ANOTHER MOB HIT IN HAMILTON? RCMP SAYS YES.

While we reported a month or so ago that the Rizzuto crime family had allegedly reached a peace treaty with the Musitano's and other criminal groups, news yesterday began to spread that a Giorgio Barresi got clipped outside his home late Monday night.   While Barresi has long been associated with the Musitano crime family, I'm not sure the RCMP have this one right.   This marks the second hit on an alleged "Real Estate agent."

At 10:45 pm, Monday night, Barresi was shot multiple times outside his home located in  Stoney Creek, Ontario.   Barresi was 42, and leaves behind a wife and three children.   Barresi was long associated with the Musitano crime family, and allegedly involved in the gambling rackets; specifically sports betting and joker poker machines.  According to police Barresi was a registered real estate agent for Stoney Creek.

Twenty years ago Barresi was arrested with seven others in a bookmaking indictment, and it's worth noting that Pat Musitano was also indicted in the charges as the leader of the ring, but charges against him were dropped.  Pat Musitano was almost killed a year ago in his own driveway in a botched hit.  At the time it's been said that Barresi was an associate of the Musitano crime family, but that was two decades ago.

Whether or not this is related to organized crime or not hasn't been proven, but usually where there is smoke their is fire.  If this was an attempted hit on a Musitano member, the odds are that the hit likely came from N'drangheta, and they are still attempting in a small way to regain territory.  At this point it becomes a guessing game as to why fringe guys are being killed, but the likelihood is that it's probably something either very personal, or it's a message, that anyone at anytime can be killed.  Perhaps the strongest reason why the RCMP is making the mob association here with the murder is because of the way it's been done.  In the last year, several mob guys in Canada have been hit in the exact same way, however this could also be a simple copy cat situation, meant to turn investigators into a brick wall.