Don't look at the body. It will be too painful.

Connie Melo stood next to the slab in the funeral home where her husband, Joe, lay under a sheet. She heard the advice, but couldn't help it. She had to know.

Two days earlier, she had parked at her Ancaster home on quiet and lush Irma Court, saw the police cruisers and ran up the laneway, grabbed a uniformed cop by the protective vest with both hands and said: "Tell me why you're here!"

They told her Joe was found dead early that morning — Monday, Aug. 16, 2010 — inside the business he owned on Main Street East.

Joseph Torres Melo: a man with a brassy personality who always believed he'd make it big one day, and did, building a suburban palace among towering trees with a diamond-shaped front window.

Joe Melo. Ancaster soccer coaching legend. Generous family man with the prettiest wife and three children who were near mirror images of himself.

If Melo had imagined much of that story, he could not have foreseen the grisly end, about a month short of his 47th birthday.

Or could he? He had a nightmare not long before he was killed, but wouldn't tell Connie details. And he had once confided that he believed he would die young.

After the autopsy Hamilton detectives told the Melo family his death was a "homicide," leaving ambiguous intent and deliberation — the elements defining murder.

That ambiguity, it gnawed at Connie, a high-energy, type-A personality.

She had to know how he had been killed. Most of all — the thought brought tears to her eyes, and would for years — she wanted to know if he suffered.

And so, in the funeral home that day, she placed her hand on the sheet and drew it back.

She saw the rope-like lines from where Joe had been cut open for the post-mortem, the Y-shaped incision on his chest.

But apart from that there was — nothing. His skin still had the tan colouring, and his hands, she always loved his beautiful hands, they were just as she remembered.

"I was looking — is there a gun wound? A stab wound? No. He looked perfect."

How could that be? Had he been poisoned? She was no forensic pathologist. Where were the clues she could not see?

And who would want to kill him?

She wondered if he had allowed the wrong people into his life and this is where it ended.

Was there was something bigger involved, a shadow that she could not begin to fathom?

The thought gave her a chill, made her look over her own shoulder, although exactly why, she wasn't sure.

So many questions lingered in those final days of Joe Melo's last summer.

They still do, along with his killer.

Julieta wears the crucifix and locket that belonged to her son Joe. She lights candles for him every night and prays. “I will die with a pin in my heart,” she says. Gary Yokoyama, The Hamilton Spectator Joe Melo first caught the eye of Connie Alampi in church when she was 17 and he was 22.

He had charm and dark good looks. Girls left roses in the front door of the family's home for him.

And there was the car he drove that his father bought him, a red Fiat Spider convertible.

He knew he was going places.

"I'm going to be a millionaire one day," he told his mother when he was a kid.

The Melos lived on Victoria Avenue North, a five-minute walk from Hamilton General Hospital.

His parents, Fernando and Julieta, married in Portugal and moved to Canada in 1956. Fernando worked in construction and for a year drove a delivery van for Genuine Bakery on Victoria North.

They had five kids: Marie, Danny, Fernando, Teresa, and Joe, the youngest, in 1963.

In the early 1980s they moved to the west Mountain, on Greencedar Drive. Joe lived there late into his 20s while attending Mohawk College for architectural drafting and working at Vartanian Rugs.

Connie didn't formally meet Joe until the fall of 1988 when she was 19. She was having coffee with her aunt at Valentino's after seeing a Rod Stewart concert when Joe strode to their table.

She felt butterflies: "Oh my God, he's coming over."

He chatted up her aunt — her husband was a mechanic who worked on Joe's Fiat.

Then he turned to Connie and said he noticed her in there with a guy recently.

"What are you doing with him?" Joe Melo said. "He's not good enough for you."

Joe was smooth. Connie wasn't bad herself.

"Oh? Well, are you?" she said.

On their first date they had coffee and shared a rum ball.

Picture of Joe Melo taken within two weeks of his mysterious murder. Family photo "So is this your girlfriend?" the waitress asked.

"This," Joe said of the brunette with the hundred-watt smile, "is my future wife."

