The Hazel Park Raceway, the centerpiece of the Detroit mafia’s legitimate business portfolio for decades, shut its door last week after nearly 70 years of operation. The horse race track was a college graduation gift from the local mob’s “founding fathers,” Giuseppe (Joe Uno) Zerilli and Vito (Black Bill) Tocco to their eldest sons and eventual successors, Anthony (Tony Z) Zerilli and Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco.

The younger Zerilli and Tocco opened the track in the summer of 1949, shortly after receiving undergraduate business degrees from the University of Detroit. They were eventually forced to sell the raceway due to their organized crime affiliation. The then up-and-coming tandem of gangland figures was alleged to have been inducted into their father’s crime family around that same time, according to testimony in front of the U.S. Senate, having “made their bones,” with the 1947 murder of area Greek mob gambling boss Gus Andromolous.

Current proprietors Hartman & Tyner, Inc. purchased the track in the 1970s. Over the mob’s three decades of ownership in the property, which sits just north of the Detroit border in the middle-class suburb of Hazel Park, a who’s who of Motor City mafia chieftains, captains and associates, held interests in the track, including the elder Zerilli and Tocco, who took over the town’s rackets in 1931 after winning what was dubbed in the area press as the “Crosstown Mob War.” Bill Tocco passed away from a heart attack 1972. Joe Zerilli died of natural causes in 1977.

Tony Zerilli

From its inception into the 1980s, the track was the premier thoroughbred horse racing facility in the Midwest. Starting in 1985, the property became known for harness racing. Thoroughbred racing returned to the track in 2014. In the mid-1990s, the venue began simulcasting and accepting wagers on thoroughbred and harness races from around the entire country and Canada.

When the mob controlled the track, it was a gleaming, start-of-the-art facility known for pioneering innovation and a seemingly never-ending parade of celebrities passing through its gates. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason and Jimmy Durante were all frequent visitors to the grounds whenever they were in Detroit for a performance. Hazel Park Raceway was the first horserace venue to feature a 5/8^th Mile track, installed in 1954 and which soon became industry standard.

“That place was a palace, it was a masterpiece, a vision of perfection,” recounted Tony Zerilli years after selling the track. “We were the envy of the whole industry.”

Zerilli was convicted of skimming $6,000,000 and maintaining silent ownership in The Frontier casino and hotel in Las Vegas in 1971, the impetus for his and Tocco selling the track. Tocco, the Godfather of the Detroit mafia for almost 40 years, died of heart failure in 2014. Zerilli, the crime family’s underboss, succumbed to a battle with dementia less than a year later in 2015. The pair, first cousins and one-time best friends, had been feuding for decades when they finally cashed in their proverbial chips, a good deal of the consternation traced to Zerilli’s casino bust and Tocco’s frustration with the resulting fallout..

The post The Race Is Over: Former Jewel Of Detroit Mob’s White Collar Resume, Hazel Park Raceway, Closes Up Shop appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Retired New England mafia don Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio oversaw the planning of rogue Patriarca crime family enforcer Kevin Hanrahan’s 1992 gangland slaying, according to a new court filing related to an upcoming mob trial and first reported by television station WPRI in Rhode Island. The fresh intelligence comes via turncoat mobster Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, a capo who served under the Providence-based Manocchio until he flipped following both mob figures being nailed by the feds for shaking down Rhode Island strip clubs in 2011.

It was previously believed that it was DeLuca who planned the Hanrahan hit. DeLuca has told authorities he was instructed to inform Baby Shacks that he was responsible for coordinating details of Hanrahan’s murder. The well-liked mob chief was hit with double homicide charges in 1969, fleeing the country for the next decade before returning and pleading guilty to lesser counts.

Manocchio voluntarily relinquished his mob boss post in 2009 after a near 15-year reign atop the New England rackets. He did four years behind bars on the strip club extortions and was released in 2015. Whether the 90-year old one-time Godfather will face charges in the Hanrahan case is unclear.

Bobby the Cigar, 72, will be the star witness against Manocchio’s predecessor, Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, next month at his trial for allegedly ordering the killing of Boston nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro 25 years ago. DiSarro’s remains were dug up in Providence in March 2016 on property belonging to a former DeLuca underling.

Bobby DeLuca

DeLuca has pled guilty to taking part in both the DiSarro and Hanrahan homicide conspiracies. Until being charged in the DiSarro case in the summer of 2016, Salemme, 84, had been living under an assumed identity in Georgia as a member of the Witness Protection Program.

Per the new filings, it appears Manocchio was Salemme’s underboss and second-in-command and Hanrahan was plotting with others to assassinate Cadillac Frank, par for the course in Salemme’s rocky reign of the early 1990s where rival factions jockeyed for power and positioning in local underworld affairs. Prior lines of thinking pegged DeLuca, Salemme’s best friend, as Cadillac Frank’s No. 2 in charge during his violence-prone five-year tenure.

Salemme headquartered in Boston, while DeLuca and Manocchio are Rhode Islanders. Surviving an assassination attempt in 1989, Cadillac Frank spent most of his days as boss avenging the failed hit, taking aim at anyone he felt had opposed his rise to the throne. Busted in 1995, Salemme soon began cooperating with the government, however, left out informing his FBI handlers of his involvement in the DiSarro and Hanrahan slaying, despite admitting to setting in motion close to a dozen others.

The brash, fearless 39-year old Hanrahan was gunned down leaving a restaurant in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood on the late evening of September 18, 1992. DiSarro, 43, was strangled to death just months later, on the afternoon of May 10, 1993, reportedly inside the Salemme family home in suburban Boston.

In the weeks preceding his murder, Hanrahan had ruffled feathers in the area mafia by shaking down already spoken-for bookmakers. He was at dinner with DeLuca confidant Ronnie Coppola right before he was slain — Coppola was shot to death in a fight at a card game in 1994.

Sources familiar with DeLuca’s current cooperation agreement claim he fingers current Providence mob capo Edward (Little Eddie) Lato and deceased Manocchio consigliere Rocco (Shaky) Argenti as taking part in Hanrahan’s murder. Patrons at a Federal Hill tavern saw Lato, DeLuca and Coppola meeting in a secluded booth in the minutes after the Hanrahan hit took place.

Lato, 72, and a longtime presence in the New England mob, is in the midst of serving a prison term for the 2011 strip-club extortion where he was arrested alongside Manocchio and DeLuca. He’s slated for release from custody next year. His name surfaced in grand jury proceedings last spring revolving around the Hanrahan cold case, first revealed in a May 2017 Gangster Report article. Argenti died of cancer in 2002.

Kevin Hanrahan

The post Mob Informant: Former Patriarca Crime Family Boss ‘Baby Shacks’ Manocchio Planned Providence’s ’92 Hanrahan Hit appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Cleveland mob boss Angelo “Big Angie” Lonardo was the first sitting American mafia don to become a witness for the government. Thirty years ago this week, on April 15, 1988, Lonardo testified in front of the United States Senate, delivering lurid details on the history of the Midwest mob’s infamous skimming of Las Vegas casinos and proving a behind-the-scenes look at the inner workings of mafia politics involving several powerful gangland empires spanning from his one-time headquarters in Ohio all the way to the highest levels of the underworld in New York.

On that spring day in 1988, Lonardo read a prepared testimonial to the U.S. Senates Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, part of the Committee on Government Affairs, hidden behind a screen to shield his face. Lonardo flipped in 1985 while serving a prison sentence for narcotics trafficking. He took the stand in the famous “Commission Trial” the following year, one of the star witnesses in the landmark case against the Godfathers of all Five Families in New York brought by future New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, then an ambitious U.S. Attorney looking to make a name for himself in the public eye.

In 1981, Lonardo was named “acting boss” of the Cleveland mob upon then-boss James “Jack White” Licavoli’s incarceration. A few years before Lonardo began his cooperation, former acting boss of the Los Angeles mafia, Aladena “Jimmy the Weasel” Fratianno, entered the Witness Protection Program, becoming the first official mob leader to turn “rat” – Fratianno had once been a member of the Cleveland crime family. Philadelphia don Ralph Natale became the first full-fledged mafia boss to cooperate with the FBI in late 1998.

According to Lonardo’s Senate testimony, the Cleveland mob’s foray into Las Vegas began early on in the development of what became the “Strip,” when businessman Wilbur Clark was in need of additional funding to complete the construction of the Desert Inn which he would receive through the Jewish arm of the Cleveland mafia. The Ohio racketeers went on to provide Clark with protection in his Las Vegas business dealings, mainly through Moe Dalitz, their representative in the city.

The Cleveland mob group would eventually wrangle itself a piece of the Stardust casino and hotel too. Skimmed monies from the group’s interests in Las Vegas continued flowing into the coffers of mafia chiefs in the Buckeye State through the 1980s. Beginning in the 1970s, the crime family joined forces with mob factions in Milwaukee, Kansas City and Chicago to strengthen its grip on the Las Vegas gaming industry.

Lonardo’s mob lineage dates back to Prohibition. His father, Joe, was the first boss of the Cleveland mafia, slain in 1927 by his second-in-command, Salvatore “Black Sam” Todaro. The younger Lonardo, only a teenager, retaliated by killing Black Sam two years later, luring him to a meeting with his mom in June 1929 and shooting him to death in broad daylight from his car.

