francesco villi malingerer

Daughters of Vaughan condo mass-shooting gunman say he was abusive and aggressive

The five deceased victims of Sunday night's tragic mass shooting at a condo building in Vaughan, Ontario, are being remembered fondly by their loved ones, but the man who orchestrated the killings — 73-year-old Francesco Villi, also deceased — is being described by his daughters as a literal monster.

A statement released to media on Wednesday by Ontario's Special Investigations Unit (SIU), which is mandated to look over any case in which civilians are killed or injured by police, suggests that Villi had a history of domestic violence against both his children and their mothers.

Three of Villi's daughters who spoke to the police watchdog agency said that the shooter was a "controlling and abusive husband and father" with an aggressive, "Jekyll and Hyde"-type personality.

He had reportedly been estranged from all of his kids for more than five years despite "many offers of help" that were continuously denied.

"We offer our heartfelt condolences. We are in absolute shock and utter devastation," said the daughters, who were not named in the SIU release.

"We are grieving for the families, and they are in our hearts."

This latest piece of information about Villi is consistent with reports suggesting that the he was defiant, discredible and suffered from at least one type of mental illness.

An investigation into the 73-year-old's work and legal history published by The National Post on Tuesday concludes that he experienced a "bizarre frequency of car crashes and workplace accidents over decades" that left him "depressed, unable to work as a contractor, and suicidal years before his acrid dispute with his condo board."

He began taking extended periods of time off from work in 1973 when he twisted his back and fell on his knee. He was off for another year after slipping and falling at work in 1974, another year in 1982 for a back sprain, and for months in both 1986 and 1988 due to various workplace and auto collisions.

Villi reportedly went to court in the mid-90s to object against his insurance company for cutting off accident benefits. He had been receiving the benefits for two years after his van was struck twice in a parking lot.

The Ontario Insurance Tribunal eventually ruled that he was not credible, citing the opinions of five doctors who had examined Villi. Two surgeons testified that they could find no objective signs of damage to the Vaughan resident's back, two other doctors noted lies and exaggeration, while one actually flat-out accused him of "malingering."

While it's unclear if previous legal disputes factored into an Ontario judge's decision to throw out Villi's claims against members of his condo board in August of 2022, that ruling similarly found the now-deceased shooter's arguments "fatally flawed," "frivolous," and "vexatious."

Villi was shot dead by police on Sunday evening after attacking six residents of his condo building at 9325 Jane Street with a semi-automatic weapon.

Three of the deceased victims were members of the condo board Villi had been accusing for years of intentionally harming him. The one surviving victim was married to a condo board member who was not killed in the shooting. She remains in hospital following an emergency surgery.

Prior to Sunday's massacre, Villi appeared to have been an avid social media user with prolific output on Facebook, specifically.

He frequently posted videos in which he complained about the physical harm he was enduring on account of electromagnetic waves emanating from an electrical room beneath his unit. He had claimed both online and in court that members of his condominium corporation were intentionally trying to harm him.

Villi's Facebook post featured a video running about 17 minutes in length in which the senior claims to be dying and speaks at length about his religious beliefs.

He yells and shakes the camera at one point when describing his sleep troubles (a side effect of the electrical waves, in his opinion) and screams at the "liars and demons" on his condo's board of directors.

"You bastards! You bastard son of a bitches, all of you!" he says in the video, which was uploaded to Facebook around 2 p.m. on Sunday, just five hours before he committed one of the worst mass shootings in recent Toronto history.

Lead photo by

Francesco Villi/Facebook


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