
Speaker 4: So the manufacturer would manufacture them, he would sell it
Speaker 4: to the bootleggers. The bootleggers when they got it to
Speaker 4: the dock, there would be a government official there and
Speaker 4: they had to pay an excise tax, okay, because for
Speaker 4: shipping it off shore, and all they had to do
Speaker 4: was load it on a boat. Say that, you know,
Speaker 4: show the way bill that it was going to New
Speaker 4: York State. They would pay a certain amount of tax. Now,
Speaker 4: when the boat returned empty, they would recapture some of
Speaker 4: that tax. They were entitled to get some of the
Speaker 4: tax money back. But if nobody came back, or if
Speaker 4: they didn't come back and claim a portion of that
Speaker 4: tax they had already paid, well, the government just kept
Speaker 4: all the money. So the government was happy. They didn't care.
Speaker 4: They didn't have to refund any of this tax money.
Speaker 4: They were keeping it for themselves. It was additional revenue.
Speaker 4: So the flaw So, I mean, you could load up
Speaker 4: the same boat three times for export and say it
Speaker 4: was going to Cuba. It could come back three times
Speaker 4: the same day as long as you pay the excise tax.
Speaker 4: The government didn't care what you did with it. They did. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean later on in nineteen twenty, even though the
Speaker 4: Canadian government knew that alcohol was prohibited in the United States,
Speaker 4: as long as like you could put down in nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty one that it was being shipped to Upper New
Speaker 4: York State. Canadian government didn't care as long as they
Speaker 4: got their tax for it. Once it's hit the shores
Speaker 4: of Upper New York State. It was the US's problem,
Speaker 4: US authorities problem.
Speaker 5: You.
Speaker 4: Canadian government didn't care. So that was a loophole in
Speaker 4: the law that they discovered, so you could manufacture I mean,
Speaker 4: you could be arrested for manufacturing beer here in Canada
Speaker 4: or whiskey as long as there was an order place
Speaker 4: from another country to where it was going to be shipped.
Speaker 4: Short was placed from another country. You know, calls come
Speaker 4: from New York State. That's another country. Even though alcohol
Speaker 4: was prohibited, it didn't matter to Canadian government. That's where
Speaker 4: it was going. You paid the tax to ship it,
Speaker 4: They kept the money. Everybody was happy. So they said,
Speaker 4: you know, like the waybill that would say, oh, it's
Speaker 4: being shipped to Cuba. So they'd loaded up in Toronto,
Speaker 4: wherever these breweries were, and they'd drive the boat over
Speaker 4: to Niagara Falls and unloaded, and from there they would
Speaker 4: distribute it to all the speakeasies in Ontario. That was
Speaker 4: the loophole that they found and they took advantage of it.
Speaker 5: Right now, let's get back to the plot. You've discover
Speaker 5: in this all the players their connection to organized crime,
Speaker 5: and mysteriously or not so mysteriously, you find out the
Speaker 5: one twenty four Elm Street connection we've talked about that
Speaker 5: looks like the person involved, one of the people involved
Speaker 5: left that was driven away from that address towards where
Speaker 5: your uncle was killed. Give us what you found in
Speaker 5: total in terms of the plot to kill your uncle.
Speaker 5: Who were those players? Finally you come to a resolution
Speaker 5: and conclusion of who did what? Who are the players?
Speaker 5: Tell us about that?
Speaker 4: Okay, from the address one twenty four Elm Street, I
Speaker 4: was able and through Frank Lombardi, through Frank Lombardi's family,
Speaker 4: I was able to find out this man, Rocco Perry.
Speaker 4: Now I had heard this name before. I could only
Speaker 4: the best way to describe him is, do you know
Speaker 4: what El Capone was to prohibition in the twenty in
Speaker 4: Chicago in the United States. That's who Rocco Perry was
Speaker 4: to Canada, right, He was the biggest bootlegger in Canada.
Speaker 4: Him and his gang, well they were actually suspects in
Speaker 4: seventeen Unsolved homicides. But the real brains behind uh Rocco's
Speaker 4: organization wasn't Rocco. The real brains was his common law wife,
Speaker 4: the woman he had lope with. Bessie Perry or Bessie
Speaker 4: Startman was her maiden name. Her married name was Bessie Tobin,
Speaker 4: but she went by the name of Bessie Perry. She
Speaker 4: was extremely smart woman. It was actually unfortunate that she
Speaker 4: was born when she was because had she been born
Speaker 4: in the twenty first century, it is no doubt in
Speaker 4: my mind that she would have been the CEO or
Speaker 4: CFO of a transnational conglomerate corporation. She was very smart.
Speaker 4: Uh she educated herself and she she was cunning too.
Speaker 4: She was a very u forward strategic thinker. She was
Speaker 4: also a bit of a sociopath, and you can see
Speaker 4: that in her life the way she I mean, when
Speaker 4: she abandoned her two children, they were infants. One of
Speaker 4: them was like eight months old, the other one was
Speaker 4: a year and a half old. They were just babies,
Speaker 4: and you know, I mean she just left them to
Speaker 4: go run off with Rocco. And Rocco at the time
Speaker 4: that they ran off, wasn't King of the bootlekers that
Speaker 4: he was, you know, five years later, you know, so,
Speaker 4: I mean everything that she did. I mean she was
Speaker 4: convicted in Hamilton of running a brothel and they were
Speaker 4: selling alcohol out of there in you know, nineteen eighteen
Speaker 4: or something like that. You know, she was a person
Speaker 4: that when you know, she looked at everybody as if
Speaker 4: what is it I can get from you? What is
Speaker 4: it you can do for me? You know, she was
Speaker 4: the brains behind. She did all the organizing, She did
Speaker 4: all the ordering, she arranged the shipping. Roccal and his
Speaker 4: crew were more or less the muscle now, but as
Speaker 4: far as their part in the murder. When this murder occurred,
Speaker 4: they weren't the prominent bootleggers that they had turned that
Speaker 4: they wound up being in the nineteen twenties. But they
Speaker 4: were ruthless, you know. They if somebody stood in their way,
Speaker 4: there would be no hesitation has take to take that
Speaker 4: person out, you know. But I'm not sure Dan. As
Speaker 4: far as the organized I mean, Rocco had ties all
Speaker 4: over southern Ontario in organized crime groups. As a matter
Speaker 4: of fact, the Purple Gang of Detroit, who were buying
Speaker 4: Canadian whiskey and selling it to compone in Chicago. They
Speaker 4: were buying that whiskey of Rocco Perry, you know, so
Speaker 4: he was he was well embedded in that in the
Speaker 4: illegal alcohol business. Tying all these people up, I mean,
Speaker 4: I mean to go into it in great detail, Dan
Speaker 4: would be kind of tough because they're so you know,
Speaker 4: there's cousins and then there's uncles and and it's a
Speaker 4: family thing, you know, this organized crime group. You know,
Speaker 4: they stated themselves and well, what I basically found out
Speaker 4: is the man that Rocco killed in nineteen twelve who
Speaker 4: had insulted the mob boss from Gwelph his wife. The
Speaker 4: mob boss's wife was the sister of a man who
Speaker 4: was married to somebody at one twenty four Elm Street.
Speaker 4: There was the connection that all led to Rocco Perry.
Speaker 4: Rocco Perry was a witness at the wedding along of
Speaker 4: this man's wedding in nineteen nineteen, and the other witness,
Speaker 4: the maid of honor, also was Mary Colilo, who was
Speaker 4: a resident at one twenty four Elm Street. This was
Speaker 4: a very tight knit group of people, ethnic Italian people
Speaker 4: and the traditions from the old country they just brought
Speaker 4: over here. The organized crime traditions, but it was really
Speaker 4: alcohol prohibition that gave them their big boost, gave them
Speaker 4: a chance to make tons of money. You know, I
Speaker 4: don't know if that answers your question, Dan did.