Soon thereafter, Lonardo was convicted of Todaro’s murder and sentenced to life in prison, a conviction that would be overturned on appeal. His avenging of his father’s assassination, which years later included the murder of another conspirator and Cleveland mafia statesman named Giuseppe “Dr. Joe” Romano (a mobster and physician) earned him the respect of the local crime family. He would be formally inducted into the mafia in a 1940s ceremony and soon rise to the role of captain.

Lonardo also went into his knowledge of labor union corruption and the downfall of the Cleveland mob in his Senate testimony. He chronicled how the mafia controlled the shifts of power in the Teamsters union – especially when related to the union’s pension fund, which helped finance casino purchases in Las Vegas –, and how a reluctance to inject fresh blood into the syndicate and an upstart band of Irish gangsters eager to take advantage of the personnel shortage, resulted in a street war over racket territory, an increase in drug-dealing activity to make up for the organization’s thinner ranks and eventually the mass imprisonment of leadership.

Per Lonardo’s spilling of the beans on Capitol Hill and his future testimony in the Commission Trial, Cleveland mafia brass frequently shuffled to New York in the 1970s to meet with Genovse crime family street boss Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno in order to clear policy decisions. The Genovese clan represented the Cleveland mob on the Commission, the mafia’s national board of directors. Lonardo was promoted to underboss in 1976 in the wake of the unrest in Cleveland. Lonardo was convicted of overseeing a cocaine conspiracy in 1983 and jailed.

Living in retirement back in the Cleveland area following his reduced prison term and his bolting the Witness Protection Program, Lonardo participated in a documentary titled Sugar Wars – not released until after his death – recalling the local mob feuds he had lived through. Big Angie Lonardo died in his sleep on April 1, 2006 at the age of 90.

The post From The Horse’s Mouth: Senate Testimony From Cleveland Mafia Lord ‘Big Angie’ Lonardo Marks 30-Year Anniversary appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Defense attorneys for New England mobster Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick are fighting to keep mention of Weadick’s past mafia dealings, including allegedly taking part in more than one homicide conspiracy, out of his upcoming trial for the murder of Boston nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro. Weadick was convicted of second degree murder in a 1982 gangland slaying and did seven years in prison. He’s also a suspect in at least one other mob-connected murder in the 1990s.

The 63-year old Weadick is charged with holding DiSarro’s legs as he was strangled to death in the Sharon, Massachusetts home of a mob-boss superior on May 10, 1993. His trial is scheduled for next month.

DiSarro’s remains were unearthed in Providence, Rhode Island in March 2016. Former New England mafia don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme was subsequently ripped out of the Witness Protection Program and charged with ordering the hit for the belief that DiSarro, a business partner of Salemme’s, was cooperating with authorities and stealing from a rock music venue they owned together. Salemme, 84, started cooperating with authorities in 1999 while serving a prison term for racketeering, however denied knowledge of DiSarro’s disappearance.

According to a 2016 indictment, DiSarro was lured to Salemme’s home in suburban Boston 25 years ago this spring where Salemme’s son, Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. and Weadick killed him and he watched on. Frankie Boy Salemme, Jr, who died of AIDS in 1995, is alleged to have done the garroting. The elder Salemme, boss of the Patriarca crime family in the early-to-mid 1990s, and Weadick, have pled not guilty in the case.

In court briefs filed this week, Weadick’s attorneys seek to bar any evidence of their client’s prior mob activity from the jury. Weadick is a reputed associate of modern-day New England mafia boss, Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio and his Gemini Social Club crew out of Boston’s North End. Prosecutors want to point out to jurors in the DiSarro case that Weadick has previously acted as a collector for mafia-backed gambling and loansharking rings, a go-between for Italian and Irish crime lords in the Boston area and may have participated in multiple mob murders.

Back in 1980s, Weadick pled guilty to manslaughter in the June 1982 murder of New England mafia associate Joe Mistretta,  a business partner of his in the narcotics trade. Mistretta was found stuffed in the trunk of a car outside Weadick’s Burlington, Massachusetts home, just minutes after being slain. Police immediately arrested Weadick drenched in Mistretta’s blood in the midst of cleaning up the hit which had taken place inside his residence. Another gangster pal of Weadick’s named James Haney killed Mistretta by shooting him three times in the back of the head.

Frankie Boy Salemme, Jr. picked Weadick up from the prison gates upon his release after seven years behind bars for the crime in 1989, a fact prosecutors want to make known to the jury in presenting their case against Weadick. Months later, the Salemmes and DiSarro bought The Channel nightclub in South Boston. Both the younger Salemme and Weadick were employed at the club as an assistant manager and bouncer, respectively.

Around this time, Cadillac Frank ascended to the boss’ seat in the Patriarca crime family, outlasting rivals in a power struggle that left him thirsting for revenge against those who had opposed his rise to leadership. Over the next five years, Salemme bumped off several members of a rival faction in the New England underworld responsible for trying to kill him in an assassination attempt outside a pancake house in June 1989 where he was shot.

Authorities believe Weadick took part in Cadillac Frank’s purge. He is considered a suspect in the 1994 slaying of Mike Romano, Jr., son of a rival faction chief. Romano, Jr. was shot at point blank range changing a flat tire, his assailants mistaking him for another mob dissident present at the unsuccessful pancake house hit. The Romano family filed suit last fall against the FBI for wrongful death and gross negligence in the Romano, Jr. murder over the fact that Mark Rossetti, one of Salemme’s top lieutenants and hit men in the 1990s purge, was a confidential informant for the government.

The post Lawyers In New England Mob Murder Trial Don’t Want Defendant’s Violent History, Gangland Affairs Brought Up To Jury appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Before an endless trove of nude photos and a countless catalogue of sex videos were available in a matter of seconds with a simple click of a computer mouse, the world of pornography was controlled by the mafia. From the 1960s into the 1990s and the advent of the internet, every mob family in the country had its “porn guys,” the men who turned smut and the sex trade into millions of dollars for him and his bosses.

In Detroit, the sex rackets were first run by mobster Frank (Frankie Rah Rah) Randazzo. Then, Joseph (Joe Hooks) Mirabile, a future underboss in the Zerilli-Tocco crime family, took them over. The infamous Giacalone brothers and Ruggirello brothers had a piece of the action, too.

Randazzo had all of the Detroit mafia’s porn and prostitution rackets until he was killed in July 1976 in a gangland hit gone awry. His mob interests included a string of peep shows, porno shops and seedy motels where he sold flesh. He was connected to Midwest porn king Reuben Sturman out of Cleveland, the biggest wholesalers of pornography in America prior to his passing in a federal correctional facility 1997 (he was convicted of tax evasion, bribery and extortion eight years earlier).

After Randazzo’s death and up until his incarceration, Sturman still kept a presence in the Michigan porn racket though through Frankie Rah Rah’s little brother and fellow Detroit mafia button man, Anthony (Tony Rah Rah) Randazzo. According to FBI records, in 1978 Tony Randazzo helped the Los Angeles mob extort a $250,000 tribute from Sturman for doing business in California. The younger Randazzo died of natural causes in 1989, the same year Sturman was put behind bars.

Upon the elder Randazzo being gunned down by a hit-target of his in his own basement the week following the Bicentennial, Joe Hooks Mirabile was named the Detroit mob’s porn boss. Closely aligned with longtime Michigan don, Giacomo (Black Jack) Tocco, the slippery and savvy Mirabile expanded the racket to taxing the growing number of strip clubs on the Detroit’s 8 Mile Road border and stocking a series of mob-run after-hours joints with sex workers.

While Randazzo used Sturman as his wholesaler, Mirabile used mob contacts in New York to obtain his product. Joe Hooks was supplied by Gambino crime family captain Robert (DB) DiBernardo and his Star Distributors outfit in Brooklyn. DiBernardo was slain in 1986, but the business was maintained by his partner, Teddy Rothstein. FBI agents tracked Mirabile underlings to New York and Las Vegas where they met with both DB and Rothstein to discuss dollars and cents.

One retired FBI agent sums up the Detroit mafia-porn racket link as being simple math.

“In that world, it’s follow the money,” he said. “We’d follow Joe Hooks’ guys to New York and back, then follow them to see Hooks himself.  Then follow Hooks to where he’d meet with Jack Tocco and deliver an envelope. There were a lot of envelopes passed between Hooks and Jack. That’s what gets you into the good graces of the bosses. And from when Joe Hooks took over from Randazzo, he got into stellar standing because of the palms he was greasing. He knew where his bread was buttered. I don’t know how well liked he was before all this. In fact, we heard he had some enemies. After he had the porn racket and the cash started flowing, those enemies went away real fast.”

Tocco led the Detroit mob from the late 1970s until he died of heart failure in July 2014. Mirabile, currently 85 and semi-retired from his underworld affairs, was Tocco’s underboss in the latter years of his reign. Per Michigan State Police documents, Mirabile and Tocco often dined together at Luciano’s in Macomb County, which has been a hangout for Motor City wiseguys for decades and the spot Mirabile would hand over his tribute. Mirabile’s sons would pick up the cash from Mirabile’s soldiers at a nearby diner, according to the MSP reports, and shuttle it to their father at Luciano’s where he would give it to Tocco.

