Organized Crime Figure. A member of the Gambino crime family, he was a loanshark, car thief, and killer who operated out of the Gemini Lounge in Flatlands, Brooklyn, New York City, New York. Beginning in the mid 1970s, he started dealing drugs and retagging stolen automobiles, accompanied by several neighborhood youths. He then became perhaps the most feared man in the New York underworld, creating an an “assembly line” for murder. The potential victim was lured to the Gemini Lounge clubhouse, where he was shot, stabbed in the heart, and then sawed apart. The body parts were then bagged and thrown out with the garbage. A police informant once related that Roy DeMeo compared murder to “having the power of God. Deciding who lives, who dies.” Over the years the DeMeo crew murdered anyone and everyone who got in their way, even some of their own members. Estimates of their number of victims range from 25 to 75 to as high as 200. In the early 1980s the New York City police and Federal authorities began moving in on Roy DeMeo’s operation. Paul Castellano was worried that DeMeo might cooperate with the government and ordered his murder. He was shot to death on January 10, 1983, most probably by two of his original recruits, Joey Testa and Anthony Senter. DeMeo’s body was discovered eight days later in the trunk of his Cadillac, a chandelier covering his body like a death shroud. (bio by: Dennis Rice)