Roy DeMeo built his reputation on a method so precise that it later earned a name of its own: the Gemini Method. It was a calculated and brutal approach to murder, designed to eliminate targets quickly and quietly, leaving no witnesses and often no identifiable remains. By the time his name became synonymous with violence in New York’s underworld, he had already spent years perfecting the craft of killing for the Gambino crime family. His crimes ranged from loan sharking and extortion to drug trafficking, but it was his detached, systematic efficiency that made him one of the most feared figures in the city during the 1970s and 1980s.
Roy Albert DeMeo was born on September 7, 1940, to Anthony and Eleanor DeMeo, the fourth of five children. When he was just one month old, the family moved into a sturdy red-brick home on Avenue P in Brooklyn’s Flatlands neighborhood. His father held a steady delivery job, and the family lived a modest, middle-class life among neighbors who were mostly second-generation Italian and Irish immigrants. Like his siblings, Roy started working after-school jobs as soon as he was old enough.
When Roy was ten, his older brother Anthony, nicknamed “Chubby,” landed a job at a local soda shop. Chubby was short but broad-shouldered and muscular from constant exercise, and everyone considered him the most promising of the DeMeo children. Roy was often bullied by neighborhood kids, but never when Chubby was around. He began to look up to his older brother, who had become popular and physically imposing.
In 1951, after the outbreak of the Korean War, seventeen-year-old Chubby volunteered for the Marines. Just a few months after he sailed for Korea, a knock came at the family’s door. Chubby had been killed in action. Roy was shattered.
He began taking out his grief by bullying younger children at St. Thomas Aquinas school, though he continued to earn good grades. At home, he argued with his father, who ordered him to stay away from three boys his age who lived two doors down: the brothers of a family connected to Joseph Profaci, a powerful Brooklyn mob boss. Roy’s father knew of the Profaci family because his own brother, Albert, was a Brooklyn district attorney who had tried to put many of them in prison.
Roy ignored the warning and kept spending time with the brothers anyway. His mother, meanwhile, insisted the boys were not gangsters but smart students headed for college. By 1955, when Roy finished the eighth grade, he had grown noticeably thinner and learned to control his temper better, though he remained a dangerous presence in any street fight outside the school. Inside the school, however, he repeatedly won awards for good behavior, punctuality, and attendance.
His teachers described him as reliable, well-behaved, and cooperative. His mother, who had once hoped Chubby would become a doctor, now pinned that dream on Roy. But Roy chose to focus on manual arts in high school instead. In class, Roy often spoke about his uncle Albert and the Profaci family.
One lesson that stayed with him came from his uncle, who complained that after losing many cases, witnesses were frequently intimidated and later recanted their testimony. The implication was not lost on young Roy. At fifteen, Roy took a part-time job stocking shelves and delivering groceries for a local store called Benadir’s. He worked twice as hard as the others, and some employees earned as much as one hundred dollars a week.
During this time, Roy lost more weight and began building muscle by lifting hundred-pound boxes of Ivory Snow detergent in the store’s basement. The store manager, Charles Healy, jokingly warned Roy about a much older coworker named Dave, telling him to be careful. One day, Roy and Dave began taunting each other, and Roy attacked with savage ferocity, scratching, clawing, and kicking until he was pulled away. With the money from his part-time job, Roy began lending cash to friends and eventually to anyone who asked.
His reputation as a fighter who played by no rules ensured that loans were repaid on time. By his senior year, he was driving a used Cadillac and carrying money in brown paper bags. He liked showing off his wealth as more and more teenagers came to borrow from him. By the time he graduated in 1959, he was already a successful small-time loan shark.
Roy was not handsome and had been overweight in his early years, so he had never been popular with the girls in his neighborhood. Still, he married Gladys Britton, one of the first girls who agreed to go out with him. His parents were pleased; Gladys came from a respectable family. By then, his older brother and sister had left home, leaving only Roy and his younger brother.
Roy rented a nice apartment near the delicatessen where he worked as assistant manager and apprentice butcher, learning how to break down whole calves quickly and efficiently. But he fully intended to make his living as a loan shark. On December 12, 1960, Roy’s father, Anthony DeMeo, died of a heart attack in his car. His mother took her youngest son and moved to Italy for a few years to grieve with relatives near Naples, leaving Roy, in a sense, on his own.
Five weeks later, Gladys gave birth to their first child, the first of three. Roy began his criminal career at Felix’s Lounge, a bar a few buildings from his old home in Flatlands. Regulars included the Profaci brothers and a Hollywood actor named Richard Foronjy, known for roles in films like Prince of the City and Serpico. Roy’s closest friend at the time was Frank Foring, who shared his passion for collecting weapons and taught Roy about different types of guns.
Roy also befriended Frederick Deneo, a mechanic at a Canarsie gas station where Roy and other Lounge regulars bought fuel at excellent prices. Many mocked Freddie for his dyslexia, but Roy never did, and that kindness made Freddie a fiercely loyal friend. Freddie was also a car thief working for the Lucchese crime family, who ran the Canarsie junkyards. Through Freddie, Roy met some of those mobsters, but he was not impressed by them.
More importantly, Freddie introduced Roy to a wide new circle of potential loan customers: thieves, robbers, and truck hijackers. By age twenty-two, Roy had made so much money that he quit his job at the delicatessen and never worked an honest day again. To learn the car theft trade, he began stealing cars with Freddie. In 1965, Roy grew paranoid about the IRS.
