Also the article mentions a Greg Bucceroni and the below is his info regarding Tommy Desimone and other stuff....can anyone validate this or know any more about this guy?
According to the papers, Wise Guy and Goodfellas, Tommy DeSimone was probably whacked for killing "Billy Batts" Bentvena during his "welcome home" party, but it looks like he was part of the Lufthansa curse. According to street stories that I heard, Tommy DeSimone was cut in half with a chainsaw and dumped into the Atlantic Ocean after the Lufthansa heist. But a new source casts further shadows on the hearsay evidence.
A former Gambino family associate, now a victims’ advocate, reached out to Den of Geek for an exclusive inside take on whatever happened to Tommy DeSimone.
Greg Bucceroni was a self-proclaimed “young violent street criminal from Philadelphia who associated with a variety of adult criminal types including Jimmy Burke.” He grew up in South Philly. His uncle was former ranked heavyweight boxer Dan “Butcher Boy” Bucceroni (active from 1947 to 1954. Won 47, 31 by knockout, and lost 6. Knocked out twice), who collected debts for local gangsters.
“My uncle Dan was well known amongst the local ‘goodfellas,’ which opened the door for special treatment by Philly mobsters Angelo Bruno, Harry Riccobene and others,” said Bucceroni.
By 1975, Bucceroni was running errands for Riccobene's “loan sharking and bookmaking operations in South Philly.” His association grew into “a variety of criminal acts” associated with “human trafficking, loan sharking, book making, grand theft auto, burglary, petty thefts and vandalism,” Bucceroni said.
Bucceroni’s association with the Gambino family started when Riccobene introduced him to Gambino mob associate "Fat" Chucky Smith in the late '70s. Smith “operated mob front pornography establishments throughout Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York City along with fellow Gambino mobsters Tony Trombetta, Richie Basciano and Robert ‘DB’ DiBernardo, Richie Kuklinski, Roy DeMeo, and others along with Lucchese mob associates Jimmy Burke, Tommy DeSimone, and Henry Hill who collaborated in trafficking stolen property, illegal drugs, and guns throughout the Delaware Valley area,” said Bucceroni.
“By the 1980s, I slowly developed into a young violent mob associate with the Gambino crime family's illegal pornography establishments headed by Robert ‘DB’ DiBernardo,” Bucceroni said.
Bucceroni met Jimmy Burke “back in 1978” though Harry Riccobene. Tommy DeSimone disappeared in 1979. Press reports said the job was done by the crew of future Gambino boss John Gotti, then captain of the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club crew. Bucceroni said that the reports of “Tommy DeSimone being murdered by John Gotti” are “wrong.” Bucceroni said Jimmy the Gent was behind it.
“DeSimone actually was murdered by Jimmy Burke at Burke's home back in 1979 while Burke was covering his tracks regarding the Lufthansa Heist in addition to John Gotti's investigating what Burke's and DeSimone's involvement was in the murder of Billy Batts,” Bucceroni said.
"They were made guys with the Gambinos and Tommy had killed them without an okay," according to Wise Guy. "Nobody knew Tommy had done it but the Gambino people had somehow gotten the proof. They had a sit-down with Paulie and they got Paulie’s okay to Kill Tommy. … Even Jimmy couldn't avenge Tommy.” It was a Sicilian thing.
The book says Tommy was never seen again. The book also says, three pages later in the paperback edition on page 224, that a Lufthansa cargo worker ID’d DeSimone’s mug shot and fingered him as the gunman in the JFK heist. The shiny city shoes. In the book Gangsters and Goodfellas, Henry Hill says John Gotti had DeSimone killed. The papers say mob informant Joseph "Joe Dogs" Iannuzzi fingered Thomas Agro for the job. Agro is reportedly the guy who did the job on Tommy's brother.
Greg Bucceroni would have you believe that DeSimone disappeared because Jimmy Burke was cleaning house. If he did get a call at a booth about a murder he ordered, he must have been as good an actor as De Niro for the show he put on for Henry Hill. Our source says Hill "exaggerated" some details. He said Two-Gun Tommy was killed in Burke's home. Bucceroni doesn't say how DeSimone was killed, but he doesn't think Tommy had a less than dignified burial at sea.
“Burke requested Richard Kuklinski associate Richie Bildstein to take DeSimone's dead body to a Philadelphia scrap metal yard to be disposed of in a pile of scrap metal that was soon afterwards sent to U.S. Steel Co in Pennsylvania to be melted down as scrap metal. Tommy DeSimone's body has never been found,” Buceroni said.
According to the web site Find a Grave, you can’t find DeSimone’s grave. The young gangster was given a "non-cemetery burial." Where was DeSimone's body buried, if not in a cemetery? Bucceroni believes he saw it during a 1979 meeting in a mob front scrap metal yard in the Kensington section of Philadelphia.
“I witnessed Gambino mob associate Richard Bildstein dispose of a dead body in a crushed automobile and place the crushed vehicle into a large scrap metal pile awaiting shipment to U.S. Steel Co. to be sold as scrap metal after Bildstein returned from Queens, New York after meeting with mob associates Richard Kuklinski and Jimmy Burke,” Bucceroni said.
“Although I never saw the face of the dead body, Bildstein alleged that it was DeSimone after Burke requested Bildstein to dispose of DeSimone's body due to DeSimone's often drunkard-drug induced bragging after the Lufthansa airport heist,” Bucceroni explained.
The movie and the book both tell about the lengths Burke went to cover any tracks that might lead to him. The movie shows bodies strewn throughout the greater New York area, frozen in meat refrigerators, in the backs of trucks, on the West Side Highway as "Jimmy Conway" stays one step ahead of the feds.
