Roy DeMeo worked his way up the organized crime ladder, falling in with the Gambino family and initiating the most efficient method of murder, designed to make bodies disappear.
Wikimedia CommonsRoy DeMeo’s mug shot from July 1981.
Roy DeMeo had a knack for making people disappear. As a member of the Gambino crime family, DeMeo ran his crew methodically, with an almost business-like approach to organized crime, which included auto theft, loan sharking, drug trafficking, and selling taboo pornographic films involving both bestiality and child porn.
More than anything, however, DeMeo and his crew were most infamous for their alleged involvement in more than 100 murders carried out using their signature “Gemini Method.”
Of course, a guy like Roy DeMeo would naturally make more than a few enemies in his day, so it was little surprise when his body was found dead in the trunk of his car on January 10, 1983 in Brooklyn.
And in the wake of his death, Roy DeMeo left behind a brutal legacy of violence.
Roy DeMeo’s Early Introduction To Organized Crime
Roy Albert DeMeo was born in Brooklyn on September 7, 1942 into a family of working-class Italian immigrants, Eleanor and Antonio DeMeo. He had two brothers, one older and one younger. The eldest brother, Anthony, died fighting in the Korean War in 1951. Their father died of a heart attack in 1960.
It didn’t take long for Roy DeMeo to enter into a life of organized crime. By the time he had graduated from high school in 1959, DeMeo was already running a small-scale loan shark operation.
He was also working, from the ages of 15 to 22, as an apprentice butcher at a local grocery store. Given the brutal nature of DeMeo’s killing methods down the line, it’s clear that some of his butcher skills carried over.
The loan shark operation, in particular, caught the attention of Anthony Gaggi, an associate of the Gambino Family. Gaggi approached DeMeo and told him he’d make even more money with the loansharking business if he worked for the Gambinos directly.
So DeMeo did.
He started out small and worked his way up, joining the Gambino family before forming his own crew and developing a signature method of execution. It was named the “Gemini Method” and involved dismembering victims in such a way that no trace of them could be found.
DeMeo’s method was effective, to say the least.
The Formation Of The DeMeo Crew And The Gemini Method
While DeMeo and Gaggi were building up the loan shark operation in the late 1960s, DeMeo was putting together his very own gang on the side. The DeMeo Crew, as it would come to be known, started primarily with car theft and drug trafficking. DeMeo and his crew found lucrative ways to launder money and stole from credit unions so that they could build up their businesses.
In the 1970s, one of DeMeo’s partners in a stolen car ring, Andrei Katz, went to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office to provide them with information on the DeMeo Crew. This led to Katz’s abduction in 1975.
It was the first known murder committed by the DeMeo Crew.
Between then and 1983, along with infamous hitman Richard Kuklinski, the gang was suspected of murdering at least 100 people. Roy DeMeo himself was thought to have killed around 70 personally.
In order to kill often and not get caught, Roy DeMeo devised a specific method when it came to handling murders: the Gemini Method, named after the crew’s popular hangout spot, the Gemini Lounge where most of the murders happened.
To execute the Gemini Method, a member of the crew lured whoever the day’s murder victim was into the club through a side door. The victim would then be taken to a back room of the club.
At that point, a second crew member would appear with a silenced pistol and a towel. He would shoot the victim in the head, then wrap a towel around it to keep the blood from splattering. Next, another member would stab the victim in the heart to stop the blood flow from the gunshot wound.
The DeMeo Crew members would then drag the victim’s corpse to a bathtub, where the rest of the blood would be drained out. Once bled dry, the victim was chopped into pieces, which were then wrapped into bags, placed into boxes, and dropped off at the dump.
Crew members became experts in this brutally efficient method of murdering and dismembering, where victims disappeared without a trace.
Getty Images/BettmannRichard Kuklinski, a hitman Roy DeMeo often employed.
During his reign as leader of the DeMeo Crew, Roy DeMeo made a case to Gaggi for them to partner with an Irish American gang called the Westies. DeMeo’s intuition turned out to be a benefit to both crews, and this newfound partnership was a highly lucrative endeavor.
Even better for DeMeo, it earned him even more respect within the Gambino family. In fact, it was his role in the partnership that caused the head of the Gambino family, Paul Castellano to finally give DeMeo his “button,” formally inducting him into the family.
There was a caveat, however: DeMeo needed to get permission before committing any murders, and he had to stop dealing drugs. Unwilling to give up that cash stream, though, DeMeo’s crew continued to move large amounts of cocaine, marijuana, and narcotics.
And DeMeo continued to kill without getting approval, including the 1977 double homicide of Johnathan Quinn and his girlfriend, Cherie Golden. DeMeo had suspected Quinn, a car thief, of cooperating with authorities — and dumped his body where it would be seen to send a message.
DeMeo, ever paranoid, also killed a college student by the name of Dominick Ragucci. Ragucci had no criminal ties, but DeMeo had been stalling on carrying out a hit for the Cubans. He saw Ragucci’s car parked outside his home in Long Island and panicked, believing the young door-to-door salesman was an assassin sent by the Cubans.
What followed was a seven-mile car chase through Amityville and Farmingdale, which ended with DeMeo shooting Ragucci dead.
When he found out the truth, according to his son Albert, DeMeo allegedly broke down crying, lamenting the fact that he had murdered an innocent student. The incident also reportedly put a strain on his marriage, as the public nature of the crime made it harder for his wife to simply ignore what was going on.
Then, as the 1980s rolled around, investigations into the Gambino family by the FBI had grown as a number of missing people and murders were linked to the Gambinos and the Gemini Club. Police were being fed tips by numerous informants, and the FBI was holding routine stakeouts by the Gemini Club.
Roy DeMeo’s Brutal Death
It’s been speculated that in the midst of this, Castellano had put out a hit on Roy DeMeo to take the heat off. One of the potential hitmen mentioned was reportedly a young John Gotti, who expressed that he was wary about taking the contract, since DeMeo had killed more than three times as many people than him.
The contract was reportedly then handed off to Frank DeCicco, but he apparently had some trouble getting to DeMeo. It’s not clear who took the job in the end, but some people have claimed that it was DeMeo’s own crew who finally agreed to snuff him out.
Roy DeMeo, meanwhile, had become increasingly paranoid. Reports indicated he had even contemplated faking his own death.
It turned out, his paranoia was on the money. On January 10, 1983, DeMeo attended a meeting with his men at Patty Testa’s house, but he never came back home. This was particularly suspicious because also the day of his daughter’s birthday party. That night, Albert DeMeo found a number of his father’s personal items in his study, including his watch and wallet.
10 days later, Roy DeMeo’s body was found in the trunk of his Cadillac with several bullet holes in it. The body had also been partially frozen, and a chandelier had been placed on top of it.
DeMeo’s death also paved the way for John Gotti and DeCicco to finally move against Castellano, ushering in a new era for New York’s mobsters.
If you liked this article, next you can read about Albert Anastasia, the mob boss who was killed while getting a haircut. Then you can dive in deeper and learn about the facets of the American mafia in the 1980s.
