January 14th, 1979. A basement on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Tommy Desimon went down those stairs wearing a double- breasted black bill suit, thinking he was about to become a maid man. He was 28 years old, ambitious, and absolutely sure this was his coronation. But John Goty put three bullets in his head.

The whole thing took 5 seconds. Tommy’s head crashed forward onto a card table, blood pooling on green felt. Goty buttoned his cashmere overcoat and left. Tommy’s body was never discovered. But here’s what the movie Good Fellas never told you. Tommy didn’t get whacked just for killing Billy Bats, the made man whose death is the point of Martin Scorsese’s Good Fellas.

There was another victim, another unauthorized hit, a guy named Ronald Foxy Gerroi. And the reason Tommy killed him because Foxy stood up to him for beating his sister. Tommy was dating her. Then he laid hands on her. Foxy tried to defend his sister’s honor. So Tommy shot him three times in the face. That murder more than anything sealed Tommy’s fate, and Hollywood cut it from the movie.

This is the true story of the most explosive, deadly, and self-destructive enforcer in Lucesy family history. A killer so crazy that even his own crew was afraid of him. A man who committed at least eight murders by the time he was 27 years old, including two made men he had no business killing. From his first murder at age 17 to his execution in a Bronx basement, this is the true story of Tommy D.

Simone, the psychopath Joe Peshy portrayed so well. The man whose violence was so extreme that the movie actually had to dial it back. But here’s the question that never gets asked. Why did Good Fellas leave out the Foxy murder. It wasn’t because they lacked excitement. It was because they calculated it.

To show Tommy smashing a woman and then killing her brother would have made him utterly unsympathetic. And Scorsesei wanted you to feel something when Tommy died. Something. Anything. The fact is Tommy Dimone didn’t deserve it. Tommy Dimone, the American mobster associated with the Lucesi crime family, was born in the South Ozone Park area of Queens in New York City on the 6th of June, 1946.

He was the youngest of eight children born to Robert Anthony Desimone and Camila Pasarelli. By age 15, he was running with Paul Vario’s crew in East New York. Not as some lackey, as someone Vario’s crew already knew had the chops, the hardness. Tommy’s older brothers, Robert and Anthony, were already in the game.

Anthony would later get himself killed for being a rat. Robert got life in prison. Tommy saw this. He knew the odds. He didn’t give a damn. Here’s what made Tommy different from the rest of the young wannabes. Most kids growing up in the mob were hungry, yes, but they had boundaries. Lines they wouldn’t cross until they had to.

Tommy had no lines. None. His sister would later say that his teenage years were spent boxing, weightlifting, and punching a punching bag he kept in a spare bedroom. He had a short temper and a ferocious appetite. He’d drink almost a gallon of whole milk a day. The only other thing he was interested in, pocket knives.

He kept them in a cigar box under his bed. That tells you all you need to know. Jimmy Burke put Tommy in on the cigarette hijacking racket in 1965. Burke was already a legend. He was a thief, an earner, and someone Vario trusted implicitly. Jimmy Burke saw something in Tommy. Maybe he saw himself.

Maybe he just saw someone he could use, someone who’d do what others wouldn’t. Henry Hill, who was part of this crew, would later say that Jimmy Burke introduced Tommy to him at a cab stand. Tommy was wearing a wise guy suit and a pencil mustache, trying to look older than he was, which was 15. Jimmy Burke told Henry to teach the kid the cigarette racket.

Teach him how to make a few bucks. They made a lot more than a few bucks. Henry and Tommy hijacked cigarettes and sold them to construction sites, garment factories, sanitation garages, and subway depots. $300, $400 a day, sometimes more. This was 1965. This money went far. Tommy was still a kid, but he was bringing in more money than most workingclass adults.

And he was learning how to move product, how to keep your mouth shut, how to intimidate when necessary, how to hurt people when intimidation wasn’t enough. Tommy committed his first murder when he was 17. The year was 1968. The victim’s name was Howard Goldstein. Goldstein wasn’t connected. He wasn’t a rival.

He wasn’t a threat. He was just a random stranger walking down the street. Tommy shot him dead. No reason, no beef, no financial motive. Henry Hill later said he confronted Tommy about it. That was coldblooded Tommy. Tommy’s reaction. Well, I’m a mean cat. That was it. No justification, no regret, just a statement of fact. Tommy D.

Simone was a mean cat. And that’s the thing nobody understood until it was too late. Most killers in the mob killed for business, territory, money, respect, revenge. There was logic. Tommy killed because he was wired wrong. He killed because he was angry. He killed because someone disrespected him.

He killed because he felt like it. That made him incredibly valuable to men like Jimmy Burke and Paul Vario. It also made him a ticking time bomb. By his early 20s, Tommy was packing two guns. He carried them in a brown paper bag during hijackings. People noticed. That wasn’t normal. One gun was standard.

