How race car driver Eligio Siconolfi - father-in-law of soccer celeb Sandro Grande - died by bullets in 1986

   Sandro Grande has been in the news lately, as the retired soccer player was cancelled for social media stuff and was prevented from taking a job as a coach.

   So a little background on Sandro Grande's inlaws

   Grande is married to Tania Siconolfi. Tania's father Eligio was murdered - likely by the Cotroni crime family - in 1986.

   Eligio Siconolfi was born in 1939 and was a motorcycle racer in Italy when he arrived in Canada in 1960. He switched to racing cars once in Montreal, racing Mini Coopers for the Cambridge Motor Racing Team. 

   He fixed Ferraris for a few years as top mechanic for racer Dave Greenblatt and left racing for a while only to return to the sport from 1968 to about 1972, zooming around in his Cooper S in Formula B races in the province.

   He married Katherine Furfaro in 1977 and had three kids, Tania, David and Fabio, perhaps others. 

   Eligio declared bankrupty in 1984. He apparently had a bad temper and at least once allegedely hit his wife Katherine Furfaro with a bat in late January 1986.  

 She fled their home and took refuge in a women's shelter where staffers presumably encouraged her to report the incident to the police. She ended up in hospital with a broken jaw and contusions.

   Cops came to an espresso cafe and arrested Eligio on spousal abuse assault charges on 22 January 1986. 

  What happened next would have to be described as a total disaster.

   Police brought Eligio Siconolfi to the station and he made a phone call, as was his right. 

   Eligio Siconolfi was talking Italian on the phone and perhaps being a little indiscreet. 

   Bad news for him is that a cop standing nearby, Antoine Bastien, understood some Italian and recognized that Eligio's words indicated a drug plot.

 

Siconolfi died at age 47

 Police went to Eligio Sicolfi's home and found 40 kilos of hashish in the trunk of an unlocked car, with an apparent street value of $500,000. Sinolfi's lawyer claimed that anybody could have left the car there.

   Prosectors charged Siconolfi but the outcome of his punishment does not appear in news reports, so perhaps he was yet to be tried or sentenced by the fall of 1986.

   On 2 September 1986 gunmen came and shot him dead at his garage at 8165 Lafrenaie in St. Leonard, giving him two in the chest and one in the head in front of several witnesses.

 A pair of other grisly Mafia slayings followed that might have been connected to the Eligio Siconolfi killing.

  Michel Scarapicchia, 32, was shot dead in Oct 1986. Scarapicchia had been busted for LSD in 1973 and owned the Mira Metal ornamental metal company. He was frequently seen talking on his cell phone, considered at the time a lavish item owned mainly by drug dealers. He was talking on the phone in his Chrysler when shot dead in an industrial park in St. Leonard. 

  Donato Rufolo, 34 and Brenda Rickert, 24, were found dead in a car trunk in front of 5326 Mountain Sights on Saturday Nov. 15, 1986. They were last seen downtown on October 5.

  Why were they killed? 

  One theory, of course, is that Siconolfi was being punished for his phone call indiscretion. 

Siconolfi wheeled out dead

  But here's another: Frank Cotroni knew there was a police informant somewhere in his organization and presumably sought to eliminate the rat.

  Montreal police arrested Frank Cotroni, his son Francesco Cotroni as well as henchmen Daniel Arena and Francesco Raso on October 10, based on information provided by Cotroni hitman-turned informant Real Simard.

  So it turned out that Rufolo, Scarapicchia, or Siconolfi were not informants, it was Cotroni's protegee Real Simard all along.

   My upcoming book Want In? You're In offers an inside story into Frank Cotroni's quest for the informant but you'll have to lay down your money to get that when it comes out.

  Sinolofi's son David  made some slight notereity in more recent years. As a young man David persisted in school studies in spite of having some difficulties,and eventually ended up expelled and in reform school due to aggressive tendencies. He became a boxer of some note in the late 1990s.