Bobby DeLuca and Artie Coloian,

together in the kitchen

This story is from The Journal archives

By W. ZACHARY MALINOWSKI and MIKE STANTON Journal Staff Writers
The Providence Sunday Journal
Sunday, 3/19/2006

Once a capo in the Patriarca crime family, Robert P. DeLuca is now working for his lawyer, Artin H. Coloian at the Sidebar & Grille on Dorrance Street.

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PROVIDENCE - Bobby DeLuca is back, working in a downtown restaurant owned by a former top aide to Buddy Cianci.

In better days, when Robert P. DeLuca was flying high as a capo regime in the Patriarca crime family, overseeing gambling and loansharking, the self-proclaimed professional gambler could be found following the dogs and ponies from his own high-roller room at Lincoln Park.

Federal prosecutors in Boston called DeLuca the right-hand man to the onetime New England mob boss, Francis P. "Cadillac Frank" Salemme.

Prosecutors in Providence charged DeLuca with participating in a multimillion-dollar gambling ring run out of the Foxy Lady strip club, and using mob strong-arms to shake down a local businessman.

DeLuca, a state prosecutor wrote, "has lived a life of crime as a member of the Mafia since he was 20 years old."

Now, after more than a decade behind bars, much of it in Massachusetts and New York, DeLuca is back in Rhode Island, serving the rest of his prison term at the Adult Correctional Institutions, in Cranston, and spending his days on work release at the Sidebar & Grille on Dorrance Street.

The restaurant is owned by DeLuca's lawyer, Artin H. Coloian, who had his own brush with the law as a top aide to imprisoned former Providence Mayor Vincent A. Cianci Jr.

DeLuca, 60, has a parole hearing on Wednesday. He is scheduled to complete his prison term in 2009.

'He's been hard-working, conscientious and honest.'

Down a short flight of stairs, in an elegant, dimly lit place that one restaurant reviewer likened to "a Parisian cellar bistro," DeLuca chops vegetables, helps cook and assists with the inventory. Good help is hard to find, says Coloian.

"It was not calculated - it was a need that the restaurant had," says Coloian, who opened Sidebar two years ago. "I didn't think it would get this much notoriety. He has been hard-working, conscientious and honest. Work release is a program that I believe in."

Coloian himself was indicted with Cianci in Operation Plunder Dome, the federal corruption probe of Providence City Hall. A jury acquitted him in 2002 of acting as bagman for a $5,000 bribe from a man Cianci ordered hired to a city job.

A federal judge recently rejected his bid to expunge, or erase, his indictment. Coloian says the stigma of his indictment lingers, and has hurt his business. "I think the experience (of being charged) has made me more compassionate," says Coloian.

At the Sidebar, the menu includes bacon goat cheese pizza, angel clams and, Coloian's favorite, herb chicken. Rhode Island Monthly recently honored Sidebar for having the best "bar food," including Coloian's homemade meatballs, and the martini list features an "Artini" -- vodka with a splash of dry vermouth and chartreuse.

Judges, lawyers and police officers are among the patrons who stop in at Sidebar, a legal term for a courtroom conference among judges and lawyers.

A onetime college bar, with dollar bills nailed to the ceiling, Coloian installed a black granite bar, black glass mirrors and plasma televisions on the brick walls.

During breaks in his law practice, Coloian, who likes to cook, will roll up his sleeves and pitch in with DeLuca to wash the dishes or work the line together -- collaborating on a pasta sauce, or assembling an order of a burger and fries.

"I haven't heard any complaints about the food," Coloian says.

'As burns this saint so will burn my soul.'

In his younger years, Bobby DeLuca was a small-time hood who lived in Lincoln. He had an arrest record dating back to the 1960s, mostly gambling-related.

Then in 1989, his loyalty and longevity were rewarded when he became a "made" member of the Mafia.

The ceremony, the first one ever captured on tape by the FBI, catapulted DeLuca into the annals of mob history.

Court proceedings over the next decade would reveal the inner workings of the Patriarca crime family, and DeLuca's rise within it.

For example, in the weeks prior to DeLuca's induction, dissident Boston wise guys confronted the New England boss, Raymond "Junior" Patriarca, at DeLuca's jewelry store in North Providence. The mobsters told Patriarca that they wanted him to step down, and that they had the support of New York bosses, including John Gotti.

As a peace-making gesture, Patriarca agreed to induct four people, including DeLuca. Two days before Halloween in 1989, 21 high-ranking mobsters gathered at a suburban ranch house in Medford, Mass. for the ceremony.

DeLuca repeated the oath of allegiance and omerta, sealing it with blood pricked from his trigger finger. A holy card, bearing the image of the Patriarca family saint, was burned as DeLuca took his turn swearing: "As burns this saint so will burn my soul. I enter alive into this organization and I will have to get out dead."

