On January 14, 1979, Tommy DeSimone walked down a set of stairs into a basement on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. He was wearing a double-breasted black Bill Blass suit, convinced he was about to become a made man in the Lucchese crime family. He was 28 years old and certain this was his coronation.
John Gotti put three bullets in his head. The entire execution took five seconds. DeSimone’s head crashed forward onto a card table, blood pooling on the green felt. Gotti buttoned his cashmere overcoat and left. DeSimone’s body was never discovered.
Martin Scorsese’s *Goodfellas* told the world about DeSimone’s death, but it left out a crucial part of the story. DeSimone wasn’t killed just for murdering Billy Batts, the made man whose death is central to the film. There was another victim, another unauthorized hit, and that killing sealed his fate.
The other victim was Ronald “Foxy” Gerothe. DeSimone had been dating Foxy’s sister. After the relationship ended, DeSimone beat her. Foxy confronted DeSimone about it and punched him in the face in public. Days later, DeSimone walked into Foxy’s sister’s apartment and shot Foxy three times in the head at point-blank range.
Foxy was part of John Gotti’s crew. Gotti had been grooming him. The murder was personal, reckless, and done without permission. Gotti didn’t act immediately because DeSimone was protected by Paul Vario and Jimmy Burke. Instead, Gotti waited. He waited five years.
DeSimone was born in Queens on June 6, 1946. He was the youngest of eight children. By age 15, he was running with Paul Vario’s crew in East New York. His older brothers were already in the game. One would later be killed for being an informant. The other received a life sentence.
DeSimone had no boundaries. His sister said his teenage years were spent boxing, weightlifting, and punching a bag in a spare bedroom. He had a short temper and a ferocious appetite. He drank almost a gallon of whole milk a day. He kept pocket knives in a cigar box under his bed.
Jimmy Burke brought DeSimone into the cigarette hijacking racket in 1965. Henry Hill, who was part of the crew, later said Burke introduced them at a cabstand. DeSimone was 15, wearing a wiseguy suit and a pencil mustache. Burke told Hill to teach the kid the cigarette racket.
They made hundreds of dollars a day selling hijacked cigarettes to construction sites, garment factories, and subway depots. DeSimone was a teenager bringing in more money than most working adults. He was also learning how to move product, keep his mouth shut, and hurt people when intimidation wasn’t enough.
DeSimone committed his first murder when he was 17. The victim was Howard Goldstein, a random stranger walking down the street. There was no reason, no beef, no financial motive. DeSimone shot him dead. When Henry Hill confronted him about it, DeSimone said, “Well, I’m a mean cat.”
Most mob killers killed for business, territory, or revenge. DeSimone killed because he was angry, because someone disrespected him, or because he felt like it. By his early 20s, he was carrying two guns in a brown paper bag during hijackings. People noticed. That wasn’t normal.
Henry Hill began to wonder if DeSimone was insane after watching him murder a bartender named Michael “Spider” Gianco. Spider had told DeSimone to go screw himself during a card game. A week earlier, DeSimone had shot Spider in the foot for refusing to dance. When Spider refused again, DeSimone pulled out a gun and shot him three times in the chest.
The murder of Billy Batts happened in 1970. Batts was a 49-year-old made man in the Gambino crime family. He had just been released from federal prison after serving six years. The crew threw him a welcome home party.
*Goodfellas* shows Batts making a wisecrack about DeSimone shining shoes as a kid. The real reason for the killing had nothing to do with that. While Batts was in prison, Jimmy Burke had taken over his loan sharking racket. When Batts got out, he wanted it back. Burke had no intention of giving it up.
Two weeks after the welcome home party, Batts was drinking at a bar called the Suite. DeSimone came in and whispered to Henry Hill, “Keep him here. I’m going for a bag.” He meant a plastic mattress cover, so Batts wouldn’t bleed all over the place when they killed him.
DeSimone came back with a .38. Jimmy Burke wrapped his arm around Batts’s neck in a chokehold. DeSimone smashed the gun into the side of Batts’s head. They thought he was dead. They wrapped him up and threw him in the trunk of Henry’s car.
