On the afternoon of June 5, 1986, Robert DiBernardo walked down a narrow staircase into the basement of a construction office in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He was a Gambino capo, a porn tycoon, and one of the highest earners in the family. He thought he was there for a sit-down about business.
He was halfway across the room when a soldier named Joseph "Old Man Peruta" stepped up behind him and fired two silenced .22 caliber rounds into the back of his head. DiBernardo dropped where he stood. Sammy Gravano watched from 20 feet away. The whole thing took less than a minute.
By sundown, the body was gone, wrapped, weighted, and driven to a grave that has never been found. Forty years later, his remains are still missing.
DiBernardo, known as DB, was not an enemy of John Gotti. He was an ally who helped put Gotti in power. He backed the Castellano hit and poured millions into the family. Six months after Gotti took over, DB was dead by his order.
Robert DiBernardo was born on May 31, 1937, in Hewlett, Long Island. He grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, the son of a small business owner. He wasn't a street kid. He was clean-cut, soft-spoken, and wore glasses. People said he looked more like an accountant than a gangster.
In the late 1960s, he got involved with a small softcore magazine distribution operation in Manhattan. He saw something others didn't: scale. He partnered with Gambino soldier Theodore Rothstein and Ettore Zappi to found Star Distributors. On paper, it was a legitimate wholesaler. In reality, it became the largest distributor of hardcore pornography in the United States.
By the mid-1970s, DB controlled the pipeline that fed nearly every major adult retailer east of the Mississippi. The margins were enormous. A reel that cost $2 to produce was sold to retailers for $15. A videotape that cost $4 to duplicate was sold for $45. At every step, the mob took a cut.
Federal estimates placed organized crime's take from adult entertainment at between $500 million and $1 billion a year in the late 1970s and early 1980s. DB personally earned tens of millions and kicked a massive percentage up to Paul Castellano, the Gambino boss. Castellano loved him.
Castellano was building a white-collar Mafia, a suit-and-tie operation built on construction, labor unions, and high-margin rackets. DB was the perfect soldier for that model. But inside the family, two factions were forming.
The first was Castellano's white-collar faction. The second was the old-school street faction led by underboss Neil Dellacroce. Under Dellacroce was a hot-headed capo from Ozone Park named John Gotti. Gotti hated Castellano and believed the family belonged to men like him.
The feud came to a head in 1985. Angelo Ruggiero, Gotti's closest friend, was caught on FBI wiretaps talking about heroin, which was forbidden. Castellano demanded the tapes. Ruggiero refused. Gotti backed him. The standoff became a crisis.
Dellacroce was the only thing protecting Gotti, but he was dying of cancer. He passed away on December 2, 1985. Two weeks later, on December 16, Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti were gunned down outside Sparks Steak House in Midtown Manhattan. Gotti and Gravano watched from a parked Lincoln a block away.
The Castellano hit wasn't a one-man decision. Gotti needed support from the capos. DiBernardo gave it. He had been close to Castellano, but he signed on with the coup. He voted yes when Gotti was named boss.
What DiBernardo didn't know was that Gotti was already thinking about killing him. Gotti was deeply insecure. He didn't trust earners. He didn't trust guys who were smarter than him. He especially didn't trust anyone who had been close to Castellano.
In Gotti's mind, anyone who voted to kill one boss could vote to kill another. DiBernardo was too rich, too respected, and too independent.
Three months after becoming boss, Gotti was indicted on RICO charges. He was distracted and paranoid. With Gotti tied up in trial preparation, DiBernardo began to step forward at meetings and handle disputes. Then Angelo Ruggiero came to Gravano with a story.
Ruggiero claimed that DB had said that while Gotti was in court, maybe he should be underboss or acting boss. Ruggiero went to Gotti with this. Gotti exploded. He saw it as treason.
But years later, Gravano admitted he never actually heard DiBernardo say any such thing. Ruggiero had claimed it. Gotti had believed it. There was no wiretap, no second witness, no proof. Some believed Ruggiero, who owed DB a significant amount of money, manufactured the story to erase the debt.