The most prolific pornographer in Michigan at the time of the mob-porn “golden age” was Harry Mohney, who was raised on the Westside of the state, but based his sex-trade empire out of the Flint area. Flint, Michigan is a smoggy, economically-hamstrung factory town about 75 miles north of Detroit. Mohney paid protection to the Detroit mob’s Flint captain, Luigi (Louie the Bulldog) Ruggirello and his three brothers. He also did business in Detroit proper, owning adult book shops within city limits in partnership with Sam (Sammy the Mustache) Norber, the Zerilli-Tocco crime family drug lieutenant and former Jewish mob “Purple Ganger.”

FBI surveillance reports from the 1970s list Mohney meeting with then-syndicate Godfather Joe Zerilli and Norber’s direct superiors in the crime family hierarchy, Anthony (Tony Jack) Giacalone and Vito (Billy Jack) Giacalone, the fearsome brother tandem and Detroit mob street bosses. Informants told the FBI, these sit downs were held to negotiate the amount of street tax Mohney had to fork over for operating in Motown.

Mohney, 75, did three years in prison in the 1990s for tax-related offenses. Today, Mohney owns and operates the enormous Déjà Vu strip club chain. He opened his first Déjà Vu in the Seattle area in 1985 and now has over 130 of them in 41 different states and foreign locales around the world.

The post The Detroit Mob & The Porn Racket: ‘Frankie Rah Rah’ & ‘Joe Hooks’ Ran Sex Trade In Motor City In Pre-Internet Era appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Federal authorities have dismantled a Detroit narcotics conspiracy operating in West Virginia for the past 15 years. On Tuesday, reputed kingpin Willie (Chill) Peterson and his younger brother and alleged second-in-command Manget (Money) Peterson were apprehended as part of the DEA’s Operation Saigon Sunset.

The elder Peterson was arrested in Detroit, while his baby bro got taken into custody in Huntington, West Virginia, the hub of the Peterson organization’s Appalachian drug empire. The Peterson brothers were part of a 30-person roundup of their operation. Another 50 people unconnected to the Peterson troop were indicted this week in West Virginia as well as part of an adjoining drug sting.

The DEA began investigating the Peterson gang in 2017. According to the indictment, the gang trafficked in heroin and cocaine. Government raids targeting the Petersons dating back to last spring have yielded 760 grams of “H,” 450 grams of the lethal cutting agent fentanyl and 170 grams of coke.

West Virginia, specifically, Huntington, has long been a Detroit drug-dealing outpost. Detroiters in the drug game refer to Huntington as “Moneyton,” for the cash the Appalachian narcotics depot generates for the boys up north. In addition to the Peterson bust, there have been two other high-profile drug-conspiracy indictments in Huntington involving Motor City heroin pushers since the beginning of the year, one involving the notorious Young ‘N Scandalous gang out of Detroit’s Westside back in January.

The post Freeze Frame: Motown Drug Chief ‘Chill’ Peterson Goes Down In W. Virginia DEA’s Operation Saigon Sunset appeared first on The Gangster Report.

In the 1980s, the Supreme Team was the most well-known, prolific and feared drug-dealing organization on the east coast, operating out of the Baisley Park Projects in Queens, New York. The gang was started by Kenny (Supreme) McGriff at the beginning of the crack era and eventually swelled to include hundreds of workers, dealers and enforcers. At its peak, the Supreme Team was clearing hundreds of thousands of dollars a day in sales.

By the early 1990s though, the group was gone, dismantled via federal indictments and the incarceration of most of its members. But decades later, the legacy the “Team” and its leaders and major players created, has endured, cementing them as genuine underworld icons.

Let’s take a look at how the organization was structured:

SUPREME TEAM ROLL CALL

Kenny (Supreme) McGriff – The magnetic, business-minded founder and boss of the Supreme Team

Gerald (Prince) Miller – Supreme’s cowboy of a nephew, his second-in-command and main enforcer

James (Bimmy) Antney – One of four crew bosses in the organization and the third-in-charge of the Supreme Team, who would run things when Supreme and Prince were behind bars

Colbert (Black Justice) Johnson – One of the four crew bosses on the Supreme Team

Troy (Baby Wise) Jones – One of the four crew bosses on the Supreme Team

Ernesto (Puerto Rican Righteous) Pinella – The Supreme Team’s head of security

Wilfredo (C-Justice) Arroyo – Prince Miller’s right-hand man

Harry (Big C) Hunt – Prince Miller’s bodyguard, driver and primary muscle

Nate (Green Eyed Born) May — Supreme’s original right-hand man turned rival

Phillip (Dahlu) Banks — Supreme’s main message relayer

David (Bing) Robinson – The Supreme Team’s bookkeeper and “ledger boss”

Raymond (Ace) Robinson – The Supreme Team’s processing supervisor

Trent (Serious) Morris – The Supreme Team’s delivery supervisor

William (Willie G) Graham – The Supreme Team’s supply supervisor

Ron (Big Tuck) Tucker & Waverly (Little Teddy) Coleman — The Supreme Team’s retail spots manager

The post Teaming With Flair: Who Was Who In Queens 1980s Game-Changing Drug Gang, The Supreme Team appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Former New England mob associate Tommy Hillary will testify that he introduced slain nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro to then Patriarca crime family boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme at the 84-year old Salemme’s federal murder trial next month, according to new briefs filed in the case and people familiar with prosecutorial strategy. Salemme and DiSarro owned The Channel nightclub together in South Boston in the early 1990s before a falling out between the pair is said to have resulted in DiSarro’s grisly demise.

The surrogate son of longtime New England mob don Raymond Patriarca, Hillary, 71, has been in the Witness Protection Program for 25 years. DiSarro was killed on May 10, 1993, per the indictment, on Salemme’s orders in a hit carried out by his son, Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. and Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick. The younger Salemme died of natural causes in 1995. Cadillac Frank, who had been living in the Witness Protection Program since his release from prison in the 2000s, and veteran Boston mafia associate Weadick were arrested and charged with DiSarro’s slaying in the summer of 2016 after DiSarro’s remains were dug up in Rhode Island that spring.

Hillary lived with Patriarca, the legendary Providence-stationed Godfather, from the time he was 13 until the notoriously crusty mob boss passed away from a heart attack in 1984. He was busted with Frankie Boy Salemme, Jr. in late 1992 for trying to extort money from an FBI agent posing as a Hollywood movie producer, promising the undercover G-man that they would grease the wheels with labor unions on a purported film hoping to shoot in New England. The arrest led to Hillary cooperating. The elder Salemme had been groomed as a killer by Patriarca in the 1960s, having done a decade and a half behind bars for blowing up the car of an attorney set to testify against the mafia chieftain.

At Cadillac Frank’s urging, Hillary and Frankie Boy traveled frequently to Los Angeles in the late 1980s and first part of the 1990s looking for business opportunities to bring back east. Hillary had connections on the west coast from his time living in Las Vegas and Palm Springs, California after Patriarca’s passing. Upon Salemme ascending to the Patriarca syndicate throne, Hillary returned to New England and took a prominent place inside Cadillac Frank’s regime, getting put in charge of the rackets in Framingham, Massachusetts.

The year prior to his getting indicted in the FBI sting dubbed Operation Dramex, Hillary arranged a lunch held at a swanky Boston steakhouse where the Salemmes met DiSarro for the first time. Soon thereafter, DiSarro and his brother-in-law, Roland Wheeler — with financing from the Salemmes –, bought The Channel, a popular rock-and-roll venue-turned-go-go bar in “Southie.” Salemme, Jr. and Weadick, Frankie Boy’s best friend, went to work at the club and Hillary visited often.

According to court filings, FBI agents approached DiSarro in March 1993 and told him he was on the verge of being indicted for tax evasion and bank fraud, prompting his cooperation against the Salemmes. DiSarro and Wheeler were called in front of a federal grand jury in April of that year to divulge what they knew about The Channel’s shady business practices. Informants have told the FBI that both Salemmes became suspicious of DiSarro’s behavior and figured he was feeding the government intelligence. The Salemmes also suspected him of stealing from them. At least two informants were told by Cadillac Frank personally that he either planned to or already had plotted DiSarro’s murder.

The 43-year old DiSarro is believed to have been strangled to death inside the Salemme family home in the posh Boston suburb of Sharon, Massachusetts. Prosecutors theorize that Frankie Boy garroted DiSarro as Weadick, a convicted murderer, held his legs and Cadillac Frank watched on.

The post Gangland Meet & Greet: Future Witness At Boston Mafia Murder Trial Will Explain How Mob Boss Met Victim appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Imprisoned Chicago mob enforcer Anthony (Tough Tony) Calabrese was denied clemency from the White House last week in a last-ditch effort to live out his remaining days a free man. The 57-year old Calabrese, suspected of being the triggerman in a pair of unsolved Outfit murders, but incarcerated on an armed robbery conviction, is in a federal correctional facility in Indiana and dying of terminal cancer. Pleas to his trial judge for a medical release have also failed.

Calabrese was found guilty at a 2008 trial of sticking up three businesses — a leather shop, a butcher shop and a tattoo parlor — in 2001 and sentenced to 50 years behind bars. The FBI fingers him as the shooter in the Thanksgiving Day 2001 gangland slaying of notorious Outfit lieutenant, Anthony (Tony the Hatchet) Chiaramonti and as part of the conspiracy to murder Chinatown mobster and former Wild Bunch member Ronnie Jarrett two years before that.

Court records from his armed robbery case show Calabrese ordering the owner of a local tattoo parlor for tattooing the underage daughter of a mob superior of his and stomping a suspected cooperator for being disloyal. Prior to his arrest, Calabrese owned an auto body shop and reported to leaders of the Outfit’s Cicero crew.

