October 15, 2020 – His second cooperation deal with the feds has treated him well. Former New England mafia captain Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca was let off with no prison time for the 1992 gangland slaying of Providence mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan this week. The Hanrahan hit is an open murder investigation by both the FBI and Providence police.
Rhode Island Superior Court Judge Brian Stern sentenced DeLuca to 10 years time served Tuesday afternoon for his role in Hanrahan’s brazen killing in the middle of Federal Hill. He’s currently serving a five-year sentence in a federal correctional facility for obstruction in the 1993 murder of Patriarca crime family associate Stevie DiSarro. According to the Bureau of Prison, DeLuca, 75, is scheduled to be released in December 2021.
Bobby the Cigar was yanked out of the Witness Protection Program four years ago when DiSarro’s body was exhumed from underneath a converted textile mill in Providence owned by his one-time crew member Billy Ricci, who busted for growing and selling marijuana out of the building. Ricci helped DeLuca and DeLuca’s brother, Joe, bury DiSarro there in the spring of 1993 after DiSarro was killed in a Boston suburb at the behest of then New England mafia don Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme.
DiSarro and Salemme were partners in a nightclub-turned-strip club in South Boston and Salemme and his son feared he was about to become an FBI cooperator because of a bank fraud case he was facing tied to a series of shady real estate deals. On the morning of May 10, 1993, DiSarro went to a meeting at Salemme’s residence in Sharon, Massachusetts and was strangled to death by Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. in the kitchen as Cadillac Frank watched on. Frankie Boy died of AIDS-related cancer two years after killing DiSarro.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, DeLuca was the swashbuckling Cadillac Frank’s “kingsman’s capo” in Providence, his eyes and ears in Rhode Island while Salemme himself stationed out the Boston area. Salemme entered the Witness Protection Program in 1999, but like DeLuca a decade later, neglected to tell the feds about his ordering DiSarro’s murder. He was convicted of the DiSarro homicide at a 2018 trial with Bobby the Cigar acting as the U.S. Attorneys star witness.
As part of the deal DeLuca made with the feds in 2016, in addition to admitting to playing a part in the DiSarro murder conspiracy, he spilled the beans on the plot to murder Hanrahan as well (he initially entered the WITSEC program in 2011 after helping the feds make an extortion case against top members of the Patriarca clan). Hanrahan, a collector and hit man for the Patriarcas for years, was planning on murdering Salemme and had been shaking down mob-protected bookmakers in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. DeLuca acted as a go-between for Salemme and the shooters in the Hanrahan hit.
On the late evening of September 18, 1992, the brooding 39-year old Hanrahan was gunned down leaving a dinner at The Arch, a popular Federal Hill steakhouse. Per sources familiar with DeLuca’s deal, he has named Edward (Little Eddie) Lato and Rocco (Shaky) Argenti as the triggermen in the Hanrahan slaying. Argenti died of cancer in 2003. Lato, 73, is alleged to be a capo in the Providence wing of the Patriarca crime family today.
The post Bobby The Cigar Will Walk Free Next Year, Fmr. Providence Mob Capo Gets Time Served For ’92 Hit appeared first on The Gangster Report.