Grand Valley Institution for Women

Kitchener, Ont.

Maria Figliola lives in one of the apartments of eight women who share two kitchens, two bathrooms, one laundry and common room with a TV.

"I could easily go to the end of the driveway and pick up a taxi or bus and go home," she tells me. "But I don't."

It's minimum security, but is, she says, still prison. That includes strip searches every time she has a visitor, and sometimes cavity searches.

She speaks with her daughter two or three times a day on a communal phone.

Figliola stays active editing an inmate newsletter and counselling women about their rights.

"Lawyer up, ladies," she tells them.

She agitates, files grievances with the warden, and walks hallways brandishing a copy of the Criminal Code of Canada for correctional staff to see.

Q: People might wonder how it is that someone like you, a wife and mother in Stoney Creek, would ever come across people who had access to a hit man.

A: I may have sat down with someone at a dinner dance, we have lots of them in Stoney Creek: social events, a fish feast, and I may have known these people, or they may have been clients at the bank. But what they do in their private life isn't my business. And you don't talk about what they do. It's gossip, rumour, everyone knows everyone.

Q: And at some point there will be someone in your orbit who does harm to somebody?

A: Yes. When I was under surveillance, I might see someone at Nardini's picking up veal cutlets or something, and say, 'How's it going?' And then the cops say: 'Oh my God look who she knows!' But I don't know them, I know of them ... If my last name didn't end in a vowel I wouldn't be in this predicament.

Q: Meaning?

Q: Geoff (Gonsalves) told the police I was involved with organized crime. Because I'm Italian. I said to the police, "You guys watch way too much 'Sopranos.' " It's stereotyping.

I asked her about her co-accused, the alleged hit man, Daniele Di Trapani.

Frank Figliola was 49 when he was murdered in August 2001.| The Hamilton Spectator file photo

Q: You said you knew Daniele as "Biff"?

A: My kids said they heard on the news that someone was arrested for dad's murder. I said who? They said his name is Daniele Di Trapani. I didn't even know who he was. Everyone knew Daniele as Biff. I knew his aunt. I remember seeing him when he put a pool in for my friend Teresa. I would go over, he'd be in the back doing the electrical. Or he'd be doing work for her husband at the social club. I knew his one sister that worked at the bank.

Q: It sounds like he knew violent people.

A: When he was a young man he did pizza deliveries for some affluent Italians in Hamilton. One of them had a restaurant. I remember my husband taking me to it: a man shook his hand, we sat down, and Frank introduced me. And then Frank said to me, 'do you know who that is?' And I said whoever it is he has to lay off the pizza, because he's a nice looking young man but a bit overweight.

Q: Who was the man?

A: Ah — no comment.

Q: There were regular phone calls between you and Di Trapani leading up to Frank's murder, and then the calls stopped entirely. Why?

A: All the phone calls to me stopped, did you not notice that? I was a heatscore [being watched by police] in Stoney Creek.

Q: If not to arrange Frank's murder, why talk with Di Trapani 143 times?

A: I gave him that cellphone when I was working at CompuSmart on Upper James. It was to do with his social club. He told me it was rumoured that my husband's name was being tossed around, through the clubs, before he was killed. He said to me, 'If you give me a cellphone, I can help you out.' I was like, 'OK, how are you going to help me out?' The thing is, Daniele stole $14,000 from me. I swear as God as my mother, the day my husband was killed, we had to go pick up a car in Mississauga. We were purchasing a car for my daughter. Daniele said, 'No problem, I got dealer plates, I can get a car for you.' He was in trouble, because he used money he was getting as a bookie to screw people he should have been paying the money to … My daughter wanted an Acura-something, and I got him a bank draft for the auction. Biff said, 'I found a car for you.' That's the money he stole from me. And nine months later he calls me up and says 'Look, I'm sorry I ripped you off.' I said 'Damn right you did.'

I found a journal article online about truth detection in police interviews.

The article said that evasion and "distancing phenomena" is employed by suspects "in the performance of deception ... manifesting in ambiguity and vagueness, displayed as part of wordy responses, which afford the impression of co-operation and avoid implicating oneself."

Is that what Figliola was doing?

Q: This was all about a car?