Calabrese’s right-hand man Bobby Cooper was the star witness at Calabrese’s trial. While talk of his mob ties was barred from the proceedings by the judge, Cooper told the FBI that he drove the getaway car on the Chiaramonti hit where Calabrese shot Tony the Hatchet to death inside the vestibule of a fast food fried chicken joint. He tipped the feds off to rumors of Calabrese being the shooter in the Jarrett murder, too.

Tony Chiaramonti, 67, got caught in a power struggle within the Cicero crew, pitting the early 1990s regime, which he belonged to, versus the crew’s New Millennium leadership headed by future Outfit street boss Michael (Fat Mike) Sarno and upset Elmwood Park crew heavyweight Rudy (The Chin) Fratto by swindling a nephew of Fratto’s in a join business venture. Sarno and Chiaramonte were locking horns over video poker machine routes in the years after Chiaramonti was released from a prison sentence for racketeering. An FBI surveillance unit witnessed Chiaramonti get into a shoving match with infamous Outfit hit man Francis (Frank the German) Schweihs outside a Cicero pancake house in the days before he was slain.

Cooper admits to driving Calabrese to a Brown’s Chicken & Pasta location in Lyons Township, Illinois on the evening of November 20, 2001 and seeing Calabrese chase Chiaramonti from the parking lot into the restaurant foyer before gunning him down. Minutes earlier, Chiaramonti arrived at the fast food outlet, fresh from his Thanksgiving meal, in his black-colored BMW sedan.

Ronnie Jarrett, 55, was angered by being passed over for a Chinatown crew leadership post in the wake of longtime capo Angelo (The Hook) LaPietra’s death and angered Outfit bosses by openly trafficking in narcotics. He was shot five times outside his Bridgeport home on the morning of December 23, 1999, as he was getting into his car to drive to the funeral of fellow Chinatown crew member Charles (Guy) Bills, and died in the hospital just over a month later.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Jarrett was part of a mob enforcement subunit given many of the Chicago mafia’s hardest hit assignments dubbed the Wild Bunch. His murderer was traveling in a moving truck found ablaze in a nearby parking lot.

Calabrese’s viciousness was on full display in the following excerpt from an FBI wire being worn by an associate of his that he and Cooper threatened to kill and stomped with steel-toed boots in the office of his auto body shop (Tony C’s First Impressions) for a perceived slight and the belief that he might be informing for the government.

Calabrese: Ya know any of this stupid little shit that you see around here, you keep your mouth shut about? I mean, you understand what will happen if you don’t, right?

Victim: Tony, come on, do I look like I want to end up dead?

Cooper: Nobody said that.

Victim: I know the seriousness of what goes on here, I ain’t stupid.

Calabrese: There ain’t nothing serious going on. But when people get in trouble, sometimes the fucking make shit up. I don’t want you making anything up, that’s all. I fucking bust my balls here every day, all day long. I got enough problems. I don’t need nobody starting rumors or any fucking shit like that.

Cooper: Where you living at these days, pal?

Victim: In a hotel.

Cooper: Which hotel?

Victim: Why you guys gotta know that? Is that necessary?

Calabrese: ‘Cause we’re asking.

Victim: Tony, I don’t know if I feel comfortable telling you guys. I don’t feel safe about that.

At this point, Calabrese and Cooper attack the victim and begin stomping him

Calabrese: You disrespectful motherfucker. Fuck you. What did you just say, you fuck? Fuck you!

Victim: I’m sorry Tony. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.

Calabrese: Go fuck yourself you cocksucker. Motherfucker. Your an ungrateful motherfucker, you know that. I did everything for you. I put food on your plate and you’re going to act like this towards me?

Victim: I’m sorry, Tony. I said, I’m sorry. I’ll never disrespect you again, I swear.

Calabrese: You’re a punk ass bitch. Bobby, get his ass back up, so I can look him in the eye. You wanna feel safe? I’m gonna give you something to feel safe about. This is the last time I’m going to tell you. Remember what happens, motherfucker.

Victim: I will, I promise.

Calabrese: Let me tell you something. If anything happens around here. If anything happens to me, if I see one fucking cop, one fucking fed. I swear, we’re going to fucking kill you.

The post White House Rejects Dying Chicago Mafia Soldier ‘Tough Tony’s’ Bid For Freedom, Suspect In Two Mob Murders Will Die In Prison appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Gangster Report co-founder Al Profit has unveiled his new fascinatingly-layered docu-series, titled American Dope, exploring the complex web of how the United States government itself actually created and controlled the country’s black-market narcotics business.The first three episodes of the six-part series are available for purchase and rent on Amazon.

The first episode, Cold War, Heroin Heat, explains how for over a half-century, in exchange for helping our government fight communism, heroin kingpins from Asia and Europe were given free rein to ply their trade on American streets and generated our nation’s first opioid crisis.

The second episode, Acid Dreams, dissects how in the 1950s and 1960s the government, using college campuses and educational research as a cover, experimented with psychedelic drugs on students, citizens, prisons and mental hospital patients as a means of trying to weaponize LSD for future use by the military.

The third episode, White Powder, Black Power, shows how in the mid-to-late 20^th Century the drug economy became the first significant capital building tool for members of the African-American communities in many of the country’s biggest cities, a phenomenon made possible by several controversial policy decisions made by bosses at the CIA and by legislators in Washington D.C.

Al Profit has written, directed and produced a number of critically-acclaimed documentaries over the past decade, including Roll’n, Streets Of New York, The Frank Matthews Story, Killing Jimmy Hoffa, Detroit Mob Confidential and Motown Mafia, among others.

The post Al Profit’s “American Dope” Hits Amazon, Tells Tale Of Intersection Between Drugs & U.S. Govt. appeared first on The Gangster Report.

The Seven Mile Bloods have been the most dominant street gang in Detroit’s underworld for the past decade, controlling the drug trade on the Motor City’s notoriously dangerous northeast side (dubbed the “Red Zone”) with an iron fist and a shoot-first-ask-questions-later mentality that has left a trail of rivals’ dead bodies and drawn the ire of federal law enforcement. The group’s penchant for being boastfully active on a number of different social media sites and releasing rap videos (under the Hard Work Entertainment banner) bragging of their exploits has given the feds what they believe is damning ammunition to dismantle the “SMB” hierarchy.

In last two years, federal prosecutors have brought RICO and murder indictments against a bulk of the gang’s leadership and most-trusted rank-and-file foot soldiers. This week, The Detroit News published a powerful and exhaustively-researched eight-part investigative series chronicling the deadly drug feuds and turf wars fought by the Seven Mile Bloods in recent years and the mounting legal troubles they face.

You can read Robert Snell’s fantastic eight-part series here.

To honor such excellent journalism and give readers a primer for what the Seven Mile Bloods trap-house empire looks like, the Gangster Report breaks down SMB man by man:

SEVEN MILE BLOODS ROLL CALL

Billy (Killa) Arnold – The reputed current boss of SMB, one of the gang’s founding members

*Put out music under the name Berenzo, sometimes called “B-Man,” prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in their upcoming case against him

Devon (Block) McClure – Slain founding member of the gang

*His 2015 murder escalated tensions between SMB and eastside rivals

Corey (Cocaine Sonny) Bailey – Rapper and reputed No. 2 in charge of the gang

Robert (Ro Da Great) Brown – Rapper and reputed to be one of the gang’s founding members

Michael (Smoke) Rogers – Hard Work Entertainment music label boss, an alleged founding member of the gang, who was acquitted of racketeering and weapon offenses at trial last month

*Cocaine Sonny’s older brother, survived being shot 18 times in 2015

Steve (Steve-O) Arthur – Billy Arnold’s alleged right-hand man

Jeff (Product) Adams – Rapper and the gang’s reputed social media lieutenant

Jerome (Big Romey Dada) Gooch – The gang’s reputed crew boss in charge of affairs in West Virginia, a popular SMB narcotics-distributing outpost

Anthony (P.T. Cruiser) Lovejoy – Alleged to be Gooch’s main lieutenant on the ground in West Virginia

Chris (Baby O) Owens – Alleged to be Lovejoy’s second-in-command on the ground in West Virginia

Eugene (Fist) Fisher – Allegedly one of the gang’s top enforcers

Arlandis (Grimey) Shy – Allegedly one of the gang’s top lieutenants

Quincy (Dubb-Q) Graham – Allegedly one of the gang’s top lieutenants

*His trial ended in a hung jury last month

Derrick (Dip) Kennedy – Allegedly one of the gang’s top lieutenants

Donnell (Hard Work Jig) Hendrix – Rapper and reputed top lieutenant in the gang

Ihab (The Hobbit) Maslamani – Founding member of what was known as the SMB JV Squad, a teenage farm club of aspiring SMB big shots, now called “The Hob Squad,” in his honor after he was convicted of a robbery-murder in 2010 and sentenced to life in prison

Diondre (D-Nice) Fitzpatrick – Allegedly one of the gang’s top lieutenants

Keithon (K.P. the Prince) Porter – Allegedly ne of Billy Arnold’s main underlings

The post The Color Red: Bringing Terror To Detroit’s Eastside, Seven Mile Bloods Roll Call appeared first on The Gangster Report.

