The Papalia Regime of Hamilton, Ontario

And although the city of Hamilton already had several crews working under the tutelage of clan bosses Giacomo Luppino, Dominick Musitano, and Santo Scibetta, the young hoodlum quickly gained a reputation as “Johnny the Enforcer” and was added to their ranks as younger blood to enforce the Buffalo mob’s dictates.

Since the early days of the Great Depression, the city of Hamilton, Ontario, has always been a vibrant city. And from those earliest days forward, the criminal underworld has seen a host of highly diversified criminal gangs attempt to harness the city’s resources for their own.

Sicilians, Calabrians, outlaw bikers, the Irish, and various other independent criminals have all tried to stake a claim to its streets.

Paramount among these groups were master criminals from Calabria, Italy. N’dranghetista members, that in time would form three separate but interconnected “Clans” or “Locali” would develop in order to rule over Hamilton’s criminal underworld.

The Musitanos, Luppinos, and Papalias.

Each of these networks was small to medium in size, yet managed to overtake the city’s criminal element.

The Enforcer

John (Johnny Pops) Papalia - aka “Johnny the Enforcer” - was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (of Calabrian blood from the town of Delianuova) on March 18, 1924. He was one of seven children (six boys and a girl) born to parents who had immigrated from Italy back in 1912.

In time, Papalia had his brothers, Frank (b 1930), Rocco (b 1935), and Dominic and half-brothers Joseph and Angelo, as well as his brother-in-law Antonio Pugliese, all join him to a greater or lesser degree in helping operate the Papalia faction of Hamilton.

The Papalia family first settled at 20 Railroad Street where the children were raised. Their father was Antonio (Tony) Papalia and their mother was Maria (nee’ Italiano).

Antonio was an old bootlegger who had been allied with early Calabrian underworld bosses Rocco Perri and Antonio Sylvestro. He was also once picked up and later released, as a suspect in a gangland homicide.

In his later years, Johnny Papalia resided in a penthouse apartment on Market Street just a few blocks away from where he kept his office and base of operations - #20 Railway Street.

It was the same address where his family home as a child once sat. The Papalia brothers raised the old home and cleared the property in order to erect several buildings on it.

They also bought and built on properties next to it, adding an additional six to eight building real estate complex along that same street.

Because of deeply connected blood family, Johnny Papalia maintained many N’drangheta ties on both sides of the ocean.

In fact, a first cousin, Domenico Papalia, was a clan boss back in Calabria. Two other Calabrian-based cousins Antonio and Rocco Papalia operated up in the northern city of Milan where they committed big-money kidnappings and ran shipments of narcotics throughout Italy.

Another cousin was Pasquale Papalia, who was based in the town of Plati.

There was also another familial-tied, Papalia faction based in Sydney, Australia, who were allied with the Barbara ‘ndrina.

So, all in all, the brothers held strong connections.

Johnny dropped out of school in seventh grade, and with his brothers, would quickly follow in their father's footsteps toward careers in the Calabrian underworld.

Through their father's name and connections, early in their careers, the Papalia boys also tied their hoodlum wagons to a Sicilian Cosa Nostra Family in the United States headed by Steve Magaddino.

The Magaddino Family, based in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area, long-held rights to the entire Upstate New York region. They considered the entire area theirs and theirs alone.

The borgata’s vast territory encompassed the cities of Syracuse, Utica-Rome, Schenectady, Albany, Auburn, Rochester, and everything in between.

Magaddino’s influence stretched into nearby Erie, Pennsylvania; Youngstown, Ohio; and even into parts of Canada, including the vibrant cities of Hamilton and Toronto.

It appears that although several Calabrian clans would later settle the area, they would each recognize and respect Cosa Nostra’s flag as having already been planted there and pay a monetary tribute as mutually agreed upon between bosses.

Johnny Papalia was said to have been schoolmates with Dante (Danny) Gasparini in Hamilton’s North End and later became partners in crime with Gasparini, who was another hood who also happened to be the nephew of Sylvestro.

He, too, would make a name for himself in Toronto’s underworld.

Side Note: It is a steadfast Cosa Nostra rule that there can be no encroachment into the territory of any Mafia Family, without the prior express agreement of the residing boss of that territory.

If and when allowed, the resident borgata receives a share of whatever profits are earned within their sphere of influence, by the visiting Family or crew. This also held true by mutual agreement regarding the Calabrian N’drangheta as well.

Papalia would pile up a very lengthy police record over the years.

Among his first arrests as a youth were for burglaries and armed thefts. He served 4 months in jail on one such conviction.

