Verdict still out, but DiSarro family is grateful for closure
The jury may be out in the murder trial of mobster Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme, but the family of his alleged victim has already found a sense of closure as a result of the details revealed in court.
“Since 1993, the uncertainty has left us unable to focus on the love that Steven DiSarro had for his family, nor the many successes he had in business as a real-estate developer and nightclub owner,” the DiSarro family said in a statement.
A jury at the Moakley courthouse in South Boston is weighing federal charges that Salemme ordered a hit on DiSarro, owner of The Channel nightclub, in 1993.
Stephen “The Rifleman” Flemmi, an 84-year-old gangster who’s doing time for 10 murders, testified he witnessed the killing, which he said was carried out by Salemme’s son, Frank “Frankie Boy” Salemme Jr.
The younger Salemme died in 1995. His father and Paul Weadick, who allegedly held DiSarro’s feet as “Frankie Boy” Salemme strangled him, each face a life sentence.
For the DiSarro family, though, the circumstances surrounding Steven DiSarro’s death have been clouded in mystery and left the family with a “new narrative” that consumed them.
“We were left without any answers as to what happened,” the family said. “Nothing about the circumstances of our father, brother, uncle and husband’s disappearance have been typical. We have been living for years with the idea that a man who was deeply loved by his family never returned home to those he loved and we never knew why.”
Salemme, now 84, admitted in 1999 to several gangland slayings, but said he had nothing to do with DiSarro’s death.
Flemmi first told investigators about Salemme’s involvement in DiSarro’s killing in 2003, but Salemme wasn’t charged until 2016, when DiSarro’s remains were dug up behind a mill building in Providence. The mill owner told authorities about the remains after he was charged in a federal drug case.
“However gruesome the details presented during the trial have been,” the family said, “it’s those details that have provided exactly the closure we were looking for. As we wait for the verdict, hoping that it will reflect justice, the verdict alone will not determine our new narrative.”