Sources have confirmed long-time Hamilton mobster Pasquale (Pat) Musitano was shot to death in his armour-plated SUV on a Burlington street on Friday afternoon — a year after he survived a similar attack in Mississauga.
“He was living on borrowed time,” former Hamilton undercover police officer Paul Manning said.
Musitano, 52, was shot shortly after 1 p.m. on Plains Road East, west of Waterdown Road in Burlington.
Another man who has not been identified was also found with gunshot wounds and taken to hospital, Halton police said.
A suspect fled the scene on Plains Road, heading west in a grey sedan.
Last year, Musitano was shot multiple times in the upper body around in the morning of April 25, 2019, inside his black Yukon Denali SUV soon after a visit to his lawyer’s office in Mississauga.
Musitano had grown isolated over the past few years after the death of his uncle Tony and murder of his younger brother.
He had once been considered an Ontario lieutenant of Montreal mob boss Vito Rizzuto, who died of natural causes in December 2013.
Those deaths cost him protection in a world where he had a growing amount of enemies.
“He’s been by himself for a while,” Manning said.
Pat Musitano was involved with a paving and construction company at the time of the attempt on his life last year.
Musitano was considered boss of a Hamilton mob family that was active for more than a half-century.
His father Dominic Musitano died of natural causes is 1995 and his uncle Tony died of natural causes in April 2019.
Pat Musitano’s younger brother Angelo (Ang) Musitano, a father of three, was shot to death on May 2, 2017, as he pulled his white pickup truck up to his home on Chesapeake Drive in the suburban Waterdown area of Hamilton shortly before 4 p.m. while his wife and children waited inside for him.
His murder has never been solved.
Weeks after his brother’s shooting, Pat Musitano’s home on St. Clair Boulevard in Hamilton was sprayed with bullets in the middle of the night.
“That was a warning,” Manning said.
Nearly two years earlier on Sept. 21, 2015, his SUV was torched in the driveway of his home.
No one was ever charged in either attack.
“I thought he’d flip in the end,” Manning said, noting that Pat Musitano apparently never co-operated with police. “He never flipped.”
Since the murder of his brother, two other Hamilton area men whose families have had underworld connections have been shot to death in Hamilton.
Albert Iavarone was murdered in September 2018 and Cece Luppino in January 2019.
Pat Musitano was not seen at the funeral for his uncle Tony – a former mobster, who died of natural causes in 2019 at the age of 72.
Pat Musitano was shot a day after the funeral of his uncle Tony’s funeral.
At the time of the attack last year, Pat Musitano was embroiled in a dispute with truckers, who complained he owed them money.
In October 2004, Pat Musitano told the National Parole Board that he wanted to start a new life as a caterer, father and husband.
“I want to go home to be a husband to my wife,” Pat Musitano told the parole board. “I want to go home to be a father to the children that I will one day have. That’s my goal.”
The parole board didn’t bite and he remained in prison.
At that point, he and his brother Angelo had served almost half their 10-year sentences for hiring a hitman to kill rival crime boss Carmen Barillaro, of Niagara Falls.
“My whole life I’ve had to deal with rumours and innuendos,” he complained to the parole board. “I’ve had to work harder than the average guy because of rumours and gossip.”
Pat and Angelo were initially charged with first-degree murder and of ordering the 1997 contract killing of Johnny (Pops) Papalia.
Less than a week after Papalia’s murder, police reported seeing Pat Musitano meet with Rizzuto in Guelph.
In the middle of their preliminary hearing, they both pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder in Barillaro’s death and the Crown dropped murder charges involving Papalia, who was shot May 31, 1997, outside his Galaxy Vending office on Railway Street in central Hamilton.
Ken Murdock, who had worked as muscle for Musitano’s father, confessed to shooting both Papalia and Barillaro to death after Pat Musitano ordered the killings.
In 1990, Pat and his father Domenic unsuccessfully sought a $5 million grant from the province for his illegal tire dump in Mount Hope near Hamilton.
Asked by media why the dump was protected by guard dogs and a watchman, Pat Musitano replied, “There is always a potential danger of somebody going to light a match to it, isn’t there?”
Murder charges against Domenic Musitano were dropped when he pleaded guilty to being an accessory in the Dec. 10, 1983, death of Domenic Racco of Toronto, the only son of former Metro mobster Michele (Mike) Racco.
Domenic Racco was shot five times at close range with a .38-calibre handgun.
The Musitanos and Macaluso became angry when asked whether Domenic Musitano’s background made him a suitable candidate for government grants for the dump.
“It doesn’t matter who owns it,” Domenic Musitano said. “What’s the difference who it is?”
Pat Musitano said his family can’t afford to set up a recycling operation.
“I don’t have that kind of capital,” Pat Musitano said. “We’re willing to pay it back.”
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