Speaker 5: Well. The thing is, we talked about the role of
Speaker 5: Rossi and Bessie, but we have again. Is Bessie the
Speaker 5: person that went to that taxi stand? She's a woman
Speaker 5: and and Rossi is yeah, so you have you have
Speaker 5: Rossi and you have Bessie. Of course they're a part
Speaker 5: of me, Rocco, pardon me, Rocco's vested interest in this
Speaker 5: business and your great uncle standing in the way, they believe,
Speaker 5: But you find out who actually you believe actually did
Speaker 5: the the actual killing this Bearadelli.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as a man named Giuseppe Bernadelli, but he went
Speaker 4: by the aka Joe Berlito. He was a chef at
Speaker 4: the Queen's Hotel, which was one of the biggest hotels
Speaker 4: in Canada, and it was in Toronto, and he he
Speaker 4: came under suspicion a few times in his life for
Speaker 4: being extremely violent. And he was also from the Ward
Speaker 4: and he worked for Rocco. Well, actually he used to
Speaker 4: buy scotch and whiskey off Rocco and for wholesale, and
Speaker 4: he used to sell it retail, but he did work
Speaker 4: for Rocco too. He was like an enforcer type of
Speaker 4: a guy, and like Rocco had that area of the
Speaker 4: Ward and surrounding area. He was the supplier to all
Speaker 4: the alcohol. If he ran into any trouble with somebody
Speaker 4: trying to come into his area, he would send, like
Speaker 4: Giuseppe Bernadelli to see the people and straighten it out.
Speaker 4: And actually Giuseppe Bernadelli he got into a confrontation with
Speaker 4: Frank Lombardi in nineteen nineteen September of nineteen nineteen and
Speaker 4: Frank murdered him. He shot him. A coroner's inquest, you know,
Speaker 4: it came out that you know, this Joe Berlito, Giseppe Bernardelli,
Speaker 4: he was you know, he was a pimp. He sold alcohol.
Speaker 4: He used to muscle people down there in the Ward
Speaker 4: for money and he and he was connected to Rocco Ferry.
Speaker 4: He fit the profile and he was about six y'
Speaker 4: one in height, yeah, sixty one, and he spoke Italian
Speaker 4: exactly like the man at the murder scene who had
Speaker 4: a fight with my who was fighting with my great uncle.
Speaker 4: The man that George Rush when he returned to his
Speaker 4: house saw and heard you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's fascinating too. You you track down who you
Speaker 5: believe is the getaway driver, Charles.
Speaker 4: Larko.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and again the connection to Elm Street.
Speaker 4: Well, he was married to Annie Coelo from one twenty
Speaker 4: four Elms and Annie Koela was the daughter of the
Speaker 4: people that owned one twenty four Elm Street, the grocery store.
Speaker 4: They were actually selling alcohol out of there too after
Speaker 4: nineteen sixteen, supplied to by whom by Rocco Perry, you know,
Speaker 4: and where the man who was wanted in Guelph was
Speaker 4: kept in hiding. You know, So these people all connected up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's interesting too. You write of her fate, Bessie's
Speaker 5: fate with Rocco. Many years later, they go on to
Speaker 5: be very very successful. They buy a nineteen room mansion.
Speaker 5: They become very successful in bootlegging. But her personality, her drive,
Speaker 5: her psychopathy, catches up to her, doesn't it. Before I
Speaker 5: let you tell us what happens. What happens to Bessie
Speaker 5: and Rocko one faithful day much later.
Speaker 4: Well that was in August in nineteen thirty. The British
Speaker 4: Empire Games were on at the time in the Hamilton area,
Speaker 4: which is where their mansion was. They had been out
Speaker 4: earlier that day visiting somebody in jail, and then they
Speaker 4: went over to a friend's house and spend the evening
Speaker 4: and I think they had dinner plate cards. When they
Speaker 4: went back to their mansion, Bessie got out of their car.
Speaker 4: They had two cars. One was parked in the garage
Speaker 4: they had driven, obviously to go out that day. She
Speaker 4: opened the garage door. She went in to turn the
Speaker 4: light on in the garage, and two men stepped out
Speaker 4: behind the second car that was parked in the garage,
Speaker 4: and she was hit by two blasts of a twelve
Speaker 4: gate shotgun, one in the face and one in the
Speaker 4: hip that killed her. Instantly got out a scream, and
Speaker 4: that was the end of Bessie. She was no more.
