Mob's Grim Reaper: Roy DeMeo's Violent Odyssey

Organized Crime and Punishment

Title: Mob's Grim Reaper: Roy DeMeo's Violent Odyssey

Original Publication Date: 8/30/2023

Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/bkHR55zM1qY

Description: In this episode of Organized Crime and Punishment, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the chilling tale of Roy DeMeo, a ruthless figure who left an indelible mark on the world of organized crime. Join us as we trace DeMeo's meteoric rise through the ranks of the Gambino crime family, his notorious "DeMeo Crew," and their involvement in a string of gruesome murders and criminal enterprises. From his reputation as a cold-blooded enforcer to his ties with powerful crime syndicates, we explore the factors that fueled DeMeo's dominance and the empire he built. However, as the walls closed in and law enforcement tightened their grip, his empire began to crumble, leading to his eventual demise in a hail of bullets. Tune in to unravel the complex web of power, violence, and justice in the underworld, and don't miss our expert analysis on the legacy that Roy DeMeo leaves behind. #OrganizedCrime #TrueCrime #RoyDeMeo #CriminalEmpire #GambinoFamily #DeMeoCrew #RiseAndFall #ColdBlooded #PodcastEpisode #TrueCrimeStory

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Begin Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime with your hosts, Steve and Mustache Chris.

Let's talk a little bit about Paul Castellano because Paul Castellano, he came up in our last episode about the Iceman. To me, he seemed like the... Really the most unlikeliest of mafia guys, because he had a huge legitimate business in meatpacking that, uh, the, his business was in selling meat and chicken, and he made tons and tons of [00:01:00] money.

If I'm not mistaken, both of his sons were involved in the business and they were completely legit. And I. Don't understand why someone like Paul Castellano would want to be involved in this really dirty, nasty. Underworld element of the, the mafia when he could have just been involved completely in the white collar part of the mafia, which in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s.

Sure. If you were. In labor unions, or if you were in something like meatpacking, yeah, you were connected to the mafia, but you didn't have to be in the nitty gritty of being around people like Roy DeMeo and the Westies, and the really gritty, nasty part of the mafia and the organized crime. No, I just, I think.

It's because he just kind of grew up with it and kind of got pulled into it. And [00:02:00] because he was such a good earner, I mean, it, it would make kind of sense that you would want that guy to be the head of the family because nobody knew how to like make as much money as Paul and do it somewhat. I mean, do it legitimately for the most part and not attract like police attention, but.

I don't like Paul wasn't really cut out for the job to like, I don't think he really understood like stuff that was coming down the pipe in terms of like week, uh, Rico and like wiretapping. Cause he would have all the dude, you would have all the guys like show up at the, I believe it was like the veterans club that they called every two weeks, every week to sit down and talk about, you know, what was Gambino family.

And it's the cops are just kind of sitting there laughing at them and say, well, I mean, really, they're all going to show up at the same time. We're just. I'm going to stand out here and take pictures and, you know, and his own house was wiretapped at one point. He just doesn't seem, it seemed like probably like a good idea in theory.

This guy's a great [00:03:00] earner and he seems to keep his nose pretty clean. Like who better to run the family, but. In practice, it didn't really work out all that well. And I mean, he was so like white collar too, that he, he really kind of pissed off the guys that were, you know, like the street guys. And if you're going to be the head of a mafia family, you have to be able to strike a balance between the two where.

The street guys are happy because you do need them. At the end of the day, the mafia is kind of built on muscle. If you don't have that, um, the threat of violence, if, um, the rest of it doesn't really work all that well. I mean, especially in like, you know, labor unions and like the construction business and even.

I mean, even Paul's chicken and poultry business was built on kind of loan sharking where, you know, he was successful at it and then he would lend out loans to like other, you know, butcher shops and what have you. And then they obviously wouldn't be able to pay. And then he would just take like, 25 or 50% of their business.

And that's kind of how it grew up. That doesn't work. If you don't [00:04:00] really have the guys like Roy DeMail showing up at, you know, Joe Schmoe's butcher house saying, you know, this is how it's going to go down. If it doesn't go down in the next couple of days like this, um, you know, we're going to take care of business.

