I can’t hide my disappointment with Canada of late. A week ago they seemed to be on the brink of bringing scandal action on a scale I’ve seldom seen. But by Monday they had become like the Bill Buckner of nations, choking at the key moment, when glory was just within reach. But today, there seems to be maybe some life back in the scandal.
Here’s the latest.
If you’re at all a follower of the Ford scandal you remember this picture (above) – given to reporters at the Toronto Star and Gawker as a proof credibility of some sort relative to the epic Ford crack video which they’d show the reporters but only part with for a six-figure sum. The massive sweaty white guy in the middle of the picture is Ford. The main on the left is Anthony Smith, who may have made the crack video and was gunned down outside a nightclub in March. One of the two men on the right was also shot with Smith but he survived.
The big news today is that, thanks to some canny neighbors, the Toronto Star, Gawker and a few other publications have identified the house in question. It’s a somewhat rundown bungalow on a street near the apartment building where the crack video was allegedly being kept.
The house is occupied by members of the Basso family who appear to be fairly staunch Rob Ford supporters. When reporters from the Star briefly got Elana Basso, 51, on the phone she said “Rob Ford’s the greatest mayor ever. You guys are scavengers.” But the big takeaway today is that the house at 15 Windsor Rd. is maybe a crack house or at least a house known in the neighborhood as a place to buy and use drugs.
From the Toronto Star …
On Windsor Rd., four neighbours from different houses told the Star that they have for years had concerns of drug activity at number 15. They say the house seems to be the centre for drug activity spilling over from the nearby apartments and that young men have been seen coming and going from the house.
In 2011, concerns about people with drugs and guns leaving the Dixon Rd. apartment building and walking north onto Windsor Rd. led to a request to ward councillor Doug Ford to close the walkway.
Fabio Basso, 45, apparently went to high school with Mayor Ford so he might be able to shed some light on things. But when approached by Star reporters leaving a TD Canada Trust on Tuesday, Basso “jumped on a bicycle and pedalled away, turning back to give an obscene gesture.”
So to summarize, the photo of Mayor Ford and the dead kid which the owners of the crack-smoking video gave to reporters to show they were on the level was taken in a house that appears to be a local drug den owned by staunch supporters of Mayor Ford.
Now, one other detail. You’ll remember that three days after the Star and Gawker published the original Mayor Ford Crack Video story there was a shooting at the apartment where the video was allegedly kept. And, small world, there was also a home invasion at the drug den that same day.
The Globe and Mail adds this color …
Toronto Police spokesperson Tony Vella said there was an armed home invasion at that house that evening at 11 p.m., when a man forced his way inside and assaulted two people. The victims of that attack were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, and no arrests have been made though the investigation continues.
A husband and wife in a neighbouring home said they heard shouting that evening. “Help me, help me, help me,” the wife heard from the bungalow, a plea that was followed by “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
Now that’s what we know from the Canadian papers. Everything I’d written up to this point was based on three separate Canadian press reports. But as I was writing this post, Gawker filed an update which purports to add several key details.
Not entirely surprisingly at this point, the crack video, according to Gawker’s sources, was shot in the above noted drug den, the one on Windsor Rd. If that’s true I guess we can maybe upgrade it from drug den to Crack House. And, again according to Gawker, the home invasion was someone who came in looking for the video and beat Fabio and his girlfriend with a metal pipe trying to find it.
We join John Cook in progress at Gawker …
Flash forward to last month, after Gawker broke the story of the video and published the photo. On or about Friday, May 17, the source said–the day after we published the story–two large men knocked on Fabio’s door. “They told him that he needed to get the kid who sold them the crack that night to come back to the house,” the source said. “That he needed to induce him to come over.” Fabio reached the dealer, who told him that he was out of town, in Windsor, Ontario, and would not be coming over. (Gawker was aware that the owner of the videotape had indeed left Toronto in the immediate aftermath of the story; this detail had not to our knowledge been previously made public.)
The men returned to 15 Windsor on several occasions over the next few days, the source said, trying to get Fabio to lure the dealer back to his house. After attempting to cooperate without success, the source said, Fabio told the men to stop dropping by. “He told them, ‘Look, leave me alone,'” the source said. “‘This is my mother’s house. Rob got himself into this situation. It’s his problem, not mine.'”
Several days later, the source said, one of the men returned to Fabio’s house, forced his way through the door, and beat Fabio and Fabio’s girlfriend with a steel pipe. “He spent the night at [nearby Etobicoke General Hospital],” the source said. A photograph of Fabio (at left) published this morning by the Star doesn’t show any visible injuries.
So that’s where we are. The picture of Mayor Ford and the kid who likely shot the video but who was himself shot and killed later was taken outside the garage of a neighborhood drug den a short ways away from the apartment complex where the video was later stored. Good times. After the crack video news broke, unfriendly large men came to the home, purportedly, pressuring Fabio Basso, Mayor Ford’s High School friend, to lure the drug dealer with the video back to the home. That didn’t happen and eventually the large unfriendly men came back and gave Fabio a severe beating with a metal pipe.