He bought her a diamond necklace and earrings for her birthday. They were engaged the next year.

Joe had big dreams but right up until the wedding still lived with his parents.

"I'm losing my baby," his mother lamented at a bridal shower, to which Connie's mom quipped: "He's 27 — it's time!"

The wedding was Nov. 3, 1990, a warm blue-sky day, Indian summer, the fall colours lit up like a dream.

"It was the happiest day of my life," says Connie.

They honeymooned in Hawaii. Joe vowed they'd return for their 20th anniversary: 2010, the year he was killed.

Connie sits at a black glass dining table she has polished to perfection, clutching a wad of paper towel for when tears come — and they frequently do, between smiles and laughter, because all of it was part of life and death with Joe Melo.

Connie wasn't sure she wanted to start a family right away, but soon was pregnant and stopped working.

Joe had been on disability leave from the rug store but returned to work and did construction on the side, renovations.

Joy and despair: 18 days after they had their first child, Jesse, in the spring of 1993, Connie's mother Antoniette died from stomach cancer, at 47.

The next year they had a second son, Marcus, and Joe created his own company, naming it after the boys: Jessmar Holdings.

Through his renovation work he met and befriended the Martino brothers — John and Aldo, local businessmen who owned the Royal Crest chain of 17 nursing and retirement homes.

He expanded his business and started flipping homes — buying low, fixing them up, selling high.

He exuded charisma and could talk to anyone, could become buddies with the guy pumping gas next to him.

He tried to explain his business machinations to Connie but she wasn't all that interested. Her thing was fitness and running competitively, and Joe supported her.

They took trips to Cancun, the Bahamas, a couples trip to Las Vegas with the Martinos; Joe did Vegas solo with John and Aldo.

In 2000 they had a daughter and named her after Connie's mother — Antoniette. They had moved from a townhouse to a home in the Meadowlands and now to a mansion in Old Ancaster on Sulphur Springs Road.

The following year Joe bought and built a house for his parents.

He was a lavish supporter of Ancaster minor soccer, not only coaching teams but installing bleachers, irrigation and lights at fields.

While Connie enjoyed their home and her husband's accomplishments she also had mixed emotions as Joe kept trying to top himself.

It was like he wanted to draw attention. Get a nice car, fine, but a Range Rover? A Maserati?

Meanwhile, the business empire of his friends the Martinos collapsed under $180 million in liabilities — the largest nursing home disintegration in Ontario's history.

Royal Crest's business and bankruptcy, and the Martino brothers' personal bankruptcy, was the subject of almost 50 Hamilton Spectator articles and a W5 episode on CTV.

Ultimately, The Spectator reported the RCMP had launched a criminal investigation into the Martino brothers for allegedly attempting to defraud their creditors by concealing funds, contrary to the criminal code — and two years later, the OPP's Anti-Rackets Health Fraud Investigation Unit investigated their business as well.

After the Martinos went through bankruptcy in 2003, Melo purchased four of the retirement homes for $1.2 million.

At the time, he told The Spectator: "It's going to take a lot of work to bring them back on track ... but at the end of the day, I come from a working-class family so I'm not afraid of a little hard work."

Melo said the Martinos were not involved in the purchase, nor would they be involved in the running of the businesses. But later, when Melo decided to get out of the nursing home business, he sold the corporations that owned and ran the remaining retirement homes to Rose Hrncie, John Martino's wife, after Martino had died in 2006.

Melo sold the family's Sulphur Springs home for $1.4 million, bought on Lovers Lane and flipped that house, too, after doubling its value, and moved the family to Irma Court.

The former Home Care Pharmacy, at 1217 Main St. East, where Joseph Melo was killed. The entrance to the pharmacy was on the side of the building. John Rennison, The Hamilton Spectator In 2009 he ran a business called Home Care Pharmacy at 1217 Main Street East. It was not a walk-in operation but rather a supplier to nursing and lodging homes. His co-owner was a pharmacist named Niteal Bhatt.

