The brazen daylight shooting death of a Montreal mob boss’s daughter-in-law suggests “no one is untouchable”, said an organized crime expert, as the city braces for potential retaliation.
A woman’s body with several gunshot wounds was found in car on Tuesday. Local reports named the victim as Claudia Iacono, 39.
Police did not confirm the victim’s identity, but the city’s police chief, Fady Dagher, said the shooting was likely connected to organized crime and was “one of the first times that we see a woman being targeted” in a killing.
“We are looking into it to find out why it happened to that person, to that woman,” Dagher told reporters, warning that police “cannot prevent all the revenge” that could come from Iacono’s death.
Iacono’s husband, Antonio Gallo, is the son of Moreno Gallo, once an influential member of Calabrian side of the Montreal mafia. Gallo was assassinated at an Italian restaurant in Mexico in 2013, a year after he was deported from Canada.
Valérie Plante, the mayor of Montreal, said the daylight shooting was “extremely troubling”.
“When we speak to the [police], what they tell us is that organized crime is changing,” she told reporters. “But clearly it’s true, because certain codes change. Obviously it worries us.”
Officers said the victim was shot while driving her car and the vehicle then collided with a building. Witnesses saw a suspect flee on foot after the attack.
André Gélinas, a retired sergeant from the Montreal police’s criminal intelligence unit, said it was unusual for a member of a mafia boss’s extended family to be targeted in the city, especially a woman.
“One thing is certain, we have just crossed a line by killing the spouse. Now, this limit will be crossed by criminal organizations,” he told CBC News. “It just sent the message that no one is untouchable anymore.”
The fact that Iacono, a mother of two, was killed outside the spa she owned “shows that organized crime – regardless of the strain: street gangs, bikers, mafia – has a disregard for human life because to perpetrate acts of violence in the middle of the day when other people are around. It demonstrates an arrogance that’s quite incredible,” Gélinas said.
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But Pietro Poletti, a retired Montreal police detective, told the Montreal Gazette that Iacono’s killing, which was “not a professional hit”, could have been the result of a feud between individuals and not reflective of a broader tensions between the Sicilian and Calabrian arms of the Montreal mafia.
Iacono’s death is Montreal’s eight homicide of the year – and the second mob-related shooting in recent months. In March, Leonardo Rizzuto, the son of the late mafia boss Vito Rizzuto, was injured in a shooting.
The Rizzutos, also known to Canadian investigators as the Sixth Family, have been a looming presence in the city’s organized crime networks for decades, after Nicolo Rizzuto pushed out the rival Cotroni family in 1978.
The Cotroni family was linked to Sicily’s ’Ndrangheta crime syndicate. Rizzuto was killed in 2010 at his Montreal home by a sniper who hid in the woods outside.