In the months leading up to his alleged murdering of a well-known Chicago mob figure, reputed Outfit hit man Anthony (Tough Tony) Calabrese organized and ordered three armed robberies that proved to be his downfall. His entire crew of subordinates responsible for carrying out the stick ups turned against him and testified for the government at his 2008 trial.

The 58-year old Calabrese was found guilty and sentenced to 62 years in federal prison. The string of robberies spanned April to September 2001. According to his former right-hand man, Bobby Cooper, in November of that year, Calabrese gunned down disgruntled mob lieutenant Anthony (Tony the Hatchet) Chiaramonti in the vestibule of a fast-food fried chicken restaurant as Cooper waited in a getaway van in the parking lot. Cooper was the star witness against Calabrese in court seven years later.

Both Calabrese and Chiaramonti were part of the Chicago mafia’s Cicero crew. Tony the Hatchet, as feared as they came in Outfit circles for decades, based his activities out of Melrose Park.

Per court records, Calabrese planned the trio of armed robberies from his car-detailing business, Tony C’s First Impressions Auto Spa in Alsip, Illinois. The first job took place on April 13, 2001 and the target was The Leather Connection, a leather goods shop where Calabrese had an inside source employed at the store. His crew for the job included Cooper, Sean Smith, Walter Polino and Marcus Baker. Smith and Cooper entered the store brandishing guns and herded the store’s owners into a storage room. Calabrese then came into the premises and watched as Cooper duct-taped their arms behinds their backs. Polino acted as the getaway driver and Baker as a lookout. They walked away with a rented van full of leather jackets and $10,000 in cash. Like Cooper, Smith, Baker and Polino all eventually flipped on their boss.

On July 24, 2001, Calabrese targeted the Metamorphous Tattoo Parlor in Lockport, Illinois, tasked by an Outfit superior to teach the recently-opened parlor’s owner a lesson. The owner had tattooed a mob leader’s underage daughter without proper authorization. Calabrese tapped a crew member of his named Ed Frank with organizing the heist, which would also serve as a cold-blooded assault. Frank recruited his drug dealer Marty Flores and Flores in turn brought his associates, Juan Mirelez and Efrain Formes, on board.

Flores, Mirelez and Fromes did the actual job. They collected a box of zip ties from Calabrese’s nephew that afternoon and headed to the tattoo parlor. Once inside, Flores brandished a pistol, provided to him by Calabrese, and ordered all the employees and customers on the floor. Mirelez and Fromes grabbed the owner, Mike Farell and they took him into his office and proceeded to beat and stomp him. Flores then took a hammer he had brought and, per Calabrese’s instructions, broke both of Farell’s hands. While Mirelez and Fromes removed the shop’s expensive tattoo machinery and emptied the safe, Flores pistol whipped Farell and instructed him to shut his parlor down and “get the fuck out of Lockport for good.” Flores, Mirelez and Fromes each joined Team USA in the coming years.

By September, Calabrese got wind of a butcher shop in Maywood, Illinois which an inside source of his told him kept a lot of cash on hand. He, Frank and another crew member, Ricky Dawson rushed into Morris’ Meat Packing on September 23, 2001 and Calabrese stuck his gun in the owner’s face and demanded all the money he had on hand. Dawson’s friend Dave Sims drove the getaway car and acted as the lookout. The owner handed over $15,000 in cash and the group fled. Frank, Dawson and Sims took the stand at Calabrese’s 2008 trial – Frank wore a wire on Tough Tony and survived a savage beat down at the hands of Calabrese and Cooper in the weeks after the final robbery.

Cooper told authorities after he began cooperating that Calabrese killed Tony Chiaramonti on November 20, 2001, chasing him into a Brown’s Chicken & Pasta location in Lyons Township, Illinois on Thanksgiving night and pumping six bullets into his head, neck and torso. Tony the Hatchet had been feuding with Outfit administrators in the years following being released from prison on a racketeering bust. Calabrese was groomed in Chicago mob affairs by current Cicero crew capo James (Jimmy I) Indendino.

As a part of his debriefing wit the feds, Cooper also implicated Calabrese in the Outfit’s Ronnie Jarrett hit two years prior — Jarrett was slain for beefing with his bosses in the Outfit’s Chinatown crew. Both the Chiaramonit and Jarrett murders remain unsolved.

Today, Tough Tony Calabrese is dying of cancer in a Terra Haute, Indiana prison. His attorneys have unsuccessfully argued for a medical release so he can spend his final days as a free man with his family. Last week, President Donald Trump rejected a plea from Calabrese for clemency.

The post The Heist Index: Windy City Wiseguy Was Boosting Businesses Before Murdering Major Mob Player appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Nearly three decades ago, the Booras brothers owned The Channel, a rock, punk and new wave music venue in the Fort Point section of South Boston, until they were edged out by then-New England mafia don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and his partner, Beantown nightclub impresario Stevie DiSarro. Prior to the pair having a falling out and Salemme allegedly ordering DiSarro’s slaying in 1993 for his cooperation with the government and skimming the till at The Channel, Cadillac Frank and DiSarro unsuccessfully changed the club’s concept before quickly realizing they had made a mistake and attempting to reverse course.

Salemme, 84, will stand trial starting this week for the DiSarro homicide. Harry Booras is scheduled to be a witness at the high-profile trial, which comes on the heels of DiSarro’s remains being unearthed in Providence, Rhode Island in March 2016 and Cadillac Frank being yanked out of the Witness Protection Program.

The FBI and state officials in Boston are investigating if the torching of cars outside a current business run by Pete Booras was an intimidation tactic to persuade Harry from taking the stand. Last week, four vehicles in the parking lot of a Hull, Massachusetts pizza parlor owned by Peter Booras were set ablaze. One car, allegedly Booras’ was set on fire and the flames then spread to four more.

According to court records, Stevie DiSarro and Cadillac Frank Salemme were introduced to each other by Tommy Hillary, the surrogate son of legendary New England mafia boss and crime family namesake Raymond Patriarca, at a Boston steakhouse in 1988. Patriarca died of a heart attack four years previous and Salemme had recently been released from 15 years behind bars for trying to kill a lawyer of Patriarca’s slated to testify against the crime lord in court. DiSarro was a successful club and restaurant owner and Salemme wanted his help placing video-poker machines in bars and eateries around the area.

The Channel was opened on the South Boston waterfront in 1980 and quickly became a staple of the northeastern music scene, playing host to an array of popular recording artists, ranging from The Ramones and The B-52s to the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown — Pete Booras ran the club as its general manager. In mid-1991, DiSarro and his brother-in-law, real-estate developer Roland Wheeler, with financing provided by Salemme, began negotiating with the Booras brothers and their co-owners (who had let the club fall into bankruptcy), for the sale of majority ownership in the club.

By that September, with the deal still pending, the Booras brothers allowed DiSarro to take over day-to-day control of the establishment. He hired Cadillac Frank’s son, Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. as the club’s assistant manager and at Cadillac Frank’s urging, began preparing to switch the club from a live music venue to a go-go bar with live strippers. Things began going downhill from there.

On New Year’s Eve 1991, The Channel held its final concert and closed for renovations. At some point in the first few months of 1992, as the sale was finalized and the club was set to reopen as a semi-nude dancing venue, DiSarro and Salemme reneged on a promise to the Booras brothers to allow them to keep a minority stake in the business. Instead, they gave the minority ownership interest to South Boston Irish mob boss James (Whitey) Bulger and his second-in-command Stevie (The Rifleman) Flemmi, who had helped them with the local municipality in getting the club rezoned, according to court records.

Changing The Channel to a strip-club didn’t work and by early 1993 DiSarro and Salemme had decided to go back to its original concept and return to hosting live music acts. They shuttered it again and began another remodeling effort. During the second remodeling, DiSarro was approached by FBI and IRS agents and told he was being investigated for money laundering and bank fraud related to real estate deals he was in with his brother-in-law. DiSarro and Wheeler each testified to what they knew about Salemme and his business affairs in front of a federal grand jury in April, per court filings, and by the following month, DiSarro was living on borrowed time.

On the afternoon of May 10, 1993, DiSarro disappeared on his way to a meeting at Salemme’s family home. According to Salemme’s indictment, he arrived at the Sharon, Massachusetts residence and was strangled to death by Frankie Boy Salemme, Jr. and Salemme, Jr.’s best friend, Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick, a longtime Boston mob associate, convicted murderer and bouncer at The Channel, as Cadillac Frank watched on.

The 62-year old Weadick is on trial with Salemme for the DiSarro homicide. Salemme, Jr. died of natural causes in 1995, the same year his dad and his dad’s Irish mob buddies, Bulger and Flemmi, were indicted for racketeering (Flemmi was actually Italian and rejected a chance to be made into the mafia). Bulger was a fugitive for 15 years until he was apprehended in 2011 and convicted of on a dozen murder counts. Flemmi flipped and admitted he accidentally walked in on Salemme, Jr. and Weadick garroting DiSarro that fateful day in the spring of 1993. He’ll testify against Salemme and Weadick this spring.

Cadillac Frank was convicted in his 1995 case, but turned witness government in 1999 and helped U.S. Prosecutors nail dirty FBI agent John Connolly, who had been protecting Bulger and feeding him information. He was released from prison in the 2000s and eventually re-located to Atlanta under an assumed identity. In his 1999 debriefing with the feds, Salemme denied having anything to do with DiSarro’s murder or disappearance, instead blaming a deceased mob boss predecessor of his for placing the contract on DiSarro’s head.

