Edward Grillo

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Edward Grillo (, – November 14, 1978) was a member of a Gambino crew headed by soldier Roy DeMeo. After falling into heavy debt with Roy and other loansharks, Grillo was murdered by his own associates in the DeMeo Crew.

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[edit] Induction into the DeMeo Crew

Edward 'Danny' Grillo was recruited by Gambino soldier Roy DeMeo in 1976, shortly after completing a prison sentence for hijacking. Having known DeMeo years prior through Mafia-connected Canarsie junkyards, Grillo was considered a possible useful asset by Roy and began working for him by that summer. Danny was primarily involved in hijackings the crew committed on trucks delivering cargo to and from the nearby JFK Airport. Associate Dominick Montiglio, who had befriended Danny shortly after his induction into the DeMeo crew and who had also become a government witness by the end of 1983, told the FBI of one night around this time when he received a call at his house from Roy DeMeo. A shipment of 120 Smith and Wesson handguns that was headed to law enforcement in Finland had been hijacked by Danny Grillo and other members of the DeMeo crew before it reached the airport, and Roy needed a place to stash the firearms. Montiglio stored the weapons until the following day, when Danny and Roy picked them up. After Roy added a portion of the shipment to his personal stash of weaponry and gave one of the handguns to each of his crew, the majority of the remaining weapons were sold in various New York locations.

[edit] The Gambino-Westies Alliance

Shortly after becoming a member of Roy DeMeo's crew, Danny Grillo was largely responsible for providing DeMeo with the means to form an alliance with a group of Irish-American mobsters known as The Westies. This alliance held great benefits for the Gambino Family and ultimately led to DeMeo being officially inducted, or made into the criminal organization.

While serving his prison sentence for hijacking in the early 1970s, Grillo met James 'Jimmy' Coonan, an Irish mobster who aspired to one day become the leader of the Westies. After both of the men were released in the mid-1970s, they continued to meet socially. During these meetings Coonan would often express his intentions to take over control of the Westies from its leader Michael 'Mickey' Spillane, the only problem being that his followers did not have the necessary funds to mount such a takeover against the existing hierarchy, which was firmly entrenched in the Westie-dominated neighborhoods of Hells Kitchen. Grillo reported Coonan's predicament to his boss Roy DeMeo, who saw opportunity to benefit from the situation. Grillo accompanied Roy to several meetings with Coonan and his followers, and the two groups were soon committing hijackings together and splitting the profits. DeMeo also loaned Coonan large sums of money to help him begin building a portfolio of loanshark customers. The alliance strengthened when Mickey Spillane was shot to death outside of his apartment building on May 13 of 1977, reportedly by Danny Grillo and his superior Roy.

With Spillane gone, Jimmy Coonan then sought to eliminate Ruby Stein, a large-scale loanshark with ties to the Genovese Family. The idea was that killing Stein would eliminate massive amounts of debt owed to him by members of the Westies as well as by Grillo, who reportedly suffered from a gambling addiction. Two days after Spillane's murder Danny Grillo, without the permission or knowledge of his boss DeMeo, shot Ruby Stein to death in a club owned by a Westie member. The corpse was then dismembered by Coonan and his followers, packaged and deposited into the ocean.

[edit] Murder

By 1978, Danny Grillo found himself in debt to DeMeo as well as to other loansharks, who he borrowed from to continue paying Roy out of fear for his life. This constant pressure and threat of violence due to a late-payment, as well as an addiction to cocaine, apparently made Grillo begin acting erratically. This behavior led DeMeo and his superior, Anthony Gaggi, to believe that Grillo was weak and would fold under police pressure to cooperate if he were to be arrested. Dominick Montiglio had attempted to help Danny, sometimes even at the risk of his own life, such as when he destroyed $50,000 worth of debt markers that Danny had acquired during a night of gambling at an event sponsored by the hierarchy of the Gambino Family. DeMeo confronted Montiglio about Danny's behavior, and made statements that led Dominick to believe he did not have much time left to intervene on Grillo's behalf. Montiglio soon realized he was too late when he visited the DeMeo crew's primary hangout, the Gemini Lounge, on November 15, 1978. Seeing crew members Chris Rosenberg, Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter outside near the entrance to the Lounge, Montiglio asked if they had seen Danny. Rosenberg allegedly smiled and replied, "No one will see Danny no more." Montiglio then approached Roy inside the Lounge, who confirmed Rosenberg's statement, claiming that "...if anybody wants to talk to (Danny) they'll have to talk to him at the Fountain Avenue dump." Montiglio testified that the meaning behind that statement was clear, as it was well known around the Canarsie neighborhood that many of the DeMeo crew's victims were dismembered and then deposited at, among other locations, the Fountain Avenue dump. DeMeo went on to say that the crew had left Danny Grillo's car parked at the center of the Manhattan Bridge with its driver-side door open, to make it appear as if Danny had committed suicide by throwing himself off of the bridge and into the waters below.

Roy DeMeo further confirmed Grillo's fate in a meeting with the leaders of the Westies shortly after, according to testimony from James Coonan's second-in-command Mickey Featherstone, who became a government witness in the mid-1980s and testified in the 1988-1989 trial of the surviving DeMeo Crew members. At the meeting, Featherstone testified, DeMeo learned from Coonan that during the time Danny Grillo was in heavy debt with him, he had tried to borrow yet more money from Roy through Coonan. Upon hearing this, DeMeo allegedly remarked, "I wish you would've told me earlier, I would've cut him into littler pieces."

Grillo's wife later testified that on November 14, 1978, the day her husband disappeared, Danny had received a call at his house from Roy DeMeo requesting he come to a meeting at the Gemini Lounge. Grillo willingly attended this meeting, but not before taking special care to tell his wife and children goodbye. His wife discovered after he had gone that he had left his wallet and other personal possessions behind. Apparently he had willingly gone to a meeting he knew he would be killed at.

[edit] Sources

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