Hello, I'm a newcomer here.

What do you consider to be the most outrageous thing a made or connected guy has done (that we know about)?

I think Sam DeStefano kidnapping a black guy off the street, taking him home and making him screw his wife must be a contender!!!

Also, Sammy Gravano personally taking part in a hit on a biker who had smashed up his bar whilst he (Sammy) was still on crutches!!!! - talk about dedication to the job

I don't know that "outrageous" quite captures it but Roy DeMeo was involved in trafficking illegal films with children and animals. Supposedly his boss ordered him to stop but looked the other way as long as the money flowed.

Roy Demeo definite - but for his crew's use of what known as the GEMINI method -

The method of execution was dubbed the Gemini Method, named after the Gemini Lounge, the primary hangout of the DeMeo crew as well as the site where most of the crew's victims were killed. The exact process of the Gemini Method, revealed by multiple crew members and associates who became government witness in the early 1980s, was as follows: typically, the victim would be lured through the side door of the Lounge, and into the apartment that made up the back portion of the building. At this point, a crew member (almost always Roy DeMeo according to crew member turned government witness Frederick DiNome) would approach with a silenced pistol in one hand and a towel in the other, shooting the victim in the head then wrapping the towel around the victim's head wound like a turban in order to staunch the blood flow.

Immediately after, another member of the crew (originally Chris Rosenberg up until his 1979 murder, according to government witness testimony) would stab the victim in the heart in order to prevent any more blood from pumping out of the gunshot wound. By then the victim would be dead, at which point the body would be stripped of its clothing and dragged into the bathroom where it was left while the remaining blood drained out and/or congealed within the body. This was to eliminate the messiness of the next step, when crew members would place the body onto plastic tarps laid out in the main room and proceed to dismember it, cutting off the arms, legs and head.

The body parts would then be put into bags, placed in cardboard boxes and sent off to the Fountain Avenue Dump in Brooklyn, where so many tons of garbage were dropped each day that it was a near impossibility for the bodies to ever be discovered. During the initial stages of an early 1980s Federal/State task force targeting the DeMeo Crew, a

On a sidenote - where i from in Brooklyn, there is a guy name the Moldovan schoolmaster or sometimes the russian schoolmaster- he is like the keyzer soze of brighton. It is told that he did something in his youth that qualify for this list. He was one of the only jews in his town in moldova and one day his sister was rape. So, he waits, and wait. He wait nearly 3 years for plan his revenge. then, one night he go and kill the three boys responsible all the same night. He never heard from again till many years later he show up in Sheepshead bay - he is supposed to live on long island now but i not know for sure.

Vlad

Yeah, DeMeo had many outrageous incidents.
Possibly his "crowning" moment was chasing a terrified teenage vacuum cleaner salesman through the streets and gunning the poor kid down!Freddie DiNome was driving with Roy and Dracula hanging out of the windows firing wildly - Dracula even managed to shoot holes in Roys cars floorboards!!!!!!!

Can you elaborate on the Gravano story? I don't think I've ever heard it and it sounds interesting.

Wow, can you elaborate on that one too? Did the unsuspecting vacume salesman just show up to the gemina club and was a victim from being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

The vacuum cleaner salesman was definitely at the wrong place at the wrong time bu it wasn't at the Gemini Club.

It was during the time in which Chris Rosenberg (and probably other members of the crew) had ripped off and murdered some Cuban drug dealers and their associates) Unfortunately for the crew some of the Cubans' friends had Chris' name and had pretty swiftly worked out just who Chris worked for. They demanded Chris' death as a weregild and threatened retaliation if it wasn't handled soon. So between the time that this happened and the time that he murdered Chris, Roy was very paranoid and on edge.

So when a eighteen year old of Puerto Rican/Italian descent dressed in suit and tie stopped his car outside of Roy's house, likely to get his bearings , Roy assumed the worst. He and his friends approached the car. The kid saw the men with guns and took off. They chased him down and murdered him.

Who is Chris? Demayo actually got strong armed by a gang of Cubans? I find that very hard to believe. Roy wasnt afraid of anyone, atleast that the impression I got from reading sins of my father.

Chris DeMeo- real name Harvey Rosenberg- was Roy's first recruit into his crew and as much as anyone the gangster to whom Roy was closest. According to most people who knew "Chris" he was not overly fond of being Jewish and thus used Italian sounding aliases. Chris even harbored fantasies of being "made" one day. Roy was a father figure to Chris as they were both misfits growing up who later became homicidal maniacs.

Because strictly speaking Roy was not supposed to be involved in drug trafficking he did not wish to risk news of all this drug dealing and ripoffs getting back to Castellano, who didn't like him in the first place. Also to protect himself Roy claimed that Chris had done the ripoff and used Roy's name without Roy's knowledge/involvement. So when Roy's captain, Nino, who also wasn't overly fond of Roy, found out about the incident and what the Cubans wanted, he told Roy to take care of it.

