MURDER LOST TO TIME-Joseph A. Lapello

The year is 1917. Less than two decades into the new century and already the Great War is occurring in the muddy fields of France. Soon there will be the Spanish Influenza which will kill many more millions. An inauspicious start to a new millennium, to be sure. In one of Canada’s largest cities, Toronto, there has been a murder. A cab driver is found dead in west-end Toronto, stabbed multiple times. The cabbie’s name is Carmine Lapello (AKA Tony Lapello, Tony Ross), an Italian Canadian. Inquests occur, but the murderer is never found.

Now, we take a leap forward to the year 1964 when a ten-year-old Joe Lapello is going through some cardboard boxes in his parent’s basement. He finds an old photo of a handsome young man. He takes the picture to his father and is told that the picture is of Joe’s great uncle, Carmine Lapello. Joe’s father was only seven years old at the time of the murder.

Become entwined in a story of a young man’s undying love for a woman, which would drive him to participate in illegal alcohol smuggling during the prohibition era. Carmine was a self employed taxicab driver who became caught up with notorious people, in a small immigrant community of Toronto Ontario Canada, known as “The Ward”. Circumstances would change for the worse, turning this young man from a secretive life of crime, to that of a police informant, and eventually, paying the ultimate price. In the early morning hours of July 20, 1917, Carmine would be found brutally murdered in the street. Follow Joseph, through his discovery of this mystery, as he unravels the unsolved murder of his Great Uncle, Carmine Lapello. MURDER LOST TO TIME: The True Story of One of Canada's Oldest Unsolved Murders-Joseph A. Lapello