If they're not afraid that these guys are going to take care of business, the whole thing doesn't really work. Does that make sense? Yeah, I think that, uh, definitely in somebody like Paul, he was perfect as the boss in that he had this really. Good knowledge of the, um, of the white collar part. But at that point in the Gambino family, you had the Gambino family was really the Mafiaa in New York City.

There was still the five families. And if we go a little bit further, the de Caval canes in New Jersey right next door. But it was really, the Gambinos were the game. They were the biggest family and they were divided between the Manhattan. Faction under Neil Della [00:05:00] Croce and Nino Gaggi in the, uh, the Brooklyn Faction.

It was a family that was really split between these two regional factions, plus the white collar faction and the more blue collar faction. So they, it was a. It was a very tough, or it was a huge umbrella, you might say, and it was maybe too big for its own good. Yeah, and it's, there's a lot of different theories about, like, if Neil Delacroix had been made boss instead of, uh, Paul Castellano.

Oh, like, how history would have been different, like, does John Gotti come around? And, you know, like, there's... It's interesting, but, yeah, like, Paul... Paul just wasn't the guy for the job, in my opinion. He didn't, you can't look down on the street guys because without them, the rest of it just doesn't work. And the, the, the intimidation of is like essential to the mafia.

That doesn't, you [00:06:00] can't, you got to treat those guys fairly because they're just as important as the guys, you know, doing, you know, running the concrete business, which is pretty much. The mob ran the entire concrete business. It's crazy to think that in New York, if you poured any concrete, you're the that was the mob's concrete.

You're paying the mob one way or another. Now, the other thing. So we have this really that somebody it's Paul Castellano is like one of those people with the plates trying to like, spin them on sticks and keep this whole thing of the Gambino crime family going. Then you have, if we zoom in on Paul DeM or on Roy DeMeo, looking at his personal life, he was somebody who, for the most part, Kept lived two separate lives that he didn't live in Brooklyn.

He lived in the suburbs. He lived a completely normal suburban lifestyle at the same time of being a brutal street criminal in New [00:07:00] York City. You know, he would do like firework shows for house parties. Uh, He practice and for, you know, every in house with the mom, the peddling, the pornography and all that stuff.

And he tried to like his family life was completely stopped, not want any of the stuff kind of truly involved in all the craziness. I don't, how do you think some, it seemed that it, Roy was able to hold those two lives together for a long time, but then it really did start breaking down for him. Yeah, well the, I, the thing that kind of starts it is Chris Rosenberg.

Should, is that, should we start talking about that? Yeah, let's, because that's kinda where it kind of all starts falling apart. Yeah. Let's get into that. Yeah, so Chris Rosenberg, who we had mentioned earlier, was kind of like, uh, a son almost to Roy DeMille, you kind of viewed him as like a son or a little brother, comes up with this, uh, harebrained idea that he [00:08:00] was going to do, uh, a massive coke dealer with some, uh, Colombians that were living in Florida.

Colombians, uh, sorry, Cubans that were in Florida at the time and Chris, yeah, Chris comes up with this great idea. It's like, well, I'm going to do the deal and I'm going to show up and but I'm going to take the coke and I'm also going to take the money. And so how is Chris going to do this? Oh, he's just going to kill them.

And As opposed to, like, introducing himself as, like, Chris Rosenberg, which is who he is, he was, he would, he introduced himself as Chris DeMeo. And, where it gets, I believe he was, like, the, the guys who were, he ended up killing were, like, cousins to some, oh, I think it was El Negro. With some Cuban, um, uh, some big time, like Cuban drug Lord and they put, uh, basically say that the, uh, the, uh, only, uh, form that the only way that this is going to go away is if Chris Rosenberg is killed and it's [00:09:00] made publicly.

So, you know, God, he goes to Roy de Mayo. It's like, I understand that, you know, how much Chris means to you, but he like really messed up. And if we don't do anything about this quickly, we could have a full on, you know, war between the Gambino family and a Cuban, uh, drug cartel. And to be quite honest to the Gambinos are really powerful, but I don't really know if they could have, uh, taken on a, a drug cartel, which, uh, I mean, anybody who's like looked into narcos, there's the mafia and then like the narcos are a whole nother level above the mafia in terms of just, you know, power and influence Roy.

