Prosecutors in Salemme trial work to shield IDs of Witness Protection agents

Prosecutors are seeking to shield the identities of two U.S. Marshals Service’s Witness Security Program inspectors by blocking them with a screen and calling them by a pseudonym when they testify against former New England Mafia godfather Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme.

If approved by U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs, Salemme’s trial courtroom will remain open to the public; however, only the accused murderer and his jury will be able to see the witnesses.

“The Witness Security Program protects government witnesses, and others close to them, whose lives are in danger as a result of their testimony against major criminals. Participants in the program are typically relocated to a new area of the country and given a new identity,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Fred Wyshak and William Ferland told Burroughs in a motion filed yesterday.

“For this reason, it is important that the Witness Security inspectors, who protect the witnesses, be anonymous and that the public not be able to identify them by name or sight. If they are identified in public as Witness Security inspectors, it will, in obvious ways, increase the danger to the people they protect.”

Salemme, 84, is scheduled to go on trial April 24 for the 1993 murder in Sharon of Steven DiSarro, 43, then the owner of a former concert venue in South Boston known as The Channel.

DiSarro was missing until 2016, when his remains were exhumed from a building lot in North Providence, R.I.