A: All about the car — but no, apparently this was the hit man money. Who gives their supposed hit man money after the hit? Me. Apparently I'm the only one in history. What, is it cash on delivery?

Q: Did police ever ask you point blank if you hired a hit man to kill Frank?

A: Never. I never heard that come out of their mouths.

• • •

January 12, 2006

John Sopinka Courthouse

Hamilton, Ont.

"Frank Figliola was worth far more to Maria Figliola dead than alive."

A Hamilton Crown prosecutor opened the first-degree murder trial as Maria sat next to her co-accused, Daniele Di Trapani, in the prisoner's box in court.

Daniele Di Trapani, sketched in court during the Figliola murder trial in 2006. | Marcela Prikryl/Special to the Hamilton Spectator

Di Trapani had asked for separate trials rather than be linked to Figliola in one narrative for the jury.

The Crown opposed the request, and the judge ruled against Di Trapani.

It was a "murder for hire" scheme, the prosecutor told court: Maria wanted to kill Frank so she could inherit more than $500,000 in life insurance, pension and benefits, and the house.

"She played the part of grieving widow for police," he told the jury. "But nothing could be further from the truth."

Frank's mother and sister testified that Frank had hoped to leave Maria forever, the same weekend he was killed.

Maria wouldn't let him, said the prosecutor: "She saw the marriage as a dollar sign … To leave the marriage was to leave behind the money she felt she was entitled to."

As for Frank's passion for gambling, the family testified it was not an addiction.

Later in the trial, entries from a diary Frank kept were read in court. Some of the entries revealed his suspicions Maria was having an affair.

Frank's diary, May 18, 2001/80 days prior to death: "She's out again with friends, said she was babysitting for a friend … Home at 1:45 a.m."

Frank's diary, June 10, 2001/57 days prior to death: "She said she was going to visit a lady whose husband died. She didn't get home until 12:15 a.m. Was this just another excuse? She seems to be lying a lot more, every time she goes out. Is there someone else in her life?"

The Crown told the jury the trail connecting Maria Figliola to Di Trapani included a $4,300 bank draft to Di Trapani's mother, $3,500 cash, and $10,000 cheque payable to Di Trapani's numbered company account that bounced.

Maria's co-workers testified that she boasted she could take Frank off the board; fly in a hit man who would be "out of the country before they found Frank's body."

An office colleague said Maria spoke of feeling hostility from her in-laws, who were calling her "the merry widow."

Gonsalves testified that Maria said she knew a "husky Italian guy named Dan who was connected to organized crime," and that after Frank was killed, she initially told him he died in a car accident, but later said: "Basically it's done."

Di Trapani never testified, and his lawyer called just one witness: a DNA expert who said Di Trapani's DNA was not detected on track pants found at the scene turned inside out.

Police believed the track pants had been used by the killer to wipe blood off the murder weapon, then tossed aside.

Maria took the stand, at times teary-eyed during cross-examination.

Courtroom sketch of Maria Figliola during her 2006 first-degree murder trial. | Marcela Prikryl/Special to the Hamilton Spectator

Figliola's lawyer told the jury: "My client is an adulteress. My client is a thief. My client is a liar. My client is not a murderer."

In one of Frank's final diary entries, he wrote that in the event of his death, everyone should know Maria "stole from me, RSPs, bonds, lottery winnings … She has gone so far as forging my name."

The Crown played an audio tape Frank recorded, where he argues with Maria over dividing assets when they separate:

"Why did you lie to me all these years?" Frank says.

"What difference would it have — "

"Plenty."

In final arguments to the jury, the prosecutor said Frank's own words, on tape and in his diary, "led the police, and now leads you, I submit ladies and gentlemen, to Maria Figliola."

The trial lasted three months, ending May 4, 2006, with 100 spectators packing the courtroom.

After four days the jury announced its decision: Guilty for Figliola and Di Trapani.

Lawyers filed appeals, arguing that Louie Latorre's evidence had been tainted by police pressure, and that the joint trial was inherently unfair.

In June 2011, the Ontario Court of Appeals agreed, and ordered new trials.

And then, rejecting counter arguments from the Crown, the court ruled the cases would be heard separately.

