Survivors, household and residents reeling from a bloodbath inside an upscale Vaughan condominium advanced have little doubt the assault was the end result of a bitter and protracted authorized dispute.
“We now have been coping with this for 4 years,” condominium board member John Di Nino mentioned Tuesday outdoors the hospital the place his 66-year-old spouse is recovering from a gunshot wound. “The courts ought to have responded higher.”
After killing 5 victims — three condo board members and two of their family members — Francesco Villi, 73, was himself shot to dying by a veteran York Regional Police officer.
Behind him, the gunman left years of social media posts and a voluminous court docket report detailing his aggressive and menacing conduct towards the board and his outlandish beliefs that his victims have been out to get him.
The trove of information gives a remarkably thorough account of Villi’s baseless allegations and his way of thinking, illustrating, too, the impotence — at the least on this case — of the courts to halt a serial harasser in his tracks.
“We’d like the court docket’s assist in getting Mr. Villi to cease his marketing campaign of abuse and harassment,” Di Nino, who can be the president of the union representing the TTC employees, wrote in an affidavit filed with the court docket earlier this 12 months. To date, “nothing has labored,” he wrote.
“We’d like peace. We’d like this matter to be handled via courts somewhat than in our constructing,” Di Nino wrote. “We’d like the court docket to intervene to get Mr. Villi to cease his behaviour.”
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Right here’s what the Star has discovered from the years of court docket information behind the Vaughan mass homicide.
In September 2014, Villi paid $327,500 for his condominium unit inside certainly one of three 16-storey towers on the Bellaria Residences condominium advanced at 9235 Jane St. in Maple, simply north of Toronto. Villi’s was Unit 104.
By the top of December 2016, Villi was already posting defamatory movies, pictures and feedback to Fb and Twitter attacking the company, volunteer condominium board, employees, residents and others, in response to court docket paperwork.
On the root of his marketing campaign was his perception that {the electrical} room on the parking degree under his unit was not correctly constructed and that “electromagnetic waves” and vibrations have been emanating into his dwelling, making him ailing.
Amongst different outlandish allegations, Villi claimed the board was intentionally refusing to rectify the state of affairs and was in a conspiracy towards him, court docket paperwork say.
Within the spring of 2017, Villi emailed the condominium’s property supervisor complaining that chemical and burning oil odours have been seeping into his suite.
Metropolis inspectors visited the property, and the administration firm wrote again: “{The electrical} room and your suite has been cleared by Vaughan Hearth.”
The condominium company, in the meantime, was receiving quite a few complaints relating to Villi’s “aggressive, abusive, threatening and harassing conduct.” Examples included screaming in condominium hallways at 4 a.m. and harassing and intimidating board members and property administration employees.
That fall, the condominium company’s legal professionals despatched Villi the primary of a number of letters ordering him to stop and desist his “offensive behaviour.” The letter claimed his behaviour was inflicting vital employee turnover and making a “fearful and unsightly working and residing surroundings.”
Issues didn’t enhance and in 2018, employees members stop or requested for transfers to different areas. In September that 12 months, Villi advised a entrance desk employee that he was “coming to some extent the place (he would) quickly be strolling round with a baseball bat,” in response to a doc filed by the board’s legal professionals in Newmarket’s Superior Courtroom of Justice.
Extra warnings have been despatched. None appeared to have any impact on Villi’s behaviour.
In November 2018, the condominium sought a court docket order directing Villi to cease harassing condominium employees and condominium board members in particular person and thru social media.
In April 2019, Villi responded with a $1 million lawsuit towards the York Area Commonplace Condominium Corp. No. 1139, Wilson Blanchard Administration Inc., Solmar Improvement Corp., and the Metropolis of Vaughan. (This lawsuit bought caught up in future litigation and was not but resolved on the time of the murders.)
Villi, who immigrated to Canada from Italy when he was 17 and labored as a bricklayer and common contractor in building, was no stranger to litigation.
A 1996 court docket choice referring to insurance coverage funds detailed an in depth historical past of significant office and motorized vehicle accidents, stretching again many years. The arbitrator in that call discovered he was not a reputable witness; his attraction in 1998 was rejected.
Greater than twenty years later, on Oct. 24, 2019, Superior Courtroom Justice Paul Perell responded to the board’s request to restrain Villi’s poisonous actions. Perell ordered Villi to cease making video or audio recordings of the company’s board members, administration, residents or workers, nor submit any content material “about issues earlier than the court docket.”
“We had hoped that the order would change issues however it didn’t,” Di Nino, who grew to become the condominium board’s president in August 2018, wrote in an affidavit. Villi continued to report people with out their consent and submit on social media; the condominium company notified Villi on a number of events that he was breaching Perell’s court docket order.
“Regardless of the warnings, the breaches continued,” Di Nino wrote.
