Free PROFESSIONAL KILLERS (True Crime) by Gordon Kerr Page A

the face when an argument they were having about a pornography business in which they were both involved got out of hand. DeMeo was prevented from killing Brocchini by Mob protocol, but swore revenge anyway at a meeting about it with Gaggi. On 26 May, he and Borelli cold-bloodedly shot Brocchini five times in the back of the head in the office of his used car dealership, making it look like an armed robbery gone wrong, blindfolding the employees and ransacking the office. DeMeo was on a roll. Next month, a young man, Vincent Governara, with whom Gaggi was in dispute, was shot several times by DeMeo and Gaggi and died in hospital a week later.
    In July, DeMeo and Gaggi flew to Florida to kill another enemy, George Byrum, who had stupidly given burglars information to help them rob Gaggi’s house. He was lured to DeMeo’s hotel room and shot as soon as he walked in. The plan had been to dismember him in the hotel room with the help of a local Gambino man, but there was construction work going on and they fled the scene leaving the body in the bath, its head half-sawn off.
    The body count rose. An informer who had described DeMeo to the FBI as a ‘ruthless killer’ who had killed at least a dozen people and dismembered their bodies, had this fact confirmed for himself not long after when he was murdered. Nino’s nephew, who was acting as DeMeo’s driver, said that DeMeo had pointed out a newly built gas station and told him that he and the boys had buried two people under its foundations.
    In 1976, when Carlo Gambino, head of the Family, died, Paul Castellano took over and Nino was promoted to capo. But Castellano was a different kind of boss. He behaved more like a businessman than a gangster and was contemptuous of the type of street crime that DeMeo specialised in – car theft and hijacking. Besides, DeMeo was a violent and unpredictable individual. For these reasons he opposed DeMeo ever becoming a made member of the Family. DeMeo was devastated, but continued to try to impress by finding more ways to bring cash into the Family.
    He finally managed it with a bold plan to broker a partnership between the Westies, an alliance of Irish-American gangs, and the Gambinos. This alliance brought in a lot of money, and he was finally inducted in 1977 and made responsible for all the business the Family did with the Westies. But he still ignored the customary Family rules regarding drug trafficking and persisted in selling large quantities of coke and marijuana, as well as pills. However, he was not the only one who flaunted this rule.
    Neither did he bother too much about the rule that said members should seek permission before killing anyone. In June 1977, the crew took care of Johnathan Quinn, a car thief suspected of informing, and Cherie Golden, his 19-year-old girlfriend who just happened to be there at the wrong time.
    By 1978, DeMeo was claiming to have committed 100 murders and he let it be known that he and his crew were open to contracts. They carried some out for as little as $5,000. Some were even done for free – ‘personal favour’, he would say.
    They also killed their own. Edward ‘Danny’ Grillo had joined the team, but was heavily in debt to DeMeo. DeMeo and Gaggi suspected he would cooperate with police and so he was disposed of. Chris Rosenberg, original Gemini Crew member, was next. He had done a drug deal down in Florida, but had murdered the people he was buying from, a Cuban and his associates, and walked off with the money as well as the drugs. The Cuban had connections with a Colombian drug cartel and they insisted that Rosenberg be killed. DeMeo was given the contract, but weeks passed and he failed to carry it out.
    In the meantime, he made a tragic mistake when he killed Dominick Ragucci, a college student who was working part time as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman. When DeMeo saw Ragucci’s car outside his house one night, he thought he was an assassin from the Colombian cartel and