More than 50 years after he was stabbed, 97-year-old's death ruled a homicide

On the face of it, there was nothing remarkable about Antonio Ciccarello's death, except, perhaps, that he had lived such a long life. The retired porter died in September at the age of 97. But an autopsy has concluded Mr. Ciccarello's death was a homicide -- linked to a stabbing that took place more than half a century ago.

"It was way out of left field," his daughter, Mary Paloglou, told As It Happens host Carol Off. "It was kind of disturbing because I was expecting to go to the funeral home and bring his clothes and I got a phone call that he was at the morgue."

The hospital where Ciccarello had died had checked his records and discovered that he had been admitted 54 years earlier after being stabbed. The medical examiner then connected Ciccarello's death from complications from a bowel obstruction to an earlier hernia and that hernia to the stabbing.

"I don't believe that's what happened," said Paloglou. "I know how my father passed away. Of old age, at 97."

Her father was stabbed when he was walking to catch the train to work early one morning in the late 1950s. He didn't see who attacked him. And, at first, he didn't even realize he'd been stabbed.

"[Later] he saw blood and that's when he walked back home," Paloglou explained.

Paloglou was only two or three years old at the time, but she remembers her mother screaming. Her father went to the hospital and the doctors operated to stop his internal bleeding. Ciccarello had a scar from his sternum to his belly button for the rest of his life.

But Paloglou believes her father's hernia was from his work as a porter, not that attack.

In any case, she doesn't think the police are ever going to find out who stabbed her father. And she has no interest in the homicide investigation.

"I just want my father to rest in peace and to tell his story," she said. "He was a good man, a hard-working man, unassuming, kind . . . I just don't want his memory to have a tarnish on it."

But, she added, her father also had a sense of humour.

"He's laughing right now. I think he thinks this is crazy."