Jabril Abdalla was left holding the bag by both his friends and by police. \u0027I knew nothing about what was going on,\u0027 he says in an exclusive interview
Investigators of both crimes were culling thousands of hours of video from security cameras at businesses and homes around each crime scene.
Other neighbours told police about shady men and cars spotted days before the shooting — sometimes in the middle of the night. One woman told detectives a white male with a muscular build arrived in a black Honda Civic, switched into a burgundy Ford Fusion, drove away, returned, and then left in the Honda. She was so spooked she took photos, even a close-up of the licence plates.
Detectives broke into Cudmore’s empty apartment looking for evidence, with a judge’s permission. Among items there were documents for the Honda that was registered to Abdalla and a newspaper clipping about the RCMP cracking encrypted messages to solve a Montreal Mafia murder. Bits about police techniques had been highlighted.
Mirroring the hitman’s technique, police put trackers on Abdalla’s and Tomassetti’s cars and later, wiretaps on their phones.“That’s when the light bulb kind of went off and I said, I need to change my life around. It was a big deal to me,” he says. He returned to school as a full-time business student at Hamilton’s Mohawk College and worked at the school’s rec centre.On Jan. 11, 2018, Hamilton police held a news conference where Det. Sgt.
Another police news conference, on Jan. 23, 2018, made an even bigger splash. Hamilton and York police had positively linked Musitano’s and Barberi’s murders, officers announced, and were running a joint investigation called Project Scopa, the Italian word for broom.Article content Officers raided Tomassetti’s house that day too, and the home of a friend of Cudmore’s who was storing his stuff. Among Cudmore’s belongings police found a photograph of Musitano, standing with six burly men.Abdalla didn’t realize police had been secretly watching, tracking, and listening to him for months. Unlike the others, he didn’t leave, because, he says, he was innocent.
“They are mentioning names I’ve never heard before and playing videos, and just sort of accusing me of all these things.”His lawyer got Abdalla moved from Hamilton jail to a facility further away. That was likely the easiest of her legal battles in his case.Toronto defence lawyer Leora Shemesh was once branded by the press as “the police force’s enemy No. 1” because of her fierce advocacy.
At another bail hearing in April 2020, a judge found the Crown’s case was not as strong as they had first said. Justice Andrew Goodman, admitting it was a “close call,” decided to release him. It was then the Crown’s turn to appeal, and they won in a split decision, returning Abdalla to jail. With the spy shop owner’s testimony that Abdalla didn’t buy a tracker and with a judge ordering the two murders be separated for trial, prosecutors, Shemesh and Abdalla all agreed Abdalla was guilty of something, but not of mob murders or murder plots.
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