For the Sins of My Father: A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life

by Albert Demeo

  A lie is always fragile, and the lie I was living imploded simply and cleanly one gray Manhattan morning. Jerry Capeci, the reporter who had contacted my mother in 1988, and his co-author published their book. I found out about it from an old high school friend who also worked in the financial district. He was the only one of my Wall Street colleagues who knew of my Mafia connections. One evening I got a phone call from him, telling me that a book had just been published about my father. The book was titled Murder Machine: A True Story of Madness and the Mafia. According to the advertising blurb, it was based on revelations from my father's old crew. Quietly, without telling Carrie, I went to a Manhattan bookstore the next day and asked the clerk if they stocked the book. She handed it to me without a second glance. Red letters screamed from the black book jacket: “They were the DeMeo gang—the most deadly hit men in organized crime . . . [known as] Murder Machine.” An accompanying review by the New York Post described the book as “the inside story of a single Brooklyn gang that killed more Americans than the Iraqi army.” My whole body went numb. I paid the clerk in cash and got out of there as quickly as I could.

  Alone, turning the pages of the book that night, I found myself plunged back nearly ten years, into the same state of shock that had followed my father's murder. Each page was a new agony. My father's name was emblazoned on the cover and included on nearly every page of the text. The photo insert carried pictures of Chris and Anthony and Joey, Uncle Nino, Cousin Joe, and, horrifically, crime scene photos of my father's murder. In the index I found my own name listed as Albert DeMeo, son of Roy, with page references for incidents in our family's life. It was overwhelming, bizarre. I read page after page filled with accounts of our home life by people I had never met, who had never spoken to anyone present at the occasions they described. Even more surreal, I found descriptions of what I, my mother and sisters, and especially my father had been thinking and feeling through much of our lives. How could these writers possibly know such things when they had never even met us?

  I read detailed descriptions of events that were grossly inaccurate, events that I had witnessed firsthand. A number of these “factual accounts” were completely untrue. Most of the information came from Dominick Montiglio, Nino Gaggi's nephew. I remembered the Dominick I had known, the wannabe who had always resented his uncle Nino's reluctance to give him the position in the crew Dominick believed he deserved. I remembered all the years Dominick had spent in a drug-induced fog, barely able to function in the grip of the heroin addiction that destroyed his health, his judgment, and ultimately his personal life. And most of all, I remembered my father talking Nino out of killing Dominick because my father felt sorry for him, believed that Dominick deserved compassion because of the chemical addiction that consumed him. This was the “impeccable source” for Capeci's endless accounts of Mafia life in the seventies and eighties—that and the Gemini Twins, fountains of truth that they were. As long as they were already in prison for three murders, why not make it a hundred and three? It sounded so much more impressive.

  Yet it was neither Dominick nor the Twins that angered me most. What enraged me beyond words, beyond my ability to contain it, was the book's depiction of my father. In the words of Capeci, my father had been transformed into a cowardly, hulking creature who killed for pleasure and groveled in sensory pleasure: a fat, drunken beast devoid of remorse, incapable of compassion, a preevolutionary monstrosity. Every sentence about him dripped with contempt and petty, gratuitous insults. Capeci seemed obsessed with my father's weight, the most common epithet attached to him being “the fat bully.” I'd rarely seen my father take a drink in all the days and nights I spent with him. He thought alcohol and drugs dulled the senses, a dangerous luxury in the world he inhabited. As for his weight, he worked out daily during his last years, and though he was husky, he was never grossly obese. As for “the fat bully of Brooklyn,” as Capeci described him during his teenage years, family photos of Dad show a dark, lean, fit young man during my parents' courtship. What was the point of continually emphasizing Dad's weight except for the sake of insulting him? And my mother—the book referred to her as the “stone cold widow” in the wake of my father's death. I knew the pain she had suffered, still suffered. How dare these strangers speak about my mother with such disrespect? My mind went back to the officers who had arrived at our front door to announce my father's death. “Gina,” they had called her, these strangers in our home. They had not even done her the courtesy of calling her Mrs. DeMeo.

  And for the first time, I read about my father's murder in the words of the people who had committed it. It confirmed what I already suspected. Paul Castellano had ordered the hit, making my uncle Nino do it himself as a test of loyalty. Nino had trouble pulling the trigger on his old friend and missed his aim, hitting my father in the chest as my father instinctively threw his hands up. That explained the bullet holes I had seen in his hands at the morgue. The story came from the Gemini Twins, who had been in on the hit. They described the shooting with contempt for Nino's weakness, bragging that they had put the fatal bullets in my father's head themselves and stuffed his body in the trunk. Their insolence seemed to leap off the page.

