L'histoire Complete de la Mafia - Roy De Meo
L'histoire Complete de la Mafia - Roy De Meo
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00:00 Roy Demeo set up a serial killer gang, linked to the mafia.
00:04 Roy was bringing in a lot of money.
00:07 Roy's gang could kill for any reason.
00:10 Demeo's team philosophy was "no body, no crime".
00:15 They had this incredible gift to make people disappear.
00:22 The gang could have killed up to 200 people.
00:28 We're talking about unscrupulous psychopaths.
00:31 Killing machines.
00:34 It was the gang that New York feared the most.
00:38 [Music]
01:01 Brooklyn, New York, February 1979.
01:05 [Music]
01:08 Frédéric Todaro is the owner of a movie lab in the area, and he's in the middle of a difficult divorce.
01:14 While he's in trouble with his future ex-wife, Todaro asks his nephew to take care of his business.
01:20 But his nephew, him, would like to handle the case permanently.
01:25 He hires a serial killer named Roy Demeo to make Todaro disappear.
01:31 Roy Demeo worked for the Gambino family. He ran an organized gang specialized in car theft, and also what turned out to be a killing machine.
01:40 At the time, Roy was getting more and more involved in the porn business.
01:45 He really wanted to get a hand in Todaro's business.
01:49 Demeo sends one of his men to get Todaro in one of the gang's locations.
01:55 The Pa is a car for sale.
02:00 But Todaro won't have the opportunity to buy it.
02:03 As soon as he walked in the corridor, Roy appeared.
02:09 He pointed his weapon at his head and made his brain explode.
02:14 He wrapped a towel around his head, and one of Roy's men started to stab him.
02:20 Roy and his men suspended Todaro's body by the feet above a bathtub to drain his blood.
02:28 Three quarters of an hour later, Roy and his gang dismember the body,
02:33 wrap the remains in garbage bags, which they drag to a landfill.
02:38 Roy's philosophy was "no body, no crime".
02:44 One day like another for Roy Demeo and his gang.
02:49 [Music]
02:59 At the end of the 1930s, the Flatlands neighborhood in Brooklyn
03:03 was home to many Italian immigrant families.
03:06 Among them, the Demeo family.
03:14 Anthony is a deliveryman for a whitener's company, and his wife Eleanor is a housewife.
03:20 In 1942, she gives birth to their fourth child.
03:27 The couple gives him the name of Roy Albert Demeo.
03:31 During his childhood, Demeo is too big, and he is an easy target for other children.
03:40 When he goes back to school, the boys in the neighborhood take off his pants,
03:44 especially in front of the girls in the neighborhood.
03:47 Except when his big brother Anthony is with him.
03:53 His older brother would fight for him,
03:58 and make sure that the little brutes in the neighborhood wouldn't come and bother him.
04:03 For Roy, his big brother was basically his idol.
04:09 In 1951, Anthony joins the Marines and goes to fight in Korea.
04:15 Roy is only 9 years old when his brother leaves the house.
04:21 My uncle ran a battalion, and he was surrounded.
04:26 At one point, his men were encircled, and he took a machine gun to charge the enemy troops.
04:31 He was killed by his men.
04:36 The Marines come to Demeo's house to tell him the terrible news.
04:40 My father was very affected.
04:46 For him, he was more like a father figure than just a brother.
04:49 The whole family is destroyed.
04:53 Roy starts fighting at school.
04:56 Demeo is no longer a defenseless victim.
05:04 He is transformed into a little hit.
05:07 At the age of 15, Roy starts working after school in a grocery store in his neighborhood.
05:14 Roy is a delivery man for the store, and he travels the whole city by bike, which makes him lose weight.
05:22 Once he was determined to do something, he really gave it his all.
05:30 Roy earns twice as much as other delivery men, and earns up to $100 a week.
05:35 He then starts lending liquid to his friends.
05:38 He realized that by lending money, people were giving him interest.
05:44 From the start, he made a lot of money.
05:47 And with the money, Roy also earns respect.
05:51 At school, he has a reputation as a businessman and a fighter.
05:57 And all his classmates give him money, ruby on the nail.
06:01 In 1959, Roy is 18 years old, and he is in high school.
06:07 His little loan business is a hit.