By the mid-1940s, he was already handling narcotics. He was said to have initially been employed in the trade by a well-known Canadian drug trafficker named Harvey Chernick.

By 1949, at age 25, Johnny was caught in possession of 50 morphine capsules at a local train station. He went up the river for two years on that bid.

Once he was paroled in 1951, he relocated for a time to Montreal, where he was said to be in the employ of Bonanno underboss Carmine Galante, until he later relocated back to the Toronto area.

By the mid-1950s, Papalia was reputed to have become an inducted member under the reign of Stefano Magaddino.

And although the city of Hamilton already had several crews working under the tutelage of clan bosses Giacomo Luppino, Dominick Musitano, and Santo Scibetta, the young hoodlum quickly gained a reputation as “Johnny the Enforcer” and was added to their ranks as younger blood to enforce the Buffalo mob’s dictates.

Of all the hoodlums of the era active in Hamilton, John Papalia could arguably be considered the most notorious.

In time, his reputation would precede him.

As a newly established mafioso in both Montreal and Toronto, he jumped headfirst into truck hijacking and cargo thefts.

Whether it was a truck’s cargo manifest he was grabbing or emptying a railroad freight-car loaded with valuable commodities, Papalia’s connections and sources provided him with a steady stream of information regarding valuable loads worth stealing, and later “fencing.”

Johnny was soon given an order from the hierarchy to start “putting the arm” on all independent Toronto bookmakers, illicit gambling dens, and other such gambling rackets to knuckle under the Magaddino Family to kick up a weekly tribute for the right to operate in the borgata’s perceived territory.

This systematic extortion became a major source of income for the Family.

Several professional gamblers who refused to capitulate to Papalia’s demands were known to have been roughed up or badly beaten.

One or two were said to have permanently disappeared.

A top Canadian bookmaker named Maxie Bluestein was one fella who took a terrible beating during the Buffalo mob’s attempt to subjugate all area gamblers into paying the shakedown.

He was beaten mercilessly in front of nearly 100 witnesses with blackjacks, brass knuckles, fists, and feet.

Despite reluctant witnesses, Johnny was later convicted and received 18 months in prison for that little foray.

Papalia would later expand into the gambling business himself on behalf of his Family. He was known to oversee several lively horse-betting locations and dice games operated by members of his crew.

He also partnered in the Star Vending Machine Company with other hoods to try and dominate the coin-machine rackets of the area.

In later years, this company morphed into Galaxy Vending Corp., located at 20 Railway Street in Hamilton, which he shared with his underboss brother Frank - aka “Frankie Pops.”

His success was clearly evident nearly 40 years later by the fact that the Papalia's still had strong vending industry ties.

But of all his activities, narcotics was the single most important racket he was ever engaged in.

He was a very aggressive hood and had lots of drive and ambition which manifested itself with a major drug smuggling scheme.

He soon allied with two young Sicilian-born traffickers named Vito and Alberto Agueci and another young smuggler named Rocco Scopelliti. Another ally was Frank Cipolla.

They formed a partnership to smuggle pure white heroin from the Middle East through France and into Canada for ultimate distribution into the East Coast of the United States.

It was a very ambitious plan, to say the least.

They utilized unwitting, older Italian immigrant couples traveling to Canada by hiding the narcotics in false-bottomed suitcases for them to carry along with their other possessions and luggage.

After Johnny’s jailing, the FBI and FBN caught Magaddino on a “bug” wanting the scheme to continue by using Frankie Papalia to manage smuggling the dope into the country hidden among imported cheese wheels and other food provisions.

Johnny structured his clan much the same as a traditional Cosa Nostra Family would. His brother Frank served as the underboss while Bruno Monaco held the consigliere post.

Besides only Calabrians, they accepted a blend of other hoodlums into the clan such as Steve Koaches, (Red) LaBarre, Freddy Gabourie, Enio (Peg-leg) Mora, Frank Marchilron, Jackie Weaver, Jimmy McDermott, Salvatore (Sam) Alaimo, Cosimo Staltieri, Charles Cipolla, and attorney/soldier Ignazio (Harold) Bordonaro.

But despite this roster of allies, he had his detractors, too.

Papalia himself was once wounded in an attempted assassination and was the victim of a shootout in 1955.

But he was known to give as good as he got. Some say better.

Over the years, he was a prime suspect in no less than 12 gangland murders.

These included the 1944 killing of bootleg king Rocco Perri and his wife Bessie in a shotgun slaying back in 1931.

And years later an associate named Tony Coposodi was clipped.

