Behind an old mill at 715 Branch Avenue in Providence, Rhode Island, federal investigators watched on March 31, 2016 as an excavator broke ground that had remained untouched for more than two decades. The search was based on information from the property owner, a man facing serious charges of his own. He told authorities that the ground behind the old brick building held a secret from New England’s mob history. After two days of digging, investigators found human remains beneath the soil.
Clothing fragments were still present, along with evidence pointing to how the victim had been killed. The grave belonged to Steven DiSarro, a 43-year-old Boston nightclub manager who left his home in Westwood on May 10, 1993 and never returned. His wife watched him get into a car she did not recognize. The description matched a vehicle used by the son of New England mob boss Francis “Cadillac Frank” Salemme.
For 23 years, the family had no body, no funeral, and no resolution to the killing. The ground behind the Providence mill was about to reveal not just where DiSarro was buried, but why a crime boss ordered the death of a man who had never actually agreed to become a government witness. DiSarro did not start his life as a nightclub front man. He grew up near Providence, attended Boston University and Suffolk Law School, then discovered his real talent was in real estate development.
He never took the bar exam. Instead, he entered the property market during a period when converting apartments into condominiums was highly profitable. By the 1980s, DiSarro had made millions developing hundreds of units around Boston. He and his wife Pamela raised five children.
They lived comfortably in a large home with a pool and a second house in Florida. Then the real estate market collapsed. The losses pushed DiSarro toward a different kind of business. In 1992, he acquired a closed nightclub in South Boston called The Channel.
The venue had once been known for live music, but the deal that brought DiSarro in also brought the mob. According to the later federal case, the money used to buy the club came from Francis Salemme Jr. , the son of “Cadillac Frank. ” Because DiSarro was already under investigation, the property papers were placed in his half-brother’s name.
Salemme Jr. appeared on the records as a part-time manager, a job that helped him avoid a full curfew while awaiting trial on labor racketeering charges. Paul Weadick, a close friend of Salemme Jr. , was hired as the night manager.
On paper, the club looked like an ordinary business trying to reopen. Behind those documents, the arrangement tied DiSarro to the top of organized crime in New England. Cadillac Frank Salemme was then the boss of the New England family of La Cosa Nostra, known as the Patriarca crime family. His power stretched across a region where Boston gangs, Providence mob figures, and corrupt law enforcement relationships created an exceptionally dangerous environment.
The Channel gave Salemme and his son something valuable: a hidden financial interest without appearing publicly as owners. DiSarro became the legal face standing between the business and the men whose names could threaten licenses and attract federal attention. That role is sometimes called a straw owner. It may seem passive, but it carries enormous risk.
The public owner signs documents, talks to banks, answers investigators, and takes the first questions. The hidden owners get the influence while staying far from the official paperwork. For the arrangement to continue, the public face had to remain trustworthy. By early 1993, the Salemmes were no longer sure DiSarro was.
In March, a federal agent approached DiSarro and told him he was under investigation. The agent asked him to cooperate. DiSarro did not accept, but when Salemme learned of the contact, he worried that DiSarro might implicate Salemme Jr. and eventually lead investigators to the boss himself.
Weadick expressed similar concerns to Salemme Jr. Around the same time, the Salemmes told others they suspected DiSarro was skimming money from the nightclub. The later trial presented both themes: DiSarro was seen as a potential informant and as a business partner no longer trusted with the club’s money. The federal investigation kept moving forward.
A second agent approached DiSarro, told him an indictment had been filed, and again asked for cooperation. DiSarro reported that contact to his wife and to the half-brother whose name appeared on the club’s ownership papers. That disclosure may have been an attempt to show he had nothing to hide. In mob logic, it confirmed that federal pressure was rising.
This crucial distinction emerged clearly at trial and on appeal. Steven DiSarro was not actually cooperating with the government. Prosecutors never proved that he signed an agreement, provided evidence, or began working secretly against Salemme. They did not need to.
The murder charge required proving that the defendants intended to prevent any potential communication with federal authorities. What mattered was their belief about what DiSarro might do next. In that world, suspicion was enough. Salemme had already expressed fear that DiSarro might turn on his son and then on him.