The post Changing The Channel: How Boston Mob Took Control Of Southie Night Club & Fallout Led To Owner’s Killing appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Oscar-nominee Matt Dillon will play former Chicago mob boss John (Johnny the Fox) Torrio and Sopranos and House of Cards alum Al Sapienza will play one-time Chicago mob captain Ralph (Bottles) Capone in the upcoming film Fonzo about the final years of legendary American mafia icon Al Capone’s life. Torrio was one of Capone’s gangland mentors. Bottles Capone was his older brother and his conduit to the crime family he built in Illinois when he was living in retirement in Florida throughout the 1940s, his mind being ate away by a bout with syphilis.

Versatile actor Tom Hardy is cast as Capone. Hardy was born and raised in Great Britain and received an Oscar nod for his role as the antagonist in 2015’s The Revenant. He’ll be the lead in the heavily-anticipated Spiderman spin-off Venom this summer.

Fonzo, written and directed by Josh Trank (Chronicle, Fantastic Four), is currently shooting in New Orleans. Capone, America’s first celebrity gangster of the modern media age, was the face of organized crime in the country during the Prohibition era. He was eventually imprisoned for tax evasion in 1931. When he was released in November 1939, he left the life of a racket boss behind him and moved permanently down to his palatial estate in Miami, where he remained until his death of natural causes in 1947. The film will focus mainly on Capone’s time living in South Florida, while featuring flashback sequences to his heyday leading the mob in the Windy City in the 1920s.

Dillon was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Supporting Actor category for the 2004 movie Crash, playing a racist cop. He’ll portray the wily and highly-respected Torrio, who brought Capone to Chicago from New York in 1919 to work for him and Windy City Godfather James (Big Jim) Colosimo, Torrio’s uncle via marriage. The following year, Torrio, with help from Capone, arranged Colosimo’s assassination and took his place as top dog in the Chicago mafia (his photo can be seen in this story’s cover image).

Torrio started the bloody street war with the city’s Irish mob that Capone finished with the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in February 1929. Upon Torrio surviving an assassination attempt in 1925 and going into retirement in Europe and then back east in New York, Capone ascended to the throne and became a staple in newspaper headlines across the world. Torrio dropped dead of a heart attack in the spring of 1957 in a Brooklyn barber shop.

A seasoned character actor, Sapienza is best known for portraying Mikey Palmice in The Sopranos on television. Palmice was aging Mafioso Junior Soprano’s driver, bodyguard and main enforcer. The Palmice character was killed off in the Season 1 finale. Sapienza also had a story arc in the smash-hit Netflix series House of Cards, as well as in many other network and premium cable TV shows.

His character in Fonzo, Bottles Capone, ran the Chicago mob’s non-alcoholic beverage business, specifically, a series of bottling plants, at the peak of Prohibition, hence his colorful nickname. As one of his brother’s primary lieutenants, in 1930, authorities in Chicago dubbed him the city’s Public Enemy No. 3 (Al Capone was No. 1). After his baby bro’s release from prison, he was responsible for ferrying Outfit powers and statesmen from other crime families around the nation down to the Capone Palm Island compound in Miami in order for them to pay their ceremonial respects to the infirmed mob don known in the press as “Scarface.”

Bottles Capone semi-retired to Wisconsin following his brother’s death. He himself died of natural causes in 1974. The elder Capone was responsible for aiding the enacting of legislation which required expiration dates be put on all milk and dairy-related cartons being sold by retail outlets.

Ralph “Bottles” Capone

The post Acting The Part: Roles For Chicago Gangland Figures Johnny Torrio, “Bottles” Capone Cast In New Al Capone Movie appeared first on The Gangster Report.

According to recent federal court filings, former New England mafia boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme gave authorities alternate versions of who he believed killed his business partner, Stevie DiSarro, 25 years ago this month – one blamed a dead mob superior of his, the other a lifelong friend and underworld associate. The United State Attorneys’ Office in Boston is of the opinion that in actuality it was Salemme himself that set the DiSarro homicide in motion.

The 84-year old Salemme, who led New England’s Patriarca crime family in the first half of the 1990s before being incarcerated and then entering the Witness Protection Program, will go on trial for ordering DiSarro’s murder in the coming days. DiSarro’s remains were dug up in Rhode Island in the spring of 2016. Opening arguments in the case are expected to begin next week.

DiSarro, 43, and Salemme co-owned, The Channel nightclub in the Fort Point section of South Boston. When the FBI and IRS jammed DiSarro up with evidence of shady real estate deals and bank fraud, he began cooperating with the government in building a case against his mob don business partner. Cadillac Frank suspected he was stealing from him, too. Less than two months later, on the afternoon of May 10, 1993, at the Salemme family home in Sharon, Massachusetts, DiSarro was strangled to death by Salemme’s now-deceased son as Salemme watched on with pride, per his indictment.

After Cadillac Frank was convicted of racketeering, he turned witness for the government and testified his way out of prison, helping prosecutors bust the most infamously corrupt FBI agent in history. He admitted to taking part in nine gangland slayings, but neglected to mention his or his son’s role in the DiSarro murder despite the fact that his son, Frankie Boy, had been dead for years.

During his initial 1999 debriefing, Salemme told the feds DiSarro was murdered on orders of imprisoned New England mafia boss Nicky Bianco, who Salemme said had a personal beef with DiSarro over a business deal gone bad. Bianco took the reins of the Patriarca clan for a year in the late 1980s as a means of stabilizing a fractured organization split between factions in Providence and Boston. Even though he was from Boston, Salemme sided with the Providence regime, where Bianco resided.

Nicky Bianco

Bianco had a reputation as a mediator of mob disputes, first earning accolades for his skills as an arbiter in the 1960s when he helped squash tensions in New York’s Colombo crime family. DiSarro and Bianco were both born and raised in Providence and knew each other from the city’s Federal Hill neighborhood. Following Bianco’s indictment for racketeering in March 1990, Salemme assumed the mantle of power in the Patriarca syndicate. Bianco died of Lou Gehrig’s Disease while behind bars at a Springfield, Missouri federal penitentiary in November 1994.

Salemme looked like he was in the clear from getting corralled into a legal quandary surrounding his misdirection with the feds regarding the DiSarro murder until 2003 when top Winter Hill Gang lieutenant, Stevie (The Rifleman) Flemmi, flipped and keyed his handlers to Cadillac Frank’s role in DiSarro’s death – he told the FBI he had unintentionally walked in on DiSarro being killed on an unannounced visit to the Salemme home and that days later Salemme informed him that DiSarro was clipped because of his cooperation and sticky fingers at The Channel (Flemmi can be seen in this article’s cover image).

The Winter Hill Gang was Boston’s Irish mob, back then run by Flemmi’s partner-in-crime, the notorious James (Whitey) Bulger. Flemmi and Bulger maintained a small silent ownership stake in The Channel and they were indicted alongside Salemme in 1995. It was soon revealed that they were both longtime FBI informants in bed with a dirty FBI agent named John Connolly.

The iconic Bulger, depicted by Hollywood stars Johnny Depp and Jack Nicholson, respectively, in the big-budget films Black Mass and The Departed, was a fugitive for 16 years until his apprehension in 2011 residing in Santa Monica, California. The half-Irish Salemme came up in the Boston underworld with Bulger and Flemmi, cutting his teeth in a brutal shooting war that raged in Beantown between rival Irish gangs in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Almost immediately after Flemmi became a cooperator in 2003 and he let the feds know of his alleged witnessing of the DiSarro hit, they indicted Salemme for perjury and obstruction of justice. He pled guilty and got an extra five years added to his reduced sentence. Since DiSarro’s body was never found though, Salemme skated away from any homicide charges.

However, the FBI kept trying to crack the case and upon agents paying a visit to Salemme in 2013, living in Atlanta under a new name as a part of the Witness Protection Program, he changed his tune again. This time, he placed the blame for DiSarro’s murder at the feet of Flemmi, a rare Italian member of the Irish mob.

Highly-decorated as a Korean War hero, Flemmi had in fact turned down induction into the Patriarca crime family on a number of occasions. Despite their Italian heritage, Flemmi and Winter Hill Gang hit man Johnny Martorano, who would also eventually join Team U.S.A., rose fast in the Irish underworld and acted as liaisons to the Patriarcas for Bulger, who used his relationship with the FBI to eliminate a series of counterparts in the Italian mob and accumulate their racket territory.

At his 2003 debriefing, Flemmi admitted to his role in more than a dozen murders, including killing two of his girlfriends he worried knew too much about his controversial status as an FBI mole. Flemmi went on to testify against Bulger and their ace-in-the-hole fed Connolly at separate trials and is scheduled to take the stand against Salemme as well.

Stevie Flemmi & one of his slain girlfriends

The post “Cadillac Frank” Salemme Tried To Shift Blame For 1993 N.E. Mob Murder To Fmr. Boss Bianco, Then To Friend Flemmi appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Slain Providence mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan intended on assassinating the top two leaders of the New England mafia in the weeks preceding his own homicide in 1992. Per new federal court filings related to an upcoming murder trial in Massachusetts — first reported on Friday by Rhode Island television station WPRI and its resident mobologist Tim White –, Hanrahan planned to use plastic explosives to kill then-Patriarca crime family boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and his underboss Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio and possibly conducted dry runs for both attacks before meeting his own grisly demise shortly thereafter.

