A Coquitlam man who allegedly told his wife he killed up to two dozen people appeared in Burnaby provincial court Monday on weapons charges.
Salvatore Ciancio, 34, was arrested Friday and has been charged with possession of an unregistered restricted weapon and possession of a prohibited firearm.
His court appearance lasted only a few seconds. The matter was adjourned to today because his lawyer was unable to attend court. Outside the courthouse, Ciancio's sister Patricia Favretto said her brother is innocent and is being used by his wife, Tami Morrisroe, who has been trying for years to get her father released from prison.
``She used him and fooled him,'' Favretto told reporters. She disputed the allegations made by Morrisroe, now hiding in the witness protection program, that Sal Ciancio is a contract killer. ``My brother is a working person,'' his sister said. ``She's trying to ruin his life.''
Morrisroe, 26, a former Richmond homemaker, said earlier she went undercover and infiltrated a criminal organization with ties to the Cali cocaine cartel in Colombia in order to find out who framed her father. Sid Morrisroe, 62, is serving a life sentence for the 1983 murder of Penthouse nightclub owner Joe Philliponi, 71. Tami Morrisroe said Ciancio, a relative of the Philliponi family, told her that her father was framed by someone in the Philliponi family.
Favretto said she talked to her brother in jail and he isn't taking Morrisroe's allegations seriously.
``He thinks she's a joke,'' she said of Tami Morrisroe. ``It's nothing but lies.'' Of Morrisroe's claims she wore a hidden microphone and secretly tape-recorded Ciancio's conversations for police, Favretto said: ``She was wired sometimes but not all the time.'' Morrisroe, she added, was the one who wanted to marry her brother and even paid for the Sept. 22 wedding. Favretto said she never trusted Morrisroe and felt she was up to something.
``I told my brother to check her purse, but he was in love with her,'' she said.
``Why did my brother admit to her he killed two dozen people? Is he so stupid?''
She called Morrisroe a ``tramp'' and said she has caused nothing but grief for Ciancio and his family. She said her brother was born in Vancouver but lived in Montreal after the age of 10, when his parents separated and he went to live with his bricklayer father. An older sister lived with their dad as well, she added.
Favretto and another sister stayed in Vancouver with their mother and attended Templeton secondary school, she said. She said Sal owned his own auto body shop, called First on Second, which was located off Clark Drive in east Vancouver. But he closed it last summer. He has been working for Clemente Motors on Kingsway for the past three months.
``He was a very straightforward, honest and trusting person,'' said Gio Clemente of Clemente Motors. ``I never saw him as a hitman.'' He added he was a friend of Ciancio and would hire him again. Favretto, 33, said her brother previously served a four-year sentence for being a passenger in a stolen truck. ``I think the driver was shooting at police,'' she added. Ciancio shared a house with Sid Morrisroe at Ferndale minimum-security prison in Mission, where he met Tami, said Favretto.
Mike Halko of the national parole board said Ciancio began his federal prison term in October 1991 for dangerous driving, use of a firearm and possession of a weapon. His sentence expired four years later. Halko said the parole board could not release Ciancio's parole documents because there is an ongoing police investigation.
A report in the latest Maclean's magazine said the investigation involving Morrisroe has so far cost $12 million.
For months last year, Morrisroe said, she counted millions in drug money for gangsters and became a trusted member of the criminal organization, which imported tons of cocaine into Canada.
Morrisroe said in a recent interview with The Sun that she was given a gun and was later told to get rid of it, which led her to believe it may have been used in the murder of five people at an Abbotsford farm on Sept. 11, 1996. Favretto, however, suggested Morrisroe bought the gun on the street and gave it to police.
Morrisroe said she has provided police with information about eight murders and huge drug deals, including:
- The Abbotsford murder of cocaine dealers Sonto Graves, 57, her husband Raymond Graves, 71, Sonto's son David and another couple, Daryl and Theresa Klassen, both 30.
- The execution-style murders of Eugene and Michele Uyeyama, who were found strangled in their Burnaby home shortly before Christmas 1995. The house was set on fire to cover the killer's tracks.
- The murder of Terry Watts, 41, who was found in the trunk of a car in Vancouver's Chinatown last August. He'd been shot.
Morrisroe said she wants all the people involved in the murders charged and she plans to testify against them. But first she wants her father to join her in the the witness protection program.
Sid Morrisroe, who has been moved to a maximum-security prison for his own safety, said Monday he is worried about the safety of his daughter. She has been relocated with her common-law husband Claudio, their two young children and Tami's brother Kevin. All have new identities and are living somewhere in North America.
``I would have never ever wanted Tami to do what she done,'' he said. ``She's put her life on the line.''
Morrisroe said that when his daughter told him what she had done, he didn't believe her at first. ``It sounded like something out of a movie,'' he said.
THE END
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