Judge: Case against reputed mobster can proceed

PROVIDENCE—A federal judge has refused to dismiss an indictment accusing a reputed mobster of trying to arrange the killing of a Mafia rival.

A lawyer for Anthony “The Saint” St. Laurent argued that prosecutors had agreed not to seek criminal charges in the alleged murder-for-hire plot as part of an earlier plea deal.

But the U.S. Attorney’s office has said it never made such an agreement, and U.S. District Judge William Smith rejected St. Laurent’s claims and denied his motion to dismiss in an order dated Tuesday.

St. Laurent is accused of offering to pay for the assassination of Robert DeLuca, a man the FBI claims is a captain in the Providence-based Patriarca crime family. The hit was never carried out.

St. Laurent is serving a prison sentence for an extortion plot.