06:11 He drives a luxury car and carries banknotes in paper bags.
06:20 At the end of high school, DeMeo starts hanging out with Gladys Brayton, a few years older than him.
06:26 Roy's parents like Gladys, she comes from a good family.
06:30 They think she might have a positive influence on their son.
06:34 In 1960, Roy and Gladys get married.
06:38 My mother had already finished high school, and my father had just finished high school, so it was pretty quick for them.
06:47 Roy continues to lend money to friends, and he starts to have suspicious friends.
06:52 In the mid-1960s, DeMeo becomes friends with a mechanic from the neighborhood called Freddy Dinome.
07:01 Freddy knows about cars, but not only to fix them. He also steals them.
07:07 Freddy introduced Roy to car theft networks.
07:13 Freddy was more or less in contact with a family of criminals, the Loucaisais.
07:17 Freddy's contacts with the peggers open new doors for Roy DeMeo.
07:24 One of Roy's favorite landmarks is a neighborhood bar called Phil's Lounge.
07:32 This place houses a whole network of thieves and bad guys.
07:37 It's a bit like a training center where the most promising young people in the area are recruited.
07:43 It was kind of an interesting mix of clientele.
07:47 These guys would come and drink at these bars and hang out with the girls.
07:51 They're short on cash, need money, and quickly become the neighborhood loan shark.
07:56 At the age of 22, Roy earns so much money that he quits his job at the grocery store.
08:05 He can start his life as a thief at any time.
08:10 In 1966, DeMeo and his wife have a little boy named Albert.
08:15 We had great times. He was always there for me. He always encouraged his kids.
08:22 When they saw we had a gift or a special talent for something, he really encouraged us.
08:28 With the money he earns from his job as a loan shark, DeMeo and his family leave their Brooklyn apartment
08:36 and move to a small house in Massapequa Park, a small suburb in Long Island.
08:41 He moved us to Long Island because he didn't want to raise us in Brooklyn, in that environment.
08:47 Among Roy's new neighbors is the very respected godfather of a family of crime in New York,
08:57 Carlo Gambino.
08:59 Carlo looked like an old Italian grandfather, very smart, very smart.
09:05 He was a very loving Italian grandfather, very discreet.
09:08 But he was earning a lot of money, and he was killing a lot of people.
09:12 Gambino doesn't have much time to notice DeMeo's success in his job as a loan shark.
09:19 And they're going to make Roy take a much more violent direction.
09:32 The mid-sixties is a fast period for Roy DeMeo.
09:36 Thanks to the profits he makes from his job as a loan shark, he just moved in with his family in a small suburb of Long Island.
09:45 Roy's reputation and his success in the business have preceded him, and Nino Gaggi, one of Gambino's men, noticed him.
09:53 Nino came to see him and said, "You know, we could make a lot more money by uniting our forces,
09:59 if you agree to work exclusively for us."
10:02 In 1966, DeMeo had already proven that he could make money by playing racquet, but he wanted to go as far as possible.
10:16 He saw in Gaggi his ticket into the most powerful family of crime in New York.
10:27 Gaggi also saw his own interest in it. He hoped to get promoted in the Gambino family by recruiting the goldfish.
10:34 The same year, while stopping at a gas station, Roy met Harvey "Chris" Rosenberg, then 16 years old.
10:46 Young Chris, small and Jewish, wanted to be tall and Italian.
10:52 He hated being Jewish, that's all. Chris wanted to be the first Jew to join the mafia. He just told me, "Don't worry about it, I'll swing it."
11:01 At the time, Rosenberg was a small drug dealer, but DeMeo liked his style.
11:08 Chris was stubborn, hard-headed, and determined to make money.
11:15 From the first meeting with Rosenberg, Roy had a kind of crush on him. He saw in Chris the teenager he had been, and he treated him like his son.
11:25 In the street, Roy started to teach Chris the art of racquet.
11:31 But when he came home in the evening, he behaved like a perfect father to his wife and children.
11:37 For his son, Albert, DeMeo was the ideal father.
11:41 "My father never shouted, he never raised his hand on me."
11:45 When DeMeo is not at home with his children, the place he prefers is the Phil's Lounge, a small tavern in Brooklyn.
11:53 The owner of the bar is also a client of Roy.
