Estranged Morrisroe husband freed Sal Ciancio, freed on bail, pleads not guilty to weapons offences. Saturday 7 June 1997 Neal Hall Vancouver Sun

The estranged husband of a woman now in the witness protection program was released from custody Friday after posting $15,000 cash bail. Sal Ciancio, 34, made a brief appearance in Coquitlam provincial court and entered a plea of not guilty to six weapons offences. His lawyer, Ken Young, also made demands for further disclosure of Crown material concerning the charges. Cicancio also elected trial by judge alone before provincial court Judge David Stone. The accused was arrested last month and charged with possessing three restricted automatic handguns. He was also charged with possessing weapons while prohibited. The prohibition stems from a 1993 conviction and six-year sentence for weapons after Ciancio was caught in a stolen truck that was involved in a shoot-out with Surrey RCMP. Last September, Ciancio married undercover police agent Tami Morrisroe, 26, who claims to have infiltrated a criminal organization that has links to the Cali cocaine cartel in Colombia. She wore a secret transmitter to allow police to tape record conversations about drug deals and contract killings. Morrisroe has alleged that Ciancio told her he was involved in two dozen murders. She alleged her husband told her intimate details of eight Lower Mainland contract murders, including one involving the death of five people killed at an Abbotsford farmhouse last September. Ciancio's lawyer, however, has dismissed the murder allegations as bogus. He noted his client has not been charged with murder. Morrisroe claims she went undercover last year to find out who framed her father, Sid Morrisroe, for the 1983 first-degree murder of Penthouse nightclub owner Joe Philliponi, 71. She has alleged that Ciancio, a former convict who did time with her father at the minimum-security Ferndale institution, told her he was a distant relative of the Philliponi family and he knew that Sid had been set up to take the fall for the murder. After Morrisroe went public with her allegations about the criminal underworld, her father was transferred for his own safety to a maximum-security institution.

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