Prosecutors offered a plea deal to Figliola: a downgrade in her charge to second-degree murder.

She declined.

After a new six-month trial, on Sept. 30, 2013, she was found guilty once again of first-degree murder.

"We will never stop fighting for her innocence," Maria and Frank's son was quoted in the Hamilton Spectator.

She appealed the second conviction and lost.

Di Trapani's trial was still to come.

The conclusion offered a twist.

• • •

Grand Valley Institution for Women

Kitchener, Ont.

Q: Why did you tell Geoff Gonsalves that Frank died in a car accident?

A: I didn't want to explain it on the phone, I was going through enough, my husband had been killed. When I went to see Geoff two weeks later, I took the newspaper clippings, and said this is what happened.

Q: You said, 'basically it's done'?

A: I did not say that. If that's the case, why isn't it on the wiretaps? All I said was not to say stupid things on the phone. I kept saying, 'you know I didn't kill my husband, why are you saying these things?' We heard quite a few of the wiretaps in court, and all the Crown kept saying was, 'she's trying to cover it up.'

Q: What about the co-worker who said you told her you could have Frank killed?

A: At first she refused to talk to the police, then all of a sudden she comes up with this story? Lies on top of lies. Here's the thing: the co-workers who testified against me were ones I had given a pink slip to. So was this retaliation?

Q: And there was testimony you were blowing money on cocaine for you and Gonsalves?

A: Oh please. Geoff told the police I got him cocaine. From who? In one of the wiretaps, he says I never drink or do anything, never let my hair down, yells at me for being an old stiff. And in the same breath says I do cocaine on weekends? I don't do cocaine. What I did do, when he said he wanted to bulk up, and said he wanted steroids, I said don't get that on the street, if worst comes to worst I know somebody who is involved legitimately, brings it in from the States, it's anabolic steroids, and I will get some of that for you, and at least we know it's good stuff from a distributor with a licence. And the cops said, obviously she is lying, it's not steroids, it's cocaine.

Q: Why didn't you take the plea deal for second-degree murder?

A: We had a big meeting, my brothers were there, my children were there, and they said, 'why does she have to admit to something she didn't do?' I would have got 15 years on a second-degree. I would have been coming up for day parole now, this year.

Maria Figliola with her lawyers outside court at trial in 2006. | The Hamilton Spectator file photo

Figliola is eligible to apply for day parole in December 2029, when she is 73, and full parole three years after that.

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She applied to the Parole Board of Canada for weekly "escorted temporary absences" to attend a Catholic church in Kitchener, and to visit her 89-year old mother in Stoney Creek.

She recently received permission to go to church, but visiting her mother was rejected. The board ruled that in refusing to take "accountability for a planned and deliberate murder," she was playing the role of victim.

But she appealed the board's decision and won. In November it was overturned.

That means Figliola will be free to visit Stoney Creek each week, under supervision.

Q: If you never admit to the crime, is it your sense you may never be released on full parole?

A: It's true. If anything I keep putting the fence around myself. But with God as my witness, it will be proven that I did not kill my husband and I did not sanction his murder ... I told (a parole board member) I was in fear of my life, and he said, 'so your life is more important than your husband's?' I'm sorry, but yes it is. It's either fight or flight. I flew.

Q: Do you ever feel like admitting it?

A: My kids said to me, 'mom, if you have to say you took a baseball bat to our dad, do it so you can get out on parole. Because we know the truth' …. I do get desperate and think, OK, you know what, screw it, if it's going to get me out of here. But what's important is that my family believes in my innocence. If my children ever thought I was involved in their father's death they would never speak to me again.

Q: Have you ever sensed that your kids think you're lying, but are supporting you anyway?

A: No. My daughter said it to my face: 'Mom, if we thought that you had anything to do with our dad's death, we would not be talking to you.'

Q: After reading your perspective, people might either say you're a real firecracker, or that you are a pathological liar.

A: Yes, you'll get people saying she's a liar, but this is what we know in our family, it's not just me saying it.

She imagines what she will do if she is ever released.

One, she wants to work again in the financial services field.

"I still have a lot of clients in Stoney Creek."