11:58 And when the man can no longer settle his payments, from a simple client, Roy becomes a co-owner.
12:04 And the bar is now called the Gemini Lounge.
12:09 At the Gemini, DeMeo hears about a new opportunity to make money.
12:13 Paul Rottenberg, a bar owner, manages a half-legal case.
12:18 He works in pornography, on films where many violate the laws on obscenity, which makes him a perfect target for blackmail.
12:27 DeMeo and Ninogaji, one of Gambino's men, decide to visit Rottenberg.
12:35 Roy and Nino told him that they could help him make more money.
12:39 Paul Rottenberg did not need to associate, he did not want to.
12:43 He told them, "I do not want to be disturbed, leave me alone."
12:47 But DeMeo does not leave him alone.
12:50 He hits Rottenberg in the face and pulls out a revolver.
12:54 There, Paul Rottenberg immediately said to himself, "Finally, I have a chance to make money."
13:01 Paul Rottenberg immediately thought, "I might be interested in taking Roy and Nino as partners."
13:09 A year later, the police make a descent to the film lab.
13:15 Accused of several charges, Rottenberg risks a long prison sentence.
13:20 DeMeo and Ninogaji know that they will have the same problems if the police manage to convince them to take a chance on Rottenberg.
13:28 When the police discover DeMeo's cheques, Rottenberg decides to negotiate an agreement.
13:34 At that point, he thought he could get away with denouncing Roy and Nino.
13:41 Rottenberg meets with the office of the prosecutor of Manhattan.
13:48 As Gaji knows that Rottenberg risks denouncing them, he asks DeMeo to keep silent.
13:58 DeMeo organises a meeting with Rottenberg in the parking lot of a restaurant in the neighborhood.
14:04 On July 29, 1973, DeMeo waits patiently in his car.
14:11 When Rottenberg arrives, he asks him to get out of his car and follow him down a lane.
14:20 Roy simply pulled out a revolver and shot him in the head.
14:25 That was the first time Roy killed for Nino.
14:30 But the cheques found in the lab betray Roy DeMeo.
14:38 The police call him in for an interrogation, but Roy gives no information except his name and address.
14:45 Without concrete evidence, the case is a dead end.
14:49 Roy has learned an interesting lesson. A criminal can easily get away with it.
14:55 Within the Gambino family, Rottenberg's murder has impressed the big guns.
15:04 It seems that Roy's success is assured.
15:08 There are two ways to succeed in the business. Either kill for them, or make them earn money.
15:14 And Roy did both.
15:17 Nino Gaggi decides to submit Roy to another test.
15:22 On March 2, 1975, Gaggi is in front of an Italian restaurant in Brooklyn.
15:29 He tries to settle an old score with Vincent Governara, a young boxer who broke his nose years before.
15:42 Now, more than ten years later, he wants his revenge.
15:47 Gaggi asks his 27-year-old nephew, Dominique Montilio, and his old friend, Roy DeMeo, to take care of it.
15:55 Nino said, "Let's go, we'll blow him up."
16:00 He called Roy, and Roy came with a grenade.
16:04 Around midnight, while Nino was playing, Dominique entered the car of Governara.
16:11 Dominique is a veteran of Vietnam. He knows the weapons.
16:15 He puts the grenade in the car with a string and a hook.
16:20 I put a hook inside the driver's door, and another one in the pin.
16:27 At 2 o'clock in the morning, Vincent Governara leaves his game table and heads to his car.
16:35 He opens his door, sits down, and puts his key in.
16:40 The car explodes.
16:42 He was ejected from the car on the other side of the street.
16:49 He had a broken leg, and he was badly injured.
16:52 The explosion didn't kill Governara, but it did save Belle.
16:57 Others won't have that chance.
17:01 DeMeo will soon form one of the most deadly gang-rapes in the history of organized crime.
17:10 [Gunshot]
17:11 In the 60's, Roy DeMeo proved himself to the Gambino family.
17:21 He's an efficient and reliable loan shark, who brings a lot of money.
17:27 He even killed for the family.
17:30 [Gunshot]
17:33 But in 1975, DeMeo is still just an associate, and not a full-time member.
17:39 I think at one point, the quest for prestige and pride caught up with him.
17:43 He really wanted to be a full-time member of the Gambino family.