Two guns meant you were either expecting trouble or planning on giving it. Tommy was always planning on giving it. Henry Hill would later say that he began to wonder if Tommy was actually insane after observing him murder a bartender named Michael Spider Giano. Why? Spider told Tommy to go [ __ ] himself.

This is how it happened. They were playing cards in a basement. Tommy, Jimmy Burke, Henry Hill, Anthony Stabil, Angelo Sepe. It was 3:00 in the morning. All of them were drunk. Spider walked in. Tommy told him to dance. Spider had already been shot in the foot by Tommy a week earlier for refusing to dance.

Yeah, you heard that right. Tommy shot a kid in the foot because he wouldn’t dance. Vinnie Assaro, who was a member of the Banano family, took Spider to a doctor to get him fixed up. Everyone thought it was an accident. It wasn’t. So, Spider comes into this card game with his foot still all bandaged up.

Tommy tells him to dance again. Spider, either very brave or very stupid, tells Tommy to go screw himself. The other guys started laughing, encouraging Tommy. Jimmy Burke said, “You going to take that from this punk?” Tommy was still playing cards. Then, out of nowhere, he pulled out his gun and shot Spider three times in the chest.

Henry said, “I didn’t even know where he had the gun. We were all deaf. I could smell the burn.” Nobody said a word. At this point, Henry believed that Tommy was a complete psychopath. He was right. But that wasn’t the murder that really counted. That happened in 1970. The man who was killed was William Billy Batsbent Veayner. Bats was 49 years old.

A made man in the Gambino crime family. He’d been in Carmine Fatiko’s crew since 1961. He’d been sent to federal prison in 1964 for a drug transaction and served 6 years in Danbury. When he got out in June of 1970, the crew gave him a welcome home party, food, drink, hookers, the usual celebration.

This is what Good Fellas teaches you. Bats makes a wise crack about Tommy shining shoes when he was a kid. Go home and get your shine box. Tommy goes ape but can’t do anything because Bats is a made man. You don’t touch a made man without his says so. Not ever. Later that night, Tommy and Jimmy Burke beat Bats with a gun and a tire iron, stuffed him in a trunk, and buried him.

Good old-fashioned mob violence. Fantastic film. Partly true. The actual reason for Tommy and Jimmy killing Billy Bats had absolutely nothing to do with Bats making a wise crack about shining shoes. While Bats was in the joint, Jimmy Burke had taken over his lone sharking racket. When Bats got out, he wanted it back.

Burke had no intention of giving it up. Bats went to Crazy Joe Gallow to try to strongarm Burke into turning over the lone sharking business. Burke said, “No way.” Bats made a wise crack to Tommy at that welcome home party, but the reason for killing him was over territory and money.

The wise crack was just the reason for Tommy to pull the trigger. Two weeks later, Bats was drinking at a bar called The Suite. Tommy came in, told his girlfriend to go home, and gave Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke the eye. Jimmy began to cozy up to Bats. Keep him occupied. Tommy whispered to Henry, “Keep him here. I’m going for a bag.

” He didn’t mean a bag of money. He meant a plastic mattress cover, a body bag, so bats wouldn’t bleed all over the place when they killed him. Tommy came back with a 38. Bats saw the gun in Tommy’s hand. Jimmy wrapped his arm around Bats’s neck in a chokeold. Tommy yelled, “Shine these [ __ ] shoes.

” And smashed the gun into the side of Bats’s head. Then again, blood started pouring out. It looked black under the bar lights. They thought he was dead. They wrapped him up and threw him in the trunk of Henry’s car. They were driving up the taconic parkway when they heard banging. Bats wasn’t dead.

He woke up in the trunk. So Henry and Tommy pulled over, popped the trunk, and finished him with a shovel and a tire iron. Then they buried him. Three months later, they had to dig him up and move him because the property was being developed. That’s the real Billy Bat story. Good fellas got the violence right.

It missed the motive. But even killing a maid man without permission wasn’t the worst thing Tommy did because four years later in December of 1974, Tommy killed another Gambino associate. This one was even more personal, even more reckless, and this one would directly lead to Tommy’s execution 5 years later.

Ronald Foxy Jer was part of John Gotti’s crew, the Bergen Hunt and Fish Club in Ozone Park, Queens. Foxy was young, loyal, and someone Goty was grooming. Tommy started dating Foxy’s sister. Nobody knows her full story. Her name is barely in the record. What is in the record is this. Tommy and Foxy’s sister dated.

Then they broke up. After the breakup, Foxy heard that Tommy had beaten her. Not just a slap, not just a fight, a beating. Maybe it was true. Maybe it was exaggerated. But Foxy believed it and Foxy confronted Tommy about it. The fight occurred in public. Witnesses reported Foxy punched Tommy in the face, knocked him down.

That was an unforgivable act in Tommy’s world. You don’t go around laying hands on a mobster. Even if he did beat your sister, you especially don’t knock him on his ass in public. Tommy’s pride couldn’t take that. His reputation couldn’t take that. So on December 18th, 1974, Tommy went into Foxy’s sister’s apartment and shot Ronald Foxy Gerroa three times in the head at pointblank range with a 38 caliber revolver.