For obvious reasons is, you know, apprehensive. He really doesn't want to do this and this kind of shows a different kind of side of Roy where a lot of the stuff you read about Roy, you get the impression that he's just this like cold blooded, ruthless killer. And he definitely was that. But this to me shows, I think it was like two weeks or a couple of [00:10:00] weeks.

He was holding off trying to killing Chris because he really didn't want to do this. And uh, Roy, in the meantime, you know, he's like getting paranoid and there is a kid hanging out in front of his house. Um, can't remember his name right now, but he would, he looked cute. Uh, Roy DeMille thought it was a Cuban hit man.

So, you know, he chases him down for a couple of blocks and catches up to him and basically shoots dead, you know, right in the middle of the street, middle of the day. Turns out that the kid was just selling vacuums and, you know, gets a word of this and freaks out and says like, okay, that's enough. Like you, you, uh, take care of Chris right now, or you're, you're done yourself.

We're, we'll take care of you. And so they get, um, Chris to go back to the Gemini lounge, which they had done many, many times. I'm surprised that Chris knowing the circumstances would agree to go to the Gemini lounge, but he does. And Roy [00:11:00] shoots. Um, and from the information that we have, he shoots them once and, uh, in the head, but Chris didn't die.

I guess he didn't get a clean enough shots and he's up on one knee. Roy can't finish the job. And I believe in the job for Roy, but this and Roy's son talks about this and period and Chris's, I mean, in a Roy's life and how it, it really messed him up, like when he shot that Cuban kid, he was. I believe was didn't leave his room for a couple of days.

It really affected them. And then on top of, you know, with Chris, it really affected him too. And it, it shows that he wasn't like a psychopath. He actually did feel like he actually didn't care about people and deeply and. Unlike say, like somebody like a Ted Bundy who was a sociopath and didn't really have any empathy for anybody.

Clearly Roy did. He was just able to [00:12:00] compartmentalize the, um, what he was doing with the, the murdering. Cause for the most part, the guys that he was killing were going to either. Gonna rat on him and his crew and, you know, like ruin his family's life. And for the most part, the guys who were going to be ratting weren't like exactly good guys either.

They probably would have done the same thing to Roy if the roles were reversed. I mean, I can see in a way how you would justify. Uh, justified to yourself that, like, these murders are okay because they, you know, because of the situation I just laid out, but Chris, that's my best friend, and this kid, he had nothing to do with it.

I was just being paranoid, and I killed an innocent person for no reason. Steve here again. We Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like Josh Cohen's Eyewitness History and many other great shows. Go [00:13:00] to Parthenon Podcast to learn more. And now, here's a quick word from our sponsors.

That's the big thing with Roy, and I think, you have to try and understand Roy, I think, even though it's hard to, and it's hard for, me to wrap my mind around, Roy is like a, um, somebody in the military who, They, they kill the enemy. I think that first for Roy, he took a lot of glee in it and a black humor, but I think it was black humor in a lot of ways to cover up for how insane it was, how much killing they were doing and the way they were killing it, killing people.

But like you said, that Roy really was upset that he had to kill his. Best friend for a good chunk of his life and is the person we mentored in Chris, uh, Chris Rosenberg and [00:14:00] that, uh, you know, inadvertently killing that kid who was selling the vacuums that really wasn't Roy. Roy was a killer, but he, he wasn't a serial killer.

I think that that's really the difference. Yeah. It's like the military is, is, is a really good comparison. That's kind of how I view is Roy saw himself as a soldier in the Gambino family. And he excelled at doing. This type of dirty work and he viewed it as no different than say, like a soldier going into battle and having to kill the enemy.

Let's talk, let's shift gears a bit to, um, the biggest score really that Roy had in his whole career. And it was this whole thing about stealing cars in New York. Cleaning them up, you might say, and then shipping them over to [00:15:00] Kuwait. It was really the score that made him a lot of money. And if it had really come to full fruition, what it probably had made him one of the biggest gangsters in, of all times.

Yeah, the. It's called, well, it's referred like Empire Boulevard and they had this, this whole elaborate system in terms of stealing these cars where they had it down to such a science where his, uh, Kuwaiti buyers would say, we want, I'll just use it. We want a caddy, you know, 72 caddy red with these types of rims.

