The family of a nightclub owner that a former New England Mafia boss is charged with killing said Tuesday the trial has provided the closure they have been seeking for more than two decades.
Steven DiSarro's family released a statement after jurors finished their first day of deliberations in the trial of 84-year-old Francis "Cadillac Frank" Salemme.
Prosecutors say Salemme had DiSarro killed in 1993 to prevent the nightclub owner from cooperating with authorities investigating the mobster. DiSarro's remains were not found until 2016, when the FBI received a tip they were buried near a mill building in Providence, Rhode Island.
DiSarro's family members said the information they have learned through the trial "however gruesome" those details have been has brought them closure.
"As we wait for the verdict, hoping that it will reflect justice, the verdict alone will not determine our new narrative," the family, who has sat through the trial, said in the statement released through federal prosecutors.
"While we know nothing will bring him back, we now have the information surrounding the circumstances of what took him from us. We have waited a long time for answers and explanations to things that are unexplainable," they said.
Jurors are expected to resume deliberations on Wednesday.
Salemme and his co-defendant, Paul Weadick, insist they had nothing to do with DiSarro's killing. Their lawyers say another gangster Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi lied when he told the jury that he witnessed the killing.
Flemmi said he saw Salemme's son strangling DiSarro while Weadick held the nightclub owner's feet and Salemme stood by. Salemme's son, known as "Frankie boy," died in 1995.
Salemme and Weadick are both charged with murder of a federal witness and face up to life in prison if convicted.