The men around Salemme had difficulty arranging a meeting with DiSarro. Weadick and Salemme Jr. discussed inviting him to the boss’s home in Sharon, Massachusetts, because a private residence would make DiSarro feel safe. That detail explains the plan.
They did not want to snatch him off a public street. They wanted him to enter voluntarily. The Salemme home suggested a serious conversation between men with prior business dealings. It would feel controlled and familiar, not like a place chosen for murder.
On the morning of May 10, 1993, Pamela DiSarro saw her husband leave their Westwood home and get into an unfamiliar car. Her description later matched a vehicle Salemme Jr. sometimes used. She never saw Steven again.
According to the case established in federal court, Weadick brought DiSarro to Frank “Cadillac” Salemme’s home in Sharon. Inside the house, Salemme Jr. strangled him while Weadick held his legs. The mob boss stood watching as the killing took place.
That account came from more than one source. Steven “The Rifleman” Flemmi, a Boston gangster and longtime criminal associate of Salemme, testified that he walked into the house while DiSarro was being killed. Robert DeLuca, a captain in the New England mob, later told investigators that Salemme described the same roles to him. The prosecution also called Weadick’s former girlfriend.
She testified that shortly before the murder, she heard Weadick and Salemme Jr. worrying that DiSarro talked too much. Weadick left her apartment, then returned in a disturbed state. He gave her a bracelet and told her she would not have to worry about seeing DiSarro again.
The killing solved the immediate problem Salemme believed he faced. But it created another one. A body had to disappear. On the day of the murder, Salemme called Robert DeLuca in Providence.
According to DeLuca’s testimony, the boss ordered him to dig a hole because he would be delivering “packages. ” The word avoided stating directly what was coming. The order was still clear enough for DeLuca to make preparations. The next day, Salemme transported DiSarro’s body to Rhode Island wrapped in a blue tarp.
He handed it to Robert DeLuca and his brother Joseph. The men were instructed to bury the body and destroy the tarp because it could hold fingerprints or other evidence. The burial site was behind the old mill on Branch Avenue, a property controlled by William “Billy” Ricci, a man connected to figures in Providence’s crime world. The location offered heavy equipment, soft ground, and the appearance of an ordinary industrial operation.
Soil could be moved without immediately raising suspicion. Joseph DeLuca later described moving the wrapped body across the mill property with a wheelbarrow. The men moved it in the dark and lowered it into a prepared hole. They ignored the instruction to destroy the tarp and buried it with DiSarro.
That decision preserved part of the secret. When heavy equipment later disturbed the burial area, the tarp tore and the body was exposed before being covered again. The men at the mill knew exactly what lay beneath them, even as others saw only an industrial property where machinery moved dirt. DiSarro’s disappearance became an open wound for his family and a well-known puzzle for investigators.
His wife had descriptions of the car. Federal agents realized his connection to The Channel. Within days, law enforcement sources received information pointing to the Salemme home and the mob boss’s men. But suspicions are not proof, and underworld accounts are not necessarily judicial evidence.
The body could not be found. Some people who knew the truth had been involved in the disposal. Others had their own criminal entanglements and reasons to lie. Steven Flemmi had been secretly cooperating with the FBI during part of his criminal career, a fact that later helped expose corruption within the Boston office.
Any case built around him would face fierce attacks on credibility. The years began to work in the killers’ favor. Salemme Jr. died in 1995 before he could be charged with DiSarro’s murder.
That same year, federal racketeering charges were filed against “Cadillac Frank. ” He was convicted in 1999 and later agreed to cooperate with the government in other cases. His cooperation created a striking contradiction. A mob boss accused of ordering DiSarro’s murder out of fear of witnesses eventually became a government witness himself.
During plea negotiations, Salemme promised to provide truthful information. He admitted involvement in several other murders but denied responsibility for DiSarro’s death. He tried to blame another mob figure, Nicky Bianco. The government later proved that Salemme lied about the disappearance.
In 2008, he was convicted of obstruction of justice for those false statements and sentenced to five years in prison. Still, prosecutors did not yet have the physical breakthrough needed to turn a missing-person case into a final murder trial. The secret remained locked behind the mill. By then, the old industrial building had changed around the burial site.
