Alternative Facts: Did The Gemini Twins Help Execute Carini Brother's Killers?
The “Gemini Twins” was a nickname for Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter, who were once part of the most prolific crew of mob killers ever assembled.
The crew would then chop the body up, package the pieces, and toss the pieces in city dumpsters. More often than not, those packages vanished forever in the ever-rising mounds of garbage comprising the Fountain Avenue dump (which will be a park one day?)
The authors of Murder Machine
documented 75 Murder Machine murder victims, while the FBI suspects the crew committed between 100 and 125 slayings.
DeMeo was last seen wearing a leather jacket over a shotgun when on January 10, 1983, he went to Patty Testa's house for a meeting. That night, he failed to attend his daughter Dione's birthday party. Exactly 10 days later -- on January 20, DeMeo's Cadillac was found in the parking lot of the Veruna Boat Club in Brooklyn. Shot in the head, Roy DeMeo's partially frozen body was in the trunk. In an odd twist, a chandelier had been placed and left on top of his body. Theories abound regarding who killed Roy DeMeo. Gambino boss Paul Castellano likely ordered it, according to Sammy the Bull Gravano.
In 2000, Gang Land reported that, according to FBI reports, the Gemini Twins -- who moved over to the Luchese family in the mid-1980s -- were with Frank Smith on a Luchese hit team that killed Carmine Variale and Frank Santora in 1987.
For Testa and Senter, the larger story ended in 1989 when prosecutors in Federal District Court in Manhattan won “a sweeping victory” in the second of two trials stemming from a 1984 indictment that originally included charges against then-Gambino family boss Paul Castellano, who was killed in December 1985.
The cases included evidence of 25 murders, 10 of which resulted in Senter and Testa getting life sentences. They were sent to different prisons to serve their terms.
In 2000, while Frank Smith was awaiting trial for murder, Gang Land obtained an FBI report that included new and very different details about the murders of Variale and Santora.
After the botched 1987 murder of George Aronwald, Vincent and Enrico Carini were murdered, according to the Feds in the indictment of Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace.
Frank Smith, who also was a member of the Aronwald hit team with the two brothers and who also may have been marked for death, believed Variale and Santora were responsible for the Carini killings and killed the two in retaliation.
The FBI had obtained seemingly contradictory as well as supplementary information about the murders at the social club on Bath Avenue from an interview with turncoat Luchese gangster Frank Gioia Jr.
As per the FBI by way of Gang Land:
Joey Testa and Anthony Senter were poised on one end of a block as Smith waited on the other for the intended victim, Luchese mobster Carmine Varriale, to leave a Bath Beach social club near Smith’s home.
When Variale and Bonanno associate Frank Santora “exited the club they came down the block towards Smith (and) Smith began shooting Variale and when he did, Santora started towards him so he killed Santora as well,” said Gioia, who said Smith and Luchese capo George (Georgie Neck) Zappola had told him about the hit.
Smith ultimately got just one year of house arrest and probation for five years in exchange for his cooperation. Then when he was in the witness protection program, he was nabbed twice for stealing flat-screen TVs from Wal-Mart.
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| The Gemini Twins, Joey Testa, left, Anthony Senter.... |
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the “Murder Machine” crew positively bloomed under Gambino wiseguy Roy DeMeo. (Jerry Capeci christened the crew the Murder Machine
, which also was the name of the book he co-authored with Gene Mustain ---- Murder Machine is the single most-absorbing Mafia read on the market today).
Other members of the DeMeo crew included Joseph (Dracula) Guglielmo (a DeMeo cousin), Joey Testa's younger brother Patrick, Freddie DiNome (who previously was Roy DeMeo's driver), Henry Borrelli, and Chris Rosenberg.
The crew's MO was to first lure the intended victim inside the little apartment behind the Gemini Lounge on Flatlands Avenue in Canarsie, which was the crew’s main hangout. The victim would be shot in the head — and in quick succession, they were “turbanned” (a towel was wrapped around the head) and stabbed once through the heart. Both efforts were attempts to minimize blood flow.
, which also was the name of the book he co-authored with Gene Mustain ---- Murder Machine is the single most-absorbing Mafia read on the market today).Other members of the DeMeo crew included Joseph (Dracula) Guglielmo (a DeMeo cousin), Joey Testa's younger brother Patrick, Freddie DiNome (who previously was Roy DeMeo's driver), Henry Borrelli, and Chris Rosenberg.
The crew's MO was to first lure the intended victim inside the little apartment behind the Gemini Lounge on Flatlands Avenue in Canarsie, which was the crew’s main hangout. The victim would be shot in the head — and in quick succession, they were “turbanned” (a towel was wrapped around the head) and stabbed once through the heart. Both efforts were attempts to minimize blood flow.
The crew would then chop the body up, package the pieces, and toss the pieces in city dumpsters. More often than not, those packages vanished forever in the ever-rising mounds of garbage comprising the Fountain Avenue dump (which will be a park one day?)
The authors of Murder Machine
documented 75 Murder Machine murder victims, while the FBI suspects the crew committed between 100 and 125 slayings.DeMeo was last seen wearing a leather jacket over a shotgun when on January 10, 1983, he went to Patty Testa's house for a meeting. That night, he failed to attend his daughter Dione's birthday party. Exactly 10 days later -- on January 20, DeMeo's Cadillac was found in the parking lot of the Veruna Boat Club in Brooklyn. Shot in the head, Roy DeMeo's partially frozen body was in the trunk. In an odd twist, a chandelier had been placed and left on top of his body. Theories abound regarding who killed Roy DeMeo. Gambino boss Paul Castellano likely ordered it, according to Sammy the Bull Gravano.
In 2000, Gang Land reported that, according to FBI reports, the Gemini Twins -- who moved over to the Luchese family in the mid-1980s -- were with Frank Smith on a Luchese hit team that killed Carmine Variale and Frank Santora in 1987.
For Testa and Senter, the larger story ended in 1989 when prosecutors in Federal District Court in Manhattan won “a sweeping victory” in the second of two trials stemming from a 1984 indictment that originally included charges against then-Gambino family boss Paul Castellano, who was killed in December 1985.
The cases included evidence of 25 murders, 10 of which resulted in Senter and Testa getting life sentences. They were sent to different prisons to serve their terms.
In 2000, while Frank Smith was awaiting trial for murder, Gang Land obtained an FBI report that included new and very different details about the murders of Variale and Santora.
After the botched 1987 murder of George Aronwald, Vincent and Enrico Carini were murdered, according to the Feds in the indictment of Joel (Joe Waverly) Cacace.
Frank Smith, who also was a member of the Aronwald hit team with the two brothers and who also may have been marked for death, believed Variale and Santora were responsible for the Carini killings and killed the two in retaliation.
The FBI had obtained seemingly contradictory as well as supplementary information about the murders at the social club on Bath Avenue from an interview with turncoat Luchese gangster Frank Gioia Jr.
Joey Testa and Anthony Senter were poised on one end of a block as Smith waited on the other for the intended victim, Luchese mobster Carmine Varriale, to leave a Bath Beach social club near Smith’s home.
When Variale and Bonanno associate Frank Santora “exited the club they came down the block towards Smith (and) Smith began shooting Variale and when he did, Santora started towards him so he killed Santora as well,” said Gioia, who said Smith and Luchese capo George (Georgie Neck) Zappola had told him about the hit.
Smith ultimately got just one year of house arrest and probation for five years in exchange for his cooperation. Then when he was in the witness protection program, he was nabbed twice for stealing flat-screen TVs from Wal-Mart.
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