And Roy has a whole, you know, had a whole army of kids. police cars. And they had a system where he basically had like an on demand car stealing service where, you know, people would like write down to the color of the paint, the type mileage, the whole nine yards. And yeah, they would bring them back to the empire [00:16:00] Boulevard and they would change the VIN number and, you know, stuff so that the car wasn't, uh, wasn't traceable and.

I'm trying to remember the amount of cars that were stolen like in a year, but it is astronomical and there was just nothing done about it. I mean, at the time, like the police force in general was understaffed, but, you know, roundabout way, you know, the The, the, you know, the chubby kid from school was like a butcher apprentice and like was always known for these like blue collar type crimes as become an international criminal, because that's basically what it is.

This is committing international crime, trading stolen cars from, you know, New York and shipping them out to Kuwait. It's mind boggling that it got this big. The, the thing that, because I was kind of going into this with the. Modern mindset on how hard it is to really steal a car for and resell it in the U.

1. with VIN [00:17:00] plates and each car has a unique identifier called a vehicle identification number of VIN, and if I'm not mistaken, that this is kind of your business. The VIN number is all over everything, if I'm not mistaken, like it's really hard to take a car and just resell it because then you can't get it registered.

You can't do anything with it because of this VIN number. Yeah, that's why a lot of the times like the cars they would end up stealing for the, I mean, they would steal like. Cars hold sometimes they tell them to love just, uh, you know, shady or like used car lots. I wouldn't have you and they would buy it for cheap But for the most part you would steal the car and it goes to what we call In the the business kind of I'm in i'm not In the chop shop business, but we call them chop shops and they would, they would steal a car and they chop the car ups.

They take all the parts out of all the valuable parts off the car and then [00:18:00] sell the parts and then those become untraceable for the most part. And then they would just get rid of the car, no car, no crime. And this, this thing took it to a whole nother level though, cause they were selling like an entire cars and I assume parts too, but like entire cars to these, uh, Kuwaiti businessmen.

And I guess at the time that they did have VIN numbers on the cars, they just, Roy was able to like. Come up with new VIN numbers and he would double check with his contacts in the police department to, you know, make sure that the, this didn't accidentally just like duplicate a VIN number or what have you.

And then that would like trigger off, like, uh, if this car had ever been got pulled over or what have you, um, cause he had a whole sophisticated business too, in terms of like. You know, police on the payroll, basically, because none of this would work unless the police were turning a blind eye to a lot of it.

And he, and he was really kind of threading the needle [00:19:00] because the, the local, the MIPD cared about the stolen cars, but the federal authorities like customs. They didn't particularly care because the paperwork was clean enough for them that they didn't really, nothing, it didn't raise any huge alarms to them of these cars and a lot of them had really, you know, they were getting sloppy with the VIN plates and they were getting sloppy with a lot of elements with it, but it didn't really matter because the Kuwaitis didn't care.

They were just getting flooded with it. Extremely cheap cars, and Roy was making a fortune off of it, I think they were saying that just when they were getting ramped up, they were stealing four to five cars a night, every night of the week, for weeks and weeks and weeks, I mean, hundreds and hundreds of cars, they had to expand their Enterprise from only from being able to process four cars at a [00:20:00] time to 20 cars at a time.

And that was at a time when it was a lot easier to steal cars than it was today. So they, it was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. You know, cars were just vaporizing off the street. Yeah, well, it goes to show you to that, like the cops were, he had to have enough of the police force paying paid off the police force with nothing to really be done about for as long as it's this was going on, you'd imagine, like, just say for 20 cars a day or getting stolen in New York, 20 cars, the point where they, like, I pointed it out, they had, like, an on demand service where you could just kind of go to Roy and be like, I want a red caddy.

Oh, yeah, no problem. I'll get it for you tomorrow. And he just sends out like some kids to go steal the car from, you know, because they would use kids because of the most part they nothing would really happen to them. They just get sent home like they wouldn't throw them and the kids don't, you know, steal a car again.

For the most part, that's what they would do. And for the most part, you could teach a kid how to steal [00:21:00] those cars. A kid could steal one of those cars in minutes. Yeah, yeah, easily. And then there's like, you don't have to worry about a lot of the other stuff of like an adult was caught stealing the car.

