Roy DeMeo
Roy Albert DeMeo was an American mobster in the Gambino crime family of New York City. He headed a group known as the "DeMeo crew", which consisted of approximately twenty associates involved in murder, car theft, drug dealing, prostitution and pornography. The DeMeo crew became notorious for the large number of murders they committed and for the grisly routine they employed to dispose of bodies, which became known as "the Gemini Method." The crew is believed to be responsible for up to 200 murders, many of which were committed by DeMeo himself.
Early life
Roy DeMeo was born on September 7, 1940, in the Flatlands neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City. He was raised in a working-class Italian immigrant family originating from Formia in the region of Lazio. The fourth of five children of Antonio Joseph "Anthony" DeMeo, a laundry company deliveryman, and Eleanor DeMeo, a housewife, Roy graduated from James Madison High School in 1959, during which time he began earning money as a loanshark. Economist Walter Block and future presidential candidate Bernie Sanders were among DeMeo's graduating year classmates.Between the ages of 15 and 22, DeMeo worked at a local grocery store, where he trained as an apprentice butcher. His older brother Anthony Frank "Chubby" DeMeo, a United States Marine Corps corporal, was killed in action during the Korean War on April 23, 1951, aged 20. DeMeo's father died of a heart attack on December 12, 1960, and his mother subsequently returned to Italy with Roy's youngest brother to live with relatives near Naples.
Criminal career
Gambino family
DeMeo was initially an associate of the Brooklyn faction of the Lucchese crime family, which controlled towing companies, junkyards and car theft operations in Flatlands and Canarsie. Anthony "Nino" Gaggi, a soldier in the Gambino crime family, noticed DeMeo in 1966 and told him that he could make even more money with his successful business if he shifted his allegiance to the Gambinos. Through the late 1960s, DeMeo's organized crime prospects increased on two fronts: he continued in the loansharking business with Gaggi and began developing a crew of young men involved in car theft. It was this collective of criminals that became known both in the underworld and in law enforcement circles as the "DeMeo crew."The first member of the DeMeo crew was sixteen-year-old Harvey "Chris" Rosenberg, who met DeMeo in 1966 when he was dealing cannabis at a Canarsie gas station. DeMeo helped Rosenberg increase his business and profits by loaning him money so that he could deal in larger amounts. By 1972, Rosenberg had introduced his friends to DeMeo and they began working for him as well. Additional members of the crew came to include Joseph and Patrick Testa, Anthony Senter, Richard and Frederick DiNome, Henry Borelli, Joseph "Dracula" Guglielmo, and later, Vito Arena and Carlo Profeta.
Meanwhile in 1972, DeMeo joined a Brooklyn credit union and quickly a position on the board of directors. He utilized his position to launder money earned through his illegal ventures. DeMeo also introduced colleagues at the credit union to a lucrative side-business, laundering the money of drug dealers he had become acquainted with. He also built up his loansharking business with funds stolen from credit union reserves.
DeMeo's collection of loanshark customers, while still primarily those in the car industry, soon included other businesses such as a dentist's office, an abortion clinic, restaurants and flea markets. He was also listed as an employee for a Brooklyn company called S & C Sportswear Corporation. DeMeo frequently told his neighbors that he worked in construction, food retailing and the used car business. Bonanno family underboss Salvatore Vitale claimed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that in 1974 he was ordered to deliver the corpse of a man who had just been murdered to a garage in Queens so that it could be disposed of by DeMeo.
In late 1974, a conflict escalated between the DeMeo crew and Andrei Katz, a young auto repair shop owner who was partners with DeMeo in a stolen car ring. In January 1975, Katz visited the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office and voluntarily provided information pertaining to Rosenberg's involvement in car theft. DeMeo learned about the meeting immediately afterward from a New York City Police Department auto crimes detective on his payroll. He ordered Borelli to contact a female acquaintance, Babette Judith Questel, about being used as bait. In May 1975, Katz appeared before a Brooklyn grand jury and divulged what he knew about the DeMeo crew's illegal activities.
On June 13, 1975, Questel was used to successfully lure Katz to her apartment for what he thought was a date, where upon arrival he was immediately abducted by members of the DeMeo crew. He was then taken to the meat department of a supermarket in Rockaway Beach, where he was stabbed multiple times with a butcher knife. After being decapitated, Katz's head was then put through a machine normally used for compacting cardboard boxes, where it was crushed. The body parts were wrapped in plastic bags and deposited into the supermarket's dumpster, where they were discovered days later when a pedestrian walking his dog spotted one of Katz's legs lying on a curb near the store. Police reported to the press that a grisly, brutal killing had occurred, but that was the extent of the information given. The body was identified as Katz's two days later through the use of dental records.