17:47 DeMeo would do anything to become a criminal.
17:51 Including committing murders regularly.
17:57 [Siren]
17:59 [Explosion]
18:00 [Siren]
18:01 [Gunshot]
18:02 [Siren]
18:03 [Music]
18:07 In the 70's, Roy DeMeo lends money to his young friend, Chris Rosenberg,
18:12 to allow him to sell marijuana and hashish in large quantities.
18:16 In fact, their relationship became so close, that Chris Rosenberg started to be called Chris DeMeo,
18:24 in certain circumstances.
18:28 Rosenberg wants others to join this improvised family.
18:32 He introduces to Roy two of his close friends, Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter.
18:39 Roy met Joey and Anthony through Chris Rosenberg.
18:45 Joey and Anthony had experience in the field of car theft.
18:53 In addition to having a court record for car theft, Testa and Senter are tall and Italian.
18:59 Anthony and Joey were so close that when Joey started a sentence, Anthony finished it.
19:06 Anthony and Joey go to the Gemini Lounge and join Roy's gang.
19:12 They are called Gemini twins.
19:15 While Rosenberg and Gemini twins steal cars in the street,
19:21 DeMeo finds customers to sell them.
19:24 One of his customers is called Andrei Kats, whose father owns a garage.
19:30 Kats, a Romanian immigrant of about 20 years,
19:34 uses his father's shop to sell stolen car parts.
19:38 For Kats, it is cheaper to pay DeMeo at very low prices than to pay full tariffs at a manufacturer.
19:49 DeMeo's gang ends up doing a real science of car theft.
19:54 They steal cars in the street, replace their identification number or VIN code,
20:00 then sell them through the garage.
20:03 This system works perfectly until the day when the police end up finding a fake VIN code on a truck sold by Kats.
20:10 Kats is arrested, then released very quickly.
20:18 Andrei Kats was not happy with this.
20:20 He felt that Chris was to blame for all of this,
20:25 so he decided to cooperate with the office of the prosecutor of Brooklyn.
20:29 When Rosenberg and Gemini twins learn that Kats is about to speak,
20:35 they ask Roy for advice.
20:38 Roy tells them that Kats knows too much.
20:44 On June 13, 1975, Gemini's twins agree with a local dealer, Henry Borelli.
20:50 Together, they make a plan to kidnap Kats.
20:56 Henry Borelli made sure that one of his acquaintances, a very beautiful woman,
21:02 meets Andrei and gives him an appointment.
21:05 When he arrived at her house, a car appeared.
21:10 Three men pulled up, grabbed him, threw him into the car and drove him away.
21:16 The men take Kats to a butcher shop in Queens, where Roy is waiting for them.
21:24 Chris Rosenberg stabs Kats six times in the heart with a butcher knife.
21:30 Kats collapses on the ground.
21:34 Chris gave him another ten or fifteen stabs when he was dead.
21:39 At some point, they thought, "That's enough of this. Let's get to work."
21:43 DeMeo, in a butcher's blouse, prepares the band saw to dismember the body.
21:49 He cuts Kats' head and helps Anthony Senter cut the limbs.
21:55 In a fit of rage, Chris Rosenberg picks up Kats' head and throws it into a cardboard compressor.
22:08 The gang wraps the pieces of the body in solidly wrapped garbage bags.
22:12 Then they went out and threw the bags into the bins at the back of the store.
22:17 This murder is the perfect example of DeMeo's philosophy.
22:23 No body, no crime.
22:32 In June 1976, Nino Gaggi, Roy DeMeo and Dominique Montilio find one of their previous victims.
22:39 The former boxer Vincent Governara, who survived a car crash a year earlier.
22:45 I went out for a race and I saw his car parked on 21st Avenue.
22:54 He was in front of a candy store.
22:58 I told Nino, "You knew Vinnie was back. He wouldn't let it slide. That's that old Sicilian mentality."
23:05 With Roy and Dominique's help, Nino decides to fix this 13-year-old once and for all.
23:12 We put on the disguise, the moustache, the hats, the clothes, and we went to the candy store.
23:24 When the men arrive at the store, they see Governara get in his car and they shoot him.
23:29 Roy and Nino just shot him in the middle of the street.
23:36 That was the end of that.
