One year after a vacationing middle-aged Canadian couple were found slain in a luxury Mexican Riviera hotel, their throats slashed ear to ear in a spectacular unsolved crime, Cancun investigators regard the couple's son, Anthony Ianiero, as "a person of interest."
That does not mean an individual is a suspect, but rather, someone investigators would like to interview.
Were Domenic and Nancy Ianiero victims of a random robbery, as Anthony has long insisted? Or, as some have speculated, were they slain by a professional assassin acting on orders?
Bello Melchor Rodriguez y Carrillo, Attorney-General for the state of Quintana Roo, was unequivocal.
"The killers were contracted by Canadians," he said.
The Globe and Mail has spent months investigating the Ianiero homicides, in Mexico, the United States and Canada. In an exclusive, three-hour interview in Mr. Rodriguez's Cancun office, the prosecutor said he had not wanted to give the case file to Anthony's high-profile Toronto lawyer, Edward Greenspan, who ultimately secured a Mexican court order compelling Mr. Rodriguez to disclose his findings.
For the past 10 months, Mr. Greenspan and Mr. Ianiero have voiced certainty that the Feb. 20 killings at the Barcelo Maya Beach Resort stemmed from a brutal robbery. Mr. Ianiero was in Canada when his parents - Domenic, 59, and Nancy, 55 - were slain, preparing to join them at the five-star resort for what was to have been his sister Lily's beach wedding. Still, he has said he knows "for a fact" that his parents had more money than the cash that was found on them.
Although it was a month before he spoke up, since then he has repeatedly said the prime suspect is a hotel security guard, Blas Delgado Fajardo, who befriended his parents before allegedly slaughtering and robbing them.
Not all of the Ianiero family shares that theory.
And on Thursday, four members of the Mexican investigative team provided a Power Point presentation to explain why they don't believe it either, revealing crime-scene photographs and detailing all the cash, items and travellers cheques that weren't taken from the room.
Along with Mr. Rodriguez were Ludwig Vivas, state director of forensic services at the time of the killings, Raymundo Canche, director of the criminal investigation, and William Bastarrachera, Quintana Roo's chief of police.
They stressed they still view Mr. Delgado Fajardo as "a person of interest," that he appears to have entered the United States illegally and that they are looking for him. However, he is regarded as a peripheral rather than a central player in the deaths, Mr. Rodriguez said, one reason being that he was off duty on the night of the killings.
The Mexicans cited numerous problems with the robbery theory:
-- Nancy Ianiero was found in the hallway of room 4134, lying on her stomach, wearing her underwear and a white blouse but without a brassiere. There was no evidence that either the front door, or sliding glass door, were forced open. Investigators believe she opened the door to someone she knew.
-- The hotel's computer shows that the last time a key was placed in the couple's door on the night of the homicides was about 11:10 p.m. Witness interviews suggest that's when the Ianieros turned in for the night, causing investigators to discount the possibility the killers accessed the room with a different key and theorize that Nancy did, indeed, open the door.
-- York Regional Police - the Ianieros lived in Woodbridge, just north of Toronto - relayed a tip to Mexican authorities that someone known to Domenic Ianiero was a "compulsive gambler" who had incurred a debt of around $300,000, the investigative team said.
The Mexicans suggest that the Ianiero family have not been as co-operative as they would like. But Anthony Ianiero, a 36-year-old former hair stylist, said he hired Mr. Greenspan to get the answers the Mexican police weren't providing and to ensure a proper investigation.
He has also criticized the Mexicans for not zeroing in on Mr. Delgado Fajardo, the security guard - not seen since the night of the homicides. In interviews, Mr. Ianiero has recounted what his sisters told him: After one of his father's feet became sore, the guard gave the couple a lift on a golf cart and, at his insistence, massaged Domenic's foot. The guard returned to the room at 2:30 a.m., knocked on the door and told Nancy to remind Domenic to apply foot cream.
Mexican authorities, however, said the families' own statements at the time of the homicides contradict that account.
In statements given by the slain couple's daughters, Nancy and Lily Ianiero, neither mentioned a security guard or Mr. Delgado Fajardo, investigators said. Rather, they said their father received a foot massage from the hotel's in-house doctor. And in an interview with police, Mr. Rodriguez said, the hotel doctor concurred with that account.