It’s unclear if Hanrahan had backing from any high-ranking crime family figures in his twin assassination plot. For the majority of Salemme’s five-year run atop the organization he feuded with a renegade mob crew based out of East Boston. He survived being shot six times in a suburban Boston pancake house in June 1989.

Salemme, 84, is standing trial this month in federal court for the May 1993 murder of nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro, a business partner of his who had begun cooperating with the government. He’s pled not guilty. Opening arguments are scheduled for next week. Before being indicted in the DiSarro case two years ago, Cadillac Frank had been residing in the Witness Protection Program.

DiSarro’s remains were exhumed from under a converted Rhode Island textile mill in March 2016. Authorities believe he was strangled to death inside the Salemme family home in the posh Boston suburb of Sharon, Massachusetts.

Besides the DiSarro homicide, Salemme appears in jeopardy of being arrested for his role in killing Hanrahan, too. His one-time right-hand man in the mafia, former Providence mob captain, Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca has implicated him in both murders. The 72-year old DeLuca has pled guilty to playing a role in the DiSarro murder conspiracy and the Hanrahan murder conspiracy.

A court filing from last month in the DiSarro case revealed that DeLuca fingers 90-year old Baby Shacks Manocchio, Salemme’s successor as don but currently retired from activity in the mob, as being tapped by Salemme to handle the details of the Hanrahan hit. Grand jury proceedings have been active in the Hanrahan investigation since last spring.

Kevin Hanrahan

The most-recent court filing cites a conversation between an FBI agent and an informant where the informant told the agent that Hanrahan had purchased plastic explosives from a contact in Boston as a means of eliminating Salemme and Manocchio.The informant further explained that Hanrahan was going to send a remote-control airplane stocked with some of the explosives into Salemme’s Sharon home to kill him and his wife and the rest he was going to place into a briefcase and detonate in Manocchio’s Providence restaurant headquarters, The Euro Bistro, located in the Federal Hill neighborhood, Rhode Island’s Little Italy — Manocchio has long lived in an apartment above the now-shuttered bistro. Salemme got tipped off to Hanrahan’s intentions, saw Hanrahan casing his home and telephoned Manocchio to warn him of the danger, according to the informant. Manocchio told Salemme on the phone that Hanrahan had in fact been frequenting his eatery with a briefcase in tow.

The 39-year old Hanrahan was of Irish descent and used as a collector and reputed hit man by New England Italian mob administrators for years. Just prior to the news of his wanting to blow up Salemme and Manocchio reaching Patriarca clan brass, Hanrahan had angered his superiors in the syndicate by attempting to shake down a pair of bookies already paying protection money to Providence mafia powers. The bookies told authorities that they were present when Salemme was made aware of the extortion effort and paid extra cash to Rhode Island mob captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent in the days leading up to Hanrahan’s murder to get Hanrahan off their backs. St. Laurent died of natural causes in the fall of 2016, mere weeks after being sprung from a prison sentence.

Hanrahan was gunned down outside a Federal Hill steakhouse on the evening of September 18, 1992. Indicted on racketeering charges in 1995, Salemme flipped in 1999, however neglected to tell his FBI handlers of any role he played in either the DiSarro or Hanrahan homicides, despite admitting his participation in almost a dozen other gangland slayings. Manocchio ruled the Patriarca crime family from the time of Salemme’s imprisonment in 1995 until he voluntarily resigned his post in 2009. He served a four-and-a-half year prison stint (2011-2015) for extorting Rhode Island strip clubs. His welcome home party was held The Euro Bistro.

The post Court Filing: Murdered Mob Muscle Kevin Hanrahan Planned On Knocking Off N.E. Mafia Boss & Underboss W/ Explosives appeared first on The Gangster Report.

From Miami Vice in the 1980s to Providence vice in the 1970s. Don Johnson is playing deceased New England mobster Gerard (The Frenchman) Ouimette in the first of two upcoming films about the notorious Bonded Vault Heist. Titled simply Vault, the movie just wrapped shooting.

Rising as far as any non-Italian organized crime figure ever has in east coast mafia circles, Ouimette died behind bars of natural causes in 2015 at 75 years old. He was in charge of a crew of hoodlums in Rhode Island that pulled off the audacious 1975 robbery of a series of safety deposit boxes belonging to local gangland figures located in a private bank inside a Providence furrier that yielded $30,000,000 in cash and valuables. Although Ouimette himself didn’t take part in the heist, his brother John, did and ran point for the eight-man job. His nephew, Walter Ouimette, participated, too.

The boost of the Bonded Vault Bank was allegedly put into motion and sanctioned by New England mob boss Raymond Patriarca, who was angered at his own men for not providing him more monetary assistance while he was incarcerated. Oscar-nominated actor Chazz Palminteri is cast as Patriarca, a born-and-raised Rhode Islander. Patriarca died of a heart attack in 1984.

Ouimette was one of Patriarca’s favorite and most trusted lieutenants. As a state prisoner from the mid-1990s until his death three years ago — locked up on an extortion conviction –, Ouimette penned a book about the city of Providence. When he died, he was a suspect in a number of unsolved mob hits dating back decades.

Gerard Ouimette

Don Johnson shot to international fame for his role in the iconic 1980s television cop show, Miami Vice, playing narcotics detective Sonny Crockett, known for his pastel-colored wardrobe ensembles, Ferrari automobile and living on a house boat with his pet alligator, “Elvis.” Johnson won a Golden Globe award for his portrayal of Crockett.

Vault is being financed by Verdi Productions, which sold foreign distribution rights to The Solution Group last week, ahead of a premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. Based out of Providence, Verdi Productions put out Bleed For This in 2016, a story about Rhode Island pro boxing champion Vinnie Pazienza. First-time director Tom DeNucci is helming the movie.

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An informant told the FBI that deposed New England mob don Raymond Patriarca, Jr. backed and financed Kevin Hanrahan’s unsuccessful plot to assassinate a pair of Patriarca Jr.’s successors from behind bars two and a half decades ago, according to a court filing last week related to an upcoming federal murder trial involving one of the intended victims. In a 2016 phone conversation with his FBI handler the informant stated that Patriarca, Jr. sent $100,000 in cash to Hanrahan through an intermediary with instructions to kill then-New England mafia boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme and his then-underboss Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio, who would go on to replace Cadillac Frank atop the mafia in the Northeast in the years to come.

On Friday, WPRI’s Tim White first reported that a filing in federal court referenced the informant saying that in the weeks preceding Hanrahan’s own gangland slaying in the fall of 1992, the Providence mob enforcer and reputed experienced hit man purchased a package of plastic explosives he was going to use to blow up Salemme in his house located in the Boston suburbs and Manocchio inside his Euro Bistro restaurant headquarters in Providene’s Federal Hill neighborhood. Salemme and Manocchio got wind of the plot and Hanrahan’s himself was slain instead.

The filing was made by defense attorneys in a first-degree homicide case set to begin this week in Boston where the 84-year old Salemme is charged with murdering his business partner, nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro in 1993. Salemme had taken over the Patriarca crime family in 1990 in the direct aftermath of Patriarca, Jr. and other top syndicate administrators being imprisoned. Patriarca, Jr. led the crime family named in honor of his dad for the last half of the 1980s, a rocky time period across the New England underworld in which he faced an insurgence to his regime from within and was for all intents and purposes forced to step down in the months before his incarceration for fear that he was going to be slain by a crew of angry underlings.

Leveraging support from the Gambino crime family in New York, Patriarca, Jr. took over the New England mob following his father’s death in 1984 from a heart attack. Upon Salemme getting sprung from a 15-year prison sentence for attempted murder in 1987, he was inducted into the crime family by the younger Patriarca and immediately began politicking his way up the ranks.

Salemme cut his teeth in the mafia under the elder Patriarca, acting as the Providence-stationed mob chieftain’s main muscle in the Boston area until he was convicted and jailed in the early 1970s for blowing up the car of an attorney scheduled to testify against the ornery Godfather in court. Manocchio also tied his rise in mafia circles to the elder Patriarca – the two were indicted for two murders together in 1969.

Partially due to resentment over Salemme’s rapid ascension, the crime family’s East Boston crew — headed by Joe (J.R.) Russo — declared war on Patriarca, Jr., killing his underboss William (The Wild Man) Grasso and seriously wounding Salemme in coordinated attacks on the same day in June 1989. Russo threatened to kill Patriarca unless his resigned. Eventually, the Gambinos interjected and with Russo being promoted to consigliere and heavily-respected Providence wiseguy Nicky Bianco stepping in for Patriarca, Jr. the tensions between the two factions halted for the time being.

When Patriarca, Jr., Russo and Bianco were indicted in a roundup of several powerful Patriarca clan mobsters in March 1990, Salemme became boss. With Salemme living in Boston, Manocchio became his underboss, running the Rhode Island wing of the crime family. Salemme’s best friend, Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, acted as his eyes and ears in Providence.

Shortly after taking the reins, Salemme went back to war with the remnants of the East Boston crew that had tried to clip him and is believed to have ordered the slayings of at least a half-dozen enemies in his five-year tenure as boss. Kevin Hanrahan, 39, upset Salemme by trying to extort bookmakers in Massachusetts linked to his regime. He was gunned down on the night of September 18, 1992 leaving a Federal Hill steakhouse.

