Mob Informant: Former Patriarca Crime Family Boss ‘Baby Shacks’ Manocchio Planned Providence’s ’92 Hanrahan Hit

Retired New England mafia don Luigi (Baby Shacks) Manocchio oversaw the planning of rogue Patriarca crime family enforcer Kevin Hanrahan’s 1992 gangland slaying, according to a new court filing related to an upcoming mob trial and first reported by television station WPRI in Rhode Island. The fresh intelligence comes via turncoat mobster Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca, a capo who served under the Providence-based Manocchio until he flipped following both mob figures being nailed by the feds for shaking down Rhode Island strip clubs in 2011.

It was previously believed that it was DeLuca who planned the Hanrahan hit. DeLuca has told authorities he was instructed to inform Baby Shacks that he was responsible for coordinating details of Hanrahan’s murder. The well-liked mob chief was hit with double homicide charges in 1969, fleeing the country for the next decade before returning and pleading guilty to lesser counts.

Manocchio voluntarily relinquished his mob boss post in 2009 after a near 15-year reign atop the New England rackets. He did four years behind bars on the strip club extortions and was released in 2015. Whether the 90-year old one-time Godfather will face charges in the Hanrahan case is unclear.

Bobby the Cigar, 72, will be the star witness against Manocchio’s predecessor, Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme, next month at his trial for allegedly ordering the killing of Boston nightclub owner Stevie DiSarro 25 years ago. DiSarro’s remains were dug up in Providence in March 2016 on property belonging to a former DeLuca underling.

Bobby DeLuca

DeLuca has pled guilty to taking part in both the DiSarro and Hanrahan homicide conspiracies. Until being charged in the DiSarro case in the summer of 2016, Salemme, 84, had been living under an assumed identity in Georgia as a member of the Witness Protection Program.

Per the new filings, it appears Manocchio was Salemme’s underboss and second-in-command and Hanrahan was plotting with others to assassinate Cadillac Frank, par for the course in Salemme’s rocky reign of the early 1990s where rival factions jockeyed for power and positioning in local underworld affairs. Prior lines of thinking pegged DeLuca, Salemme’s best friend, as Cadillac Frank’s No. 2 in charge during his violence-prone five-year tenure.

Salemme headquartered in Boston, while DeLuca and Manocchio are Rhode Islanders. Surviving an assassination attempt in 1989, Cadillac Frank spent most of his days as boss avenging the failed hit, taking aim at anyone he felt had opposed his rise to the throne. Busted in 1995, Salemme soon began cooperating with the government, however, left out informing his FBI handlers of his involvement in the DiSarro and Hanrahan slaying, despite admitting to setting in motion close to a dozen others.

The brash, fearless 39-year old Hanrahan was gunned down leaving a restaurant in Providence’s Federal Hill neighborhood on the late evening of September 18, 1992. DiSarro, 43, was strangled to death just months later, on the afternoon of May 10, 1993, reportedly inside the Salemme family home in suburban Boston.

In the weeks preceding his murder, Hanrahan had ruffled feathers in the area mafia by shaking down already spoken-for bookmakers. He was at dinner with DeLuca confidant Ronnie Coppola right before he was slain — Coppola was shot to death in a fight at a card game in 1994.

Sources familiar with DeLuca’s current cooperation agreement claim he fingers current Providence mob capo Edward (Little Eddie) Lato and deceased Manocchio consigliere Rocco (Shaky) Argenti as taking part in Hanrahan’s murder. Patrons at a Federal Hill tavern saw Lato, DeLuca and Coppola meeting in a secluded booth in the minutes after the Hanrahan hit took place.

Lato, 72, and a longtime presence in the New England mob, is in the midst of serving a prison term for the 2011 strip-club extortion where he was arrested alongside Manocchio and DeLuca. He’s slated for release from custody next year. His name surfaced in grand jury proceedings last spring revolving around the Hanrahan cold case, first revealed in a May 2017 Gangster Report article. Argenti died of cancer in 2002.