They'll be like, who are you stealing the car for? You know, most people are stupid. They'll start blabbing. What really was the cause of Roy's fall? Because Roy eventually does it, everything crumbles, uh, underneath him, his whole foundations. What happens to Roy? Crazy as it sounds, you'd think once Roy was made a, like a main guy, he would just kind of slow down a bit.

It's like, okay, uh, you know, I'm, I'm good, but no, I apparently the exact opposite happened. He ramped up the killing and he took more contracts and like to the point he was like doing them at like discounts and It's crazy, I figured you would slow down and you know, you've made it, you're not gonna, like his, Roy wasn't gonna get any higher than that, you know, [00:22:00] he was a made guy, he wasn't gonna be a capo, he was never gonna be a head of the family, that was never gonna happen.

He figured I reached the pinnacle of everything I worked for, but no, that's not what happened at all. But like the, I, the one particular situation that happened that kind of like accelerated his downfall was there was James Eppolito and James Eppolito jr. Right. I'm saying that I'm remembering this correctly.

And yes, there is, they're actually related to that famous mafia cop. Yeah. Yeah. They're, it's a really fat, those guys. Fascinating story. They go to Paul Castellano saying that Roy, uh, and Nino are dealing drugs. And officially the ruling in the Gambino family, it was different from family to family, but in the Gambino family, Paul Castellano said, had like a zero tolerance policy for dealing drugs.

This is what he would say, right? And it was like, Death penalty for anybody caught dealing drugs. [00:23:00] Now people say like, Oh, you know, it wasn't that like moral and virtuous for the mafia family to be like, Oh, we're above, we're not going to be dealing drugs. It wasn't like anything to do with morals. It was guys.

We get caught dealing drugs and the charges for dealing drugs were. Really high. So the guy dealing just a bit of heroin or a bit of coke would be looking at 20 years in prison. Most people don't have enough willpower to not talk when they're looking at 20 years in prison. They're probably going to talk and it causes, you know, so people talk and then.

But then if you're having to worry about people talking because they got busted for drugs, you're going to have to take care of them. You take care of them yourself, and it just leaves all kind of problems. It's just in the long run. There's a ton of money to be made in drugs, but Paul and certain mafia guys.

It's not worth all the extra trouble. Like we're, we're making tons of money doing our loan sharking and stealing cars and, you know, our labor unions and construction rackets. [00:24:00] And, you know, we don't, we don't need that type of money, but Paul was, Paul was a hypocrite, he knew that Roy and Nino were dealing drugs and he, he took the money, right?

Um, Paul goes to Nino and says, well, the. You know, these Epilito guys have, uh, came to me saying that you were doing this. He goes and basically gave Roy and Nino the, you know, go ahead, just take care of it as you want. And so, Roy and Nino, they do, they, they find out where these guys are, I believe it was in a, like a parking garage or what have you.

And they, um, they go and kill 'em. But there happened to be an eyewitness nearby. That's all 'em do. And they waved, I guess she waved the cop that was nearby and the cop came down and Nino and Roy get into a gunfight with a cop, Nino gets hit, he ends up in the neck, he gets arrested, Roy ends up, ends up, uh, getting away.

But, [00:25:00] this This is where one of the more infamous, uh, Roy DeMeo stories, and was that hair, like, can you explain this, this hair brain scheme that they had? Because they end up taking the bullet out of, like, Nino's neck and try to put a different bullet in his neck. Oh, I'm, it was, it was so... Dumb, but if it worked, it would have been genius.

I think they, yeah, I didn't completely understand what they were trying to do because I don't think they really understood what they were trying to do, but they wanted, they wanted it to make it look like Nino was, they wanted to make it look. Like, Nino had been shot earlier, I think, to give him a defense that it was a self defense or something.

It was just, it was a really, really, if it, because I think you have to look at it that juries and lawyers and that whole, the, the whole criminal thing, you're just trying to prove some. [00:26:00] Tiny doubt in one juror's mind that maybe it didn't happen the way the prosecution said it and, but it was just, I think that it was to me, that was so emblematic of Nino it's Nino, let's come up with this airbrained idea and throw it up in the air and let's see if it, if it takes off or not.