However, Mr. Rodriguez refused to provide The Globe with a copy of that statement or name the doctor, for fear of compromising the investigation, he said.
Staff aren't allowed on the grounds of the Barcelo Maya unless they're working, the prosecutor said, and anyone else must have a wristband to go through the hotel's sole entrance. Asked about evidence that Mr. Greenspan has presented to Canadians in support of the robbery theory, Mr. Rodriguez issued a challenge.
At Mr. Greenspan's last press conference in December, he told reporters the Mexican police file showed that the Ianieros' safe was opened 12 times the day they died, and that the last time it was opened - 8:55 p.m. - the couple were eating dinner. That fact "could lead to the conclusion that robbery was the motive," he said.
However, Mr. Rodriguez insisted that the Barcelo Maya has no way of electronically tracking how many times its 5,000 guests open and close their safes.
"I say to Mr. Greenspan: Bring me the proof that the safe was opened 12 times," he said. "It's your obligation. It's your responsibility to offer up any piece of evidence."
The Globe has independently confirmed that the hotel did indeed have a mechanism to register use of the safe when the homicides took place.
The prosecutor also questioned Mr. Greenspan's description of Mr. Delgado Fajardo as a former member of an elite force in the Mexican army who was trained to kill with an array of weapons. Mr. Rodriguez said the Ministry of National Defence has no record of Mr. Delgado Fajardo ever serving in the armed forces.
Mr. Vivas, the former state director of forensic services, noted that the Ianieros were both killed with single, clean slices across their necks, severing their arteries and vocal chords, making it impossible for them to cry out for help.
"The killers were professionals with a lot of experience in managing knives," Mr. Canche, the director of the criminal investigation, added. "They were cold-blooded with good technical knowledge, including of medicine."
Mr. Greenspan did not respond to requests for comment yesterday. Anthony Ianiero refused comment, saying he is working exclusively with a TV documentary team.
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Domenic Ianiero grew up in the tiny town of Torella del Sannio in central Italy. His father, Anthony, emigrated to Toronto shortly after his release from an Allied prisoner-of-war camp, leaving his four children and wife behind.
As a teenager, Domenic washed dishes in Switzerland, saving for a plane ticket. To his younger brother John, he described the trip as a vacation.
"Fratie [brother] I'm going to go see my father," he said. But he soon realized this would be more than a holiday. Unlike their impoverished hometown, where the stubborn soil no longer produced beans, grapes and tomatoes, the land around Toronto was ripe for something that would come to consume Domenic's life - bungalows, triplexes, two- and three-storey homes.
His three siblings soon followed, quickly becoming Canadian citizens. "We were dancing on the carpet," his brother John said. "You have all these beautiful things and you're going to think about Torella? No way."
Sleepy Camperdown Avenue in the west borough of Etobicoke became the Ianieros' new base. The area was also home to Domenic's future wife, Nancy Lattavo, the daughter of Domenic's father's best friend, who lived around the corner. The Ianieros and the Lattavos were so close that both patriarchs pooled their money to buy a piece of land in Huntsville, Ont., on which Domenic and Nancy would eventually own their family cottage.
In those days, Domenic had few practical work skills beyond playing the accordion. But he developed a taste for sales after going door-to-door signing up children for music lessons. His father, by then a realtor, convinced him to get his own real-estate licence. The market was booming in the mid-1980s and Domenic rode the wave, winning numerous brokerage sales awards.
His business day often ended at midnight, and he worked seven days a week. "He was a real hard worker," said his father-in-law, Quirino Lattavo. "He worked like a jackass, that poor guy." Rather than purchasing a larger home for his family, which now included four children, he poured his earnings into investment properties.
His first, bought in 1983 in his wife's name, was a triplex in the Lakeshore community of Mimico, where he swiftly cranked up the rent by more than 200 per cent - from $90 to $210 - his tenants recall. That move landed him before the Ontario Housing and Rental Tribunal, and was Domenic's introduction to the laws governing landlord-tenant relations.
He became well-versed in those laws, often turning to the court if tenants in one of his eventual six rental properties were behind in payment; one couple got an eviction notice when they were late by one day.
