Thomas DeSimone
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| Tommy DeSimone | |
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| Born | May 24, 1940 Brooklyn, New York, USA |
| Died | January 14, 1979[1] Howard Beach, Queens, New York, USA |
Thomas Anthony "Two-Gun Tommy" DeSimone (May 24, 1940 – January 14, 1979[1]) was a gangster and associate of the Lucchese crime family in New York. Also known as "Tommy D", he was also nephew of Los Angeles mob boss Frank DeSimone. He was married to a woman named Cookie but was a constant womanizer. Thomas "Two Guns" DeSimone was the basis for the character "Tommy DeVito" played by Joe Pesci in the 1990 movie Goodfellas. Thomas had one sister, Dolores, as well as three brothers, Robert (imprisoned for life) and Anthony (murdered by Tommy Agro) sometime in 1960s. He is one of the sons of Gambino crime family soldier Joseph "Joe Black" DeSimone (alive as of 2006) and Joe Black's son, Ralph "Cousin" DeSimone Jr. (found murdered June 13, 1991), all of whom were also mobsters.
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[edit] Early life and background
Tommy came from a long Detroit mafia family lineage before relocating to the East Coast. One relative, Rosario DeSimone was the boss over Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas from 1931 until his death in 1946.[2] Tommy's brother Anthony became an informant on the Gambino, Colombo and Lucchese crime family and was later executed by his mentor Tommy Agro. Tommy's uncle, Frank DeSimone, was a criminal attorney-turned-mobster who was an inspiration for the Robert Duvall character Tom Hagen in the 1972 film The Godfather. "Uncle Frank" (as he was known) replaced Jack Dragna in 1957 after Dragna's death, becoming the second DeSimone family descendant to become Los Angeles don. Frank DeSimone was later disbarred as a lawyer, lost his firm and died of a heart attack on August 4th 1967. Robert DeSimone was the last of the brothers who was sentenced to life imprisonment for racketeering in Florida.
[edit] Association with Vario and Burke
Thomas DeSimone worked under Mafia capo Paul Vario with his friends Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill; DeSimone and Hill had known one another since their teens, when Burke took them on as his protégés. Vario used Tommy to steal trucks and perform other crimes for the family, including insurance fraud.
DeSimone's violent temper and callous nature as a hitman were well known. While playing pinochle with mobster-turned-informant Joe Ianuzzi and Tommy Agro, Thomas started throwing darts at the fellow players when he started losing. Hill described DeSimone and Burke by saying, "It didn't take anything for these guys to kill you. They liked it. They would sit around drinking booze and talk about their favorite hits. They enjoyed talking about them." Hill later described DeSimone as a "psychopath", and suggested that DeSimone had something to prove because his older brother, Anthony, had become an informant and was allegedly murdered by members of the Gambino crime family, and that Tommy felt that he had to prove his loyalty by "overcompensating."
[edit] Gangland slayings
Desperately seeking attention from higher mob figures so that he could receive his "button", DeSimone decided to do this by committing his first murder on March 15, 1968. DeSimone was walking down the street with Hill and Burke when DeSimone spotted a victim, Howard Goldstein, an innocent pedestrian. Hill recalls DeSimone turning to him and saying, "Hey Henry, watch this." DeSimone yelled, "Hey!", pulled out a .38 caliber pistol, and shot and killed Goldstein. Henry exclaimed, "that was sheerly cold-blooded, meaningless homicide Tommy." DeSimone replied, "Well, I'm a mean cat."
His second murder was of William "Billy Batts" Devino, a made man who was part of the Gambino crime family. He worked with rising mobster John Gotti. Batts had just gotten out of prison after serving a six-year term for drug possession. While incarcerated, Burke had taken over Batts' businesses, and now that Batts was out of prison, he needed to have Batts out of the way. One night while Batts and Burke were having drinks in the Suite, DeSimone showed up with a .38 revolver and a plastic mattress cover. Burke held Batts in a headlock while DeSimone beat his skull with the revolver. DeSimone, Burke, and an unwitting Henry Hill loaded Batts into the trunk of Hill's Buick Riviera, and were on their way to bury him when Batts woke up; he had to be beaten/stabbed further before he eventually died.
DeSimone's third murder is described by Hill in his book Wiseguy. A young man named Michael "Spider" Gianco was acting as bartender at a card game, and DeSimone took out a handgun, demanded that Gianco dance for him, and shot him in the foot when Gianco refused. A week later, Gianco was again serving drinks; DeSimone started to bully him about his damaged foot, spurring Gianco to reply, "Go fuck yourself." Even though the other card players expressed admiration for Gianco's standing up for himself, DeSimone was humiliated and furious. Losing his temper, DeSimone shot Gianco in the chest, killing him (much to the anger of Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill, who made Tommy bury Gianco's body right there in the cellar). In Goodfellas, Michael Gianco is portrayed by Michael Imperioli.
His fourth murder, according to Hill, occurred when DeSimone got carried away after being asked to 'rough up' a witness to a robbery. After a truck heist, a man had refused to allow Henry Hill to unload the loot in the factory, and made a tremendous fuss because they had no union cards. Burke attempted to reason with the man, but he stood his ground and refused to be threatened. After this, Burke unwisely sent DeSimone to the man's apartment with instructions to threaten and "rough up" the witness, but the homicidal DeSimone ended up beating him to death.
