BREAKING NEWS: Gemini Twin No. 2, Joey Testa, Back Home In NYC With The Lucchese Mob, Cut Loose From Feds
May 1, 2024 — Lucchese crime family soldier Joey Testa is free as a bird, released from federal prison on Tuesday morning after three and a half decades inside for racketeering, drugs and multiple gangland homicides. He’s 69. Back in December, Testa’s best pal and fellow Lucchese button man, Anthony Senter, 68, was released to a halfway house. Testa isn’t required to do any time in a halfway house and is off restrictions.
Both Testa and Senter were paroled from their life sentences, grandfathered into a federal parole system that ceased to exist shortly after their incarcerations in 1989. Where the pair will fit into Lucchese mob affairs today, if at all, still remains to be seen, according to sources, although these sources say Testa and Senter are each in the good graces of Lucchese organization leaders.
As young, aspiring Goodfellas, Testa and Senter were dubbed the “Gemini Twins” because of their always being seen side-by-side and being part of the ultra-violent Gambino mob’s Gemini Lounge crew of the 1970s and first portion of the 1980s. The Gemini Lounge crew was overseen by sociopath Brooklyn Gambino mafia chief Roy DeMeo. Later in the decade, Testa and Senter were inducted into the Lucchese crime family. The Gemini Twins and the Gemini Lounge crew as a whole were implicated in literally dozens and possibly hundreds of executions and convicted of several of them in federal court.
Testa and Senter began as teenage gofers for DeMeo’s surrogate son, Harvey (Chris DeMeo) Rosenberg. They ended up being involved in both the DeMeo and Rosenberg killings and tons of money-making rackets involving international car theft rings, bookmaking, juice loans and pricey murder for hire contracts. Although parole was abolished from the federal prison system long ago, if your case was filed prior to 1987, which Testa and Senter’s were, you remain eligible via a grandfather clause. That clause was their saving grace despite the objections from their victims’ families.
Rosenberg was slain in May 1979 in the wake of a quadruple homicide related to a drug-deal-gone-bad with a Cuban cocaine cell out of Miami. The Cubans blamed Rosenberg and the Gambinos instructed DeMeo to kill him to satisfy the Cubans demands, not wanting a drug war with the Cocaine Cowboys in South Florida spilling onto the streets of Brooklyn. DeMeo reportedly stunned Rosenberg by shooting him in the neck as he sat down for their crew’s weekly Sunday night dinner and meeting at the Gemini Lounge. Senter is alleged to have delivered the kill shot to the back of Rosenberg’s head.
DeMeo’s body was found in the trunk of his Cadillac in the parking lot of a Sheepshead boat club in January 1983. Per court testimony and FBI intelligence reports, Testa and Senter shot DeMeo to death at a property owned by Testa’s brother Patty on orders of the Gambino brass via a contract accepted by Lucchese leaders in return for the Lucchese’s receiving DeMeo’s territory and the rights to the Gemini Twins for any future dealings.