Patriarca intoned, "bygones are bygones and a good future for all of us."

Within three months, Patriarca and more than a dozen confederates were behind bars. The Medford tape became Exhibit A in proving the Mafia's existence.

DeLuca, Patriarca's neighbor in Lincoln, escaped that indictment. But the following year, he was charged in Massachusetts with overseeing a multi-million-dollar gambling ring in Lowell and mediating disputes among Bay State criminals.

During this period, with Patriarca behind bars, Salemme took control of the New England rackets and DeLuca emerged as his right-hand man, prosecutors said.

Then in 1993, DeLuca was indicted in Providence with Anthony "The Saint" St. Laurent and two dozen others for running a $42-million-a-year illegal bookmaking ring from the Foxy Lady strip club.

Not long after, DeLuca, a cigar clamped in his mouth and two beepers on his belt, took up residence in a private room at Lincoln Park. The VIP Room became known as "Bobby's Room."

In 1994, DeLuca pleaded no contest in the Foxy Lady case and received a 5-year suspended sentence. The judge wished him luck and said he hoped he wouldn't be back in court.

A year later, he was -- twice.

In January of 1995, DeLuca was caught in a sweeping federal racketeering indictment in Boston, along with Salemme and James J. "Whitey" Bulger, leader of Boston's Winter Hill Gang, and Bulger's top lieutenant, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi.

Five months after that, DeLuca was indicted in Providence with mob enforcer Gerard T. Ouimette on federal charges of trying to extort $50,000 from a Cranston businessman, Paulie Calenda.

According to court testimony, DeLuca was willing to accept Calenda's restaurant in Warren, the Fore 'N Aft, as payment for a loan-sharking debt.

If Calenda refused, Ouimette threatened to blow him up in his car.

Calenda went to the FBI instead. DeLuca and Ouimette were convicted by a jury after a splashy trial featuring testimony from a mob turncoat and strippers.

U.S. District Judge Ernest C. Torres, who would later preside over Cianci's and Coloian's trials, called DeLuca a poor candidate for rehabilitation and sentenced him to 10 1³2 years in federal prison.

'Who's gonna put out the hits?'

Meanwhile, DeLuca and Salemme sat in adjoining cells at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility in Massachusetts awaiting trial in the Bulger case.

Whitey Bulger had not been arrested. Tipped off by a friendly FBI agent, Bulger disappeared. Whispers of a corrupt relationship between Bulger and the FBI burst into the open in a federal courtroom in Boston.

The hearings documented Bulger's and Flemmi's careers as government informants, how they had corrupted FBI agents and how they had built their criminal empire, including the commission of numerous murders, with the protection of the feds.

During a break in Flemmi's testimony, an enraged Salemme attacked Flemmi in their holding cell, and DeLuca jumped in to break it up, according to a book about the case, Black Mass.

DeLuca eventually pleaded guilty to racketeering and extortion, and was sentenced to 2 years and 10 months. As he whiled away the hours in prison, DeLuca wrote a poem commemorating the fallen Bulger gang, and the still-missing Whitey, who had fled with his girlfriend, leaving her poodles behind. The poem, "Who's Minding the Puppies," is contained in a new book, The Brothers Bulger, by Boston Herald columnist and radio talk-show host Howie Carr. It reads in part:

Who's gonna clean the rifles?

Who's gonna put out the hits?

Who's gonna pull the trigger

Now that Stevie's hit the pits?

Who's shaking down the bookies,

And who's gonna deal the drugs?

Who's gonna sell the hot stuff

From TVs to Persian rugs?

Was he set up?

Bobby was on the inside, but according to federal prosecutors, his old mob cohorts still helped him out.

In 1999, Anthony "The Saint" St. Laurent and six others were busted for running a major gambling, extortion and loan-sharking operation in Rhode Island. A federal prosecutor said that money from the operation had helped finance DeLuca's unsuccessful appeal of his conviction in the Calenda extortion case.

A few years earlier, when he had been a co-defendant in the Bulger case in Boston, DeLuca had come across information hinting that the Saint was a rat.

From his federal prison cell in Otisville, N.Y., DeLuca in 2001 filed another appeal -- this time of his Foxy Lady gambling conviction with St. Laurent seven years earlier.

DeLuca argued that he never would have pleaded no contest in the Foxy Lady case had he known that his co-defendant was an informant -- a fact that he says the prosecution failed to disclose.

Flemmi, Bulger's onetime top lieutenant, submitted an affidavit saying that his FBI handler, John Connolly, had told him that the Saint had been an informant.

DeLuca, in his affidavit, alleged that over the years St. Laurent had provided him with "sensitive law-enforcement information." That later convinced DeLuca that St. Laurent must have been an informant for the Rhode Island State Police.

