Messy homewecking fiasco followed by murder: the story of Mario Taddeo, Louise Caron and Tony Accurso

Mario Taddeo and wife Geraldine

      A man wearing a children’s Halloween mask stormed into a construction office trailer at a quarry in Mirabel on a December morning in 1987

He flashed his gun and demanded the 10 people present point him to Mario Taddeo. The employees did not immediately comply but the intruder figured it out.

Taddeo presented his identification before the gunman shot him dead, as well as another innocent bystander. Police later concluded that it was a hired hit man, due to his unfamiliarity with the victim.  

   Police investigators interviewed about 250 people in connection with the grisly double slaying and performed many lie detector tests. Charges were never laid in connection to the crime. 

   The tale begins decades earlier when Vincenzo "James" Accurso came to Montreal in 1922 and worked hard in construction. His company Louisbourg Construction fared well, partially thanks for useful friendships he had forged. He got into some occasional trouble and was found guilty of collusion along with five other companies for rigging prices for City of Montreal contracts. When Vincenzo died at the age of 74 in June 1981 he handed the business off to his son Tony Accurso, 30 and son-in-law Mario Taddeo, 44. His third child, Nora, must have gotten some other thing as well.

   Mario Taddeo was married to Vincenzo’s daughter Geraldine Accurso, who was born in 1941. They had five kids: Rocky born in 1962, Jimmy 1965, Danny 1969 and twins Sandra and Tamara in 1974. 

   One day Mario showed up to a wedding at the Ritz Carlton in downtown Montreal with someone who was not his wife. The woman was Louise Caron, who for over a decade was the wife of Mario’s wife’s brother Tony.

Taddeo with Mike Bossy

 Mario was brazenly cheating on his wife Geraldine while also cuckolding his brother-in-law Tony. This did not go over well and ended Mario’s marriage and created a major obstacle in his business endeavors with Tony Accurso.  

   Taddeo and Tony Accurso formally split the $1.4 million in assets of the Construction Louisbourg company in June 1984. Taddeo got the quarry and Tony Accurso got the construction company. The two no longer communicated after that. Geraldine filed for divorce from Mario that same year. Mario stayed in a romantic relationship with Louise Caron, who had three kids with Tony Accurso. 

   It was a mess. 

  Taddeo was a well-connected Conservative fundraiser who ran the Carriere Mirabel Ltd, a quarry north of Montreal. The company had a $1.5 million construction contract in Boisbriand. Taddeo had a holding company called Investissements Tadmar and he was president of Louisbourg Farms Inc, which had a number of residential buildings. He also owned 16 acres of land on Danger Bay Blvd in Laval as well as property in Duvernay Laval.

    After the messy split Taddeo discreetly shopped his Mirabel quarry business around for the price of $5 million. Taddeo aimed to structure the sale to receive a $3 million advance to be deposited in a bank account in Europe in order to shield himself from having to fork it over to his ex-wife in the divorce proceedings. 

 

Tony Accurso

  Taddeo was killed along with his employee Pierre Blanchard, 48, on December 4, 1987 at about 9 a.m.. The killer entered the trailer and found 10 workers there having a coffee waiting to start their day of work. Taddeo’s eldest son was among those who looked on during the horrendous slaying. The killer shot Blanchard for no particular reason. "You, fastso, don't move," he said 

 The killer sped off in a car and cops never found him.

Taddeo has a lawsuit against Accurso at the time of his death demanding $2.4 million that he said Accurso still owed him as part of the division of the company assets.

Taddeo was aged 49. Shortly afterwards a will was discovered. It gave his $18 million fortune to his kids and $25,000 to Louise Caron. 

   Police questioned 250 people and put eight of them to the lie detector test. None were charged.     

  Tony Accurso and his sister Geraldine might have been seen to have a motive for killing Taddeo. Tony passed a polygraph test with no problems and was cleared.

Taddeo also had a legal conflict at the time with a farmer whose land in Mirabel had been unnecessarily expropriated for the airport project but his attempts to get it returned were stymied after Taddeo purchased it. 

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police announced that they had been investigating Taddeo at the time of his death but did not reveal the details of why he was being investigated.

Tony Accurso

   Louise Caron later sued the Taddeos, seeking more money from Mario’s will and a judge awarded her $1.7 million of the cash. 

   Tony Accurso went on to become good pals with Louis Laberge, the firebrand labour leader who founded the FTQ construction labour union. Both parties benefited from the friendship, as the FTQ invested $4.4 million in the concrete pipe company operated by Accurso in 1990.

   The FTQ then invested $16 million in the Galeries Laval in 1993, which Accurso owned. Accurso's company Marton built the headquarters of the FTQ. 

   Laberge and Tony Accursor even traveled together on fun holidays. Accurso purchased the Simard Beaudry construction firm in Laval in 1999. That company then bought Beaver asphalt which later went bankrupt after the collapse of the du Souvenir viaduct.

   Authorities later investigated Tony Accurso and he was eventually sentenced to concurrent prison terms of 30 months and four years in 2018. He had wined and dined notable figures of municipal bureaucrcy on his luxury yacht, including Montreal Executive Committee chief Frank Zampino, Mascouche mayor Richard Marcotte, Terrebonne mayor Jean-Marc Robitaille and Montreal General Manager Robert Abdallah.

Laberge

A judge described his actions as the worst example of municipal corruption to ever come before a Canadian court. Accurso recently ran out of appeals and will now have to serve the sentence.     

   Accurso’s ex-wife Louise Caron, resurfaced in the news. In 1994 she became the wife, or spouse or girlfriend or whatever of John Galianos, a police who ran the lie detector department for the Quebec provincial Police SQ and was involved in the prosecution or questioning of Accurso. 

   Twenty years later she was still with him and this led to claims of conflict of interest, as Caron was mother of Accurso’s kids Jimmy, Lisa and Marco Accurso, who were all engineers working for Tony Accurso's company, with Jimmy seen as the right hand man.

Additionally, the leader of the initial police investigation, SQ provincial police detective Gaétan Rivest was convicted of criminal extortion and uttering threats in 2001 however that was not in relation with the Taddeo murder investigation.