Roy DeMeo’s Gemini Lounge in Brooklyn became one of the most feared addresses in New York organized crime during the 1970s and 1980s, a bar where victims were routinely lured to their deaths in an adjoining apartment using a brutal procedure known as the “Gemini method. ”
Anthony Senter and Joseph Testa, known as the Gemini Twins, were among the most committed members of the crew. Their rise from Brooklyn street criminals to key figures in the Gambino and Lucchese crime families ended with life sentences, but decades later, both men walked out of prison. Both were born into Italian-American families in Brooklyn.
Senter married in 1977 at a ceremony attended by Roy DeMeo himself, cementing his place in the underworld. Testa, one of nine children, met Senter as a teenager, and the two quickly became inseparable, earning their nickname for their constant companionship around the Gemini Lounge. Their criminal path began with car theft and odd jobs for Chris Rosenberg, DeMeo’s trusted associate, who later introduced them to DeMeo. The crew built a reputation for extreme violence, believed to be responsible for anywhere from 75 to 200 murders over its years of operation.
The crew’s signature method was designed to make victims vanish without a trace. A target would be lured into the apartment behind the bar, shot in the head, stabbed in the heart to stop blood flow, and hung upside down over a bathtub to drain completely before being dismembered and disposed of in dumpsters. Not all targets were enemies. In 1979, DeMeo killed Dominic Ruggiero, a 19-year-old college student selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door, after mistaking him for a Cuban hitman.
The mistake triggered a crisis within the crew and led directly to Rosenberg’s murder. Rosenberg had stolen from a Cuban drug cartel during a deal gone wrong, and the Cubans demanded his death as restitution. DeMeo stalled, reportedly because of his close bond with Rosenberg, but pressure from both the Cubans and his own superiors forced his hand. On May 11, 1979, DeMeo shot Rosenberg during a meeting.
Senter then stood and fired four more shots into his head. The crew staged the body in a car and riddled the vehicle with machine-gun fire, ensuring the killing was public enough to satisfy the Cubans. Rosenberg’s death was the beginning of the crew’s unraveling. DeMeo himself was killed in January 1983, found dead in the trunk of his Cadillac with a chandelier resting on his corpse.
He had been shot multiple times, and a wound on his hand suggested he tried to shield himself. Former Lucchese acting boss Anthony Casso later claimed that Senter and Testa carried out the killing under a contract arranged by Gambino boss Paul Castellano, who had ordered the entire crew eliminated. Frank DeMeo, Roy’s underboss, instead offered the twins their lives in exchange for turning on their leader. The Gambino family kept its promise but refused to formally induct Senter and Testa into the family.
The pair instead aligned with the Lucchese family under Casso, carrying out additional hits, including the 1986 murder of Russian gangster Vladimir Reznikov. Their criminal careers ended in 1989, when both were convicted of racketeering and multiple murders and sentenced to life in prison. Senter was sent to a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania, while Testa served time on Terminal Island. In 1994, an unusual discovery emerged involving Senter while he was in prison.
His cousin, Dominic Vulpis, who owned a garbage disposal company, had made payments into a Teamsters pension account under Senter’s name totaling over $30,000 over six years. The union disqualified Senter, and the pension fund rejected his claim. After more than three decades behind bars, the parole commission granted Senter parole in June 2022. In December 2023, he was transferred to a halfway house in New York.
Testa was ordered released in February 2024 and paroled on April 30, 2024. The release of both men closes a chapter on one of the most violent crews in Mafia history. Their methods were so brutal that they attracted intense law enforcement scrutiny, which eventually helped dismantle the very organization they served.