Notorious Mobster Pleads No Contest in 25-Year-Old Murder
Providence, Rhode Island mobster Robert “Bobby” DuLuca, 71, plead no contest Wednesday at Kent County Court to conspiracy to commit murder.
DuLuca was accused of conspiring with others to murder Kevin Hanrahan in 1992. To date, nobody has been charged with the actual murder of Hanrahan, a feared mob enforcer.
Baum said DeLuca planned the murder with late mobster Rocco Argenti and other unnamed individuals. Hanrahan was shot three times in the head and later died at Rhode Island Hospital.
Conspiracy to commit murder carries a maximum ten year sentence, however, DeLuca is already facing additional prison time after pleading guilty to charges he lied to federal agents about a 1993 murder of Steven DiSarro. His body was exhumed from a Providence mill building this past year. The discovery of DiSarro’s body ultimately helped resolved the Hanrahan cold case.
DeLuca will be sentenced in that case on February 1.
The Hanrahan case – dormant for decades – surfaced again after DiSarro’s body was discovered. Once in custody after being arrested in Florida, where he had been laying low after cooperating with the FBI in a 2011 case, DeLuca began talking to a Massachusetts State Police detective.
DeLuca told the investigator Salemme called him after DiSarro was killed and he and his brother Joseph DeLuca met the then-mob boss in North Providence to retrieve the body.
As part of the plea deal in Boston DeLuca pledged to also admit his role in the Hanrahan murder. No one has been charged in the murder of Hanrahan.
