To order a murder, a senior mobster would simply say someone “has got to go,” and leave the rest up to him. Murdock says his personal code of conduct for gangland hits was something he thought up himself. “They don’t trust these people that they pay,” Nicaso said. The North American practice of paying men like Murdock to commit murders often backfires by breeding informers and mistrust within an organization, Nicaso says. “They are all people with the organization, made members.” “It’s part of the job, traditionally,” Nicaso said of the Italian Mafia’s use of in-family killers. In Italy, such jobs are only given to reliable members of the Mafia, said Nicaso, who has written several books on organized crime. The inference is that they likely would have approved of his technique, if not his targets.Īuthor Antonio Nicaso says Murdock fits the North American profile of a hitman, where outsiders are contracted to do a dirty job. However he adds that Barillaro and Papalia were active, longtime members of the underworld. Murdock said he had no ill feelings toward Papalia. He continues that he eschewed the use of bombs, noting that shrapnel from a bomb in a biker hit in Montreal accidentally killed an 11-year-old boy in 1995. Musitano and his brother Angelo were each freed in October 2007 after serving less than seven years of 10-year terms after pleading guilty to conspiracy to murder Barillaro. Musitano confessed to plotting the Barillaro murder, but denied any involvement in the Papalia killing in his plea bargain with the Crown. Pasquale (Pat) Musitano, 42, of Hamilton was originally charged with ordering the murder of Papalia, his godfather. It also meant there was little chance of missing his victims. Murdock says he shot Barillaro and Papalia up close with a pistol to ensure there were no innocent bystanders between him and his target. “Making peace with God? I don’t think that would be the first thing on his mind,” Murdock says. Since Papalia was shot in the back of the head, he didn’t have an instant to make his peace with God before dying.īut Murdock stresses that he was a hitman, not a theologian, and that Papalia would have been fighting, not praying, if he had been shot from the front. The Catholic Church denied Papalia a full funeral mass because of his criminal lifestyle, which included convictions for drug trafficking. He dismisses the comments made about the fact that he shot Papalia in the back of the head in the parking lot of the vending machine company Papalia ran in downtown Hamilton. The execution of Hamilton mob boss John Papalia on sparked criticism in the underworld about Murdock’s methods. Murdock later learned they had gone to buy presents for Barillaro because the next day was his 53rd birthday. “I sat down the street with binoculars, waited for the kids to leave. He points out that before he gunned down Niagara Falls mobster Carmen Barillaro on July 23, 1997, he surveyed the target’s upscale house for hours, waiting patiently for Barillaro’s wife and children to go on a shopping trip. Having served 10 years of a life sentence for three gangland hits, he will be eligible for full parole in December next year. “You don’t do that sort of stuff in front of the wife and kids,” he said in a telephone interview. One strict rule was to kill his victims away from their wives and children. Murdock, 47, refrains from using words like “etiquette” or “ethics” while revealing the personal code of conduct he followed while carrying out murders for the Hamilton mob. Ken Murdock’s voice is surprisingly polite when he discusses the dos-and-don’ts of being a hitman for the mob.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |