He headed a group known as the "DeMeo crew", which consisted of approximately twenty associates involved in murder, car theft, drug dealing, prostitution and pornography.

[4] DeMeo was born on September 7, 1940, in the Flatlands neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York City into a working-class Italian immigrant family originating from Formia in the region of Lazio.

[10][11] His older brother Anthony Frank "Chubby" DeMeo, a United States Marine Corps corporal, was killed in action during the Korean War on April 23, 1951, aged 20.

[12][13] DeMeo's father died of a heart attack on December 12, 1960, and his mother subsequently returned to Italy with Roy's youngest brother to live with relatives near Naples.

[8] DeMeo was initially an associate of the Brooklyn faction of the Lucchese crime family, which controlled towing companies, junkyards and car theft operations in Flatlands and Canarsie.

[15] Through the late 1960s, DeMeo's organized crime prospects increased on two fronts: he continued in the loansharking business with Gaggi and began developing a crew of young men involved in car theft.

[17] DeMeo's collection of loanshark customers, while still primarily those in the car industry, soon included other businesses such as a dentist's office, an abortion clinic, restaurants and flea markets.

He was also listed as an employee for a Brooklyn company named S & C Sportswear Corporation, and frequently told his neighbors he worked in construction, food retailing and the used car business.

[18] Bonanno family underboss Salvatore Vitale claimed to the FBI that in 1974 he was ordered to deliver the corpse of a man who had just been murdered to a garage in Queens so that it could be disposed of by DeMeo.

The body parts were wrapped in plastic bags and deposited into the supermarket's dumpster, where they were discovered days later when a pedestrian walking his dog spotted one of Katz's legs lying on a curb near the store.

With the exception of killings intended to send a message to any who would hinder their criminal activities, or murders that presented no other alternative, a set method of execution was established by the DeMeo crew to ensure that victims would be dispatched quickly and then made to disappear.

[27][3] The process of the Gemini Method, as revealed by multiple crew members and associates who became government witnesses in the early 1980s, was to lure the victim through the side door of the lounge and into the apartment in the back portion of the building.

This was to eliminate the messiness of the next step, when crew members would place the body onto plastic sheets laid out in the main room and proceed to dismember it, cutting off the arms, legs and head.

At times, suspected informants or those who committed an act of disrespect against a member of the crew or their superiors had their bodies left in the streets to serve as a message and warning.

[31] In the latter half of 1975, DeMeo became a silent partner in a peep show and prostitution establishment in Bricktown, New Jersey, after the owner of the business became unable to pay his loansharking debts.

The owner of Team Auto, Matthew Rega, also purchased stolen vehicles from the DeMeo crew and sold them off at a New Jersey car lot that he owned.

The leader of a rival Irish gang, Mickey Spillane, was causing delays for the construction of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, much to the frustration of Castellano, who had an interest in the project.

After the unsolved murder of Spillane in May 1977, Westies leader James "Jimmy" Coonan assumed control of the Irish mob rackets on the West Side of Manhattan.

Shortly afterwards, Coonan and his second-in-command Mickey Featherstone were called to a meeting with Castellano, in which they agreed to become a de facto arm of the family and share ten percent of all profits.

[49] The next member to be killed was Rosenberg, who had set up a drug deal with a Cuban man living in Florida and then murdered him and his associates when they traveled to New York to complete the sale.

DeMeo's men placed Rosenberg's body in his car and left it on the side of Cross Bay Boulevard, near the Gateway National Wildlife Refuge in Broad Channel, Queens, to be found.

[58] Albert later recounted that Rosenberg's murder affected his father deeply, and that when DeMeo came home after the killing, he went into his study room and didn't emerge for two days.

[59] After the murder, DeMeo spent six weeks hiding out with Guglielmo in a safe house near 42nd Street in Times Square, growing a full beard and disguising himself with a baseball cap and sunglasses when out in public.

Dubbed the Empire Boulevard Operation by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents,[61] it consisted of hundreds of stolen cars being shipped from the port of Newark to Kuwait and Puerto Rico.

[68] They were the paternal uncle and cousin, respectively, of a corrupt former New York City Police Department (NYPD) detective, Louis Eppolito, whose father, Ralph, brother of James Sr., was also a made member of the Gambino family.

[76] DeMeo eventually emerged from hiding to consult with lawyers as he anticipated an indictment stemming from the Southern District of New York's investigation into his crew's activities.

[85] Ten days later, on January 20, 1983, DeMeo's Cadillac Coupe DeVille was discovered in the parking lot of the Varuna Boat Club in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

[92] Lucchese family underboss-turned-government witness Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso claimed that Castellano ordered John Gotti and Frank DeCicco to kill DeMeo, but they were unable to get close to him.

[98] Montiglio turned when he learned that Gaggi, his uncle, had put a contract on his life, and was placed in the witness protection program for twenty years for his testimony.

[citation needed] Ray Liotta plays DeMeo in the 2012 film adaptation of Anthony Bruno's book about Richard Kuklinski, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer.