There are plenty of ways to pay off an underworld debt.
It can be as simple as sitting beside someone on a crowded patio, watching a soccer game — useful if you’re sitting beside a target for an out-of-town hit man.
That’s one theory for how Alfredo (Freddy) Patriarca of Toronto tried to settle an account with mobsters connected to the Wolfpack Alliance, a multi-ethnic collection of millennials from across Canada who are knee-deep in the cocaine trade from Mexico.
Patriarca was sitting beside John Raposo, 35, of Toronto on the crowded patio of the Sicilian Café on College Street on the afternoon of June 17, 2012.
They were watching a match between Italy and Ireland in the 2012 Euro Cup on a big-screen TV when hit man Dean Michael Wiwchar walked up to Raposo and shot him four times in the head, at close range.
Raposo and Wiwchar had apparently never met before.
The gangly hit man, who was originally from Stouffville, dressed up like a construction worker—complete with a blond wig and reflective vest—for the job.
Immediately after the Raposo hit, Wolfpack leader Rabih (Robby) Alkhalil celebrated in an encrypted email to Wiwchar:
Time we put u in sniper school I think.
This seems too easy for u
Wiwchar messaged back, gloating:
LOL…
I had the whole construction uniform on…
Mullet… helm [sic]… dust mask…
orange side road shirt
…and rocker shades…
LOL
Wiwchar also wounded Patriarca, and a police source says he thinks that it was by accident.
Asked why Patriarcia was also hit, the police source replied that it was an underworld version of friendly fire. “Nothing is perfect,” the police source said. “Nothing is rehearsed. It’s not TV.”
Court in Toronto heard that Wiwchar charged the high price of $100,000 for the job.
For that fee, Wiwchar flew out from Vancouver, taking time to scope out potential murder sites and escape routes.
He also found time to visit his grandmother in York Region before flying back home.
Wiwchar is now serving a life sentence for the job, along with Alkhalil and Martino (Lil Guy) Caputo, who were also convicted of first-degree murder and connected to The Wolfpack Alliance.
After Raposo was murdered, Patriarca became a target for gangsters wanting to strike back at the Wolfpack, the police source said.
Raposo had plenty of criminal associates in the GTA who wanted revenge for his murder, the police source said.
Raposo had been a close friend of popular former Canadian boxing champion and Montreal mob enforcer Eddie (The Hurricane) Melo, who was murdered in 2001 after leaving a coffee shop in a Mississauga strip mall.
“When you move against certain people, there are consequences,” the police source said. “In this particular case, the motive is revenge.”
He continued: “You set someone up, you may be held to account.”
Patriarca wasn’t a violent man but he was part of a violent ecosystem. The Raposo murder wasn’t the first time Patriarca was picked up on the radar by police focusing on organized crime.
Patriarca was caught frequently in the early 2000s on police wiretaps probing the Rizzuto crime family of Montreal, a police source said.
“He definitely was intercepted on multiple occasions,” a police officer who specializes in organized crime said in an interview.
Those wiretaps were part of the mid-2000s Colisée probe into the Montreal-based crime family of Vito Rizzuto, who has since died of natural causes.
The Colisée wiretaps showed that Patriarca was in frequent communication with people tied to the Rizzuto crime family, including one of the men convicted in Raposo’s murder, Martino Caputo, the police source said.
(Caputo’s brother, Paolo Caputo, 64, was later shot to death outside his Roncesvalles Avenue wine bar on Friday, Aug. 16, 2019. His murder remains unsolved.)
Patriarca was murdered shortly after 6:20 pm on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016, at the garage of his home in an affluent area of Etobicoke, near The Kingsway and Princess Margaret Boulevard.
Twenty-three seconds after Patriarca pulled up to the garage, a person in a hooded parka, carrying something in his or her hand, jogged up from the side of the property into the garage.
“I believe this was targeted and someone was waiting for him to come home,” Det. Sgt. Joyce Shertzer of the homicide squad said shortly after the murder.
“The offender is seen to be entering the garage and exiting approximately eight seconds later,” Schertzer said.
Patriarca was pronounced dead at the scene.
His wife and two children were in the home at the time.
Immediately after the supertime shooting, a woman with two children could be seen speaking with police officers and then began screaming.
Police officers whisked her and the children away from the murder scene.
Weeks after the murder, Patriarca’s widow gave police a statement to read to the public, pleading for help in the investigation. It also reminded the public that a human life had been lost.
“Freddy was a very loving husband, and my best friend,” Patriarca’s widow said in her plea. “He was an extremely devoted father who adored his two little children of him. He was a son, an uncle, and a man who was loved by so many. Please don’t let the person who killed Freddy get away with taking such a good and giving man.”
“No one has the right to take the life of another,” she wrote. “The responsible person needs to be found before they do it again.”
Was her husband killed as revenge for the Raposo hit? Did he owe money to dangerous people, like the ones who killed Raposo?
Whatever the motive, Shertzer called Patriarca’s murder a “thought-out, planned hit.”
Patriarca’s home was outfitted with security cameras and police said immediately after the murder that they were combing through a reported 348 hours of home security video.
“The suspect approaches in a northeasterly direction to Mr. Patriarca’s home, then flees in a southwesterly direction toward the intersection of Princess Margaret Boulevard and The Kingsway,” Shertzer said.
Patriarca was vaguely described by police as “self-employed.” Others said he was in the construction waste bin business. At the time of his murder of him, Patriarca was recovering from an April 2009 bankruptcy, in which he listed his total liabilities at $76,137 and his total assets at $4,000.
“There is little doubt in my mind that someone knows the identity of the shooter,” Schertzer told the media, adding the killer seemed to have a “distinctive gait” to his walk.
The Patriarca murder remains unsolved.
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