According to exclusive Gangster Report sources, the rumor that New England mob captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent is or was a federal confidential informant stems from a leaked affidavit signed by noteworthy Boston underworld turncoat Stephen (Stevie the Rifleman) Flemmi that somehow made it into the hands of east coast wiseguys or their associates. In the affidavit dated December 3, 1999, Flemmi – seen above – admits he was told by his handler in the FBI back in the late 1980s that St. Laurent was also informing for the government.
The 75-year old St. Laurent was released from a decade-long prison sentence for extortion and an attempted murder conspiracy earlier this week. The intended target of St. Laurent’s murder plot was former fellow Patriarca crime family capo Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, who angered St. Laurent for spreading the rumor that he was a rat and trying to muscle in on the Saint’s portfolio of rackets while the Saint was away serving time behind bars in the early 2000s.
DeLuca himself flipped five years ago and entered the Witness Protection Program in 2011. He was arrested this summer for lying to the FBI in his debriefing regarding his knowledge of the 1993 murder of nightclub owner and New England mafia associate Stevie DiSarro and has since admitted to burying DiSarro’s body behind a converted mill in Providence, Rhode Island.
DiSarro’s remains were unearthed in March. DeLuca’s one-time boss in the mob, Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, the don of the Patriarca clan for the first half of the 1990s, is facing homicide charges in the DiSarro slaying, ripped out of the Witness Protection Program in August, weeks following his former second-in-command Bobby the Cigar.
The tension between St. Laurent and DeLuca, 71, allegedly began in the fall of 1990 when the Boston-stationed Salemme selected DeLuca over St. Laurent to be his No. 2 in charge and proxy in Providence. Two years prior, St. Laurent was having problems in Las Vegas which led to Stevie Flemmi, the right-hand man to notorious Boston Irish mob boss and controversial “CI” James (Whitey) Bulger, discovering the Saint was most likely a government informant as well.
Bulger and Flemmi were “opened” as confidential informants in the 1970s and FBI agent John Connolly, who grew up idolizing Bulger in the South Boston neighborhood they were both raised in, was their handler. Their scandal-plagued relationship got chronicled in the 2015 Hollywood film, Black Mass.
Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Salemme, closely aligned with Bulger and Flemmi on the street, had dispatched lieutenants of his out west to California and Nevada in order to plant a proverbial flag and generate criminal activity for the Patriarcas in fresh territory. Per sources, St. Laurent spent a considerable amount of time in Las Vegas during this period (even getting “Black Booked” from Sin City casinos) and started shaking down any bookmakers and loansharks he could find.
One of these bookies, according to Flemmi’s 1999 affidavit, was already paying protection but St. Laurent was undeterred and threatened to harm the man’s teenage daughter if he didn’t cough up cash immediately – the bookie subsequently went to his unnamed mob benefactor and had a murder contract slapped on St. Laurent’s life resulting in a series of sit downs between mob higher ups back east throughout the summer of 1988. When Flemmi brought this specific piece of intelligence to Connolly, he was told by Connolly that St. Laurent was a FBI confidential informant too and he and Bulger were to intercede on St. Laurent’s behalf to help the contract get lifted which they did and it was.
Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent
Bulger, Flemmi and Cadillac Frank were all indicted together on racketeering and murder charges in January of 1995. Both Flemmi and Salemme went on to enter the “Program.” Bulger went on the run for 16 years until he was apprehended in California in 2011 and convicted at trial two years later.
The Flemmi affidavit was prepared as part of the federal racketeering case eventually filed against Connolly less than a month following it being drafted and signed in December 1999 – Connolly was convicted on those charges and further second-degree murder charges out of state court in Florida linked to his dealings with Bulger, Flemmi and their depraved Winter Hill Gang. Sources tell Gangster Report that a photocopy of the affidavit leaked in 2001 and the information on the affidavit or the photocopy itself made it into Bobby DeLuca’s hands causing him to start circulating rumors of St. Laurent’s top-secret cooperation.
St. Laurent attempted recruiting two different FBI informants to kill DeLuca, telling one on tape in the spring of 2006 that he got the okay for the hit on DeLuca from then-New England mob don Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio. In response to the wired-up informant’s worries of repercussions for murdering a “made man,” St. Laurent offered to se up a meeting in-person with the since-retired Manocchio and get the sanctioning from the horse’s mouth, so too say.
“I’ll take ya right to him,” he told him with the tape rolling.
The post GR Sources: Rumblings In New England Mafia That ‘The Saint’ Talked To Feds Tied To Leak Of ‘Rifleman’s’ Affidavit appeared first on The Gangster Report.