On the night of August 14, 1990, Mello was observed with Gordon O'Brien, William Anthony, a recently paroled freelance hitman from West Warwick, as they sat in a parked car in on the East Side of Providence, Rhode Island.
Although an altercation between Mello and officers attempting to fingerprint him would result in his being restrained by several detectives while in custody, the three would be released on bail (Hanrahan, who had been waiting in a van a block from the others, had fled the scene after witnessing their arrest).
Waiting outside his Adesso Restaurant, the men would "arrest" Marfeo on the pretense of a routine traffic stop and drive him to a safehouse in Fall River where they would ransom him for between $250,000-$300,000 or simply murder him.
After the gangland slaying of Hanrahan, Mello retreated from Providence and began competing with rival criminals over bookmaking operations from the recently retired Donald Waterhouse.
With Mello left as the dominant figure in the local underworld, he soon entered into "legitimate" businesses including the fishing industry building a multimillion-dollar empire over a nine-year period as the owner of Tempest Fisheries processing plant in 1994 and controlling over small fleet of fishing boats as well as the Fall River-based insurance company Cost Plus, the property management company TEK Properties and local King's Highway restaurant Fatso's (formerly the Rocking Horse Pub).