Read Online PROFESSIONAL KILLERS (True Crime) by Gordon Kerr - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gordon Kerr
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Approach victim from behind with a gun fitted with a silencer in one hand and a towel in the other. Add one bullet to victim’s head, quickly wrapping your towel round the head like a turban to staunch the flow of blood. As you hold the towel around the head, another person stabs the victim through the heart, severing arteries and stopping blood from pumping around the body and out of the head-wound. Make sure your victim is dead and then remove all his clothing and leave him hanging like a game bird over the bath to drain all remaining blood out of the body. Return the body to the living room and place on large swimming pool liner. Remove arms, legs and head and then seal all parts in separate bags that are then placed in boxes and sent to the Fountain Avenue Dump in Brooklyn.
That was the preferred method – the Gemini Method as it was known – of Roy DeMeo and his crew, although they did use other methods as the situation demanded. Want to send a message out to everyone to say ‘don’t mess with us’? Leave the body on a street. Victim could not be lured to the Gemini Lounge? There were lots of other places the dismemberment could be carried out – on a yacht, in a hideout, in the meat department of a supermarket, anywhere.
The head killer of this murderous crew, Roy DeMeo, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940 to working-class Italian immigrants. He learned about loan-sharking as a teenager from the sons of his neighbour, Mafia boss Joe Profaci. By the age of 17 it had become almost a full-time occupation for him. He was good at it too, mainly because he had no qualms about using violence to ‘persuade’ his debtors to pay up in time. He graduated High School in 1959, marrying not long after, and carried on with his criminal activities. He prospered so well through them, in fact, especially through loan sharking, that he gave up his day job at the Banner Dairy Supermarket in the early 1960s, focusing instead on making money in any way he could.
DeMeo’s place of business was Phil’s Bar, later to become the Gemini Lounge, which occupied the front half of a two-storey building located on a street corner in Flatlands, Brooklyn. Here he would pursue his loan-sharking activities and fence stolen goods and, in 1965, he bought a chunk of the bar.
He had hovered around the edges of the Lucchese Crime Family for a number of years, but in 1966 he befriended Anthony ‘Nino’ Gaggi, a high-ranking member of the Gambinos who had been inducted into the Family after taking part in the 1960 hit on Vincent Squillante, the killer of Frank and Joseph Scalise. Much of Gaggi’s money also came from loan sharking, but he also dipped his toes in a number of legitimate businesses in which he had become a silent partner. DeMeo saw a better future for himself with the Gambinos than the Luccheses and cultivated his friendship and business relationship with Gaggi.
He diversified his interests throughout the sixties, assembling a crew of young crooks and moving into car theft and drug trafficking. Among his gang were Harvey ‘Chris’ Rosenberg, a friend whom DeMeo had met when they were both teenagers. Rosenberg had been dealing drugs and the young DeMeo had provided funds for him so that he could deal in larger quantities. Joey ‘Dracula’ Gugliemo, DeMeo’s cousin, was a pornographer and killer whose strange rituals with the blood of victims in the rooms behind the Gemini Lounge earned him his nickname. Other members included Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter who were known as the Gemini Twins because they were inseparable and could always be found in the Gemini Lounge, and Joey’s younger brother, Patrick Testa.
The Brooklyn Credit Union, of which DeMeo became a director, offered ample opportunity for laundering the proceeds of his loan-sharking activities and he stole funds from the Credit Union reserves which he used in his business.
It was not until 1972 when he was aged 32, that DeMeo carried out his first murder.
That was the preferred method – the Gemini Method as it was known – of Roy DeMeo and his crew, although they did use other methods as the situation demanded. Want to send a message out to everyone to say ‘don’t mess with us’? Leave the body on a street. Victim could not be lured to the Gemini Lounge? There were lots of other places the dismemberment could be carried out – on a yacht, in a hideout, in the meat department of a supermarket, anywhere.
The head killer of this murderous crew, Roy DeMeo, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940 to working-class Italian immigrants. He learned about loan-sharking as a teenager from the sons of his neighbour, Mafia boss Joe Profaci. By the age of 17 it had become almost a full-time occupation for him. He was good at it too, mainly because he had no qualms about using violence to ‘persuade’ his debtors to pay up in time. He graduated High School in 1959, marrying not long after, and carried on with his criminal activities. He prospered so well through them, in fact, especially through loan sharking, that he gave up his day job at the Banner Dairy Supermarket in the early 1960s, focusing instead on making money in any way he could.
DeMeo’s place of business was Phil’s Bar, later to become the Gemini Lounge, which occupied the front half of a two-storey building located on a street corner in Flatlands, Brooklyn. Here he would pursue his loan-sharking activities and fence stolen goods and, in 1965, he bought a chunk of the bar.
He had hovered around the edges of the Lucchese Crime Family for a number of years, but in 1966 he befriended Anthony ‘Nino’ Gaggi, a high-ranking member of the Gambinos who had been inducted into the Family after taking part in the 1960 hit on Vincent Squillante, the killer of Frank and Joseph Scalise. Much of Gaggi’s money also came from loan sharking, but he also dipped his toes in a number of legitimate businesses in which he had become a silent partner. DeMeo saw a better future for himself with the Gambinos than the Luccheses and cultivated his friendship and business relationship with Gaggi.
He diversified his interests throughout the sixties, assembling a crew of young crooks and moving into car theft and drug trafficking. Among his gang were Harvey ‘Chris’ Rosenberg, a friend whom DeMeo had met when they were both teenagers. Rosenberg had been dealing drugs and the young DeMeo had provided funds for him so that he could deal in larger quantities. Joey ‘Dracula’ Gugliemo, DeMeo’s cousin, was a pornographer and killer whose strange rituals with the blood of victims in the rooms behind the Gemini Lounge earned him his nickname. Other members included Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter who were known as the Gemini Twins because they were inseparable and could always be found in the Gemini Lounge, and Joey’s younger brother, Patrick Testa.
The Brooklyn Credit Union, of which DeMeo became a director, offered ample opportunity for laundering the proceeds of his loan-sharking activities and he stole funds from the Credit Union reserves which he used in his business.
It was not until 1972 when he was aged 32, that DeMeo carried out his first murder.
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