DeLuca charged that St. Laurent had set him up by inducing DeLuca to place a bet on a telephone line that the Saint knew to be tapped, and then mentioning "a figure of money that was owed to (DeLuca) from previous bets."

DeLuca also took aim at his lawyers, John F. and David Cicilline. He accused them of a conflict, saying that their law office represented both him and St. Laurent, and pressured DeLuca to go along with a "package deal" from the prosecution that was good for St. Laurent, because his status as an informant remained concealed, but not for DeLuca.

St. Laurent and state prosecutors deny that he had been an informant for the state police.

If St. Laurent was an informant, says Jack Cicilline, he never knew -- and that makes DeLuca's accusations "groundless."

"I think he was suggesting that my son was somehow in collusion with the Saint," said Cicilline. "David would never get anywhere near such activity."

Jack Cicilline said that he never had any direct problem with DeLuca, and shrugs off his former client's dissatisfaction as "part of the life" of a criminal-defense lawyer.

'Once you're in, you're in for life.'

In July 2004, DeLuca completed his federal sentence in Otisville and was transferred to the ACI's minimum-security unit in Cranston to serve five more years for the Foxy Lady gambling conviction.

In August 2004, Coloian entered his appearance in DeLuca's Foxy Lady appeal. DeLuca's lawyers, including Coloian, pressed to subpoena the FBI for information regarding whether the Saint was an informant.

DeLuca, meanwhile, qualified for work release at the ACI. He spent nine months on prison work crews before Coloian hired him at Sidebar last spring.

Under prison rules, DeLuca leaves the ACI in Cranston each weekday morning and either catches a RIPTA bus or a prison van to work in downtown Providence. He works about 40 hours a week. ACI officials regularly drop in, unannounced, to check up on DeLuca.

Last Thursday afternoon, a casually dressed DeLuca sat at a table with Coloian and a few other men. A couple of lawyers sat at the bar, watching Boston College play in the NCAA basketball tournament.

DeLuca kept his distance as Coloian showed a reporter around the restaurant.

"Prison rules do not allow Mr. DeLuca to interview with you, nor do I believe that he would be inclined to," said Coloian.

Coloian said that he pays DeLuca to work at Sidebar, and DeLuca pays him to be his lawyer; the financial arrangements are kept separate. Asked who gets the better financial end of the deal, Coloian laughed and declined comment.

DeLuca's presence at Sidebar has not gone unnoticed by law enforcement.

State Police Maj. Steven G. O'Donnell, a veteran mob investigator, said that DeLuca has had an exemplary record since coming to the ACI. But he's not convinced that DeLuca's future is as a restaurateur.

"He hasn't denounced [La Cosa Nostra]," said O'Donnell. "Once you're in, you're in for life."

DeLuca, whose projected release date is St. Patrick's Day in 2009, has a parole hearing scheduled this week.

"He's ready to re-enter society as a productive member," said Coloian. "He's a 60-year-old man who's been incarcerated for 11 years, and he's never had an infraction during that period. He's received two certificates of law (in prison), graduated from both, magna cum laude and summa cum laude. He taught math at Otisville.

Nor is DeLuca the only organized-crime figure associated with Sidebar.

Blaise Marfeo, a mob associate, businessman and longtime proprietor of Adesso, an East Side restaurant, has been a consultant to Sidebar. Coloian said that he turned to Marfeo last fall to help straighten out problems in his kitchen.

"He has many, many years and a great deal of experience in restaurants," said Coloian. "He has consulted on my kitchen."

Marfeo is not a partner in Sidebar, said Coloian -- but in January, he was briefly a criminal client, after the state police arrested him as part of a bust of an organized-crime gambling ring.

Coloian represented Marfeo after his arrest, but then handed off the case because he also represents a co-defendant, Raymond Jenkins.

The day after Marfeo's arrest, Adesso filed for bankruptcy. The restaurant has since closed.

Jack Cicilline, who caught heat for once employing mob underboss Nicholas Bianco as a paralegal, said that he wouldn't judge Coloian's hiring of DeLuca and Marfeo. But, he added, "with all that comes a lot of responsibility -- and that's all I'm going to say about that."

Coloian views DeLuca's hiring as part of his commitment to work release.

"Part of incarceration is rehabilitation, and work release is an essential part of that," said Coloian. "I'll probably hire more. I would absolutely consider it if it was someone who could help my business."

Buddy Cianci is due to be complete his prison term in the summer of 2007, and will become eligible for work release some time before that. Would Coloian consider hiring his ex-boss to work at Sidebar?

"If he made the marinara sauce the way I do."

bmalinow@projo.com/401-277-7019

mstanton@projo.com/401-277-7724