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'''Roy DeMeo'''(1942, – January_10, 1983) was a ranking member of the Gambino_crime_family, the largest and one of the most feared crime families in New_York. Image:Roydemeo2.JPG
==Career==
'''Roy Albert DeMeo''' was born in 1942 in Brooklyn, New York into a working class Italian immigrant family. As a kid DeMeo grew up on the same block as crime boss Joseph_Profaci and often played with Profaci's sons. In his teenaged years he began a small loan sharking operation which turned into a full time job by the age of 17. DeMeo graduated High School in 1959 and began working seriously in criminal enterprise while maintaining legitimate business practices. He married and fathered three children, and worked his way up the criminal career ladder, first with car-theft, Loansharking, then through Pornography. Much of DeMeo's enterprise is still clouded in suspicion today because many of the witnesses who could have testified to his crimes were already dead. The few that did report on his crimes are those suspected of acting in his killing.
According to the book ''Murder Machine'' by Jerry Capeci, DeMeo committed his first murder in 1974, when he was 32, shooting to death Paul Rothenberg, an associate in his car theft ring who he suspected of being a 'rat', or an informant. After that, DeMeo began committing more murders, slaying anyone who he suspected of being an informant, anyone who got in his way, anyone who upset him and, of course, anyone he was paid to kill. It should be noted that in his book ''For the Sins of My Father'' DeMeo's son Albert strongly contests much of the writing in the book.DeMeo had a great deal of help from a small but vicious gang he built around him. They hung out at the Gemini Club in Brooklyn, which was their base and also the scene of their murders, which earned them the name the Gemini Crew. Victims were lured to the Gemini Club at night. According to former crew members who became government witnesses, the victims would be swiftly shot, a towel wrapped around their blood-spurting head, and then stabbed in the heart to stop the blood from pumping through the body. One of the more sensational accounts provided by former crew member Vito Arena (who became a government witness and was later shot to death in Texas during the attempted robbery of a convenience store) was that the crew of killers would often eat pizza and drink beer whilst the corpse was left to bleed out in a Bathtub, before it was hacked up and disposed of. Some bodies were incinerated, others buried in landfills, and some taken out to sea on a private yacht owned by one of the crew and the remains dumped overboard.
Members of The Gemini Crew included Henry_Borelli, Chris_Rosenberg, Joseph_"Dracula"_Guglielmo (Roy's cousin), Vito_Arena, Ronald_Ustica, Peter_LaFroscia, Frederick_DiNome, Richard_DiNome, Joseph_Testa and Anthony_Senter.
Image:Demeo4.JPG Occasionally, when necessary, victim's bodies were dumped where they could be found to send out a warning. One victim's decapitated corpse was dumped in the road. The head was never found. DeMeo's crew once killed five Cuban drug-dealers simply to avoid paying for a large shipment of cocaine. Unlike most gangland killers, the Gemini Crew had no inhibitions about killing women when it was necessary. One victim, who was suspected of being an informant, turned up at the Gemini Club with his 19-year-old girlfriend. DeMeo and his men did not hesitate to execute both their intended target and his young girlfriend. DeMeo and his crew lent their 'talents' to other mobsters, carrying out murders for cash (in some cases charging as little as $5,000) or even for free as professional favors.
DeMeo eventually achieved his ambition to become a 'made' man, a formal member of the Gambino Family. However, the Gambino Godfather, Paul_Castellano, never liked DeMeo, especially when he heard DeMeo was dealing in drugs (Castellano did not like his men being involved in narcotics, because the penalties for drug-trafficking were so harsh that they often tempted suspects to become informants. John_Gotti earned Castellano's disfavor for the same reason.)