While driving up the Taconic Parkway, they heard banging. Batts wasn’t dead. They pulled over, popped the trunk, and finished him with a shovel and a tire iron. Three months later, they had to dig him up and move him because the property was being developed.
Even killing a made man without permission wasn’t the worst thing DeSimone did. In December 1974, he killed Foxy Gerothe. Foxy was young, loyal, and someone Gotti was grooming. DeSimone had dated Foxy’s sister and then beaten her. Foxy confronted DeSimone and knocked him down in public.
DeSimone’s pride couldn’t take that. On December 18, 1974, he went into Foxy’s sister’s apartment and shot Foxy three times in the head with a .38 caliber revolver. Foxy’s sister was there. She saw it all. The police suspected DeSimone, but no one testified. The case went cold.
The streets knew, and John Gotti knew. Gotti was livid. Foxy was his protege. DeSimone had taken him out over a personal grudge, without permission, without a sit-down, without respect. Gotti couldn’t kill DeSimone without starting a war, so he waited.
DeSimone kept killing. He strangled Dominic Remo Asani on orders from Jimmy Burke. Remo had set up one of Burke’s cigarette loads to get busted. DeSimone used a piano wire in the backseat. They buried him behind Robert’s Lounge in Queens, next to the bocce court.
Then came the Lufthansa Heist. On December 11, 1978, a crew of masked men walked into the Lufthansa cargo terminal at JFK Airport and walked out with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry. It was the biggest cash robbery in American history at the time. DeSimone was part of it.
During the robbery, DeSimone raised his ski mask to wipe sweat from his face. A warehouse employee caught a glimpse of him. A police sketch artist could now identify him. The FBI had his picture. DeSimone was now a liability.
Jimmy Burke began eliminating loose ends. DeSimone was one of the hit men doing the eliminating, but he was also a marked man. John Gotti hadn’t forgotten about Foxy. With the Lufthansa pressure, Gotti saw his chance.
Gotti went to Paul Vario and demanded a meeting. He made his point. DeSimone killed Billy Batts without asking. He killed Foxy without asking. Both were Gambino soldiers. Now Vario wanted to make DeSimone a made man. Gotti said it was like sticking a cactus up his ass. He wanted the green light to whack him.
Vario thought about it. DeSimone had always been a problem, a useful problem, but a problem. He killed without thinking. He bragged when he should have kept his mouth shut. He attracted attention. He was soon to be indicted for Lufthansa. There was one more thing. Years before, when Henry Hill was in federal prison, DeSimone had attempted to assault Hill’s wife, Karen. Vario was angry about that.
Vario granted permission. “Yeah, John, do what you got to do.”
On a cold winter night in late January 1979, DeSimone received a call. He was told to get ready. He was going to be made. He put on his best suit, a black double-breasted Bill Blass, a starched blue shirt, and a beige silk tie. He thought this was the most important night of his life.
Bruno Facciolo and Peter Vario picked him up in Ozone Park and drove him to the Bronx. They told him the ceremony was happening at a restaurant called Don Vito’s. DeSimone walked into that basement expecting to see Lucchese people. Instead, he saw John Gotti sitting at a card table with a few old men. Candles lit the room.
DeSimone was confused. Why was a Gambino capo at a Lucchese induction? Gotti smiled. “Welcome, Tommy. Congratulations. Pull a chair up to the table and sit comfortably. This is not an ordinary day in your life, I want you to know.”
DeSimone sat down. Gotti pulled a silencer-equipped Colt .38 Magnum from his coat. Three shots. All three bullets hit DeSimone in the skull. His head slammed forward onto the green felt card table. Gotti buttoned his coat, straightened his lapels, and walked out without a word.
Tommy DeSimone’s body was never discovered. Some think he was split in half with a chainsaw and thrown into the Atlantic. Some think his body was crushed in a car at a mob-connected scrapyard and melted down at a steel mill in Pennsylvania. Nobody knows for sure.
What is certain is that DeSimone’s violence was so extreme that the movie had to dial it back. The Foxy murder was left out of *Goodfellas* because showing DeSimone beating a woman and then killing her brother would have made him utterly unsympathetic. Scorsese wanted the audience to feel something when Tommy died.
The fact is, Tommy DeSimone didn’t deserve it.