Foxy died instantly. The murder occurred at his sister’s apartment, the woman Tommy had beaten, the woman Foxy had tried to defend. She was there. She saw it all. Tommy left. No disguise, no hesitation, no attempt to make it look like anything other than what it was, murder. The police immediately suspected Tommy, but no one spoke. No one testified.

The case went cold, but the streets knew, and John Goty knew. Goty was livid. Foxy was his protege, his money maker, someone he’d brought up, someone he trusted. And Tommy D. Simone, some crazy hitman from the Lucesy crime family, took him out over a personal grudge, without permission, without a sitdown, without respect.

Goti didn’t act right away. He couldn’t. Tommy was with the Lucasi crew. Paul Vario was protecting him. Jimmy Burke was protecting him. Goti couldn’t go out and kill Tommy without starting a war. So, he waited. He filed it away. He seethed. and he waited for the right moment. That moment would come 5 years later.

In the meantime, Tommy kept on killing. He strangled Dominic Remmo Cerseani on orders from Jimmy Burke. Remo had set up one of Burke’s cigarette loads to get busted. Burke found out. Burke told Tommy, “Let’s take a ride.” They brought Remo along. Tommy used a piano wire in the back seat. Remo fought.

He kicked, swung, and [ __ ] himself before he died. They buried him behind Robert’s lounge in Queens next to the botchi court. Henry Hill would later say, “I don’t know how many people Tommy killed. I don’t think even Jimmy knew. Tommy was out of control.” Then came the Lufanza heist. December 11th, 1978, 3:12 in the morning.

A crew of masked men walked into the Lufansza cargo terminal at JFK airport and walked out with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry. It was the biggest cash robbery in American history at the time. It took 64 minutes. The planning was meticulous. The execution was flawless. And Tommy Dimone was part of it.

But Tommy made a big mistake during the robbery. He raised his ski mask to wipe the sweat from his face. A warehouse employee caught a glimpse of his face. Now a police sketch artist could use that to identify him. Tommy’s face was now linked to the largest robbery in the nation. The FBI had his picture.

This made Jimmy Burke and Paul Vario very angry because now Tommy was hot and when you’re hot, you’re a liability and liabilities get taken care of. Jimmy Burke began taking care of loose ends. Burke was eliminating witnesses. Tommy was one of the hitmen doing the eliminating. But he was also a marked man.

Because John Goty hadn’t forgotten about Foxy. And now with the Lufanza pressure, Goty saw his chance. He went to Paul Vario and demanded a meeting. Goty made his point. Tommy killed Billy Bats without asking. Tommy killed Foxy without asking. Both were Gambino soldiers. And now Vario wanted to make Tommy a made man.

Goty said, “This is like sticking a cactus up my ass. I want to whack the guy, and I want you to give me the green light.” Vario thought about it. Tommy had always been a problem. A useful problem, but a problem nonetheless. He killed without thinking. He bragged when he should have kept his mouth shut. He attracted attention.

He was soon to be indicted for Lufanza. And there was one more thing. Years before, when Henry Hill was in federal prison, Tommy had attempted to assault Henry’s wife, Karen, attempted to rape her. Paul Vario was angry about that. So when Goty asked for permission to kill Tommy, Vario granted it.

Yeah, John, do what you got to do. It was a cold winter night in late January of 1979. Tommy received a call. He was told to get ready. He was going to be made. Finally, after all the bodies, all the risks, all the years of waiting, he was getting his button. Tommy put on his best suit. Black double- breasted bill blasts, starched blue shirt, beige silk tie. He was proud.

He thought this was the most important night of his life. Bruno Fiolo and Peter Vario, Paul’s son, picked him up in Ozone Park and drove him to the Bronx, Arthur Avenue, an Italian neighborhood. They told him the ceremony was happening at a restaurant called Don Vitos. Tommy walked into that basement expecting to see Lucesy people.

Instead, he saw John Goty sitting at a card table with a few old men. Candles lit the room. Tommy was confused. Why was a Gambino cappo at a leucasi induction? Goty smiled. Welcome Tommy. Congratulations. Pull a chair up to the table and sit comfortably. This is not an ordinary day in your life.

I want you to know. Tommy sat down. He was 3 seconds into his future when Goty pulled a silencer equipped Colt 38 Magnum from his coat. Three shots. P. All three bullets hit Tommy in the skull. His head slammed forward onto the green felt card table. Blood leaked everywhere. Goty buttoned his coat, straightened his lapels, and walked out without a word. Tommy D.

Simone’s body was never discovered. Some people think he was split in half with a chainsaw and chucked into the Atlantic. Some people think his body was smashed in a car at a scrapyard with ties to the mob and then melted down at a steel mill in Pennsylvania. Nobody knows for sure. What is certain is