Retribution for a previous gangland slaying might have been the motive for the 1992 New England mafia hit of mob associate and enforcer Kevin Hanrahan, per a recent WPRI television exclusive on the reopening of the Hanrahan homicide probe. One of two suspected motivations for Hanrahan’ violent downfall mentioned by award-winning investigative reporter and Patriarca crime family historian Tim White was revenge for the 1982 mob-related murder of 31-year old up-and-coming underworld figure Raymond (Slick) Vecchio. Hanrahan (seen above) had long been the top suspect in the Vecchio murder when he was gunned down on September 18, 1992 in the heart of Providence’s Federal Hill district. Vecchio was felled in a hail of bullets while sipping a drink at Vincent’s, an Italian restaurant in Federal Hill, exactly ten years earlier on September 18, 1982. They were both slain on Atwells Avenue, the neighborhood’s main thoroughfare. Hanrahan met his brutal fate leaving the The Arch steakhouse, just feet away from where Vincent’s stood. According to White and WPRI, current Patriarca clan captain Edward (Little Eddie) Lato, is possibly on the verge of being charged in the Hanrahan hit. The 71-year old mob vet is currently serving the last year of an eight-year prison stint for racketeering and extortion connected to his shakedown of Rhode Island strip clubs. Lato is one of the subjects of an ongoing federal grand jury in relation to the Hanrahan case. Eddie Lato Hanrahan’s cold-case homicide investigation was jumpstarted back to life in 2016 when Providence mob capo and former Patriarca syndicate underboss Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca reconvened his cooperation with the FBI after an arrest in another murder conspiracy while in the Witness Protection Program. DeLuca has pled guilty to overseeing the details of planning Hanrahan’s murder in addition to handling burial duties in the 1993 slaying of Boston nightclub owner and mob associate Stevie DiSarro, knocked off for becoming a confidential informant for the FBI and IRS . Sources familiar with DeLuca’s information about the Hanrahan hit claim he told authorities Hanrahan was clipped for trying to extort protected bookies in Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts as well as payback for killing Vecchio in an unsanctioned gangland rubout. The 39-year old Hanrahan was allegedly feuding with Vecchio in the early 1980s over business in the drug world, per sources. Hanrahan had beaten murder charges in the years preceding his own homicide, walking away being indicted for strangling a one-time female partner in a narcotics conspiracy.. Slick Vecchio and Little Eddie both rose through the ranks of the New England mafia in the 1970s in a crew led by feared Providence mob skipper Rudy (The Captain) Sciarra. Vecchio and Sciarra were indicted together in 1978 in a conspiracy to escape from a Rhode Island state correctional facility. Sciarra died of natural causes in 2012 at 88. Vecchio’s rap sheet included arrests for bookmaking, drug dealing, assault and armed robbery. Sources tell Gangster Report that former Patriarca crime family boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme could also face coming charges in the Hanrahan murder conspiracy. Salemme, 84, like DeLuca, was ripped out of the Witness Protection Program in 2016 and is set to go on trial for the DiSarro hit this spring. Witnesses told the FBI in 2010 that Salemme was informed via phone of Hanrahan attempting to extort at least two already-spoken-for bookmakers in the days before Hanrahan got killed in the fall of 1992 and helped arrange a lump-sum payment from a pair of Taunton, Massachusetts bookies to an underling of his in Johnston, Rhode Island as reward for getting Hanrahan off their backs. Rudy Sciarra