And he didn't waste money on lawyers, preferring to write out his own affidavits by hand in the appropriate legalese: "I verily believe I am entitled to be paid .ƒ|.ƒ|." He applied the same do-it-yourself approach to other things, frequenting garage sales and repairing old toasters, lamps, lawnmowers. "He was so good at that - fixing anything, and then he'd have his own garage sales," recalled Tomasina DaCosta, Nancy's sister.
Some called him thrifty. Others, less diplomatic, called him cheap - ď but his careful attention to money helped him amass an estate valued at more than $3.5-million. At weddings or picnics thrown by the Torella del Sannio recreation club, Domenic's contribution in the envelope was never a surprise.
"Let's say you had to put $100, he'd put exactly $100. He wouldn't put anything else. He was always right on the dot," said Ross Passero, a long-time family friend.
To his four children, Domenic was generous. Property records show that he and Nancy bought the Woodbridge home of their eldest daughter, Rosina, and mortgaged their rental properties so they could contribute $200,000 each to the homes of Lily, Nancy and Anthony.
And his largesse, it seems, did not stop there.
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Soon after the Ianieros were discovered slain, police in Woodbridge held a secret meeting with a high-level mobster. He wasn't an informant or someone who normally met with police officers. Rather, as one source said, "We had a lever to pull and we pulled it."
The meeting wasn't specifically about the Ianieros, and the officers had no role in the nascent investigation. They just thought it prudent to see whether the man had any light to shed on events.
He said he did. He told police that someone known to Domenic had incurred an illegal gambling debt of around $300,000, and that Domenic had come to the rescue by offering to pay it.
The theory that Domenic and Nancy were killed over a debt has surfaced before, and Mr. Greenspan has dismissed it entirely, saying: "There is no debt. .ƒ|.ƒ|. This is baseless."
Since then, however, a close family member has also told The Globe that, a few years before the slayings, Domenic let it slip that he had paid that same person's earlier gambling debts, which were between $10,000 and $30,000.
The story of the $300,000 has also reached another Ianiero family member and a friend of Domenic's from Torella del Sannio. And by one account, Domenic refused to pay it.
Records also show that, less than three weeks before Domenic and Nancy flew to Cancun, the couple gave this alleged debtor a $120,000 loan with a 5-per-cent interest rate, with $500 to be repaid on the first day of every month.
It was rare for Domenic to discuss his financial affairs with family members and friends, few of whom were aware of the small fortune he had amassed. But he was a meticulous keeper of records. "He would never throw a piece of paper out," his brother John said.
Domenic's first-floor office in the six-bedroom home they eventually bought in Woodbridge was crammed with documents pertaining to taxes, his sales history and even his great-grandfather's property records in Italy. The office was always locked because Domenic, by most accounts, was secretive.
"Nobody knew what he had and what he didn't, because he didn't tell anyone," said Mr. Lattavo, his father-in-law. His brother John agrees: "Domenic was so private. He would want to know my business, but he wouldn't want me in his business."
It was these traits that leave some associates and family members puzzled at the notion that Domenic would let his guard down in front of the man whom Anthony Ianiero and Mr. Greenspan have cited as the prime suspect: Mr. Delgado Fajardo.
In a December newspaper interview, Anthony told the story of his parents' first encounter with the security guard - relayed to him, he said, by members of the wedding party.
By that account, Mr. Delgado Fajardo met the Ianieros on their first day in Cancun. It was after midnight. The couple had left the hotel bar and were walking back to their hotel room when a cyst on Domenic's foot flared up and made it difficult to finish the journey.
The couple waved down the guard, who was on a golf cart, and he drove them back to their room, Anthony recounted. The guard told the couple that he had medical training and that he could ease Domenic's pain with a massage, which Domenic allowed him to do, Anthony said. Then, a couple of hours later, Mr. Delgado Fajardo returned.
"My parents were infrequent travellers," Anthony said. "They didn't find it unusual that this individual returned at 2:30 in the morning, knocked on the door, which my mother answered, and told her not to forget to rub cream on her husband's foot. .ƒ|.ƒ|. They weren't suspicious of him coming back to the room at that time."
That account of events, friends and family told The Globe, is hard to square with the Domenic they knew. "He was no fool. He was streetwise," said Helmut Gschoesser, who was Domenic's broker from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. "Naive? I wouldn't say that."
In an interview with two Ianiero relatives, neither of whom was at the wedding, both scoffed at the idea of Domenic forming such a quick and intimate relationship with Mr. Delgado Fajardo.
