Roy DeMeo
Roy DeMeo began his career in crime by developing a loansharking business while he was still in high school. After graduating he expanded his growing criminal business by adding car theft and other activities, with the support of Gambino crime family member Anthony Gaggi. DeMeo began funding drug dealers through his loans and laundered the money he acquired through his criminal activities through the Boro of Brooklyn Credit Union, where he obtained a position on the board. By the end of the 1960s, DeMeo had a well-established crew within the Gambino family. In 1975 the DeMeo crew committed its first known murder.
DeMeo developed what became known as the Gemini Method – named for the Gemini Lounge favored by DeMeo and his crew – of killing designated victims and disposing of their bodies. The DeMeo crew became an execution system for other crews of the Gambino family. The method required the victim to be enticed into entering the Gemini Lounge through a side door and into a backroom apartment where they would be shot in the head, simultaneously stabbed in the heart and a heavy towel immediately wrapped around the head to stop the flow of blood. The victim was then dragged to a bathtub and the blood drained.
The shooter was nearly always Roy DeMeo, according to the testimony of eyewitnesses who later cooperated with authorities. DeMeo developed the Gemini Method as a means of killing victims and destroying their remains in a manner in which the body could never be found and thus murder could not be determined. After the body was drained of blood it was dismembered and placed in plastic bags, for disposal at the Fountain Avenue landfill and dump in Brooklyn. The bagged bodies were shipped to the dump in cardboard boxes. Other locations were sometimes used when the victim could not be lured to the Gemini Lounge.
Sometimes a killing was intended to send a message and the DeMeo crew would carry them out – again usually including Roy DeMeo – in a manner in which the body would be found in the streets or alleys of New York, mutilated so as to convey the intended message. Between 1973 and 1983 the DeMeo crew committed more than 100 murders, with DeMeo personally the killer in at least 70 killings. In 1979 Gaggi was convicted of a mob-sanctioned hit, though the conviction was for the lesser included charge of assault, and he was sentenced to 5 to 15 years in prison. While he was in prison one of the witnesses who had testified against him was murdered by DeMeo.
DeMeo eventually fell into disfavor with the mob as the FBI investigated the number of missing persons who had last been seen either in the company of members of his crew or entering the Gemini Lounge. Fear of DeMeo or members of his crew being turned by federal authorities led to a contract being put out on DeMeo. Demeo’s body was found in the trunk of his car on January 20, 1983. He had been shot several times in the head. His murder had been authorized by the head of the Gambino family, Paul Castellano, who was eventually indicted for it and many other crimes, but he was executed at the order of John Gotti while he was on bail during his trial. Gotti took over as the head of the Gambino family.