The NYPD were “actively investigating Burke's possible involvement in the airport theft, in addition to the unrelated John Gotti inquiry into the unsanctioned murder of Gotti crew soldier William 'Billy Batts’ Bentvena back in 1970,” Bucceroni explained.
“I remember Bildstein saying ‘bye bye Tommy’ as he dumped the crushed car into a pile of scrap metal due to be shipped out the following day. The Kensington based scrap metal yards often served as a disposal location for criminal types that wanted a murdered body to disappear,” Bucceroni said.
Bucceroni is no stranger to headline attachment himself. He appeared on The Dr. Phil Show, made headlines in the New York Daily News, a Washington Post blog, the Huffington Post, and The Daily Mail when he came forward as a former child prostitute who was part of a ring that serviced former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky and the late Philadelphia businessman Ed "Uncle Eddie" Savitz, who died in 1993 while awaiting trial.
“Yes I was a general practitioner of crime including child prostitution,” said Bucceroni. “Back in the 1970s, street hustling was just another criminal avenue in making a lot of money on the streets. It was well known back in the 1970s that Sandusky, Ed Savitz and other philanthropists would meet up in Philadelphia during Eagles or Army-Navy football games and philanthropy charitable events then afterwards participate in what was known as 'kid swapping' in sexually exploiting adolescent boys at local Philadelphia area hotels. This is where the Sandusky connection comes in," Bucceroni said.
The Daily News branded Bucceroni’s Sandusky interview a “Bull Session.” To put it in movie terms, Bucceroni was suspect because he suffered from a kind of Forrest Gump syndrome, putting himself in historical context long after the fact. When confronted with the reports, Bucceroni responded like the former street kid he claims to be. He came out fighting.
"Philly Daily News reporter William Bender did exactly the story his employer Daily News owner Lewis Katz told him to do in discrediting my allegations after I reported to the U.S. Attorney Generals, FBI and U.S. Postal Inspectors regarding certain Philadelphia politicians and businessmen who sexually solicited me and other kids from Philly back in the 1970s when I was a young adolescent street hustler, " said Bucceroni.
"Talking about the mob stuff is nothing, but talking about a few powerful Philadelphia politicians that had a sexual taste for adolescent boys back in the 1970s when these politicians were climbing the political ladder is a total different monster with far more serious consequences," Bucceroni said.
Ralph Cipriano interviewed Bucceroni for his book about Philly mobster John Veasey, The Hit Man. Cipriano cut Bucceroni from the book because he found him "spectacularly unreliable" and determined "his facts did not seem to be reality-based," according to Philly.com.
"Ralph Cipriano was doing a story on my former childhood street hustling friend, mob hitman John Veasey, at the time, and was going to include me in a mob book based on Veasey's life story," Bucceroni explained. "Things quickly fell apart when I mentioned to the Feds how former mob hitman John Veasey (now in the witness protection program) use to street hustle with me and other Philly kids back in the 1970s."
"Veasey became aware of my allegations and threatened Cipriano that he was going to pull out of the mob book story if Cipriano mentions
My past is my past, there’s not much I can do about that,” Bucceroni said. “It’s what I do today that defines me. I felt you deserved to know a few things about a few people that are not commonly known. All I can say is that was unfortunately part of my life that developed into my adult life as a mob associate.”
Bucceroni said when he was a kid and met Henry Hill, that the older mobster was a “degenerate junkie” and that he “exaggerated” his role in the mob to beef up Pileggi’s book. Bucceroni puts himself in the middle of a few stories that have made headlines or celluloid fare. The Richard Kuklinski that Bucceroni talks about is the suburban hitman that Michael Shannon played in The Iceman. Both Hill and Bucceroni talked to the feds.
The volcano, which is what law enforcement calls the society that surrounds organized crime, is small. It is much smaller than the press or entertainment presents. If Bucceroni did come up through child prostitution on his way to a short-lived criminal career, it is entirely possible that he would have traversed the worlds he talks about. If not, he feeds into the legends of the streets. Goodfellas is all about street mythology. Things become true if they’re repeated enough and word on the street is that nobody knows nothing.
Everyone knows something, most of them just keep their mouths shut.
A few years ago, I wrote a piece that talked about a killing that a member of their thing, who died seven years before the Tommy D disappearance, did twenty years before that. The incident was common knowledge on the streets, the thing of local legends. I showed it to a friend of friends of friends and was given word that it would classify me as a “rat.” The story never went forward. I met a former member who admitted that years after leaving the organization, as an old man now, he was still dreading the knock at the door that might end with a .22 behind his ears.
Bucceroni said he’s not afraid of any repercussions because the players are deceased and nobody cares anymore about what he had to say.
"How is it I can walk around South Philadelphia mob neighborhoods and attend Philly mob trials sitting next to Philly mobsters in the court room audience if I'm a 'fake' mobster?" Bucceroni asked. "We both know that I would have been taken out a long time ago if that was true. Today I talk about mobsters of past not involving any current Philly mobsters. I'm no threat to the Philly mob for which many know of my troubling past and associations. But hey, the past is the past. They’re not worried nor am I."
His life is defined by his role as a youth and victims’ advocate now and the past was largely buried.
Jimmy Burke’s former home on 81-48 102 Rd. in South Ozone Park, Queens, was excavated for bodies in June 2013. According to DNAinfo New York, the FBI found what they thought was human remains. Reported forensics results were unclear.
Jimmy “the Gent” Burke died in federal prison in 1996 while serving a 20-year prison term for murdering a drug dealer. The truth is buried with him. Everyone in New York has a little Zelig in them, growing up so close to everything that's going on, two blocks from national headlines. This is all speculation because corroboration is synonymous with contradiction. It is a secret society, or was, until ratting became a racket.
Tommy DeSimone’s body is still at large.
