Excavator ended 23-year mystery
Body find recounted at Salemme trial
The secret murder and 23year disappearance of nightclub promoter Steven DiSarro was finally unraveled by a short piece of frayed rope that snagged on the metal teeth of an excavator searching for him in Providence, an FBI agent testified yesterday.
Agent Timothy Darling and Assistant U.S. Attorney William J. Ferland yesterday showed jurors graphic photos of the meticulous 2016 body dig, including images of thick, knotted rope that was found coiled around DiSarro’s neck and body, which Darling noted appeared to have been “folded” in a “wall of dirt” 8 1⁄2 feet beneath discarded bricks, wood and concrete blocks in the shadow of a vacant mill’s eerie ruins.
“We found a piece of rope first. A few buckets later, we noticed something that appeared to be of evidentiary value: bones, and fabric that appeared to be wrapped around the bones,” Darling recalled of the afternoon on March 30, 2016, when it appeared DiSarro, 43, had at long last been found.
“We knew we had something potentially in the hole,” Darling recounted on the third day of testimony in the murder trial of former New England Mafia godfather Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme and accused mob associate Paul Weadick, 63, of Burlington.
Darling, whose expertise in locating human remains has taken him on government missions to Iraq and Afghanistan, snapped on a pair of sky blue latex gloves to hold up a yard of duct tape, a piece of “sleeve” the excavator exhumed still hanging from bone and a nylon warm-up jacket with purple zipper pulled from the grave as workers feared mountains of dirt above them would cave in.
The defense teams will begin their cross-examination of Darling this morning in U.S. District Court.
DiSarro, a real estate developer who owned the The Channel in South Boston, vanished May 10, 1993, days after the FBI approached him about turning informant against Salemme and his late son, who the feds suspected were his not-so-silent partners in the former rock ’n’ roll concert hall. DiSarro was planning to re- invent the waterfront venue as a strip bar.
Salemme, now 84, is accused of standing by as his late son Frank Jr., at one time a manager at The Channel, strangled DiSarro to death while Weadick held the struggling victim’s legs.
Ferland and Assistant U.S. Attorney Fred Wyshak Jr. assert DiSarro was killed to stop him from outing the Salemmes’ financial stake in The Channel.
Salemme’s son died in 1995 of leukemia, according to his family. Four years later, while being questioned by more than a half-dozen federal agents and prosecutors on Nov. 2, 1999, about DiSarro’s disappearance, the father was asked about The Channel.
“He (said he) was involved because his son had a piece of the club and there were some problems with permitting and financing,” Lt. John Tutungian, a retired state police organized crime investigator, testified yesterday.
Tutungian said Salemme told them it was Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, his former partner turned Winter Hill Gang rival, who cleaned up their troubles.
“He indicated through some political figures, correct?” Salemme attorney Steven Boozang pressed Tutungian.
“Correct,” the ex-cop said.