He sought out a former classmate from St. Thomas Aquinas who now worked as an IRS agent and asked how the agency pursued net worth cases. When the agent dodged the question, Roy was furious. Later, at a mutual acquaintance’s funeral, he announced loudly and sarcastically to a group of mourners that there were informants in the room and that he was leaving.
In 1966, after an introductory meeting with Anthony Gaggi, Roy set his sights on becoming a made member of the Gambino crime family. That same year, he met Chris Rosenberg. During the late 1960s, while working for Anthony Gaggi, Roy brought Chris and some of his friends along on jobs. By then, Roy and his wife had settled in Massapequa Park, and Roy often hosted his new friends at backyard barbecues.
When Felix’s Lounge fell into financial trouble, Roy stepped in and became its silent owner. The bar became known as the Gemini Lounge. In 1972, Roy joined a Brooklyn credit union and, within months, worked his way onto its board of directors. Having established himself in the car business, he soon added a dental practice, an abortion clinic, a flea market, and two restaurants to his portfolio.
Around that time, someone at the credit union began complaining, and for the first time, Roy’s name appeared in an official police file. This eventually led to Roy’s first murder: the elimination of Paul Rothenberg on orders from Anthony Gaggi. By 1974, Chris Rosenberg had moved into a nicer apartment in Flatlands, and many young thieves were stealing cars for him. Among them were two nineteen-year-olds, Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter, whom Chris had met while living in Canarsie and dealing marijuana.
Joseph Testa was skilled with knives but nearly died in 1973 in a knife fight in a bar against a Puerto Rican opponent. He was stabbed in the chest and suffered a collapsed lung that caused breathing problems for the rest of his life. Anthony Senter later tracked down that opponent and nearly beat him to death with his bare hands. Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter were seen as brothers, and because they were constantly together at the Gemini Lounge, they became known as the Gemini Twins.
Joseph’s seventeen-year-old brother Patrick, known as “Patty,” sometimes joined them. By 1974, they were under Roy’s wing. With Roy’s backing, Chris Rosenberg entered the cocaine business, a market that Gambino boss Carlo Gambino had forbidden. Chris got his drugs from a young pharmacist he later introduced to a twenty-two-year-old mechanic named Andre Katz.
Katz ran his father’s excellent foreign car repair shop and soon was using cocaine with Chris and the Gemini Twins. Katz bought a . 38 caliber pistol from Chris, and the two went in halves on eleven stolen Volkswagen trucks. A friend of Katz bought one of the trucks, but police later stopped him and discovered it was stolen because of a tampered vehicle identification number.
Auto crime detectives arrested Katz, but they wanted more than a simple arrest. After Katz posted bail, Chris Rosenberg and Joseph and Patrick Testa visited him. Chris threatened Katz about talking too freely during the investigation. The next day, Chris visited again and punched Katz in the mouth.
A few days later, Katz was pulled from his car and beaten so badly he was hospitalized. On November 13, 1974, shortly after Katz got out of the hospital, Chris was shot three times while opening his garage door, one bullet striking his lower jaw. He survived and underwent plastic surgery for his badly disfigured face, but he was not happy. A week later, at the Gemini Lounge, police arrested Joseph and Patrick Testa, along with Anthony Senter, for possession of loaded pistols and other weapons.
Around this time, Henry Borelli entered the picture after Joseph contacted him from jail. Henry had met Roy before Chris had, and he bailed out Joseph and Anthony. The group met with Roy to discuss Andre Katz’s situation. Roy told them the best way was simply to kill Katz and get rid of him.
Henry Borelli came up with the idea of luring Katz using a young woman named Judith Costello, whom he had met three years earlier. In January 1975, at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, Andre Katz identified Chris Rosenberg as a major car thief. The information was leaked to Roy DeMeo by a police officer working for him. In March, Henry laid out the plan for Costello, saying Katz owed him money and that he just needed to talk to him.
In May, Katz testified before a Brooklyn grand jury and began revealing secrets about Roy DeMeo as well. Roy said they needed to get rid of this man immediately. On June 13, 1975, Costello lured Katz to her apartment complex in Manhattan for what he thought was a romantic date. The moment he arrived, he was kidnapped by members of what was now known as the DeMeo crew.
Katz was taken to the meat department of a supermarket in Rockaway Beach, Queens, where he was stabbed several times in the heart and then in the back with a butcher knife. After his head was cut off, it was crushed in a machine used to compress cardboard boxes. The body parts were placed in plastic bags and thrown into the supermarket’s garbage bin. They were discovered days later when a passerby walking his dog noticed one of Katz’s legs lying on the curb near the store.
A homeless man searching the dumpster for food had taken one of the bags, thinking it contained spoiled beef. When he opened it and realized his mistake, he threw it down and ran. The body was identified as Andre Katz two days later through dental records. Throughout the late 1970s, Roy DeMeo trained his followers to become a crew expert at killing victims and dismembering them.
The DeMeo crew developed a prearranged execution method to ensure victims were disposed of quickly and their traces hidden, except for murders intended to send a message to anyone who might interfere with their illegal activities, or crimes for which there was no alternative. The crew’s execution style came to be known as the Gemini Method.