Yeah, what ends up happening is Nino ends up going to jail for, I believe it was five to 15 years, probably would have got more, but there was like jury tampering involved. And I mean, the whole situation is just not good, you know, you know, Roy killed that innocent kid. And then now on top of this, they're getting into shootouts with cops and being really sloppy about that was the thing with the Eppolito.

Murders is just, it doesn't seem like Roy, he, I don't know. It's almost [00:27:00] like hubris. He's going to a parking lot, you know, out in the open. It just doesn't like Roy from a couple years ago, probably would have came up with a more intelligent way of going about this and not getting caught. But I think it was just kind of hubris and maybe it was just getting tired of the whole.

Lifestyle, I think, because it, it, it is really sloppy and it doesn't seem, I don't know, like, like I pointed out, like, a couple of years ago, Roy wouldn't be doing this, but, you know, the whole situation isn't good. Your capo's in jail, it puts a huge red light on your, uh, huge, like, uh, light on all the illegal stuff that you're up to and.

It just puts a lot of heat on the Gambino family, because, I mean, getting into shootouts with your, you know, inter mafia guys is one thing, but getting into shootouts with cops? Yeah, it's just so much heat. It's, it's can, it's so unnecessary. And I think that was a major unforced error [00:28:00] for them. That whole situation.

Yeah, because they could've just, I mean, okay, whatever, you wanted revenge at the, uh, at these, uh, polito guys, you could've just waited. There was no reason you had to take immediate revenge. They could've just waited for a better, really, you probably could've waited, like, a couple years, and these guys probably would've had their guard down at some point.

They just weren't thinking straight. They were thinking impulsively.

Steve here again with a quick word from our sponsors. I wonder with the, with the mafia at this point, like, maybe the smarter people like Paul saw that with dealing drugs, they were dealing with people like with the Colombians and the, the Cubans and these, these other groups who were really, really bad hombres, you might call them, they were not criminal Headline Anybody to trifle with and [00:29:00] sure, maybe the mafia could have taken them on, but it was so unnecessary to take these on.

And it would be just constant warfare when really drugs was just a sideshow for them, for the mafia, the five families. Yeah, I mean, I would. Yeah, I would. Yeah, I would agree with that. Like, I mean, some of the cooler heads and some of the, you know, I guess maybe higher IQ people in the month, you kind of looked at the drugs and thought, like, this is just inviting.

It's not to mention, like, you end up having guys who end up getting addicted to the drugs and and, you know, like, if you're dealing drugs in the neighborhood and people are all walking around like zombies in the neighborhood, like, the cops start looking into it. It's just and, like, the charges that come with, you know, getting busted dealing drugs.

It's just. I mean, yes, there's a lot of money that can be made into it. But I mean, if you look at a lot of the big time drug dealers in [00:30:00] American history, they kind of were, um, I don't know, like they would shine really bright for a bit and then it would all come crashing down really quickly where the mafia was kind of like the opposite, where it was just slow, slow, gradual buildup.

There was just so much more money to be made, too, with things like Paul's legitimate businesses. Sure, legitimate businesses that have connections to organized crime get investigated, and sometimes there's fines, but there's so much more avenue to obfuscate and move money around on the books and things like that.

With drugs, it's so much easier for prosecutors to start sniping people, and it Brings down everyone. I just, I, I have to agree with, with Paul. Yeah. You're not going to, well, Paul, I mean, Paul loved the money though. So Paul, he could have started whacking people to stop it, but he really didn't because he loved taking in all that money.

I guess [00:31:00] that's the thing, like you were saying that you can make so, so, so much money off of the drugs, but then it brings down. All the heat. It brings down heat from the people they're buying the drugs from. It brings down heat from every layer of government. I, I think that they, they really did miss something by just staying out of the drugs altogether.

Yeah, I agree with that, but I mean, the temptation is just, it's so, there's so much money to be made, it just seems, the temptation seems to be too much, especially with like, the cast of shady characters that is the, uh, Italian Mafia, but, I mean, That's the thing with drugs too is it doesn't like you could like take a low end street dealer and all of a sudden he's, you know, talking about, you know, he's the next Joe Valachi talking about, you know, this is how this whole thing works and, you know, it's just like a street guy, right?

That could potentially [00:32:00] facing 20 years in jail. Like it's if Paul was consistent in the sense of, Like, he actually did just kill people that were in the Gambino family that were caught dealing drugs. Then, yeah, but he tried to like have best of both worlds, or he would just pick and choose who he would do that to.

