The criminal defense team for former New England mafia don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme is wondering why it hasn’t received more evidence of government surveillance surrounding the time Salemme allegedly ordered and oversaw the spring 1993 slaying of mob associate and nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro, considering Salemme and his crew were the high-priority targets in an ongoing federal racketeering probe.
Cadillac Frank’s lead counsel, Steve Boozang, asked the U.S. Attorneys Office at a pre-trial hearing this week in Boston where the proverbial beef was in his discovery request that came back surprisingly thin in regards to surveillance records for the week DiSarro was killed almost 25 years ago. U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak didn’t have the answer Boozang was looking for and insisted to U.S. District Court Magistrate Donald Cabell that was all there was to turn over.
Salemme, 84, has been out of power in the Patriarca crime family for more than two decades, but will face first-degree murder charges at a 2018 trial following DiSarro’s remains being unearthed last year buried underneath a converted textile mill in Providence, Rhode Island. He’s pled not guilty.
“I’m not saying they (the U.S. Attys. Office) have it and they’re not producing it (more specific surveillance records), but I think there out there and maybe it just hasn’t come across their desk,” Boozang remarked to the court at the hearing. “It just seems to be that there has to be other reports (regarding that time period)…..there’s records detailing everything that happened leading up to that (week), but then it goes dark. There’s an unexplained black hole, (right) before, during and (right) after (the crime is committed).”
Taking in account past events, Salemme and his lawyers have reason to be suspicious. The FBI’s tactics in combating organized crime in the New England area has come under scrutiny in recent years, starting with its controversial handling of South Boston’s one-time Irish mob boss, James (Whitey) Bulger, a longtime confidential informant and then with its use of East Boston Italian mob captain Mark Rossetti, also outed as an informant and like Bulger, known to have committed murder on the federal government’s watch.
Bulger, currently doing life in prison after 16 years as a fugitive, and Cadillac Frank Salemme were childhood friends and gangland confidants. They were indicted together in January 1995 under the RICO act. Rossetti, halfway through dozen-year-long stint in the can for various racketeering offenses, was one of Salemme’s top enforcers during his reign.
Upon learning that Bulger was an informant in the late 1990s, Salemme, serving a prison sentence for racketeering at the time, entered the Witness Protection Program. Although he admitted to participating and sanctioning multiple gangland slayings when he flipped in 1999, Cadillac Frank denied responsibility in the DiSarro hit. He was yanked out of witness protection in the summer of 2016 and charged with DiSarro’s execution in the wake of being implicated in the homicide by his former underboss Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, has pled guilty to his role in the murder conspiracy last fall.
According to the indictment, on the afternoon of May 10, 1993, DiSarro was lured to the Salemme family home in swanky suburban Sharon, Massachusetts and strangled to death by Cadillac Frank’s son and fellow “made man” Frank (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. as mob associate Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick held his legs and the elder Salemme watched on. The Salemmes were partners with DiSarro in a South Boston bar and music venue and they believed he was cooperating with the FBI and IRS and stealing money from them.
Whitey Bulger’s former right-hand man Stevie (The Rifleman) Flemmi will testify for the government that he accidentally walked in on the DiSarro murder as it was occurring and saw DiSarro being garroted to death by Salemme, Jr. DeLuca will testify that Cadillac Frank told him in April of 1993 that he suspected DiSarro of being a rat and a thief and then tasked him with burying DiSarro’s body weeks later.
Frankie Boy Salemme, Jr. died of AIDS in 1995 at 38. The 62-year old Weadick, already a convicted murderer for a gangland hit he took part in back in the early 1980s, is scheduled to go to trial with Cadillac Frank next year.
Based out of Boston, Cadillac Frank ruled the New England mafia from 1990 until his incarceration in August 1995. Bobby DeLuca acted as his eyes and ears on the street in Providence. DeLuca, 72, went into witness protection in 2011.
Both Salemme and Weadick are behind bars awaiting their day in court, having been denied bail for risk of flight. Weadick is part of the Gemini Social Club crew in Boston’s North End run by current reputed Patriarca clan boss Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio.
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