Although reputed New England mafia associate Charles (Harpo) Garabedian vigorously denies playing any role in the burial of slain mobbed-up nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro two and a half decades ago, he’s expected to testify at the trial trying to bring DiSarro’s murderers to justice. The United States Attorneys’ Office in Boston has given Garabedian, 83, immunity and will call him as a witness against former Patriarca crime family boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, who is currently on trial for DiSarro’s homicide.
Garabedian’s name was bandied about on the stand this past week when Patriarca soldier Joey DeLuca testified about burying DiSarro’s body back in the spring of 1993. DeLuca, the older brother of Salemme’s one-time right-hand man, mob captain Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, told jurors Garabedian helped him transport DiSarro’s body the day after he was killed to a Providence mill where it was thrown into a six-foot pit with hazardous waste and covered with dirt via construction equipment. Bobby DeLuca, 72, will be the star witness at Salemme’s trial.
Joey DeLuca, 78, claims Garabedian provided him a rental car, drove the vehicle with DiSarro’s corpse stashed in the trunk from DeLuca’s home to the mill and fell down when he and DeLuca placed the body on a rusty rolling hand cart to move it from the mill to the burial site. The mill was owned by DeLuca crew member Billy Ricci. After getting busted in a drug case in 2016, Ricci made a deal with the government and led the FBI to DiSarro’s remains.
The elder DeLuca recounted a run in with Garabedian at the Twin River Casino in the months following DiSarro’s remains being dug up, where Garabedian disparaged Ricci for cooperating.
“Can you believe that motherfucker couldn’t do three years?” Garabedian allegedly said to DeLuca, referencing the amount of prison time Ricci was staring at had he not cut a deal.
Charles Garabedian, Jr., Harpo Garabedian’s son and attorney, sent email correspondence to a number of east coast media outlets in the wake of DeLuca’s testimony last week, strenuously disputing DeLuca’s version of events and reiterating that his father played no role whatsoever in the DiSarro homicide conspiracy. He noted in his messages the discrepancies between DeLuca’s testimony at trial and his testimony in front of a May 2016 grand jury.
“Joe DeLuca’s testimony (in regards to the elder Garabedian) is completely false. Amid his patently self-serving recounting of events, Mr. DeLuca could recall word-for-word what my father said and did in 1993, but couldn’t remember the key points of his testimony in 2016. The prosecution failed to introduce any audio recordings to substantiate any of these claims of what my father said or did.”
Harpo Garabedian was banned from Lincoln Downs Racetrack in the 1970s for being an “undesirable” and did two years in prison for racketeering offenses linked to currently incarcerated New England mob capo Edward (Little Eddie) Lato. He was released in 2001. Lato has recently been looked at for his role in an unsolved 1992 gangland homicide.
During Cadillac Frank’s reign atop the Patriarca syndicate in the first half of the 1990s, Garabedian was observed in his company on numerous occasions by FBI and Massachusetts State Police surveillance units. Salemme was imprisoned in 1995 and entered the Witness Protection Program in 1999, testifying for the government in a second-degree murder case filed against a corrupt FBI agent.
During his November 1999 debriefing with federal agents, Salemme, 84, denied any knowledge or involvement in DiSarro’s murder. Five years later, Cadillac Frank pled guilty to perjury and obstruction of justice related to the DiSarro homicide probe. DiSarro and Salemme were partners in a South Boston music venue called The Channel. DiSarro is alleged to have fallen out of favor with Salemme after he got jammed up in a bank and real estate fraud case and was suspected of cooperating with the FBI and stealing proceeds from the club.
According to his indictment, Salemme summoned DiSarro to a meeting at his Sharon, Massachusetts home on the morning of May 10, 1993 and watched as his late son and mob associate Paul (Paulie the Plumber) Weadick strangled him to death — they’ve both pled not guilty. For aiding in DiSarro’s burial, Joey DeLuca was “made” by Salemme into the Patriarca crime family. Garabedian could never be initiated into the mafia due to his Armenian heritage.
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