23:38 DeMeo once again proves he is ready to do anything to become a full-time member of the Gambino family.
23:46 But the godfather, Carlo Gambino, doesn't want to admit any new members to the family.
23:54 Carlo Gambino obviously ran the family with an iron fist.
23:59 Although he was a very quiet man, he ran the family completely.
24:06 But soon enough, Carlo's failing health will give Roy an opportunity.
24:12 An opportunity that will almost destroy the family.
24:17 In the 70s, Roy DeMeo has brought together his own gang of hardened criminals.
24:22 In addition to stealing cars and selling drugs, they kill cold-blooded people.
24:29 They cut their victims before throwing their bodies in the trash.
24:35 If someone is killed, they are not the only ones.
24:41 In October 1976, Carlo Gambino's boss suffers a heart attack.
24:46 Just before his death, he is killed by a police officer.
24:53 He is a victim of a drug-related crime.
24:57 He is a victim of a drug-related crime.
25:01 He is a victim of a drug-related crime.
25:06 He is a victim of a drug-related crime.
25:09 Just before his death, he is killed by his cousin and brother-in-law, Paul Castellano.
25:16 Some members don't approve of this decision.
25:22 But Roy DeMeo and Nino Gaggi are delighted.
25:26 By becoming the godfather, Castellano names Gaggi as "Capo".
25:33 Hoping that his moment of glory has finally come, DeMeo insists on speaking to his friend about him to Castellano.
25:39 Nino goes to see Roy's new godfather, but Castellano refuses.
25:44 There was never any real chemistry between them.
25:49 Paul viewed him as a second-class gangster.
25:53 But Paul could not ignore the fact that Roy brought a lot of money.
25:57 So he let him do what he wanted, as long as it didn't affect Paul.
26:03 Paul tolerated DeMeo's gang because they were his main armors.
26:07 They were the crew that, when somebody had a name, this is the crew you killed.
26:13 DeMeo concludes that he must earn even more money to become a member of the family.
26:20 So, when he meets a Irish gangster named James Cunhan, he sees an opportunity.
26:28 Cunhan asks him for help for a crime, and promises to give him in return a part of his racquet territory in the west of Manhattan.
26:36 The victim is called Mickey Spillane.
26:39 He is the almost retired leader of Cunhan's Irish gang, known as the Westies.
26:44 Roy thought it would be a good thing to kill Mickey Spillane,
26:48 in order to make Jimmy Cunhan his obliged.
26:55 On May 13th, 1979, DeMeo goes to Mickey Spillane's building.
26:59 While his accomplice is knocking on the door, Roy hides in the staircase.
27:05 When Spillane opens the door, DeMeo shoots him.
27:11 Roy leaves his body in the middle of the street, like a message addressed to the Westies.
27:19 The former boss is dead, Cunhan is now the leader.
27:25 The relationship was now sealed between Jimmy Cunhan and Roy DeMeo.
27:29 It was still a big operation brought by Roy to the Gambino family.
27:36 The Gambino family now controls the west of Manhattan, a very lucrative sector.
27:43 Castellano can no longer ignore DeMeo.
27:46 At the age of 35, Roy finally gets what he had been dreaming of since the beginning.
27:51 In 1978, Roy DeMeo savours his success.
27:55 His whole team has become experts in murder.
28:01 Their dismemberment technique is even called the Gemini method.
28:08 If possible, the gang attracts the victims in the apartment behind the Gemini Lounge.
28:16 Roy would arrive with a revolver, shoot out in the head with one hand,
28:22 and wrap the other in a towel to stop the blood from spouting out.
28:28 Then Chris would come in, wearing underwear, to avoid staining his clothes,
28:33 and stabbing the guy in the heart to stop the blood from spouting.
28:40 The whole gang would then suspend the body by the feet, above a bathtub for 45 minutes,
28:46 to empty it of its blood.
28:49 Once they got done emptying the body of its blood, they would take it to the bathtub,
28:54 and Joey, Anthony and Roy would dismember it.
28:58 They would basically cut the body with sharp knives.
29:02 They would wrap the pieces up in plastic bags, and they would put them in the bathtub.
29:08 They would carry the bags up to the Fountain Avenue dump.
29:12 In 1979, Chris Rosenberg started dealing with a big Cuban dealer,
29:24 known only as El Negro.