Years passed, businesses changed, and the neighborhood moved on. DiSarro’s children became adults without knowing where their father had been taken. His family could not bury him because the mob had reduced his whereabouts to shared knowledge among men who benefited from silence. Then an investigation of a completely different kind reached Branch Avenue.
In August 2015, authorities discovered a large marijuana-growing operation inside the mill property. More than 1,400 plants were reported. William Ricci faced federal drug and weapons charges. With his future at risk, the man connected to the property gave investigators information worth far more than another drug arrest.
He told them where Steven DiSarro was buried. In late March 2016, federal agents and Rhode Island authorities arrived with digging equipment, search teams, and forensic staff. The excavation continued over two days. On March 31, the hidden remains were recovered from beneath the ground.
Forensic examination found evidence that DiSarro had been strangled. In June, the FBI publicly confirmed his identity. Pamela DiSarro thanked investigators for continuing the search and said the family finally hoped to learn what happened. The discovery shifted the balance of the case.
Until that moment, prosecutors had accounts of a murder but no physical evidence that DiSarro had died the way witnesses described. The remains proved the death, the location, the hidden burial, and a cause consistent with strangulation. The grave also confirmed that someone with access to the Branch Avenue property had kept that secret for years. Finding the body did not automatically make every cooperating witness honest.
It did something more useful: it allowed investigators to compare statements against one another. A witness who knew the body arrived in a blue tarp, or knew the Providence figures who received it, or identified the exact area behind the mill, possessed information that had not been public during the initial investigation. That turned the mill from a mere burial site into a tool for strengthening evidence. The place where the mob tried to dispose of evidence became the evidence that connected witnesses to one another.
Ricci’s information led investigators back to Robert DeLuca. DeLuca admitted receiving the body from Salemme with instructions to dispose of it. His brother Joseph described the burial. The blue tarp, the mill, the Sharon home, the car Pamela saw, and the witnesses who spoke at different times could now be placed within a single physical timeline.
Salemme was living in the Atlanta area as Richard Parker after a period in the Witness Protection Program. The grave brought federal agents back to him. In August 2016, he was arrested. The following month, prosecutors unveiled an indictment charging Salemme and Weadick with the murder of a federal witness.
The name of the crime could give a misleading impression. DiSarro never became a cooperating witness. The government’s theory was that Salemme and Weadick killed him to prevent the possibility that he would report information about their federal crimes. The First Circuit later confirmed that the defendants’ belief and intent were the decisive issues.
The trial began in Boston in 2018 and lasted 23 days. Jurors heard from DiSarro’s wife, former organized crime figures, Weadick’s ex-girlfriend, and men connected to the body disposal. They were taken to the Sharon residence and the Providence burial site to see the distance between where DiSarro was killed and the ground chosen to hide him. The defense attacked government witnesses as admitted criminals receiving benefits for their cooperation.
That criticism was substantial. Robert DeLuca initially denied knowing what happened. Flemmi was an admitted killer with a long history as an informant. Ricci revealed the grave while facing his own trial.
Nevertheless, the jurors found the combined evidence convincing. On June 22, 2018, Francis Salemme and Paul Weadick were convicted of killing Steven DiSarro to prevent him from communicating with federal authorities. On September 13, Judge Allison Burroughs sentenced both men to life in federal prison. The convictions did not assign the same physical act to each participant.
Salemme Jr. , whom prosecutors said carried out the strangulation, had been dead for more than 20 years. The jury held “Cadillac Frank” responsible for ordering and participating in the killing. It held Weadick responsible for helping bring DiSarro to the house and physically assisting during his murder.
Salemme and Weadick appealed. They challenged the evidence, the witness statements, the trial structure, and the jury instructions. On September 24, 2021, the U. S.
Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld both convictions. The appeals court addressed the central question directly. It noted that DiSarro was not actually cooperating. But the evidence allowed jurors to conclude that Salemme and Weadick acted to prevent potential communication with federal authorities.
The motive for the murder was what they feared DiSarro might say, not proof that he had already said it. The U. S. Supreme Court declined to review Salemme’s case in 2022.
Cadillac Frank died in federal custody that December while serving his life sentence. Paul Weadick remains imprisoned.