DeSimone's fifth murder was of John Gotti's protégé, a young gangster named Ronald "Foxy" Jerothe, on December 18, 1974. DeSimone had dated Jerothe's sister and then beaten her up, prompting Jerothe to threaten to kill DeSimone. When DeSimone heard about the threat, he went to Jerothe's apartment and knocked on the door; Jerothe opened the door, punched DeSimone in the face, and then DeSimone shot Jerothe between the eyes, killing him.
[edit] Role in the Lufthansa heist
DeSimone was alleged to have taken part in the December 1978 Lufthansa heist from JFK International Airport, the largest robbery in U.S. history at the time. The loot is reputed to have been almost $6,000,000, only a fraction of which was recovered. He was picked out by having very well polished shoes, too well polished for an airport employee.
Henry Hill claims that during the week after Christmas 1978, after murdering Lufthansa robber and mob lackey Parnell 'Stacks' Edwards in his home in Ozone Park, Queens, DeSimone was going to become a "made" member of the Lucchese Family; but due to a heavy snowfall, the event was called off. A few weeks later, DeSimone disappeared.
In Gangsters and GoodFellas, Henry Hill mentioned that DeSimone had killed around 4 people whilst in prison, so that brings the total to around 10. Hill commented that Tommy would murder someone just because he wanted to try out a new firearm and wouldn't hesitate to use someone as a human target for practice.
It is highly likely that aside from knowing murder was a necessity in his trade that DeSimone received a real sense of empowerment and a thrill when he killed someone; he even began carrying two pistols to distinguish himself from others.
[edit] Making his Bones
DeSimone's sixth murder was of Lufthansa lackee, Stacks Edwards. DeSimone was a good friend of Stacks and was as such wary of killing him. When he was told, by a ranking mafiosi, that he could become a made man off of this hit, i.e. 'making his bones', he jumped at the opportunity.
Once he found out where Stacks was hiding out, he visited Stacks and shot him 6 times in the chest and head using a silencer.
[edit] Disappearance and death
On January 14, 1979,[1] DeSimone's wife Cookie reported him missing. Teressa Ferrara, Martin Krugman, Frenchy McMahon, Joe Manri, Parnell Steven Edwards and Paolo LiCastri had all been murdered following the Lufthansa Heist, by Jimmy Burke, who wanted to avoid paying them their share of the loot. For years, the New York Police and FBI believed that DeSimone had either been murdered by Burke, or that he was in hiding to avoid being killed.
When Henry Hill became an FBI informant in 1980, he told authorities that DeSimone had been murdered by the Gambino Crime Family. The full details were unknown until 1994, when Hill, in his book Gangsters and Goodfellas, gave the whole story of the events leading up to DeSimone's death. Hill's wife, Karen, had been having an affair with Hill's boss, Mafia Capo Paul Vario. When Hill was sentenced to prison, DeSimone approached Karen Hill for sex; when she turned him down, DeSimone attempted to rape her. In retaliation, Paul Vario approached the Gambino crew and revealed that DeSimone had murdered Foxy and Billy Batts without first seeking permission from the Gambino family, violating mafia protocol. Sometime in January 1979, DeSimone was contacted and told that he was going to be "made." Peter Varıo and Bruno Facciolo took him to a house, where he was executed.
According to one version, DeSimone's killer was his brother Anthony's capo, Tommy "Tommy Ambrosio" Agro, who was the driving force behind the "getting made" ruse. Agro assassinated him on the orders of John Gotti, and also admitted to murdering his brother Vincent after Vince turned informant. Agro admitted this to turncoat-soldier Joe "Joe Dogs" Ianuzzi. Tommy Agro also at times suggested murdering Robert DeSimone According to Ianuzzi, Agro would often laughingly refer to killing the third DeSimone brother, stating that "Maybe it is time to go for the DeSimone trifecta!" Another account, told by Henry Hill in Gangsters and GoodFellas, states that John Gotti himself was the triggerman.
Allegedly, DeSimone is buried somewhere near his former Ozone Park residence, in the "mafia graveyard". It is also believed that his body was wrapped with some chain-link fencing, weighted down with concrete blocks and dumped in Jamaica Bay to be eaten by the resident crabs.
[edit] In popular culture
- DeSimone's infamy rests on the depiction of him given by actor Joe Pesci in the 1990 movie Goodfellas, a role for which Pesci won an Academy Award. Not surprisingly, the movie took some artistic liberties with a few facts. Pesci's character, Tommy DeVito, was shown ramming an ice pick into Martin Krugman's head; Henry Hill claimed that DeSimone was dead by the time Krugman was killed. At various points in the film, for the purpose of making the story flow better, Tommy DeVito was substituted for various individuals not portrayed in the film. For instance, in the double-date scene where Hill meets his future wife, Tommy DeVito is substituted for Paul Vario's son, Lenny, who actually went on the date.
Hill, neverertheless, calls Pesci's portrayal "between 90 and 95% accurate," mentioning only that Pesci did not physically resemble the character he portrayed; Tommy DeSimone was tall and muscular, always wore a mustache, and was only in his teens and twenties during the events depicted in Goodfellas.
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c Reported missing, January 14, 1979.
- ^ MafiaInternational.com
[edit] References
- Wiseguy, by Nicholas Pileggi and Henry Hill
- Gangsters and Goodfellas, by Henry Hill
- Joe Dogs: The Life and Times of a Mobster by Joseph Ianuzzi