29:27 Chris had made a deal to buy 12 kilos of cocaine from Cuban drug dealers in Florida.
29:37 But in reality, they were going to steal the drugs.
29:40 Why pay half a million dollars for a drug when you can steal the drugs?
29:45 On March 17, 1979, St. Patrick's Day,
29:52 El Negro sent his cousin and his girlfriend to New York
29:56 to exchange a suitcase full of cocaine for cash.
30:02 During the exchange, at the Fountain Avenue dump, Rosenberg shot El Negro's two men.
30:07 In Miami, El Negro waited for a call from his girlfriend, in vain.
30:20 Finally, thanks to the name Chris gave him, Demeo's, he went back to Roy.
30:28 When Ninogatji found out, he was upset.
30:31 The Gambinos don't need a war against a cartel of Cuban dealers.
30:35 The tacit law in Italian mafia is to never touch the family.
30:40 But the Cubans kill everyone, the family, the dog, the red fish.
30:43 They kill everyone and blow up the house.
30:45 Faced with the threat of a bloody conflict, Roy was forced to betray one of his own.
30:57 In 1979, Roy Demeo continued to apply his principle, "No body, no crime."
31:03 But one of his team members was not as careful.
31:09 His old friend Chris Rosenberg got into a Cuban dealer,
31:13 who he killed his cousin and girlfriend.
31:16 The Cubans counterattack and threaten to settle their score in New York
31:26 if Chris is killed and his death is made in the papers.
31:29 In the hope of avoiding a war against the Cubans for a drug case,
31:37 an activity absolutely prescribed by the boss, Paul Castellano,
31:41 Ninogatji asked Roy to solve the problem.
31:44 Which means he has to get rid of Chris.
31:49 [Music]
31:56 Demeo is faced with a painful dilemma.
31:59 Roy said, "Well, I'm going to do what I have to do."
32:03 And Chris was like a son to him.
32:07 Demeo spends weeks thinking.
32:10 Finally, El Negro sends his men to New York to settle his score.
32:16 When Demeo hears that the Cuban murderers are in town,
32:19 he takes refuge in his new house in Massapequa.
32:23 "That made my father completely paranoid.
32:26 At that point, my father's whole universe started to collapse around him.
32:29 The things that he was doing back home started to come knocking on our door."
32:34 On April 19, 1979, Demeo, very nervous,
32:39 is in front of the screens of his video surveillance system.
32:43 And he notices a car parked in front of his house,
32:45 with a young man in a matte suit driving.
32:48 "It was an 18-year-old young man who was there to sell vacuum cleaners
32:52 and who had stopped by chance in front of Roy's house.
32:55 And because of his skin tone, Roy thought he was a Cuban killer."
33:00 Armed to the teeth, Demeo and his cousin, Joseph Guglielmo,
33:04 run out of the house.
33:07 Seeing two armed men running in his direction,
33:12 the young salesman starts and runs away.
33:14 "Roy and Joe jumped into Roy's car
33:19 and they started chasing them.
33:22 Roy was driving, he was driving with his right hand,
33:25 and with his left hand he pulled out his gun from the window to shoot."
33:29 The kid was completely crazy, he didn't understand what was going on.
33:34 "It's a Saturday, he's driving for about ten kilometers,
33:39 and all of a sudden, Roy continues to shoot."
33:42 But the young man ends up colliding with another car.
33:48 Despite two punctured tires, he continues to drive 200 meters
33:54 before Demeo catches up with him.
33:57 "Roy got out and, cold as hell,
34:01 he shot several bullets in the kid's head."
34:04 [Gunshots]
34:06 After the murder, Demeo comes home, panicked.
34:15 "My father came home, he took us all with him,
34:18 he gave us a trash bag and he said,
34:21 'Put everything you need in there, we're leaving and we're not coming back.'"
34:25 Demeo drives his whole family to a motel outside New York,
34:29 where he hides for two weeks.
34:33 And then the news comes out in the newspapers
34:35 that a young 18-year-old salesman had been shot dead.
34:38 And when Nino saw that, he became malicious.
34:42 Nino Gaggi then tells Demeo that he must stop trying to buy time
34:48 and take care of Chris Rosenberg before others are killed.
