Frederick Di Nome - Biography

Biography

Frederick was one of three brothers born to Italian-American emigrants in Canarsie, Brooklyn. His brother Richard worked for a chop shop in Staten Island stealing cars. DiNome followed him into organized crime and became a member of the DiMeo crew led by Roy DeMeo. Albert DeMeo described Frederick in For the Sins of My Father as, "...A husky guy about five feet, nine inches, a little shorter than my father, and every inch of him was covered in grease. He seemed to exude engine grease from his pores. Freddy had dirty blond hair, a lopsided nose, and tattoos covering both arms. His teeth were stained and crooked, and his fingernails were filthy." In his biography, Albert DeMeo writes that his father had "taken by Freddy's house to play with Freddy's children while he and Freddy talked some business." He commented about Frederick's house, "The house was set on nearly two acres, and Freddy's backyard was like a Hot Wheels racetrack. He kept race cars and motorbikes there, and he promised that as soon as was big enough, he'd let ride on one of the bikes. He also had a basement filled to the brim with electronic equipment. Hundreds of televisions, VCRS, stereos covered his basement in stacks, still in their boxes." He was a fourth grade drop out. Roy DeMeo gave him cash to have the dental work repaired and to purchase a new wardrobe. He suffered from an undiagnosed case of dyslexia which made him an outsider among the other children in the neighborhood. He was a close friend of fellow DeMeo crew mob associate Peter LaFroscia. He was involved in the murder of car thief and mob associate Joseph Scorney.

He was born and raised in the same neighborhood as Chris Rosenberg, Anthony Senter, Joseph Testa, and Henry Borelli, who would all later become associates in the crew of Roy DeMeo. He invested the money from his car theft operation and drag racing career and bought a gas station and an automobile body shop and repair business which he named "Broadway Freddy's Diagnostic Center". Although his car repair business was successful he was usually broke. He had borrowed money from his friend Roy DeMeo since 1971. He did not like working with fellow Gemini crew member Henry Borelli because Borelli had a laid back attitude, showed up late at his automotive center to steal cars and complained about his workload, stealing seven to ten cars a day. Car ring mob associate Abdullah Hassan later complained directly to Roy DeMeo that someone was stealing the radios from the cars before they were shipped off to Kuwait. Roy DeMeo would personally instruct and mentor Frederick in the Gemini way of human dismemberment following the murders of Khaled Daoud and Ronald Falcaro. Henry Borelli and Vito Arena who were present during the murders and assisted in the dismemberment would later state that in court they witnessed Frederick cut off Falcaro's genitalia and stick it in the mouth of his severed head.

In 1971 he was filing for divorce and fighting with his ex-wife over custody of his son and namesake, Frederick Jr., and needed $3,000 to pay off the gasoline supplier of his automotive center. He would later remarry in September 1977. Frederick associated with both the Lucchese crime family's Clyde Brooks and Paul Vario, but due to his reputation for being erratic and infantile, he was denied becoming a made man. He moved to Long Island and was granted full custody of his son.

DiNome's eccentricities that bothered many mobsters including owning a pet monkey that he housed at the garage named "Susie" who he trained to pump gas at his fueling station. He frequently smoked marijuana, but hid this from his friend Roy DeMeo who openly disapproved of any indulgence in illegal narcotics. He and Dominick Montiglio acted as a chauffeur for Roy DeMeo, Anthony Gaggi. Roy had him help out in transport truck hijackings from John F. Kennedy International Airport. Although Freddy was never able to get his driver's license because of his dyslexia he was said to be a capable chauffeur because he never forgot where a certain address was after someone directed him to the location. After moving to Long Island during a heated domestic dispute with a neighbor he snatched the neighbor's dog and decapitated it and then left it on the man's porch. He introduced Vito Arena into the DeMeo crew.