Eventually, Roy's whole world falls apart around him. How, what's the end of Roy look like? Well, the heat's Starts coming down for the car Stealing business, but the whole how the whole epilido thing went down paul castellano just comes to the conclusion It's like yeah, roy's bringing in a lot of money But all the other trouble that he's bringing is just not worth it.

He puts out a contract to uh on roy And this is what I found pretty interesting is apparently nobody would really take the contract because they were all just terrified of Roy Tamayo and his crew like, uh, apparently John Cotty wouldn't take the job for this reason because, you know, Roy had a whole like [00:33:00] psychotic killer crew with him and Roy himself was, you know, had a reputation of, you know, well founded for being pretty insane himself and yeah, nobody would take the job and eventually it came down to his own crew was the one that decided they would Take the job and do it.

Uh, and that's exactly what happened. Anthony center and Joseph test. Uh, are the prime suspects are the ones who took down Roy to mail. But people think that, you know, God, who was out of prison at this time, uh, was there as well. They shot Roy a bunch of times and stuff them in his trunk of his car. And where he was found, I think it was like a couple of days later, frozen to the spare wheel.

Do you think in the end that Roy, because Roy, his career is really very parallel with John Gotti and this is the time period of the rise of John Gotti. Do you think that Roy was a serious competitor to John [00:34:00] Gotti to have to take over the Gambino crime family? No, I don't, I don't think so. Just because of the way, I mean, it's possible.

I mean, Albert Anastasia had became like a, you know, a head of the family himself, right? And he was pretty and he was like Roy DeMille in the sense of like, he enjoyed killing and. was pretty insane himself. Um, but I just don't think, I don't know, I just don't, I just can't see Roy becoming a head of the family.

But I mean, he was a great earner, and he didn't mind getting his hands dirty. So I mean, it's possible, but everything that I've read, I don't think many people thought that was a realistic positive possibility. And now in our next episode, we're going to tie together Richard Kuklinski and Roy DeMeo. The one thing that sticks with me with Roy DeMeo, and I think that how Richard Kuklinski got drawn into his orbit, is that Roy DeMeo really did [00:35:00] surround himself with a varied crew, a diverse crew, you might say, and I think that, not to give away too much of next week, but My thought is that Richard Kuklinski was an admirer of Roy DeMeo from afar.

Yeah, I would agree with that, and I think Richard, it kind of, yeah, I kind of almost like, I don't worship Roy DeMeo in a lot of ways. I noticed it when I was, uh, reading Into the Iceman. I had already known a little bit about Roy DeMeo, but like, really getting into, like, Roy DeMeo's story. It really kind of, and we'll get into this more next week, but it really kind of looks like Richard really wanted to be Roy DeMeo or, um, admired Roy DeMeo so much that he mixed, uh, he mixed, uh, his story and Roy DeMeo's story.

Together. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I think in a lot of ways it goes even deeper than that. So I think [00:36:00] that I'm I know I'm going to really enjoy discussing this story. And I hope people join us next week when we talk about the Iceman at movie and how that draws in Richard Kuklinski with the story of Roy DeMeo because I think you're going to people out there are going to see a lot of parallels.

Between their story, their two stories. And I think it's going to be interesting to compare and contrast them and see maybe where some of those similarities come from. Yeah, for sure. I guess my like last word on like Roy DeMille would be John Gotti and tough guys in the Italian mob, you know, some of the toughest guys in the world or in New York at the time looked at, had a contract.

Put out on Paul, the boss put a contract out on Roy and they looked at Roy and said, no, I'm not really interested in taking that contract. So that just kind of shows you the, uh, the, uh, the reputation that Roy [00:37:00] had in the, you know, in that tough guy world where he was like the toughest of the top and the craziest of the craziest.

Then yeah, I'm going to, I've had a blast. You know, learning about Roy and learning about Richard Kuklinski. And, you know, I guess it's going to come to a conclusion next week. We're going to leave it at that for today. I just want to mention though, the best thing you can do to help us in this podcast is if you enjoy what you're hearing, tell a friend, tell a couple of friends about the Organized Crime and Punishment Podcast so that your friends can become friends of ours.

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