"He doesn't trust people - then you go and make this guy your best friend?" the first relative said. "The same day?" the second relative chimed in.
Shortly before he departed for Mexico, Domenic told his brother John that he didn't want to go, without saying why. Nancy's father, Quirino Lattavo, heard the same, recalling his son-in-law wondering why Lily couldn't just get married in Canada.
"I don't know, Fratie, about this trip," Domenic said.
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When news of the slayings rolled across the Greater Toronto Area last February and March, television, radio and newspaper reporters lined up to speak with the lanieros' four adult children.
But aside from a brief statement delivered by Anthony, there was silence. Not until March 30, shortly after York Regional Police started making requests for interviews, did word reach the media that the Ianieros had hired Mr. Greenspan.
Shortly afterward, Mr. Greenspan held a press conference, the first of four. There and in TV appearances, he reiterated that this crime had nothing to do with the family and everything to do with Mexico trying to protect its booming tourism industry. The prime suspect, he has said, was Mr. Delgado Fajardo.
"We'd like to see the proper people working on this to the fullest extent that they're supposed to, and any help we're supposed to be getting, even in our country," Anthony told CTV's Canada AM in May. "We haven't received any help or phone calls from anyone. We're trying to do this on our own."
In December, Mr. Greenspan announced that the Mexican police file, accessed through court order, showed that the safe in the Ianieros' hotel room was opened 12 times the day before their bodies were discovered, and twice while the couple was supposedly at dinner. That, he said, reinforces the notion that robbery was the motive.
When asked by a reporter how he could know the Ianieros didn't return to their room during that time, the lawyer said: "We're Canadians. We go to Mexico to have a holiday. Two of our Canadian people were murdered there and all we want is a proper investigation. What's your problem?"
Behind the scenes, meanwhile, other wheels were turning - the settling of the slain couple's estate. In a strange twist, it emerged that Domenic - the litigious multimillionaire who hand-wrote his own affidavits and owned properties all over west Toronto, had no will.
On Oct. 18, the four Ianiero children filed court affidavits stating that after a careful search, no will or related documents could be found. So, with the consent of Rosina and Nancy, Anthony and Lily applied to be trustees of the estate.
The lack of a will still surprises some family members. One relative recalled once talking to Domenic about financial responsibilities. Pressed, Domenic assured the relative not to worry - he had a will.
"How can you not have a will with all this property?" the family member said. "We were surprised."
Mr. Greenspan's public pleas, which have focused exclusively on the notion of a Mexican robbery, have had small effect on either the RCMP or York Regional Police, both of which have sought to assist their Mexican counterparts but which have no jurisdiction over a non-Canadian crime, barring evidence of a conspiracy hatched in this country.
Of the more than 25 people interviewed by The Globe for this story, only two said they had been questioned by police. Tomasina and Victor DaCosta, Nancy's sister and brother-in-law, said they believe the answer to the mystery lies in Mexico and that fault lies with the error-plagued investigation of Mr. Rodriguez, whose first instinct was to point an accusatory but improbable finger at two female tourists from Thunder Bay, Ont., Kimberly Kim and Cheryl Everall.
A witness described seeing blood outside the women's door, and forensic scans of the room later that night - after the women had flown home - showed traces of blood on their door handle, TV remote control and the handle on the mini-bar. In all likelihood, that blood derived from over-hasty efforts by hotel employees to clean up the scene.
Meanwhile, when The Globe interviewed Nancy Ianiero's father at his Florida winter home on Jan. 18, the retired brickyard worker said he was still under the impression, conveyed by his granddaughters, that the item cementing the robbery theory was a supposedly missing $1,000 travellers cheque.
In fact, no travellers cheques were stolen; they were still in the couple's hotel room when their bodies were found. So was Nancy's costume jewellery, her cosmetics-filled purse, Domenic's wallet which contained $100 and $6 (U.S.), their wedding rings and, contrary to some reports, their wristwatches.
"It wasn't a robbery. There was no robbery," said one member of the extended Ianiero family who asked not to be identified. "If nothing was stolen, how could it be a robbery?"
With reports from Marjan Farahbaksh, Celia Donnelly and Rick Cash
Greg McArthur
Marina Jimenez