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MANDEL: Hit man who killed Eddie Melo wins new parole hearing
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Author of the article: Michele Mandel
Published Aug 20, 2025  •  Last

Charles Gagné
Charles Gagné killed former boxing champ Eddie Melo and his pal Joao Pavao in Mississauga in 2001.

The hit man who killed boxer Eddie Melo has won an appeal and will get a new parole hearing due to “unfairness” —  so he’ll get another chance to argue the board didn’t properly consider his newly-discovered Indigenous roots when they revoked his release.

It makes Melo’s daughter absolutely furious.

“It’s mind-blowing, just absolutely mind-blowing,” says Jess Melo, from her home in British Columbia. “He just found out from Ancestry.com or something that he’s 1.2% Indigenous so now he’s playing that card so he can play the system some more.”

Charles Gagne, 51, is serving a life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 12 years for the mob hit of her beloved dad, the former Canadian middleweight champion who turned enforcer for the Cotroni crime family.

On April 6, 2001, Melo, 40, was talking to childhood friend Joao “Johnny” Pavao, 42, outside Amici Sport Cafe in the Cliffway Plaza parking lot in Mississauga when Gagne opened fire. “Mr. Melo tried to press the gas. I shot him twice in the head,” he told the judge.

With ambitions of moving up in the underworld, the longtime criminal had jumped at the $75,000 contract to kill Melo. Pavao was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Gagne shot both men in the head at close range —  all while being on day parole for an armed robbery conviction and returning to his halfway house in Ottawa in time for curfew. Also while on parole, he shot another man in the stomach while trying to collect on a drug debt.

A poster boy for reform.

Originally charged with two counts of first-degree murder, the hit man was given a sweetheart deal in 2003 and allowed to plead to second-degree in 2003 in return for his — albeit unsuccessful — testimony against his co-accused Manuel “Mike” DaSilva, who was ultimately acquitted.

Despite the best efforts of Melo’s daughter, Gagne was granted day parole in 2023. It was revoked just a year later over concerns he was violating numerous conditions such as leaving his geographic boundaries, consorting with sex workers and failing to disclose he’d spent thousands of borrowed dollars on crypto investments.

In January, Melo’s daughter travelled to Joyceville prison where a hearing was held to determine if Gagne could return to day parole or whether the revocation should hold.

“He broke every possible condition imaginable,” says the mother of three.

The board found he’d misused a weekend pass to visit family to consort with a woman he hadn’t reported to his probation officer, didn’t disclose a very risky investment that placed him in serious debt or that he was visiting his uncle despite being prohibited from doing so.

Gagne insisted he’d learned his lesson. But he’d protested the same before being released on day parole in 2001 — when he went on to murder two people.

The board had his number and officially revoked his parole: “You have shown yourself to be an effective and cunning manipulator of the system. You yourself admitted in past hearings to ‘playing the game’ and parroting back program language.”

In March, Gagne appealed with a long list of complaints. The appeal division ordered a new review after finding the decision was based on new information that hadn’t been disclosed to Gagne in advance.

Melo had left the January hearing believing she wouldn’t have to hear from her father’s killer again until late next year. Instead, she’ll be flying across the country this October to present yet another victim impact statement.

“We’re 24 years into this and I still don’t get a break,” she sighs.

Three weeks ago, she and her kids celebrated the birthday of the grandfather they never met — sending wishes to heaven tied to balloons. Despite his ferocity in the ring, Melo describes her dad as a gentle soul with a big heart and it kills her that her children will never know the man stolen away from all of them.

So she has made a vow to his killer.

“I told him I will never stop coming for him until he’s removed from an institution in a black garbage bag like the piece of trash that he is. I told him that straight to his face,” she says fiercely. “I’m not ever going to stop.”

mmandel@postmedia.com

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