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The third gunman who shot Fernandez and Pimentel on April 9, 2013, became a cooperating witness and gave hours of detailed testimony in court. Giuseppe Carbone, 47, who, like the others, previously lived in Canada, was sentenced to 16 years in prison.

“Why were they killed, these two?” Fabio Marino, chairman of the Court of Assizes in Palermo, asked Carbone earlier at trial.

“There was a Mafia war in Canada,” Carbone answered.

The backdrop was the rebellion against Vito Rizzuto’s control of the Mafia in Montreal after Rizzuto was extradited to the United States in 2006 for three gangland murders. The rebellion was led by Raynald Desjardins, Carbone told court.

“He was the one who had the ongoing war with Rizzuto,” he said.

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Fernandez had torn loyalties. He was close to both Rizzuto and Desjardins and owed much to each of them.

Desjardins had first brought Fernandez into a higher echelon of crime but it was Rizzuto who gave him his true power. Fernandez claimed Rizzuto even inducted him as a “made man” of the Mafia — despite him being Spanish not Italian.

Fernandez’s sin was his failure to chose a side: He was “like a priest who visits all the churches,” Carbone was told.

The order to kill Fernandez came from Canada, although he did not receive it directly. He is not a mafioso, he said, he only worked with Mafia members.

“Certainly Vito Rizzuto or Desjardins, what’s his name, did not call me to do the killings,” Carbone said. “Rizzuto didn’t call me to do the murders, Raynald Desjardins didn’t call me to do the murders; they called them (his co-accused). So they know who they were dealing with, I do not. I was an outsider.”

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Once the order was given, Carbone and the two men on trial plotted the murder of a man known for his physical strength and determination. Fernandez was a martial arts expert, worked out every day, and was a stone-cold killer. In Montreal and Toronto, where he was also known by the name Joe Bravo, he instilled fear in even hardened criminals.

Carbone said he stole the key to his cousin’s construction yard in an out-of-the-way lane in Bagheria, near Palermo. There was a lockable gate and fence that surrounded a concrete building and yard.

After two failed attempts to get Fernandez to the workshop, Pietro Scaduto convinced him to come with the promise of a great deal on a load of marijuana. Fernandez loved a good deal.

“So it was a very easy lure,” Carbone said.

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Salvatore Scaduto was hiding in a dog’s kennel just inside the yard. Carbone was in the workshop. Pietro was to unlock and open the gate for Fernandez when he arrived. He had a gun hidden by the gatepost he was to pick up when closing the gate.

Fernandez arrived with Pimentel driving.

Pimentel was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a henchman recruited by Fernandez in Canada; he was visiting Sicily to help his boss push his way into the mob landscape in the very birthplace of the Mafia.

As their rental car pulled in, Salvatore burst out from his hiding spot early, before his brother had a chance to close the iron gate. It made for a frantic ambush. Pimentel opened the car door as if to flee or fight back but was met by gunfire. Fernandez reached over his body and tried to drive away.