Bottom line Chris wasn't Italian and wasn't made so it was not a big concern for Nino. Nino was not going to commit Roy's group, Nino's other crews or the larger Gambino family to war over Harvey Rosenberg.

This is all from "Murder Machine".

Totally about to say that. Lilo got it.
Its' ALL in Murder Machine. Sheesh, what a book. The only mob book i actually felt a little creeped out by.

"Murder Machine" is a very entertaining book, Mickey. But everything that Capeci writes is entertaining (even if it's not all true ). I've never read a more detailed account of the "day to day" operations of a mob crew. And like you say, that book was outright creepy at times.

Have you read "Sins of the Father," by Albert DeMeo? That was en exceptionally well written book for a first time author (DeMeo's son). Very thoughful and hardly a whitewash, yet it did manage to "humanize" Roy. Not an easy task.

thanks for giving me the scoop guys.

By all accounts, Nino Gaggi hit the roof when he learned that Roy had whacked an innocent kid in broad daylight.

On the subject of Gravano.....

Gravano opened an afterhours club in Bensonhurst. The bar was the scene of a violent altercation one night involving a rowdy biker gang intent on ransacking the establishment A violent melee ensued in which Gravano broke his ankle and the bikers were chased off. Gravano then went to Castellano and received permission to murder the leader of the gang.
Big Paul thought that Gravano would pay someone to do the deed for him.
Castellano was flabbergasted when he later learned the crutch-ridden Gravano personally took part in the hit.

To Gary H. - This is a great post haha. I read "Murder Machine" and it was pretty good. Agreed, Nino was crazy mad when he heard about a "civilian" getting offed in broad daylight. That goes against the codes of the street. All gangsters accept the risks, but regular people are not fair play.

To Vlad - your English is not all there but I came here 8 years ago from Odessa so I can understand. I actually found this post looking for info on Gravano but saw your info on the Russian schoolmaster. Here is what I have heard. He is one crazy Mofo and I thought he was just a myth like Soze till one day at Passage on the Bay restaraunt in Sheepshead Bay someone said something about him in passing and the table got sooooo quiet. Someone said parusski (in russian)- Ne Zdes - (not here). So, I surmise it is probably real.

Anyway, on the car ride home I pushed my uncle Alex to tell me what he knew because he seemed to know something from his look of abject horror at the table lol. So he said, from what he heard, that the Russian schoolmaster and the moldovan schoolmaster are the same guy. He was/is a jew from Moldova and he also mentioned the story about his killings in Moldova , but he said 2 people were killed not three - whatever. What he he was pretty sure about was that he was pretty connected in Brooklyn and ran a crew (jews with some really crazy contracted ukrainians mixed in haha)that did everything from gambling to car theft. The part I found interesting was that he said he was one of the only Jews in Soviet russia to be in something called Alpha group, where he instructed troops on counter-insugency and interrogation. According to Wikipedia, ""Alfa Group" or Group A, a special forces (spetsnaz) and special operations unit attached to the KGB was created on 28 July 1974 within the First Chief Directorate of the KGB on the orders of Yuri Andropov, then Chairman of the KGB. It was intended for counter-terrorism operations to give the KGB the capacity to respond to such incidents as the 1972 Munich massacre on its own territory. However, from the beginning, its assigned missions far exceeded its formal scope."

Anyway, interestingly he supposedly (Though uncle Alex was unsure of this part)runs a legit Security consulting service that advises diplomats and vips on personal and compound security. I dont know about him living on LI though - he thought more likely Mill Basin. Thanks for reminding me of this - it happened like 6-7 years ago and my uncle has since passed and this reminds me of him and that day.

Lefty Ruggerio apparently had a pet Lion once.
When it became too big and dangerous to keep he went into the middle of a park someowhere in Queens at night and left it tied to a park bench!!!
The newspaper headline the next day was "King of the Jungle found in Queens".

LOL

That wasn't a mob precedent, Gary. The infamous Gallo brothers kept a lion in their basement in Downtown Brooklyn in the early '60s to encourage prompt shylock payments.

Scary, even by President Street standards .

Vito Genovese whacked a guy so he could marry his widow.

When the Gallos went to the mattresses during the famous Profaci war ca. 1960-61, they invited a reporter from Look Magazine to visit his HQ. The reporter noticed a dwarf in the crew. He asked Crazy Joe who he was. "He's our dwarf," Crazy Joe replied, as if, "Doesn't every organization have a dwarf?"

Al Capone offered to solve the Lindbergh baby kidnapping if he could get sprung from Alcatraz.

Gotti, asked by a reporter if he was the boss of the Gambino Family, replied, "I'm a member of the Gotti family, and my wife Vicki is the boss."

Not to be nitpicky but Gotti's actual response was, "I'm the boss of my family, my wife and kids." The one above is the more witty Armand Assante version in the HBO movie Gotti.