HUNTER: Murder of Mob toady Grant Norton the Musitanos' finale
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The shattered puzzle’s pieces were scattered around southern Ontario, soaked in blood.
At least a dozen bodies hit the pavement in a shocking settling of gangland accounts during a violent three-year upheaval. The underworld fratricide only ended in July 2020 when rotund Hamilton Mob boss Pasquale “Fat Pat” Musitano was rubbed out at a Burlington strip mall.
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After decades of crime preeminence, the Musitanos were effectively annihilated.
Two pieces remain of the puzzle.
Nearly eight years after the separate hits that claimed Mob scion Angelo Musitano and innocent bystander Mila Barberi, the last of three suspects in the rubout is still in the wind. Cops believe Daniel Tomassetti, 34, is hiding in Mexico.
The alleged triggerman — Hamilton freelance thug Michael Cudmore — was taken off the board south of the Rio Grande, where his body was discovered in a car parked alongside a dusty roadway.
Now, the sidebar. Grant Norton, 59, of Ingersoll. Norton was murdered two weeks before Fat Pat in July 2020.
His body was discovered stuffed in a barrel in a ravine in London, Ont. On Tuesday night, Ashley Bourget, 40, of London, was convicted of first-degree murder.
While Norton had been involved in myriad schemes with Fat Pat, his long-anticipated demise had nothing to do with underworld machinations. He was believed to be carrying $30,000.
His murder was decidedly low-rent.
It carried none of the operatic violence of The Godfather. Instead, it was a bargain basement rip-off that careened off the rails. And, according to testimony, payback for alleged sexual assaults years before.
In many ways, violent death was a long time coming for Norton, a career criminal.
In 2001, the London Free Press reported that Norton had been busted for stiffing a Chinese food deliveryman dropping off food to his Woodstock motel room. Cops discovered Norton was wanted in three jurisdictions and was using another person’s credit card and licence plates. Neither had been in use since 1989.
Norton was busted again in 2006 when he was nabbed in Brockville driving a BMW stolen from Hamilton. In 2007, he was arrested in Brantford and charged with possession of cocaine for the purpose of trafficking and possession of marijuana.
And somewhere along the line, Norton became acquainted with Mob boss Pat Musitano.
In 2019, Norton was charged with fraud, forgery and uttering threats involving a construction company with links to organized crime. He was allegedly a key player in Havana Group Supplies Inc., claiming the outfit had contracts from Metrolinx, CN Rail and a trio of casinos. They did not.
Musitano was allegedly a minority owner of the company.
But it wasn’t a Mob triggerman who snuffed out Norton: It was spaced-out hoods from the bargain bin.
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Since Fat Pat met his maker, traditional organized crime has been quiet in the GTA. There appears to be some semblance of peace in the valley.
In The Godfather, underboss Peter Clemenza philosophically noted that the crime families had to go to war every so often.
“These things gotta happen every five years or so, 10 years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood. Been 10 years since the last one,” the jolly gangster said.
Prisons are packed with dreamers, certain they would never get caught. Or that they were tough enough to withstand bullets, fists and brass knuckles. It is the delusion all criminals share.
Grant Norton almost certainly believed it, so did Pat Musitano, as did Michael Cudmore.
But the reality is 95% of the time, there are only two destinations: Prison or the funeral parlour.
@HunterTOSun
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