(Bhatt, who works at a company called Syn Pharm in Burlington, did not return calls for this story.)

On Aug. 9, 2010 Connie's father, Joseph Alampi, died from cancer. Joe helped with the arrangements but did not seem right leading up to the funeral. He appeared preoccupied and didn't look well.

At the funeral home on Friday, Aug. 13, the morning of the burial, Joe was on his cellphone, doing business.

"What are you doing?" Connie said. "This is my dad's funeral."

On Sunday Joe took his son Jesse to a soccer game. Connie went to her sister's to open sympathy cards.

He returned to the house with Jesse that evening. Connie wasn't home yet.

He told his son he was going to the pharmacy to meet people to celebrate a deal, and that he should tell his mom he might not return until the next day.

Connie thought that was odd. Joe never stayed out overnight, unless he was on a trip.

Later that night, Marcus, the middle child, repeatedly dialed his dad's cell. No answer.

Unusual. He always answered.

The kids were worried but Connie was unfazed. Maybe he was partying, although that was not his style.

They woke at 5 a.m. Monday to howling from Joe's beloved Pug, Rocky, like he never had before.

At 9 a.m. the doorbell rang. Connie felt a premonition. Something was wrong.

But it was just another sympathy card dropped off by a friend.

Joe still had not come home or answered his phone.

It was a beautiful day. Connie went out and had maybe her best run ever.

As she glided past the Ancaster Mill she paused to notice the sky, a few gathering clouds. Everything seemed perfectly still, as though captured in a photo.

She drove to Brantford with her sister, and daughter Antoniette, to close her father's bank accounts.

At the bank her phone rang. It was one of her teenage sons. The police were at the house.

Joe Melo on a family vacation in 2001 in Mexico with his youngest child, Antoinette. Family photo Connie drove back in a daze. Her daughter was losing it, crying.

"It's OK," Connie said. "Daddy is probably in the hospital. That's why they're there."

The police told them Joe Melo was found dead in the pharmacy first thing that morning by someone who worked there. They said an autopsy would determine how he had died.

Connie's first thought was a heart attack, an aneurysm.

He had been a healthy man.

"Someone did this to him," his father said.

The next day detectives told them it was homicide but did not reveal the cause of death.

That's not unusual: it is "hold-back" information that only the killer, or killers, know.

They did say it was not random and not a robbery. Joe Melo was a target.

Detectives questioned Connie. They told her it was standard protocol to clear those close to the victim.

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Police gave her a polygraph (lie detector) test.

They asked if there had ever been violence in their home. The answer was no. She passed the test.

They said she could view his body and she went to the funeral home.

Connie had become a widow and an orphan in one week, someone told her.

She saw nothing unusual on the body apart from a small rectangular-shaped red mark on his arm and leg.

The only detail from the scene at the pharmacy detectives revealed publicly was that Melo's right sandal was missing. Hamilton Det.-Sgt. Dave Beech held up a picture of his sandal at a news conference.

Had he been murdered in one location and his sandal lost while transferring the body to the pharmacy? Had the killer removed the sandal fearing it offered a DNA connection?

Detectives said they were not ruling out an organized crime link. CH TV quoted police saying Connie had cousins in the Musitano family.

"There are some family relations there," Beech said at the news conference, "But I'm not sure if it's relevant or not."

Connie says there's no question in her mind that her extended family has nothing to do with his death.

Beyond that, she has no idea what he might have been caught up in.

It's unimaginable, all of it, she says, but then so was her husband being murdered.

She heard that Joe had expressed concern that someday his car brakes would be rigged to fail on him. Why did he say that?

Her mind raced: what about the sudden death of his friend, John Martino, four years earlier? Martino died at 48 when his car crashed into a tree and a stop sign near his home in Burlington.

For a time after Joe's death, Connie would be out walking and, hearing a car behind her, wonder if someone was watching her.

She does have a theory on who her husband's killer is, and has shared it with detectives.

Five and a half years after his death, she still phones them for updates, wants to know things are getting done. Sometimes they don't respond as quickly as she'd like.