34:52 On Friday, May 11, 1979,
34:58 Roy Demeo gathers his gang for their weekly meeting
35:02 in the Gemini Lounge apartment.
35:04 "When Chris arrived,
35:10 Roy was sitting at a table with a brown paper bag in front of him."
35:14 Chris sits down with Roy.
35:17 Without a word, Demeo takes the bag
35:20 and pulls out a gun.
35:22 He shoots one bullet in Rosenberg's head.
35:25 Still alive, Rosenberg falls to his knees.
35:32 Demeo is shocked and does not react.
35:34 Anthony Senter shoots four more times in Rosenberg's head,
35:39 putting an end to his friend's suffering.
35:43 The whole gang then takes Rosenberg's car and his body
35:49 to a park in Brooklyn.
35:51 "The Cubans wanted proof.
35:54 So Freddy Diname and Henry
35:58 stole the car with the machine gun bullets.
36:01 So it was in the papers because it was a spectacular execution."
36:07 Montilio then gives a copy of the newspaper to the Cubans.
36:12 "I said, 'That's it, it's settled, it's over.'
36:16 And that's how it ended."
36:19 Demeo's bodyguard, Harvey "Chris" Rosenberg,
36:23 became one of the victims of the murderous gang.
36:26 [Music]
36:31 After the murder, Demeo goes back to work.
36:34 In the summer of 1979, his car theft business flourishes.
36:40 The gang members take the stolen cars
36:45 to a Newark shipyard in New Jersey.
36:48 From there, the cars are shipped by boat to Kuwait,
36:52 where they are resold on the black market.
36:55 But the feds will soon discover their trafficking
36:57 and the trap will close on Roy Demeo.
37:00 [Music]
37:10 At the beginning of the year 1980,
37:12 Roy Demeo's life within the Gambino family
37:15 is in turmoil.
37:17 He had to kill a member of his team,
37:21 but his car theft business flourishes.
37:24 [Music]
37:30 But as the traffic spreads,
37:32 the feds' surveillance increases.
37:35 [Music]
37:53 In April, at a Newark shipyard in New Jersey,
37:56 a federal customs inspector
37:58 checks a car loading for the Kuwaiti.
38:01 During his investigations,
38:05 he notices that on one of the cars,
38:07 the trunk lock is broken.
38:09 No doubt, the car was stolen.
38:13 The inspector calls for backup to check the entire loading.
38:22 At the end of this search,
38:23 the state arrests 76 cars.
38:26 A big investigation is open.
38:28 [Music]
38:33 Despite this fortune,
38:35 Demeo's team wants to continue the trafficking,
38:37 at all costs.
38:39 [Music]
38:42 But in August, two of Roy's men,
38:44 Henry Borelli and Freddy Dinome,
38:46 are arrested for the theft of cars seized in Newark.
38:50 [Music]
38:52 They are sentenced to five years in prison.
38:55 And in December 1981,
38:58 the police deal with a substitute of the prosecutor,
39:01 named Walter Mack.
39:03 [Music]
39:05 The police have transmitted to us a case of car theft.
39:08 For the first time,
39:10 we have begun to have an idea of the actions of Roy's team,
39:13 and that's how we started to investigate on this specific case.
39:18 [Music]
39:21 On February 4, 1982,
39:24 a stroke of luck relaunches Mack's investigation.
39:26 [Music]
39:29 While he is out for dinner,
39:31 a civilian inspector recognizes Vito Arena,
39:34 one of Roy's car thieves,
39:36 wanted by the police.
39:38 The inspector arrests him immediately.
39:41 [Music]
39:43 Arena is linked to a series of armed thefts,
39:47 and he knows he can reduce his sentence by cooperating with the authorities.
39:50 He told us the whole story.
39:52 Where were the bodies,
39:54 who committed the murders,
39:56 who got rid of the corpses.
39:58 When the family's godfather, Paul Castellano,
40:01 hears about the problems of Demeo,
40:03 he fears to be involved in the theft of stolen cars.
40:06 [Music]
40:08 Castellano asks for an interview with Roy,
40:10 but he ignores him.
40:12 [Music]
40:15 Paul Castellano had enough of Roy Demeo's team,
40:17 and to see that he did everything he wanted,
40:19 without any limits.