Patriarca, Jr. served eight years in prison and was released in late 1998. Deciding against returning to the streets, Patriarca, 73, retired from the mob and today is a real estate agent. Russo and Bianco died behind bars.

Salemme was busted for racketeering in 1995 and joined the Witness Protection Program in 1999. In his initial debriefing with the FBI, Cadillac Frank denied any knowledge of Hanrahan’s murder and the strangulation killing of DiSarro, his co-owner in a South Boston nightclub, who had begun cooperating with authorities and testified in front of an April 1993 grand jury regarding Salemme’s business and financial practices. DiSarro disappeared on May 10, 1993. Prosecutors allege he was strangled to death that afternoon by Salemme’s son (now deceased) inside the Salemme family’s Sharon, Massachusetts home.

DiSarro’s remains were found in March 2016 on property in Providence owned by an associate of Bobby DeLuca’s. By the end of the summer, DeLuca had agreed to implicate Salemme in both the DiSarro and the Hanrahan homicides and Salemme was ripped out of the Witness Protection Program and charged with DiSarro’s murder.

Local mob watchers speculate he could be slapped with charges in the Hanrahan murder soon, too. DeLuca, 72, flipped in 2011 after he and Manocchio were arrested for shaking down Rhode Island strip clubs. Bobby the Cigar told prosecutors that the 90-year old Manocchio, retired from mob affairs since 2009, planned the Hanrahan hit at Salemme’s behest. A grand jury probing the Hanrahan case has been convened for more than a year.

The post Mob Informant: Incarcerated N.E. Mafia Chief Patriarca, Jr. Paid To Have Salemme & Manocchio Executed appeared first on The Gangster Report.

Historic Irish mob boss James (Whitey) Bulger tipped off former New England mafia boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme to the fact that Salemme’s business partner Stevie DiSarro was cooperating with the feds in the weeks before DiSarro was slain 25 years ago, according to an allegation in new court filings citing an FBI informant. Salemme is going on trial this week for DiSarro’s murder.

In the early 1990s, Salemme and DiSarro co-owned The Channel nightclub on the South Boston harbor. The FBI informant told one of his handlers in a 2016 phone conversation that in the spring of 1993, Bulger and his right-hand man Stevie (The Rifleman) Flemmi, alerted Salemme that DiSarro had flipped and already testified in front of a federal grand jury about his knowledge of Salemme’s affairs.

DiSarro disappeared on the afternoon of May 10, 1993. Prosecutors say that was the day Salemme watched on as DiSarro, 44, was strangled to death inside his suburban Boston home by his son, Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. and Salemme, Jr.’s best friend, Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick, a convicted murderer and longtime Boston mob associate. DiSarro’s remains were found in Providence in March 2016 and four months later, Salemme, 84, and Weadick, 62, were arrested and charged in the hit.

Cadillac Frank, who led the New England mafia in the first half of the 1990s before joining Team U.S.A. by the end of the decade, was living in the Witness Protection Program when the feds came calling, already having pled guilty to perjury and obstruction of justice in regards to the DiSarro investigation. Salemme, Jr. died of complications arising out of the AIDS virus in 1995.

While heading the Patriarca crime family, the half-Irish Salemme aligned himself with Bulger and Flemmi, the most powerful gangland figures in South Boston at the time. They had all come up together in the turbulent Boston underworld of the 1960s.

Bulger, one of the most iconic American criminals of the past half century, ran the Winter Hill Gang, Beantown’s Irish mob, out of a tavern in “Southie.” But secretly, he was on the FBI’s payroll, too. Bulger and Flemmi maintained an intelligence exchange with disgraced FBI agent John Connolly for 20 years prior to them all getting busted in the 1990s and Bulger spending 16 years as a fugitive.

Bulger, 88, was caught in 2011 and soon convicted of 11 murders. Connolly was convicted of second degree murder for tipping off Bulger to the identity of an FBI informant who Bulger had killed in Florida in 1982. He was suspected of aiding Bulger in other gangland slayings as well. The relationship between Bulger, Flemmi and Connolly was depicted in the 2015 film Black Mass, starring Johnny Depp as Bulger and Joel Edgerton as Connolly.

Flemmi turned government informant in 2003 and testified against both Bulger and Connolly at their respective racketeering and murder trials. He told the FBI in his debriefing session that he accidentally walked in on Salemme, Jr. and Weadick killing DiSarro in 1993 at the Salemme residence. As recently as 2013, Salemme told the FBI that Flemmi was the one who murdered DiSarro. Bulger and Flemmi owned a small piece of The Channel after arranging for certain rezoning and licensing for the club from their contacts in South Boston city hall upon DiSarro and Salemme purchasing the establishment in 1991.

Attorneys for Weadick filed a motion in court last week trying to get clarification on Flemmi’s future testimony at this month’s trial and how it jibes with a piece of law enforcement documentation from the 2000s. While Flemmi asserted in his debriefing that DiSarro was killed in the Salemme family kitchen, Weadick’s lawyers are of the belief that a 2007 report written by an FBI agent cites a confidential informant divulging that he was told by Salemme, Jr. before he died that the DiSarro hit went down in the basement to avoid his mother from knowing what was going on. Per that informant, Cadillac Frank’s wife and Frankie Boy’s mom was upstairs in the master bedroom at the time of the murder.

The post “Whitey” Bulger Blew Slain Mafia Associate Stevie DiSarro’s Cover As An FBI Snitch In Boston Mob Murder Mystery, Per Informant appeared first on The Gangster Report.

One-time New England mafia boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme called his business partner Stevie DiSarro a “snake” to a member of New York’s Gambino crime family in a conversation picked up by an FBI bug planted in the bar of the Hilton Hotel at Boston’s Logan Airport, according to the prosecution’s opening statement in a federal murder trial this week. Salemme, 84, is standing trial for DiSarro’s 1993 slaying. The pair co-owned The Channel nightclub in South Boston. The 43-year old had allegedly begun cooperating with the FBI and IRS in a case against Salemme finally brought in 1995.

DiSarro was killed 25 years ago this week, on May 10, 1993, inside Salemme’s suburban Boston residence, per Salemme’s indictment. Jurors visited the modest Sharon, Massachusetts home Friday before recessing for the weekend. Prosecutors believe Salemme’s son, Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. and Frankie Boy’s best friend, longtime mob associate Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick strangled DiSarro to death as Cadillac Frank watched on. Frankie Boy Salemme, Jr. died of AIDS in 1995 at 38 years old. Weadick, 62, is currently a co-defendant of the elder Salemme at the high-profile trial.

In 1990, Salemme became Godfather of the Patriarca crime family in the wake of an internal power struggle that raged inside the syndicate for the prior year. Then-Gambino boss John Gotti, the most celebrated American crime lord of the last quarter of the 20^th Century, helped quell the tensions in the Beantown underworld, summoning Salemme’s main rival, East Boston captain and Patriarca consigliere Joe (J.R.) Russo to a meeting in Manhattan in the late summer of 1989 and urging him to halt the coup he was heading — three Russo loyalists opened fire on Salemme in the parking lot of a Saugus, Massachusetts pancake house in June of that year, nearly killing the cagey Goodfella. Russo soon went to prison and Salemme was on top unchallenged.

Using knowledge from a number of confidential informants, the FBI bugged a suite in the Logan Hilton on December 11, 1991 to record a meeting between Salemme and Gambino captain Natale (Big Chris) Richichi, a Gotti confidant and the man in charge of Gambino rackets in Florida and Las Vegas. At the meeting, in addition to discussing the partnering between the two crime families in a series of pornography rackets, Salemme, flanked by his right-hand man Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, provided Richichi a report on the state of affairs in the New England mob and listened to Richichi’s counsel on how to maintain a stable organization.

“Big Chris” Richichi (left) & John Gotti (right)

Mob associate Kenny Guarino, who reported DeLuca in Providence and was considered the porn king of Rhode Island, arranged the sit down between Salemme and Richichi. Guarino would eventually be revealed as an informant. Richichi got locked up in 1996 and died behind bars in 2001 at 85.

“I’m the boss, I’ve got the crew now,” Salemme was recorded telling Richichi.

Big Chris warned Salemme against alienating soldiers once in Russo’s camp.

“You gotta treat’ em with respect or you’ll lose your grip on things here….you need loyalty from your men, it’s a fragile balance, do you understand what I’m saying?” he said.

Richichi’s advice not withstanding, mob-related murders would reach double digits in the Boston and Providence areas over the next four years of Salemme’s reign, as Salemme fought a bloody battle of wills with the remnants of Russo’s crew.

Cadillac Frank was known to hold court at the airport Hilton, in addition to the Busy Bee Diner in Brookline, Massachusetts and on Castle Island Pier. It’s not clear if Richichi was the Gambino member Salemme referenced DiSarro to or is it known if the Logan Hilton bar wire was in place before or after DiSarro disappeared.

DiSarro’s remains were unearthed in March 2016 after one of DeLuca’s closest friends, a drug dealer named Billy Ricci, flipped and led investigators to a converted textile mill in Providence where DeLuca had ordered his brother to bury the well-liked nightclub impresario and real estate developer. Both DeLuca and Salemme were in the Witness Protection Program at the time DiSarro’s body was exhumed and soon arrested and charged in DiSarro’s homicide. DeLuca, 72, will be the star witness against Salemme at the trial.

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