Former New England Mafia boss Francis “Cadillac Frank’’ Salemme is “champing at the bit’’ for the start of his trial on a charge of murdering a federal witness, and the aging gangster “hasn’t lost anything off his fastball,’’ his lawyer said Wednesday.
Salemme, 84, “100 percent’’ denies any involvement in the 1993 slaying of Steven DiSarro, an owner of the now-defunct Channel nightspot in South Boston, said the former mobster’s attorney, Steven C. Boozang, in a phone interview.
Boozang spoke to the Globe one day after Salemme appeared in US District Court in Boston and informed Judge Allison D. Burroughs that he has no problem sticking with his lawyer, even though Boozang worked in the 1990s with an attorney who at the time represented Bobby DeLuca, a Rhode Island mobster who’s expected to testify against Salemme in the DiSarro case.
“Frank certainly knows . . . if I’m representing Frank, then I’ll pull no punches on anybody’’ on the witness stand, Boozang said. “We’re doing our homework.’’
Prosecutors allege Salemme and a codefendant, Paul Weadick, killed DiSarro to prevent him from being a witness in a federal investigation that was targeting Salemme and his son, Frank.
The indictment alleges that Salemme and his son, who died in 1995, had a hidden interest in The Channel, which DiSarro bought in the early 1990s.
Salemme, a contemporary of James “Whitey’’ Bulger’s, left his life as a Mafia don decades ago. He testified against convicted former FBI agent John J. Connolly Jr. in 2002 and was in the federal witness protection program, living in Atlanta under the name Richard Parker, when he was arrested in 2016.
He was taken into custody soon after DiSarro’s remains were dug up from a Providence lot owned by one of DeLuca’s friends.
Salemme and Weadick will stand trial in the spring.
DeLuca has pleaded guilty to obstruction charges for initially lying to investigators about the DiSarro case. He’s expected to tell jurors he helped Salemme dispose of DiSarro’s body after Salemme’s son and Weadick strangled the club owner.
Boozang on Wednesday disputed DeLuca’s claim, first reported in the Boston Herald, that Boozang had a social meeting with DeLuca in the 1990s and also discussed legal matters with DeLuca’s then-wife.
“I never discussed any legal strategy,’’ Boozang said. “I was only a law clerk and he had, in my view, one of the best attorneys he could ever have’’ in seasoned Hub lawyer Tony Cardinale.
As for the claim that Boozang and DeLuca had socialized, Boozang said they once ended up at the same wedding and “exchanged pleasantries,’’ but he “would never get myself close to a guy like that.’’
DeLuca last year pleaded no contest in Rhode Island to conspiring to kill a mob enforcer who was gunned down in 1992 in Providence. He’s awaiting sentencing.
Salemme previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to lying and obstruction of justice for denying any knowledge about DiSarro’s death and was sentenced to five years in prison.
Material from the Providence Journal was used in this report, and Shelley Murphy of the Globe Staff contributed. Travis Andersen can be reached at tandersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.
