Salemme-DiSarro link testifies at trial
The retired wiseguy who made Steven DiSarro’s fateful introduction to Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme testified yesterday he was banished from Boston under threat of death after the Mafia boss set his hooks into the doomed nightclub owner.
“He grabs me by the throat, bada-bing, badaboom: ‘Listen to me, you piece of (expletive)’ and all this,” Thomas Leonard Hillary said of his terrifying tete-a-tete with Salemme in the booth of a Chinese restaurant in 1990 after he secretly “borrowed” $4,000 from the godfather of the New England Mafia to give his girlfriend seed money to create a fashion line.
“He (Salemme) told me, ‘Get out of this town. If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you myself.’ I went on the lam,” said Hillary, now 73 and living under a different name in the federal witness protection program.
Testifying on day two of the trial of Salemme and associate Paul Weadick for DiSarro’s murder 25 years ago, Hillary said he placed one final call to DiSarro, a lawyer, successful nightclub owner and real estate developer, hoping for a handout.
Hillary said DiSarro replied, “‘I was told if I give you anything I’m going to get whacked.’”
They never spoke again. “I ruined my whole life for 4 Gs,” Hillary bemoaned.
Two years later, while hiding out on Treasure Island, Fla., Hillary was nabbed on a federal warrant. The FBI stashed him in a safe house and he gave up all his former associates in Boston, as well as their alleged scheme to buy the rock ’n’ roll hot spot The Channel in South Boston — the nefarious business deal prosecutors believe was the motive for DiSarro’s May 10, 1993, strangulation.
DiSarro, 43, the godson of Salemme’s predecessor Raymond Patriarca, had been approached by the FBI about turning to an informant against Salemme and his late son Frank Jr. shortly before his murder.
Hillary said the plan for The Channel was if the concert venue pulled in $100,000 in a week, the mob would skim off $80,000 and the IRS would be none the wiser. “It would be like laundering money,” he said.
“You needed someone who could get all the licenses. Stevie was going to manage the place. That was his expertise,” Hillary said of DiSarro. “Frank Jr. was going to be the bartender. I don’t know what the hell I was going to do but be on the payroll.”
Hillary said he brought Salemme, now 84, and DiSarro together to help his friend make some money during a downturn in his legit income.
“Stevie got into it by accident,” he said. “Stevie was my friend and a good, good guy. Stevie was like a kid brother to me . ... I didn’t even know he was missing. I was in the (witness protection) program.”
DiSarro’s widow, Pamela DiSarro, waited eight days before reporting to Westwood police he’d vanished, according to the May 18, 1993, missing person report assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak Jr. showed jurors yesterday.
The typewritten report noted of her husband, “In the past few weeks, he has not been himself and believes he was being followed by Federal agents, Boston Police, and his questionable associates. Therefore, she does not rule out foul play.”
U.S. District Court Judge Allison D. Burroughs has suspended testimony until Monday. Jurors will be bused today to see the house in Sharon where prosecutors allege DiSarro was killed and the mill complex in Providence where his corpse was buried for 23 years.