Two, she wants to move Frank from where he is entombed, and lay him to rest in a mausoleum in Stoney Creek where she will reserve a spot. (It is an aspiration that would be vigorously opposed by Frank's sister, who testified against Maria.)

"When I die, I will go with my husband. Because he's still my husband. We are separated, legally, but not divorced."

Q: Do you believe in heaven?

A: I don't know. I do believe there is an afterlife somewhere. And I believe in hell.

Q: Yes?

A: I believe bad people go there.

Q: Where are you going?

A: I think I'm going right in the middle.

• • •

The case against Daniele Di Trapani never made it to trial.

The Crown offered him a plea deal: accessory after the fact of murder.

During his pretrial hearing, he signed an "agreed statement of facts."

Dave Beech, one of the Hamilton Police homicide detectives who investigated the murder of Frank Figliola, speaks with a resident near the crime scene in Stoney Creek by the Waterfront Trail. | Gary Yokoyama/The Hamilton Spectator

He agreed to this narrative: That, on Aug. 6, 2001, at 7:30 p.m., Maria phoned him and said Frank would be killed on a walking path after 9 p.m.; he agreed to drive past the scene to see if Frank's car was there and if police had discovered the body. Di Trapani did so, riding with Louie Latorre, and, spotting no police, went to Maria's house and told her, so she could phone 911 and report her husband missing.

These had been the same facts presented at Maria's trial.

Prosecutors believed Di Trapani either killed Frank, or arranged for his murder, but they had insufficient evidence to prove either theory in court.

The murder weapon was never found.

There was no evidence identifying a killer or accomplice at the crime scene.

Statements to police from members of the "burning barrel crew" that might have implicated others were recanted.

In its case against Di Trapani during the first trial, the Crown called a member of the Outlaws biker gang to testify, whose record included drug trafficking and extortion.

He was asked why he had been talking with Di Trapani on the phone around the time of the murder.

"Could have been about going to a strip joint or to drink beer."

The biker died in 2013.

Di Trapani took the plea deal.

The Hamilton Spectator/Jan. 20, 2015

Accused guilty as accessory in murder

"A man once convicted of murder in the contract killing of Frank Figliola has been sentenced to two years in jail for being an accessory after the fact. In a stunning development, Daniele Di Trapani had his murder charge reduced ... Justice Stephen Glithero noted Di Trapani did not have a criminal record and was not a threat to public safety. Di Trapani, a large hulking man with a shaved head, sat emotionless through the proceeding ... Police now believe the contract killer is still at large."

• • •

When asked about the status of the Di Trapani case, Hamilton Police told me in an email that it is "no longer active as it has been through the courts."

Staff Sgt. Dave Oleniuk, who not long ago reopened a 45-year-old cold case and came to new conclusions, is more philosophical.

"There is still a loose end," he said of Frank Figliola's killer. "So in that sense it will never be closed."

• • •

Maria Figliola believes the Crown offered Di Trapani the deal to make sure they kept her locked away.

Q: Di Trapani testified that he came by your house.

A: He said that but I never saw Daniele that night. Apparently I asked him to go check the murder scene? How would I ask him to check the murder scene if I didn't know where the murder scene was?

Q: Do you believe he killed Frank?

A: People in Stoney Creek know who killed my husband. The 'Creek is a tight-knit community. I don't know who it is, but people hear the gossip, the rumblings ... As much of a rat and spineless person that he is, I could never point the finger at him and say he did it. I don't know whether he did it or not. But he took the first opportunity to point the finger at me.

Q: After Di Trapani was finished in court, at the time, one of the police officers said Frank's killer was still out there.

A: That's right. So tell me: who did I pay to kill my husband?

• • •

Frank's diary, June 15, 2001/52 days prior to death: "She asked me if she could go to a movie with her work friends. I said it was OK. She was all smiles. Even kissed me for the first time in years. I almost fainted. That kiss didn't last very long."

905-526-3515 | @jonjwells

About the story

"Maria Figliola's regret" is written based on three hours of interviews with Figliola by Hamilton Spectator reporter Jon Wells at the federal women's prison in Kitchener, Ont., as well as details from her trials covered in the Spectator.

- Part 1: Maria Figliola's regret: A hit man, a widow and a jailhouse interview with Jon Wells