  All the old rage came pouring back as I read, and for the first time in years, I wished that I had killed Joey and Anthony myself. Yet the rage wasn't the worst of it. As I continued turning the pages, my anger was gradually transformed into sickened disbelief. I knew that my father had murdered people in the course of his criminal career. I knew he had killed the Colombian student, I suspected he had killed Chris, and I had listened as he considered killing Paul Castellano. I had read articles on Mafia murders from the time I was nine or ten, and I understood the implications of the gun and knife kept hidden in the trunk of the car. My father's profession was dangerous, and sometimes people got killed. Yet I had never seen the killings, never known the details, and had kept the possibilities vague in my mind. The man I knew was careful and compassionate. I had always believed that my father killed only out of grim necessity, only when there was no other way to resolve a situation, and that those who had died at his hands were fellow soldiers in an internecine war. They knew the rules and played the game anyway. Yet however exaggerated and inaccurate this book was, it was impossible to ignore the allegations that my father had been a professional assassin.

  The text swam before my eyes as they refused to focus on the words beneath. I felt myself leave my body, and I had the strange sensation that I was watching myself read. The pages overflowed with murder after murder, some of them motivated solely by profit, others involving minor players that no stretch of my imagination could label as fellow soldiers. Faces in the crime scene photos Mack had shown me flitted before my eyes. Was this what he had been getting at? Were these ghastly stories the things he thought I knew? Unbidden pieces of old conversations overheard at the Gemini began to take on horrifying new meanings. There were lurid descriptions of my father's crew disposing of bodies by what the authors called “the Gemini method,” draining the blood in the shower and carving them into small pieces with knives in Cousin Joe's kitchen so the victims could not be identified. I used to eat pasta and cannoli in that kitchen as a boy. I suddenly remembered how often Joe's apartment had been freshly repainted. What was the paint covering up? Blood stains?

  Worst of all was Chris's murder. The Gemini Twins had been there that night, too. Castellano had told my father that if he didn't kill Chris himself, Big Paul would have my father killed. When Chris got to Cousin Joe's apartment for the usual Friday night division of cash, my father had shot him coming through the door—right by the kitchen table where I had once passed my test of manhood. Only my father's hand was shaking so hard that he missed his aim, and Chris fell to his knees wounded at my father's feet. Anthony and Joey finished Chris off, but not fast enough to keep him from knowing my father was responsible. They dragged Chris's body out to his car while my father remained behind. The parallels were overwhelming. Just as my father had killed C
hris, so Nino had killed my father, in the same way and for the same reasons. Not personal, simply survival.

  I read all night, sitting in front of my fireplace with Luca, and afterward I sat staring at the pictures of my father in the photo insert. I didn't recognize him. He had lived in my mind every hour since his death, but when I looked at the face staring back at me now, I did not even know who he was.

  I could not process what I had just read. I put the book in the back of a drawer, went back to work the next day, and prayed that no one would buy it. I said nothing to Carrie.

  A few days later my mother called. Uncle Louis had heard about the book and had brought her a copy. I asked her if she had read it. Her “yes” hung in the air.

  “Albert?”

  “Yeah, Mom?”

  “We can't let your sisters read it.”

  “Of course not, Mom, absolutely. They don't need to know anything about it. I don't think many people are going to read this piece of trash anyway.”

  “You really think so, Albert?”

  “Sure, Mom. Of course I do. Don't worry about it. Everything will be fine.” She pretended to believe me.

  I pretended to believe it, too. Maybe I would never have to think about what I'd read again, and I could go on as before, the successful image of a fine young family man.

  More than a year passed, and nothing seemed to change. My insomnia was worse than ever, and I found myself short of breath for no apparent reason, but these were minor concerns. Life remained externally calm, and I began to hope that the publication of Murder Machine was a temporary ripple rather than the tidal wave I had feared. Then one afternoon on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, in the twinkling of an eye, I was drowning.

  I was standing in front of my computer as usual, absorbed in the daily high stakes gamble as I received, processed, and implemented intricate financial transactions. I never took my attention off the screen in front of me as I responded to the continually shifting columns of figures in front of my eyes. I couldn't afford to. Once, during my first year on the Exchange floor, I had seen a veteran broker drop dead of a heart attack only yards away from me, yet no one had even paused while emergency workers lifted his body onto a stretcher and carried it out a side door. On this particular day, however, I happened to glance idly at a group of co-workers a few yards away as I listened to a message that was being relayed to me on the floor. They were gathered around one of my colleagues, reading over his shoulder as he held a book in front of him at eye level. With a sudden stab in my chest, I recognized the red letters glaring from the black book jacket. I already knew what they said: “the DeMeo gang . . .” A few seconds passed like a lifetime before I was able to drag my eyes back to the screen in front of me. I tried to concentrate once again on the shifting digital display, but my mind had gone completely blank. Against my will, I found my eyes dragged back to the growing group of co-workers gathered whispering around the book. One of them pointed me out, then noticed me watching and quickly looked away.

  The littered floor around me started to spin. Gathering the presence of mind to ask the floor manager for a replacement, I rushed to a side door and out into the hallway. A few yards down was the men's room. My stomach felt like it was ripping in two. My heart pounded painfully, and there was a rushing sound in my ears. Clutching my chest with my right arm, I staggered to the nearest elevator and went straight to the small hospital on the top floor of the Exchange. I was certain I was having a heart attack.

