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Thomas "Tommy" DeSimone (c1950 - 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 the capo Paul Vario with his friends James Burke and Henry Hill. Their main racket was robbing and stealing truck shipments from the local airport, but they also conducted other scams. Tommy was notorious for a hair-trigger temper and unprovoked outbursts of homicidal violence. Mob associate Henry Hill recounts in the book Wiseguy an incident that occurred during a card game: A young man named Spider, in his late teens/early twenties, was acting as bartender, and forgot to bring DeSimone his drink. In response, DeSimone took out a handgun, demanded that Spider dance for him, and then shot the boy in the foot. A week later, Spider was again serving drinks when he made a sarcastic remark directed at DeSimone. Even though the other card players expressed admiration for Spider's standing up for himself, DeSimone, furious, took out his gun and shot Spider to death.
Tommy DeSimone is/was suspected of at least five murders. 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 Billy Batts, a veteran mobster who was part of the Gambino Family. Batts had apparently insulted DeSimone in a bar; in his book Gangsters and Goodfellas, Henry Hill explains that Batts had been attempting to take over some of Burke and DeSimone's illegal operations, and that his insults to Tommy had only spurred him on further. 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. Next came Spider. 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 had become an informant and he felt that such treachery of his sibling would rub off on him.
DeSimone's fifth murder was of John Gotti's protege, a young gangster named Foxy. 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 US 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 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 Conway; 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 Conway, or that he was hiding out somewhere to avoid being killed.
It was not until Henry Hill became an FBI informant in 1980 that the authorities found out that DeSimone had been murdered by the Gambino Crime Family. For years, the full details were unknown, until 1994, when Henry Hill discovered more information: Hill's wife, Karen, had been having an affair with Hill's boss, Mafia Capo Paul Vario. When Hill was sentenced to a stretch 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 Conway, and Conway had so much respect on the streets that Vario feared that if he didn't have the support of an entire family in killing DeSimone, that Conway would retaliate. On an unknown date in 1979, the 28 year old DeSimone was contacted and told that he was going to "made," initiated into the Mafia. Two men came and picked him up, and took him to a house where John Gotti executed him.
A lot of DeSimone's 'fame', if it can be called that, 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.
Although it is hardly the actor's fault, it must be said that Pesci did not physically resemble the character he portrayed; the real Tommy DeSimone was said to be tall, dark-haired and, furthermore, only in his twenties during the events depicted in Goodfellas. Pesci's role was also a composite of two different characters with different personalities.
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 Vincent.
External links and References
- Biography and Pictures
- Wiseguy, book, by Nicolas Pileggi and Henry Hill
- Gangsters and Goodfellas, by Henry Hill