40:21 [Music]
40:23 Castellano does not trust Demeo.
40:26 The order falls,
40:28 Demeo must disappear.
40:30 [Music]
40:32 On January 10, 1983, in the morning,
40:35 Demeo leaves his home,
40:37 and tells his wife that he will be back the same evening
40:40 for their daughter's birthday.
40:43 My father was the kind to never miss Sunday dinner.
40:46 He was always at home on the weekend.
40:48 He never missed our birthdays.
40:50 [Music]
40:52 But Demeo does not return that evening.
40:54 [Music]
40:56 The investigators think that Demeo's partner,
40:58 Nino Gaggi,
41:00 called him to find him in a garage in the neighborhood.
41:02 [Music]
41:04 Demeo suspected Castellano of wanting to eliminate him,
41:07 but he trusted his friend Nino.
41:10 [Music]
41:13 The writer Jerry Cabeci
41:14 thinks that Demeo's team
41:16 turned against him.
41:18 According to the best evidence we have right now,
41:22 Nino Gaggi,
41:24 Joey, and Anthony were involved in the killing.
41:27 [Music]
41:29 Croy was called for a meeting,
41:31 and he was shot six or seven times.
41:33 [Music]
41:37 A week later,
41:39 Demeo's body was found.
41:41 [Music]
41:42 He was found in the trunk of a car
41:44 in the neighborhood of Ship's Head Bay in Brooklyn.
41:47 [Music]
41:49 The car sat there for days,
41:51 in January,
41:53 before someone called the police to search it.
41:55 [Music]
41:57 Demeo's body was completely frozen in the trunk of his Cadillac.
42:00 [Music]
42:02 He had defensive wounds on his hands.
42:05 His hands had been pierced by the bullets that hit him in the head.
42:09 And then they put the shank on his body.
42:11 [Music]
42:13 They found him on my birthday,
42:15 and then I had to go to the morgue
42:17 to identify the body with my uncle.
42:19 And it was a completely unreal situation.
42:23 You can't suppress the feeling when you see your father
42:26 being shot seven times in the head.
42:28 No one can.
42:30 [Music]
42:32 No one will ever be convicted for the murder of Roy Demeo.
42:36 [Music]
42:39 Two months after his death,
42:41 Gadgie's nephew, Dominic Montilio,
42:43 was arrested for extortion.
42:45 [Music]
42:47 I went back to New York to get the money someone owed me.
42:51 And this person had set me up.
42:54 He set me up.
42:56 We were in a restaurant,
42:58 and when he handed me the envelope,
43:00 I saw that everyone around,
43:02 the waiters and the bartender,
43:05 were all wearing black jackets.
43:06 I was completely fooled.
43:08 Montilio decided to testify against his uncle,
43:11 who had raised him.
43:13 He then benefited from the government's
43:15 witness protection program.
43:17 [Music]
43:19 On March 30, 1984,
43:23 Paul Castellano,
43:25 Nino Gadgie,
43:27 and two other men
43:29 were found guilty of 25 murder charges.
43:31 [Music]
43:34 But they were not worried about Roy Demeo's murder.
43:36 [Music]
43:38 On December 16, 1985,
43:42 while the trial was still underway,
43:44 Paul Castellano was shot down in a New York street.
43:47 [Music]
43:49 The murderer's client was a family man,
43:55 John Gotti,
43:57 who became the new Godbino's godfather in a few days.
44:00 [Music]
44:03 [Music]
44:04 Nino Gadgie was sentenced to 5 years in prison
44:07 for his involvement in car theft.
44:10 [Music]
44:12 We will remember Roy Demeo
44:17 as a ruthless murderer
44:19 who had a gift to make the bodies of his victims disappear.
44:22 [Music]
44:24 But at the end of the day,
44:27 he died the same way as those he murdered.
44:31 Without any respect
44:32 and without dignity.
44:34 [Music]
44:36 He hurt people
44:38 and those people hurt him too.
44:40 I can't blame him for that.
44:42 I just want people to know
44:44 that this man had another side.
44:46 He was a good father to his family
44:48 and a good husband.
44:50 Unfortunately, he made bad choices in his life.
44:52 [Music]
44:55 [Music]
44:56 [Music]
44:57 [Music]
44:58 [Music]
45:00 [Music]