To paraphrase Ole’ Blue Eyes himself, velvet-voiced Frank Sinatra, “It was a very good year” for the notoriously bloodthirsty Gemini Twins. For decades, it appeared neither would ever see freedom after convictions on multiple homicide counts in the late 1980s.

Fast forward to the 2020s. And by spring 2024, both Gemini Twins will be back home in New York City before their 70th birthdays.

Lucchese crime family soldier Joey Testa, 69, was granted parole this week and is scheduled to land in a halfway house in April. In the weeks prior to Christmas back in December Testa’s best pal, fellow Lucchese button man, Anthony Senter, 68, was released and is in the process to reacclimating to life on the street following 35 years in the joint. Where the pair will fit into current Lucchese mob affairs, if at all, still remains to be seen, according to sources, although these sources say both Testa and Senter are 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 together out and about in the Big Apple together 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 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 gangland homicides 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 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.