| Tommy Desimone |
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Information AboutTommy Desimone |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT THOMAS DESIMONE | |
| italian-american mobsters | |
| 1950 births | |
| 1979 deaths | |
| murdered mobsters | |
| lucchese crime family | |
| lufthansa heist | |
| mafia hitmen | |
| murderers of children | |
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Thomas "Tommy" DeSimone ( May 24 , 1950 - January 14 , 1979 ) was a New York Gangster and an associate of the Lucchese Crime Family . He was the basis for the character "Tommy DeVito" as depicted by Joe Pesci in the 1990 movie '' Goodfellas ''. 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 proteges. Their main racket was robbing and stealing truck shipments from the local airport, but DeSimone was also involved in other activities such as Insurance Fraud . DeSimone was notorious for a hair-trigger temper and unprovoked outbursts of homicidal violence; he is/was suspected of at least six murders, four of them unsanctioned. The first was a man he garotted with piano-wire for 'ratting' (informing) on him and his fellow mobsters Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill. The following year, 1970 , DeSimone killed William "Billy Batts" Devino , a Made Man who was part of the Gambino Crime Family . Batts had apparently insulted DeSimone in a bar. In his book ''Gangsters and Goodfellas,'' Henry Hill explains that Batts had just gotten out of prison, and while he was incarcerated, Burke had taken over all of his old businesses and illegal enterprises. Batts, who outranked Burke, was attempting to get permission to seize his enterprises back, by force if necessary. The insult, combined with DeSimone's temper and Burke's anger over the possibility of losing money, spurred DeSimone to murder Batts. Burke held Batts in place while DeSimone beat his skull in with a .38 Revolver . DeSimone, Burke, and an unwitting Hill loaded the corpse into the trunk of Hill's car and were on their way to bury it when Batts woke up, and had to be beaten/stabbed further before he eventually died. DeSimone's third murder is described by Mob associate Henry Hill in the book ''Wiseguy''. A teenage boy named Michael "Spider" Gianco was acting as bartender at a card game, and forgot to bring DeSimone his drink. In response, DeSimone took out a handgun, demanded that Spider dance for him, and started shooting at his feet which ended up, not surprisingly, with Spider getting shot in the foot. A week later, Spider was again serving drinks; DeSimone told Spider to dance again and Spider replied "Go fuck yourself." Even though the other card players expressed admiration for Spider's standing up for himself, DeSimone, furious, took out his gun and shot Spider, killing him. On another occasion, according to Hill, DeSimone got carried away after being asked to 'rough up' a witness to a robbery and ended up beating the victim to death. Henry Hill would later describe DeSimone as a " Psychopath ", and suggested that DeSimone had something to prove because his older brother, Vincent, had become an informant, and Tommy felt that he had to prove his loyalty by "overcompensating." Vincent was allegedly murdered by members of the Gambino Crime Family . DeSimone's fifth murder was of John Gotti 's protege, a young gangster named Fredrick "Foxy" Civano. DeSimone had dated Foxy's sister and then beaten her up when he dumped her, prompting Foxy to threaten to kill DeSimone. When DeSimone heard about the threat, he went to Foxy's apartment and knocked on the door; Foxy opened the door, punched DeSimone in the face, and then DeSimone shot Foxy between the eyes, killing him. 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, with the loot reputed to be almost $6,000,000, only a fraction of which was recovered. DeSimone is reputed to have murdered fellow Lufthansa heist crew member Parnell Steven Edwards (known as 'Stax', sometimes spelt 'Stacks'), who was found shot to death in his Queens apartment. Stacks was supposed to take the van used in the burglary to a car compactor to have it destroyed; instead, Edwards got high on Marijuana while en route to the junkyard, left the van in a ditch, and wandered back to his apartment to get drunk. Within the week, authorities discovered it and identified it as the vehicle used in the burglary. Edwards' finger prints were later found on the wheel of the vehicle, and a muddy shoe print found at the airport was matched to a pair of tennis shoes Edwards owned. On January 14 , 1979 , DeSimone's wife reported Tommy missing. A number of people had been murdered following the Lufthansa Heist by Jimmy Burke; his motive changed between worrying that they might have become informants, and simply to avoid paying them their share of the loot. For a year, the New York Police and FBI believed that DeSimone had either been murdered by Burke, or that he was hiding out somewhere to avoid being killed. It was not until Henry Hill became an . When Hill was sentenced to time in prison, DeSimone approached Hill's wife for sex; when she turned him down, DeSimone attempted to rape her. In retaliation, Paul Vario approached the Gambino crew and revealed to them that DeSimone had been the one who'd murdered Foxy and Billy Batts; DeSimone was the favorite crew member of Jimmy Burke, and Burke had so much respect on the streets but Vario was cutting his ties to the Lufthansa heist, from which he had profited handsomely. On an unknown date in 1979, the 38 year old DeSimone was contacted and told that he was going to be "made," initiated into the Mafia. Two men came and picked him up, and took him to a house where he was executed, according to some accounts by Tommy Agro while others (including Henry Hill) say John Gotti . DeSimone's infamy rests on the depiction of him given by Joe Pesci in the movie ''Goodfellas''. However, the movie did take some artistic liberties with a few facts: DeSimone was shown ramming an ice-pick into Martin Krugman 's head; however, at one point Henry Hill reported that DeSimone had already been murdered by the time Krugman was killed. Henry Hill calls Pesci's portrayal "95% accurate," mentioning only that Pesci did not physically resemble the character he portrayed: the real Tommy DeSimone was tall, muscular, always wore a mustache, and furthermore, only in his twenties during the events depicted in ''Goodfellas''. Also, in some instances, for the purpose of making the movie flow better, DeSimone was substituted (such as the double date where Henry Hill meets his future wife) for another mobster, one of Paul Vario's sons. In October 2004, based on the testimony of Joe Massino , the FBI dug out John Gotti 's old graveyard "The Hole" in Queens, in search of DeSimone's, and other bodies. They were unable to find Tommy's body or that of his brother. EXTERNAL LINKS AND REFERENCES/SOURCES CITED
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