Free PROFESSIONAL KILLERS (True Crime) by Gordon Kerr

Like Gaggi, he had become a silent partner in a number of businesses, one of which was a pornography film lab owned by a man called Paul Rothenberg. The lab had been raided by the police and Gaggi was concerned that Rothenberg was about to cooperate with the cops, a fear that was confirmed when Rothenberg informed the authorities that he was being extorted by two men called DeMeo and ‘Nino’. DeMeo arranged a meeting with Rothenberg for Sunday, 29 July, at a local diner. As soon as he arrived outside the diner, DeMeo approached him, ordering him out of the car and into a nearby alleyway at gunpoint. He shot him twice in the head.
    Rothenberg’s murder paid off for DeMeo in several ways. Firstly, of course, he had divested himself of the problem that was Rothenberg. Secondly, and much more importantly, Gaggi and the Gambino Family were impressed.
    A couple of years later, in 1972, Andrei Katz, a young Jewish Rumanian immigrant who ran a bodyshop known as Veribest Foreign Car Services in Flatlands, Brooklyn, became DeMeo’s next victim. Katz had become involved with the DeMeo crew in some drug business as well as in a deal involving a number of stolen vans. He rented one of these vans out, but the customer to whom it was rented was stopped by police who discovered the van was stolen. Katz was arrested and offered a deal to cooperate by telling them where he had got the van. He refused, but when he was out on bail, he was threatened by members of the DeMeo crew and was then beaten up by two masked men whom he recognised as Joey Testa and Tony Senter. Foolishly, Katz tried to take revenge on Rosenberg, taking a shot at him with an automatic rifle. Rosenberg was wounded, but survived.
    By this time, Henry Borelli, a Gambino man who was an expert marksman, had joined the crew. They wanted to take care of Katz once and for all, but he was careful, never going anywhere alone. Borelli dreamed up a plan whereby a female acquaintance of his would lure Katz to a place where he could be dealt with by the crew.
    In June Katz met the woman at her apartment, but the Gemini Crew was waiting for him. He was abducted and driven to the meat department of a supermarket where he was stabbed in the heart and back with a butcher’s knife. DeMeo and Joey Testa, who had both in their youth worked as butcher’s apprentices, dismembered the body. He was decapitated and his head was crushed in a machine used for compacting cardboard. The remainder of the body was then put in bags and thrown into a skip behind the store. A few days later, a woman walking her dog was horrified to find one of Katz’s legs lying on the pavement close to the supermarket. The body was identified through his dental records.
    They had carried out their first murder as a team, but it may not have been their first dismemberment. In 2003, Salvatore Vitale, a former Bonanno underboss, claimed that in 1974 he had had to drive a body to a garage in Queens where Roy DeMeo and a few others waited. Vitale claimed he saw DeMeo with a large knife, presumably to be used in the dismemberment and disposal.
    In 1975, DeMeo began to transgress against customary Mafia rules, involving himself in a peep show and prostitution establishment in New Jersey. He was also dealing in pornography of the most graphic kind, including bestiality. Nino Gaggi warned him about this and even threatened him if he persisted with it. But DeMeo carried on and, luckily, Gaggi ignored it, presumably happy to continue receiving his increased weekly payment.
    DeMeo was also heavily involved in drug trafficking, another area that was taboo for the Mafia, but only if you were caught. The profits were huge and DeMeo was dealing cocaine out of the Gemini Lounge and importing marijuana from Colombia in 25-pound bails. The money rolled in and as long as Nino got his share, he was prepared to turn a blind eye to its source.
    In May 1976, Joseph Brocchini, a made man in the Mafia, made the mistake of punching DeMeo in