A Toronto loanshark and stock swindler named Stanley Bader, who had been a prime witness against Papalia, Paolo Violi, and Vic Cotroni, also became a murder victim.

He was also the suspected triggerman in soldier Paul Volpe’s high-profile murder.

Side Note: In 1982, informant Bader was shot to death as he answered the front door at his Miami Beach home, where he had relocated after ratting...payback as mob justice!

Papalia had come onto the Federal Bureau of Narcotics’ law enforcement radar by at least the mid-late 1950s. He would soon figure into a huge, highly publicized drug smuggling case by 1960 or so, being indicted with the “creme de la creme” of the American underworld.

By 1963, the trial was over and Papalia was among a slew of 11 top mafiosi nailed on federal narcotics smuggling charges in the Southern District of New York.

They were each convicted of being pivotal members of a vast, international heroin importation and wholesale distribution network.

He was out on a bail package of $75,000, reduced from a whopping $250,000. Sentences ranged from 5 years to 20 years behind bars.

John Papalia received a 10-year prison term, which he later served at Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. He was paroled after serving 5 years in prison in 1968 and immediately deported back up to Canada.

Remember that this was the same storied drug operation headed by New York bosses Vito Genovese, John Ormento, Carmine Galante, and their top men that were accused of importing $150,000,000 in heroin over a ten year period.

This case served to raise Papalia’s future reputation and profile considerably.

They were among the same deadly bunch of Upstate New York hoods, who in November of 1961, slaughtered a Toronto mob member named Vito Agueci in an abandoned cornfield.

Authorities determined that Agueci’s mangled corpse had been badly beaten to the point his jaw and ribs were broken, his body sliced open, strangled with a plastic clothesline, and afterward doused in gasoline and set ablaze.

Agueci’s slaying, and several other events, would all help trigger the later betrayal of soldier Joe Valachi to spill the beans on his cohorts and publicly break his vow of Omerta to Cosa Nostra.

Papalia’s reputation and name were such that in 1970, he was called to testify before The Royal Commission during a major scandal and a subsequent investigation into police corruption.

A few years later in 1974, he would be indicted on extortion charges. He later served another 6-year sentence.

Through the decades, there was much jealousy and deadly competition for power within the Hamilton/Toronto mafia itself.

Paul Volpe was one very active mafioso who was “made” into the Magaddino Family to help control the area.

He and his brother Albert Volpe were only two of several such fellow hoods that Papalia competed with over the years.

As he aged, Johnny faced some lifelong, lingering health problems such as tuberculosis.

He also ended up with a faulty ticker, so doctors had to put a pacemaker in to help regulate his rhythm. All of it led to him slowing up a bit.

After a very tumultuous, high-profile career in the mafia, Johnny Papalia was shot dead one afternoon, in front of his cigarette and game vending machine office in 1997.

In a bit of irony, he took a bullet to the back of his head and died on the sidewalk -on the very same street he had been born on.

At the time of his killing, he had been a leading racketeer in Toronto for over 50 years and a Magaddino Family capo for at least 30 of those years.

His assailant? A small-time, self-styled strong-arm man named Kenny Murdoch, who later confessed to being hired as the hitman for the killing.

His reward? An embarrassing pittance of several grams of cocaine and a few dollars.

Side Note: Frank, his underboss brother, chose not to retaliate. Never known as a violent man, Frank essentially retired from “the life” and died in a nursing home at age 83, in 2014.

Frank had been widely known as a conciliatory, soft-spoken hoodlum, who was more the brains than the brawn of his clan. It was simply not his way.

Several younger mobsters of the rival Musitano Family, Pat,and Angelo Musitano, who competed with the Papalia Clan for Hamilton rackets, were later charged in the gangland-murder of Papalia, as well as his top aide and close associate Carmen Barillaro.

It was determined that the Musitano brothers owed Papalia a $250,000 gambling debt from their mutual bookmaking business. They figured it was cheaper to kill him rather than pay him!

In a plea bargain, they pled guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in Barillaro’s death. Part of the deal with prosecutors was that the Papalia homicide would be withdrawn.

In a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence, in time, both Musitano brothers would also be slaughtered gangland-style in the streets.

So, it seems that competition to control rackets in Hamilton and Toronto remains at a premium, even today.

Until next time...”The Other Guy!”

The Papalia Regime of Hamilton, Ontario

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The Papalia Regime of Hamilton, Ontario

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Dive Deeper into the Underworld

Mafia Moon Over Miami: The Mob in South Florida (Part 5)

Mafia Moon Over Miami: The Mob in South Florida (Part 3)

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