Speaker 4: Rocco exited the car ran up the street, screaming in
Speaker 4: terror because he thought, you know, maybe this was intended
Speaker 4: for him, but it wasn't. Bessie was the type of
Speaker 4: person that didn't think much of abusing somebody, and I
Speaker 4: think what she failed to recognize was that although she
Speaker 4: was very clever and she thought that gave her some
Speaker 4: sort of superiority to the people that she. You know,
Speaker 4: Italian organized crime has been predominantly men for as many
Speaker 4: centuries as it's been going on, and this was a
Speaker 4: woman who wanted to be in charge. She was verbally
Speaker 4: abusive for the people that worked for them. She was
Speaker 4: very stingy when it came to money. For the life
Speaker 4: of me, I can't figure out why they discovered close
Speaker 4: to a million dollars in cash in nineteen twenty six
Speaker 4: in her bank account. And that's well not all the
Speaker 4: money she had. I mean, as you say, Dan, they
Speaker 4: became very wealthy. They had numerous trips down to New
Speaker 4: York Broadway and spending sprees. And at the time she died,
Speaker 4: she was wearing fifteen thousand dollars worth of jewelry. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, back in back in nineteen thirty, I mean,
Speaker 4: that was quite a that was quite a lot of
Speaker 4: jewelry to be wearing, you know, And you know, I
Speaker 4: mean her her her abusiveness, and she failed to recognize
Speaker 4: that the people she was dealing with weren't going to
Speaker 4: put up with that from her. Actually, they wouldn't put
Speaker 4: up with it from anybody that was just you know,
Speaker 4: their ego you know she and she you know, she
Speaker 4: as clever as she was was, she didn't understand the people,
Speaker 4: she didn't completely understand them, and and it caught up
Speaker 4: to her that night, that evening when she came home,
Speaker 4: and that ended up being her fate, you know, dying
Speaker 4: on the garage floor there. And yeah, Rocco emotionally fell
Speaker 4: apart for about six or eight months afterwards. He wouldn't
Speaker 4: leave the house. He was terrified. And then finally I
Speaker 4: guess he got the word that's you know, why it
Speaker 4: was done and everything, and there was nothing he could
Speaker 4: do about it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, it's interesting too that there was attempts
Speaker 5: on his life afterwards. His business went to ruin because
Speaker 5: he couldn't I don't know, he couldn't focus on it.
Speaker 5: But a couple of bombs were set for him, one
Speaker 5: in his house, one in his car. And then finally
Speaker 5: he was again battle luck. It was Italian's put in
Speaker 5: internment camps. And when he was released after three years,
Speaker 5: he went missing, never seen again. And then you tell
Speaker 5: that he actually lived his life out or reportedly lived
Speaker 5: his life out in Massana, New York. Anyway, I want
Speaker 5: to thank you so much, Joseph Lappelo for coming on
Speaker 5: and talking about your book, Murder Lost the Time, The
Speaker 5: True story of one of Canada's oldest unsolved murders. This
Speaker 5: was a fascinating investigation that you undertook. Congratulations on finding
Speaker 5: I believe and you believe who killed your great uncle
Speaker 5: and exactly why. It's a fascinating story. Thank you so
Speaker 5: much for coming on and talking about this. This book
Speaker 5: is available in ebook and paperback and also you could
Speaker 5: be found on Facebook. Am I not correct?
Speaker 4: That's true? Yes it is, Dan, And once again, thank
Speaker 4: you very much for having me and I hope your
Speaker 4: listeners have enjoyed our talk here about my book and
Speaker 4: I hope they'll check it out.
Speaker 5: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Joseph A. Lappelo Murder Lost
Speaker 5: the Time, The true story of one of Canada's oldest
Speaker 5: unsolved murders. You have a great evening.
Speaker 4: Good night, Thank you, Dan, good night, good night,