Death
Rosenberg was reportedly never informed about the Colombian situation and thus had no indication that his life was in danger. On May 11, 1979, he went to the regular nightly meeting with DeMeo and crew. As he sat at the table with his associates, DeMeo pulled a pistol out of a brown bag sitting on the table and shot Rosenberg in the head, wounding but not killing him. When Rosenberg got up off the floor and stumbled onto one knee, Anthony Senter stood and shot him four more times in the head.
Rosenberg's body was then placed in his car, which was driven and left parked on a street near the Gateway National Recreation Area in New York City. Crew member Frederick DiNome then drove by the vehicle while Henry Borelli raked it with machine gun fire, to ensure the murder was a blatant enough assassination to guarantee that it would be mentioned in the local newspaper. This gave the Colombians proof of the killing and defused the situation. Witnesses claim that for years afterward DeMeo expressed genuine regret at having to kill Rosenberg.
Members of the DeMeo crew were suspects in Rosenberg's murder but there was not enough evidence to charge them. Years later however, the murder would be among many others charges in a 1984 indictment against the surviving crew members after cooperating witnesses for the government provided a great deal of information on the crew's activities. At the trial in 1988, testimony was given by Dominick Montiglio and Vito Arena linking the remnants of the DeMeo crew with Rosenberg's murder. In 1989 the defendants were convicted of all charges and Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter, the only core DeMeo Crew members who had not been murdered or already imprisoned, were sentenced to life in prison.
Read more about this topic: Chris Rosenberg
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“The grief of the keen is no personal complaint for the death of one woman over eighty years, but seems to contain the whole passionate rage that lurks somewhere in every native of the island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bare for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of a universe that wars on them with winds and seas.”
—J.M. (John Millington)
“Life springs from death and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations.... They think that they have pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools, they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”
—Patrick Henry Pearse (1879–1916)
“They are girls. Green girls.
Death and life is their daily work.
Death seams up and down the leaf.
I call the leaves my death girls.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)