By 1982, the FBI was investigating the enormous number of missing and murdered persons who were linked to DeMeo or who had last been seen entering the notorious Gemini Club. DeMeo grew paranoid and increasingly on edge. It is around this time that a FBI bug in the home of Gambino Family (and Gotti crew) soldier Angelo_Ruggiero picked up a conversation between Angelo and Gene_Gotti, brother of John_Gotti. In the conversation, it is discussed that Paul Castellano had put out a hit on DeMeo, but wasn't having much luck finding someone willing to do the job. Gene Gotti mentions that his brother John was very wary of taking the contract, as DeMeo had an "army of killers" around him. It is also mentioned in this same secretly recorded conversation that, at that time, John had killed less than 10 people, while DeMeo had killed at least 38. According to mob turncoast Salvatore_Gravano aka 'Sammy the Bull', eventually the contract was given to Frank Decicco, but Frank and his crew simply couldn't get to DeMeo. It was too risky. Decicco decided to hand the job to Roy's own men.
According to the book Murder Machine, in his final days Roy DeMeo was seen always wearing a leather jacket, which concealed a shotgun underneath. His paranoia was at an all-time high. Despite this, on January 10 of 1983, DeMeo went off to crew member Patrick_Testa's auto shop for a meeting with fellow Mafiosi. A few days later, January 18, he was found murdered; in traditional Mafia fashion, DeMeo's bullet riddled corpse was found stuffed in the boot of his own car. He had been shot multiple times in the head and also had a bullet wound in his hand, probably from throwing his hand up to his face in a last ditch self-defense reflex as the shots were fired at him. DeMeo's immediate superior in the Gambino family, Anthony_Gaggi, was suspected by law enforcement officials of being the one who personally killed DeMeo, although it is highly likely crew members Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter were present as well. Gaggi was not charged with this crime, although he was charged with a number of other murders. He died of a heart attack during his trial in 1987, aged 62.
DeMeo's crew was soon rounded up and most were imprisoned for life after a series of trials that saw them convicted of a collective total of 25 murders, in addition to extortion, car-theft and drug trafficking.
Paul Castellano was indicted for ordering the murder of DeMeo, as well as a host of other crimes, but he was killed in December 1985 whilst out on bail and awaiting trial. The murder was ordered by John Gotti, who thus became the new Gambino Godfather.
The FBI and NYPD say that DeMeo and his Gemini Crew murdered at least 70 people between 1973 and 1983, but the true total could be as high as 200. The vast majority were disposed of so thoroughly that they were never found.
A recent anecdote from former Bonanno Family underboss turned cooperating witness Salvatore_Vitale lends credence to the FBI's claims that DeMeo may have been involved in more murders than were previously known, even with the help of the various DeMeo crew associates who flipped and provided information in the 1980s. According to Vitale, in 1975 he was called on by fellow Bonanno soldier Joseph_Massino to dispose of one Vito Borelli. Borelli (No relation to DeMeo crew member Henry_Borelli) was a boyfriend to one of Gambino Family boss Paul_Castellano's daughters and made a remark about Castellano's appearance that was construed as an insult. As a result, Vito Borelli was murdered. Vitale was recruited to drive the corpse to a Queens garage so it could be disposed of. At the meeting point where he would pick up the corpse, Vitale claims that aside from fellow Bonanno members Joseph_Massino and Dominick_Napolitano, a few members of the Gambino family were present as well, including John_Gotti, Frank_DeCicco and Angelo_Ruggiero. The body was picked up and Vitale was directed to the garage, where as the body was unloaded, Vitale claims among those assembled were several men, one of which was brandishing a knife. It wasn't until a few years later that Vitale was able to identify the man holding the knife as none other than Roy DeMeo, after seeing a picture of DeMeo in a New York newspaper. The importance of this revelation is that the extensive history of the DeMeo crew already compiled may not be anywhere as complete as previously assumed, and there is a good chance that if Vitale's story is true, the other men assembled with DeMeo were the rest of his early crew, such as Joseph_Testa, Anthony_Senter, Chris_Rosenberg and Henry_Borelli.
==Sources==
*''Murder Machine'' by Gene Mustain & Jerry Capeci, 1993, ISBN 0-451-40387-8.
* ''For The Sins of My Father: A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life'', by Al DeMeo, 2003.
* ''A Murder Most Fowl'', by Jerry Capeci. 13 May 2004.
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