She also dreads the trial to come if they lay charges, and fears that the one who did this could walk.

Since Joe Melo's death, 48 homicides have come through the Hamilton Police homicide unit. Detectives also investigate attempted-murders, suspicious deaths and deaths of children under five years old.

In an email, Melo homicide case manager Det.-Sgt. Paul Hamilton says he will not comment on when an arrest will be made, but "we have narrowed our focus."

The mantra of homicide investigation is that people murder for love or money.

Melo made a lot of money reasonably quickly, and had many business contacts.

He had "his finger in a lot of areas" a detective said soon after the homicide.

Hamilton says the investigation has been complicated by all the speculation about his dealings.

They heard rumours that he had been loan sharking — loaning money at high rates of interest, but Hamilton says the investigation revealed that was not true: while he frequently loaned money to friends who hit hard times, these friends felt no pressure to pay it back or paid a high interest rate.

Melo's brother, Fernando, says Joe "was generous to a fault."

He says he knows police must ensure they have the case nailed down before making an arrest.

"I know they have suspects, and I'm positive that within the next year or two they will have something definite."

What he misses most about his kid brother, he says, is just having him around to talk to off the cuff; still feels himself reach for his phone to hit speed dial to reach Joe.

Joe Melo's father is 84, his mother 78. They still live in the big house on the Mountain that Joe designed and built for them.

His mother wears her son's crucifix and lights candles for him every evening at dusk on a little table by the window in the living room.

Some nights when she can't sleep she sits at the little shrine and talks to him and prays.

"I will die with a pin in my heart," she says.

The Melo Irma Court home. Hamilton Spectator file photo Are you married?"

"I'm widowed," Connie Melo replied to a co-worker recently.

"I'm sorry. What happened?"

She told her.

"Oh my God, you're the Melo from the pharmacy?"

Connie feels it, the awful label she carries, and the kids.

But the kids, while still mourning the loss, talk of being resilient as a family.

Jesse is 22 and he graduated from McMaster University. He plans to go into real estate. He is composed, well-spoken.

Marcus, 21, has his dad's caramel-coloured skin, wears Joe's gold chain with an image of Jesus on it. He takes economics at Mac; Joe used to let him tag along to business meetings.

Antoniette, 16, is perhaps the one who channels Joe the most.

She has his dark brown eyes, so dark you can barely see the pupils. Her personality seems both fire and ice. She thinks she might want to study law.

She struggled in the months after his death; she was 11 and bottled up the emotion inside.

"She's a tough cookie," says Connie. "She could watch me crying my head off and stay cool the whole time."

Antoniette had the shortest time with him, but says she feels blessed to have had those years. She compares her dad to a shooting star, here and gone in a flash.

"I feel like he is this angel who can see everything I'm doing, so I still want to please him. He would want us to be strong."

Connie has moved the family twice. Their latest home seems tiny compared to the other places he built, but it feels right.

It's like they are on a journey, Connie says, one they were forced to take. She eventually came to the conclusion she would survive — they all would, as best they can.

Many years ago when her mother died, Connie and Joe lay in bed talking.

That's when he said he had a feeling that he, too, would die young.

Stop talking like that, she said, because she could never make it without him.

Joe was the fun parent, he was even the one who did Antoniette's hair when she was little.

Connie says she would do anything for her kids but she can never fill that void.

"Nobody can replace Joe."

A realization came to her, though. People kept saying how much the kids looked and sounded like their dad. He is gone but in a sense is present.

To Antoniette, it's even more.

Some nights, lying in bed, she feels him, and it's no dream: an invisible hand touches her hair, caresses her cheek, she feels a cold wisp on her skin.

Joe Melo's daughter says she has one more point to make.

"We do want justice," she says with an unblinking stare.

"And I know one day we will have it."

It's a long road. Death, life, endings and beginnings.

Still many questions, yes. But a few important ones have been answered, too.

Watch: Jon Wells talks with Joe Melo's parents who continue to search for answers five and a half years after their youngest son was killed. / thespec.com

