Joseph Guglielmo

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Joey Guglielmo aka "Dracula" was the elderly first cousin of Gambino family capo Roy DeMeo (d1983). He was as vicious a gangster as any of the DeMeo Crew and although his penchant was for the pornography rings that the crew operated out of the city, Joey was also an old hand at drug dealing and murder. He was part of the fateful team along with Chris Rosenberg that travelled to Miami, Florida in the new year of 1979 to take delivery of half a million dollars worth of cocaine and to kill the suppliers without payment. This incident caused a huge scandal in the criminal underworld and to some degree precipitated the eventual downfall of the entire crew.

Only a handful of people alive today know the origins of Joey's nickname which has been variously attributed to either the gangsters all-night revelry in the pornography studios or to his predilection for performing assorted observances with the blood of the crews countless victims in the apartment building he rented behind the Gemini Lounge in Brooklyn. Nevertheless at the end of the DeMeo Crew's reign it is well know that Joey accompanied Roy on various undertakings that could only be described as habitual serial slayings.

By the early to mid 1980s, the DeMeo crew was under heavy investigation by the US government. Warrants were handed out for many of the core and periphery crew members. It was around this time that Joseph Guglielmo disappeared. Law enforcement originally suspected that he had most likely been murdered by the same members of the crew that killed Roy DeMeo in order to eliminate the possibility of Guglielmo being pressured into becoming a government witness in the case. It was also assumed Guglielmo's lack of discretion in discussing the murderous activities that took place in the DeMeo crew's primary hangout was a contributing factor to his suspected murder.

However, according to Albert DeMeo's book, "For The Sins of My Father", Joseph Guglielmo was not killed, but actually fled voluntarily to avoid prosecution. Albert claims to have driven Guglielmo to the airport, where Guglielmo then got on a plane and never contacted Albert again. It is unknown just how valid this story is, but it presents an interesting alternative to the original accepted story of Guglielmo's disappearance.

[edit] Sources

• Murder Machine by Gene Mustain & Jerry Capeci, 1993, ISBN 0-451-40387-8.
• For The Sins of My Father: A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life, by Al DeMeo, 2003.