Villi, in the meantime, launched one other lawsuit on Dec. 15, 2020, this time searching for greater than $6 million in damages and restitution and an order for the company to finish a listing of repairs. The defendants, who denied all of the allegations in an announcement of defence, included three board members he killed final weekend: Rita Camilleri, 57, Naveed Dada, 59, and Russell Manock, 75.
Additionally killed: Camilleri’s companion Vittorio Panza, 79, and Manock’s spouse Lorraine, 71.
Survivor John Di Nino was additionally named among the many defendants.
Villi’s assertion of declare, which he wrote, claimed every defendant had dedicated felony offences, together with perjury, extortion, fraud, felony harassment, felony intimidation, defamatory libel and slander, and he accused them “abusively abusing” their energy and “intentionally inflicting hurt, stress, bodily, mentally, financially, confusion incapability to relaxation and sleep for over 5 years, torment, torture that can’t be clarify (sic) in phrases.”
In August this 12 months, one other Newmarket decide rejected the lawsuit as “frivolous” and “vexatious.” The decide discovered Villi offered no evidence to support his claims, and ordered him to pay authorized prices.
The condominium company, in the meantime, commenced an pressing movement to have Villi held in contempt for breaching Perell’s order.
On Sept. 13, 2021, Superior Courtroom Justice Mary Vallee, who additionally sits in Newmarket, discovered him in contempt of court docket for breaching the order and ordered him to make an interim prices cost of $29,5000.
Vallee discovered Villi had spoken to condominium employees members “in an aggressive and generally threatening method.”
After her choice, Villi started complying with the order — a lot in order that condominium company legal professionals withdrew a penalty listening to scheduled to be heard on April 8, 2022.
The calm was short-lived.
Villi resumed his offensive behaviour this previous spring, once more posting unfounded allegations concerning the condominium and its administrators to social media and harassing residents by swearing at them and taking pictures with out their permission.
Extra warning letters have been despatched. Resident complaints piled up.
One safety guard reported a “extremely offensive and distressing” encounter with Villi in April 2022 that left him “frightened.” Additionally that month, he posted a collection of movies on Fb accusing condominium administrators of corruption by accepting cash to “conceal the criminality” within the constructing.
Villi claimed within the video that condominium administrators have been attempting to “systematically homicide” him in his dwelling.
In a single video, in response to court docket paperwork, Villi referred to certainly one of his eventual victims as: “a catastrophe mendacity liar manipulative deceiver homicide cheat fraud pure evil demon satan with out conscience dignity morality integrity no disgrace no rating merely a s— dishonest face.”
Camilleri was a selected goal of his ire; she submitted proof to court docket that she had modified her behaviour to keep away from him.
“She instances her exits and entrances to the constructing when he thinks he won’t be there as a result of he has been harassing and threatening her,” says a court docket submitting summarizing Camilleri’s affidavit.
Courtroom paperwork additionally embody an e mail Manock despatched final August complaining Villi “turned and made direct eye contact with my spouse, stared at her and known as her a bastard. Individuals within the elevator and within the frequent space witnessed the abusive remark.”
Dada too submitted an e mail to the condominium supervisor in Could 2022, complaining that Villi had stared at him and spit on the ground after he had requested if “he wants something.”
All through the summer time of 2022 residents continued to report being “verbally assaulted” and photographed by Villi; a number of filed a grievance to the condominium. They included feminine residents who had been subjected to his spitting, swearing, and name-calling.
His conduct worsened as this 12 months dragged on, the court docket paperwork say.
On Sept. 26, 2022, the defendants requested Justice Mary Vallee — the identical decide who discovered Villi in contempt of court docket — to do it once more. This time, they requested her so as to add some tooth to the order with a jail time period and to power him to promote his condominium and transfer out. The listening to was adjourned to a later date.
Forcing the sale is uncommon and an excessive penalty, the condominium legal professionals acknowledged. Nevertheless it’s not unprecedented.
In a single 2010 instance, a decide ordered a woman to list and sell her unit in a small downtown Toronto townhouse advanced after he discovered she had repeatedly dedicated verbal and bodily threats and assaults towards different residents.
However that listening to by no means occurred. It had been set for Monday.
In a video posted to Fb at 2:13 p.m. Sunday, mere hours earlier than the bloodbath, a dishevelled-looking Villi mentioned: “I didn’t have to do that. For those who would have give me some consolation in my dwelling, that’s all I need, consolation in my dwelling. Why’s it been denied? For seven years. Why? You bastards all of you.”
The video was the final in an extended collection of social media posts suffering from Christian iconography and references, most starting with an unintelligible string of mathematical symbols and emojis.
Hours later, Villi stalked the halls of the condominium tower armed with a semi-automatic pistol.
Patrick Greco, companion at legislation agency Shibley Righton representing the condominium company and administration firm, declined the Star’s request to remark, “given the energetic police investigations, and “out of respect for the house owners, residents, household and buddies who’re nonetheless coming to grips with Sunday night time’s occasions.”
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