Chris Rosenberg - Death

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.