Gravano protested the hit. He told Gotti there was no proof. Gotti wouldn't hear it. He gave the order: kill him, fast and clean.
Gravano ran a construction company out of a two-story office building at 1809 Stillwell Avenue. He sent word to DiBernardo that he needed to meet about a construction issue. DB trusted Gravano. They had worked together for years.
On the afternoon of June 5, 1986, DiBernardo drove his white Cadillac to Stillwell Avenue. He went inside. Gravano suggested they go down to the basement to look at blueprints. DB went first down the narrow staircase.
Old Man Peruta was waiting behind a support column with a silenced .22. DB walked past him, focused on the desk with the blueprints. Peruta stepped forward and fired twice. Both shots hit the back of DB's head.
The body was wrapped in a tarp and carried to a waiting van. It was driven to a pre-dug grave somewhere in the New York or New Jersey area. Some believe it was a construction site. Others say a patch of wooded land in Staten Island. A few insiders suggested it was mixed into the foundation of a building being poured that week.
The hole was filled. The earth was smoothed. Robert DiBernardo disappeared.
His white Cadillac was later recovered in the Gravesend neighborhood of Brooklyn. Engine off, doors locked, keys still in the ignition. The FBI opened a missing person investigation. It stayed open for years.
Inside the family, DB's crew was dissolved and his rackets were absorbed by other capos. Gravano took over a significant chunk of his legitimate businesses. Gotti joked about the disappearance, saying things like, "That guy always had big ideas, didn't he?"
Gravano didn't laugh. He later wrote that the DiBernardo killing was the moment he first understood what John Gotti really was: a man who killed out of fear and called it strategy.
There was a darker detail Gotti used years later to justify the hit. Federal investigators in New Jersey had begun building a case tying DB to the distribution of child pornography. No indictment had been filed, but rumors reached the family. Gotti used this publicly to suggest DB deserved what he got.
Gravano never bought it. He said if the child pornography investigation had been the real reason, Gotti would have said so before the hit, not after. The truth was simpler. DiBernardo was becoming too powerful. Ruggiero wanted his debt erased. And Gotti wanted to send a message.
The message was this: no one is safe. Not friends, not earners, not allies. The boss decides who lives and who dies.
Old Man Peruta, the shooter, was never charged with the murder. He died of natural causes in the early 1990s. Angelo Ruggiero was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1988. Gotti refused to visit him. Ruggiero died alone on December 4, 1989, at age 49.
Sammy Gravano rose to underboss. In 1991, he agreed to cooperate and became the highest-ranking mafia turncoat in American history. His testimony put Gotti away for life. Among the 19 murders he confessed to, the one he said haunted him most was the killing of Robert DiBernardo.
John Gotti was convicted on April 2, 1992, on charges that included the murders of Paul Castellano and Robert DiBernardo. He was sentenced to life without parole. He died of throat cancer on June 10, 2002, at age 61.
The rackets DiBernardo built were dismantled by federal task forces through the 1990s. Star Distributors was seized. The peep show economy collapsed with the rise of the internet. Everything DB built was gone within 15 years.
DiBernardo's wife, Andelise, lived in the Hewlett home they had shared for decades. She held out hope that her husband might walk through the door. She attended no funeral. She had no grave to visit. Family members said the worst part wasn't knowing he was dead. It was the silence.
Forty years later, DB's remains have never been found. Federal investigators have searched sites in Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and New Jersey. They have dug up parking lots and probed construction foundations. Nothing.
Robert DiBernardo made the Gambino family richer than almost any capo in its history. He earned respect without violence. He supported John Gotti when Gotti needed him most. For every envelope, every vote, every loyal act, he got two .22 caliber rounds in the back of the head from a man he trusted.
That is the real story of the mafia. Not the honor. Not the brotherhood. Not the romance the movies sell. The real story is this: you can be the smartest man in the room, the highest earner in the family, and help crown the new king. None of it matters.
In the end, the king decides. And John Gotti killed the one man who proved what the job really required: the willingness to murder a friend for no reason at all.