  After running a series of tests, though, the doctor told me there was nothing wrong with my heart. What I had just experienced, he informed me, was a severe panic attack. I refused to believe him. I never panicked. He gave me medication for my ulcer, then advised me to take a few days off and see my family physician. Most important, he told me, I should tell no one about the diagnosis. Better to let my superiors think it was a heart problem. If anyone found out I was having panic attacks, I would never work on the Exchange again. A panicky broker was a bad risk.

  I took his advice and said nothing, even to Carrie. The next day I saw another doctor, who gave me a bottle of Valium with several refills and also advised me to keep quiet about my condition. He didn't need to warn me. I was filled with shame, confused and frightened. I had survived things in life few men have to face and never blinked. What was wrong with me? And why was it happening now? I took a few days off to rest, claiming my ulcer was acting up, and returned to the Exchange the next week. Some of my co-workers now treated me like a celebrity because of the book's revelations; others backed away in suspicion. It was high school all over again: I was the mobster's son. One of them jokingly asked me if I had ever killed anybody. I took my pills, endured their comments and questions, and tried to carry on as if nothing had changed.

  Less than two weeks later, the second blow struck. I was soldiering through the days at work by sheer determination, but the nights were another matter. No amount of medication made me sleep, and from midnight to dawn, I wandered from room to room like a restless spirit. One night was particularly bad and, desperate to turn off my thoughts, I switched on the television at about two in the morning. I turned to the Arts and Entertainment channel and was about to sit down when I was stopped in midmotion by the image that took shape. There, on the large screen of the television set, was my father's face, flickering in the darkness. In the background, I was dimly aware of a voice droning a narrative. The voice was familiar. Dominick Montiglio. Sinking onto the couch, I watched in horrified fascination as my father's life passed before my eyes in lurid detail. The shameful narrative had metamorphosed into a nightmare documentary. I couldn't breathe.

  There was no escaping this time. The next morning I told Carrie about the documentary and warned my mother and sisters. With the documentary airing, they were certain to hear about it. Carrie shrank from me in humiliation and anger, insisting fiercely that no one must find out about this. But I watched my mother shrink back into the shadow she had become following my father's death. The worst part was Debra. I saw the bewildered pain on my older sister's face as she turned the pages of the book that had started it all. “I don't understand, Al,” she told me. “I don't recognize this man. This isn't Daddy. What is this all about? Is any of this true?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Did you know?”

  “Parts. Not all of it.”

  “Where was I when all this was going on?” she cried out in anguish. “Why didn't I know?”

  “Daddy didn't want you to know.”

  I saw her mind casting frantically about, trying to grasp the remnants of her childhood, an illusion that had unraveled in one horrible moment of enlightenment. Finally it caught on a single thread of memory, and she looked up at me with sudden understanding. “That's why Daddy was crying, wasn't it? After we went away that time? He was crying because he'd killed that boy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, my God,” she wept.

  I had no words to comfort her. I found myself gazing at the floor in shame, and my mind went back to the day I had innocently asked my father about the worst thing he had ever done. A sense of failure overwhelmed me. I was supposed to be protecting my mother and sisters, yet I was helpless to protect them against this.

  Somehow the weeks passed and turned into months. The questions and the stares from my co-workers were more and more frequent as rumors went around the floor. I saw some of them reading Murder Machine during breaks. I began making the rounds of doctors, trying to find an explanation for the illness that was crippling me. Each day I found it more difficult to function, and I feared that one day I would not be able to step onto the train that took me daily into the bowels of the city. My body had become a dead thing, and I dragged it behind me like an unwanted burden. Every doctor gave me another medication and the same advice: “Keep your mouth shut. Tell no one what is happening to you. You will never live down the stigma if you do.”

  I gathered my reserves one last time and decided to take my health
back in my own hands. I detested the drugs I had been given and knew I was becoming addicted to the Valium they were prescribing in increasing doses. Against my doctor's advice, I checked myself into the rehab section of the local hospital and went off all of the sedatives and sleeping medications I'd been given. They were not working, and I could not fight my battles when my senses were confused by chemicals. Two weeks later I emerged chemical free and determined to resume some semblance of a normal life. I had survived a long war with the Mob and the government. I told myself that I was not going to be defeated by a couple of hack writers and a Mafia rat.

  It is the things you least expect that destroy you. I had learned that lesson with painful clarity in my father's world. I learned it again on the floor of the biggest financial market in the world.

  It was 1994, and Rudolph Giuliani had just been elected mayor of New York for the first time. I had not followed the election closely, but I knew the name all right. I had seen it dozens of times over the last ten years, maybe more, a phantom signature at the bottom of every document the New York prosecutors served on me. Giuliani was the head of the investigation that had convened the grand juries at which I'd testified; he was the power behind the faces I saw in the courthouse offices and chambers. Over the years he had come to symbolize every assault on my peace of mind the legal system had made. The fact that I never saw the man face to face only made him loom larger. He was the boogie man in the closet of my anxieties, the name to which my hatred and fear attached itself. And one day, without warning, he was standing in front of me, the flesh-and-blood embodiment of my nightmares.