Aging and infirmed New England mob captain Anthony (The Saint) St. Laurent was released from prison this week. The 75-year old St. Laurent has been behind bars for most of the past two decades for a pair of federal extortion convictions and a bust in an ill-fated murder-for-hire plot. He hails from the Patriarca crime family’s Providence, Rhode Island faction and served the final years of his most recent sentence at a prison hospital in Massachusetts. In his younger days on his way up the local mob ladder, St. Laurent served as the point man for the crime family’s legendary namesake Raymond Patriarca in controlling all the bookmakers in the Providence area, according to FBI records. Patriarca died of a heart attack in 1984, around the same time the Saint was reportedly promoted to capo status. Nailed on extortion charges in 1999, St. Laurent did the next six years in prison. Released in early 2005 he resumed his racketeering ways, lasting only a year back on the streets until he was indicted again in another extortion case in April 2006 resulting from his longtime taxing of bookies operating in the southeastern part of Massachusetts. “The Saint is a hood’s hood,” wrote one New England mobster in a text to the Gangster Report. “He always loved being a street guy. I don’t care how sick they say the guy is, I’d bet my life he ain’t gone soft…the man is one tough cookie.” During his 13 months of freedom in the mid-2000s, St. Laurent tried unsuccessfully to solicit the murder of heated mob rival Robert (Bobby the Cigar) DeLuca. On multiple occasions, St. Laurent approached two separate wired-for-sound FBI informants requesting that they kill DeLuca on his behalf, shooting him in the head and telling him “this is from the Saint” before they pulled the trigger. St. Laurent was feuding with DeLuca over the fact that he believed Bobby the Cigar was spreading the rumor that St. Laurent was a rat and St. Laurent’s further belief that DeLuca had tried muscling in on his rackets while he was incarcerated. Ironically, DeLuca entered the Witness Protection Program five years ago. He was arrested in connection to a murder conspiracy this past summer and is once again cooperating with federal authorities. DeLuca, 71, has admitted to burying the body of mob associate, Stevie DiSarro behind a converted mill in Providence in May 1993 after the nightclub owner and FBI informant was slain in suburban Boston at the residence of then-Patriarca borgata boss Francis (Cadillac Frank) Salemme allegedly by Salemme, his son and protégé, the now-deceased Francis (Frankie Boy) Salemme, Jr. and mob associate Paul Weadick, hours earlier. DeLuca was Cadillac Frank Salemme’s underboss and main representative in Rhode Island. The 83-year old Salemme, who entered the Witness Protection Program in 1999 while incarcerated on racketeering charges, and Weadick, a plumber, convicted murderer and seasoned mob associate considered closely aligned with current acting New England mafia boss Carmen (The Big Cheese) DiNunzio, have pled not guilty in the DiSarro homicide and are going to stand trial. Per sources, the bad feelings between St. Laurent and Bobby DeLuca date back 25 years to St. Laurent thinking he was “passed over” by Salemme in favor of DeLuca as Salemme’s No. 2 and Rhode Island rep upon Salemme officially assuming the reins as don in 1991. From that point forward, sources say, St. Laurent and DeLuca began butting heads because St. Laurent resented DeLuca’s more prominent position in the Patriarca hierarchy. St. Laurent, DeLuca and Salemme were all aligned together in the Patriarca crime family war of the late 1980s and first portion of the 1990s when Salemme’s ascent to the throne was challenged by a Boston-based contingent led by capos Joseph (J.R.) Russo and Vincent (Vinnie the Animal) Ferrara. Salemme survived an assassination attempt in June 1989 when he was shot several times in the parking lot of a Saugus, Massachusetts’ International House of Pancakes. Anthony St. Laurent in a mug shot from the 1980s FBI agents watched on two months later as St. Laurent and Patriarca syndicate Providence wing power Nicky Bianco traveled from Rhode Island to attend a high-level peace meeting with Russo and Ferrara at a hotel restaurant in Randolph, Massachusetts (the Saint acted as Bianco’s driver and bodyguard in the 1970s). Both St. Laurent and Salemme are suspects in the fall 1992 slaying of infamous east coast mob enforcer Kevin Hanrahan, per sources in New England law enforcement. The heavily-feared Hanrahan, a frequent collector of outstanding debts for the Patriarca clan, was shot to death in Providence on the night of September 18, 1992 after having dinner and drinks with a group of wiseguys in the city’s Federal Hill neighborhood. He was supposedly trying to shakedown a bookmaker already paying protection money to St. Laurent. Two years prior, Hanrahan and Salemme were indicted side by side in an attempted kidnapping case. According to FBI informants, the bookie that the 39-year old Hanrahan approached to extort immediately contacted St. Laurent who sent him to an underling named Gordon O’Brien in the St. Laurent stronghold of Taunton, Massachusetts who in turn called Salemme on the phone in Boston to inform him of Hanrahan’s unsanctioned strong-arm tactics. Hanrahan told the people he was with the night he died that he was coming into a “big score” later that evening. St Laurent allegedly accepted a large payment from the bookie in question in the 48 hours leading up to Hanrahan’s murder. St. Laurent’s son, Anthony, Jr., was indicted and convicted alongside his pops in the Saint’s last two extortion busts. The younger St. Laurent walked free in March.