Gemini Method
As the 1970s progressed, DeMeo cultivated his followers into a crew experienced with the process of murdering and dismembering victims. With the exception of killings intended to send a message to any who would hinder their criminal activities, or murders that presented no other alternative, a set method of execution was established by the DeMeo crew to ensure that victims would be dispatched quickly and then made to disappear. The style of execution was dubbed the "Gemini Method," after the Gemini Lounge, a bar which served as the crew's primary hangout, as well as the site where most of their victims were killed.The process of the Gemini Method, as revealed by multiple crew members and associates who became government witnesses in the early 1980s, was to lure the victim through the side door of the lounge and into an apartment in the back portion of the building. At this point, a crew memberalmost always DeMeo according to crew member-turned-government witness Frederick DiNomewould approach with a silenced pistol in one hand and a towel in the other, shooting the victim in the head then wrapping the towel around the victim's head wound like a turban to stanch the blood flow. Immediately after, another member of the crew, originally Rosenberg, would stab the victim in the heart to prevent more blood from pumping out of the gunshot wound. By then, the victim would be dead, at which point the body would be stripped of clothing and dragged into a bathroom, where the remaining blood drained out or congealed within the body. This was to eliminate the messiness of the next step, when crew members would place the body onto plastic sheets laid out in the main room and proceed to dismember it, cutting off the arms, legs and head.
Following dismemberment, the body parts would then be put into bags, placed in cardboard boxes and sent to the Fountain Avenue landfill in Brooklyn. So many tons of garbage were dropped each day at the dump that it would be nearly impossible for the bodies to be discovered. During the initial stages of an early 1980s investigation targeting the DeMeo crew, a plan by authorities to excavate sections of the dump to locate remains was aborted when it was deemed too costly and unlikely to locate any meaningful evidence. The landfill, opposite the Starrett City Apartment Complex on Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York, was closed in 1985, capped over and converted into parkland.
Some victims were killed in other ways for varying reasons. At times, suspected informants or those who committed an act of disrespect against a member of the crew or their superiors had their bodies left in the streets to serve as a message and warning. There were also occasions where it would not be possible to lure the intended victim into the Gemini Lounge, in which case other locations would have to be used. A cabin cruiser owned by Richard DiNome was used on at least one occasion to dispose of remains at sea.
Further criminal career
In the latter half of 1975, DeMeo became a silent partner in a peep show and prostitution establishment in Bricktown, New Jersey, after the owner of the business became unable to pay his loansharking debts. DeMeo also began dealing in bestiality and child pornography, which he sold to his New Jersey establishment as well as connections in Rhode Island. When Gaggi found out about DeMeo's involvement in such taboo material, he demanded that DeMeo stop under the threat of death. However, DeMeo defied Gaggi and continued the practice. Gaggi did not retaliate, and, according to his nephew Dominick Montiglio, the subject was never mentioned again as long as DeMeo continued making payments to Gaggi.DeMeo also dealt in narcotics despite the Gambino family strictly forbidding such activity; he financed a major operation importing Colombian cannabis, which was unloaded from an offshore freighter and sold at various auto shops in Canarsie, and also sold cocaine out of the Gemini Lounge.
As 1975 drew to a close, DeMeo was the subject of Internal Revenue Service investigations into his income. Months earlier, DeMeo's credit union had been pushed into insolvency as a result of the plundering of its finances by DeMeo and his crew; DeMeo quit the credit union as a result. Before an indictment could be handed down against him, DeMeo utilized false affidavits from businesses owned by friends and acquaintances claiming he was on their payrolls as an employee. These affidavits served to account for some of his income, allowing him to reach a settlement with the IRS.
DeMeo's sources of income, as well as his crew, continued to grow. By July 1976 he added a used car firm called Team Auto Wholesalers to his loanshark customers. The owner of Team Auto, Matthew Rega, also purchased stolen vehicles from the DeMeo crew and sold them off at a New Jersey car lot that he owned. DeMeo also involved himself with hijacking delivery trucks from John F. Kennedy International Airport. His crew now included Edward "Danny" Grillo, a hijacker who had just been released from prison.
In the fall of 1976, the Gambino family went through a massive change when its boss, Carlo Gambino, died of natural causes. Paul Castellano, the head of the family's Brooklyn faction, was named as Gambino's successor, while Aniello Dellacroce, the head of the Manhattan faction, retained the position of underboss. The implications of this were twofold for DeMeo. Gaggi was elevated to the position of caporegime, taking over the crew of men Castellano previously headed. This promotion was beneficial for DeMeo, whose mentor was now even closer to the family leadership. Another advantage was that with Gambino deceased, new associates would be eligible for official membership into the family.
Castellano did not immediately "open the books" for new members, opting instead to promote existing members and reshuffle his capos to new crews. He also allegedly opposed the idea of DeMeo being "made", looking down on street-level members and instead involving himself in white-collar crime. Additionally, Castellano felt DeMeo was uncontrollable. Gaggi's attempts at persuading Castellano to initiate DeMeo were continually rejected. By 1977, DeMeo became distraught by this state of affairs and searched for opportunities that would ensure larger returns for his superiors.