TOMMY DESIMONE - The Real Story Behind Joe Pesci's Character

Tommy DeSimone stood 6 feet 2 inches tall and

carried 225 pounds of muscle that he'd built

by obsessively pounding a heavy bag in his mother's

spare room. On a sweltering Brooklyn afternoon

in 1968, he was 17 years old, walking down a

sidewalk alongside Henry Hill when he spotted

a complete stranger, a pedestrian in his mid

-40s named Howard Goldstein. Tommy didn't know

the man, and he didn't have a reason to dislike

him. He simply reached into a brown paper bag

he always carried, a bag that usually hid his

.38 revolver so it looked like he was just carrying

a sandwich, and turned to Henry with a grin.

He said, watch this, before he leveled a gun

and shot the stranger dead in cold blood. When

a stunned Henry asked why he'd done it, Tommy

just shrugged and said, well, I'm a mean cat.

This was the raw, unpolished reality of the man

who inspired the cinema legend Tommy DeVito.

While the movies gave us a small, wiretight fireball

played by Joe Pesci, the real Tommy DeSimone

was a hulking, cocaine -fueled shadow that loomed

over the Lucchese crime family, a man who didn't

just break the rules of the mob, but the basic

laws of human sanity. That violence wasn't just

a byproduct of his work, it was his primary hobby.

There's a story Henry Hill told for years about

Tommy's sheer, aimless cruelty. An incident involving

a random person with a baby stroller. Tommy was

high, as he often was, and he spotted a woman

pushing a stroller down the street. Without a

word, he pulled his gun and fired a shot directly

into the stroller, just to see the terror it

would cause to watch the panic unfold for his

own amusement. It was this total lack of a filter,

this refusal to distinguish between a rival and

an innocent. that made even his closest associates

stay on edge. Jimmy Burke, a man who had personally

ended dozens of lives, once warned Henry never

to be alone with Tommy when he was high, because

Tommy would kill you and not even remember why

the next morning. He was an animal in a suit,

a six foot two weight lifter who used his size

and his reputation to physically dominate every

room he entered. The Confrontation at the Warehouse

Following a successful truck hijacking, Burke's

crew drove the stolen cargo to a warehouse to

unload it. However, the warehouse foreman vehemently

refused to let them use the space, protesting

because Burke's guys did not have legitimate

union cards. Burke tried to reason with the foreman

and intimidate him, but the man stood his ground

and refused to back down. The Escalation Burke

backed off temporarily to avoid making a scene

at the warehouse. Instead, he instructed Tommy

DeSimone and another brutal associate, Stanley

Diamond, to go to the foreman's house in rural

New Jersey. Burke's explicit orders were only

to rough him up enough to terrify him into cooperating

with the crew's hijacking operations in the future.

The Murder The plan failed entirely due to Tommy's

infamous explosive temper. The Annoyance Tommy

and Stanley Diamond were deeply annoyed and highly

aggravated about having to drive all the way

out to New Jersey for a routine intimidation

job. The overkill. When they arrived at the foreman's

home, they got carried away during the beating.

Instead of leaving the foreman with a warning

and broken bones, they beat him so savagely that

they killed him. This incident showcased how

wildly unpredictable and violent Tommy was in

real life. It became a pattern. Just a short

time later, Burke asked Tommy to help handle

the Remos or Sani situation, which Tommy executed

using piano wire. The weight he carried wasn't

just physical. Tommy was living in the shadow

of a family shame that he felt he had to wash

away in blood. His brother, Anthony D. Simone,

had been murdered by the Gambino family after

it was discovered he was an informant. In a world

of the South Ozone Park cruise, Having a rat

for a brother was a stain that never came out.

Tommy spent his life overcompensating, trying

to prove he was the toughest, the most loyal,

and the most dangerous man on the street. He

wanted that button to be a made man, more than

he wanted air, and he thought everybody he dropped

brought him one step closer to the ceremony.

But his loyalty was a jagged thing, and it often

cut the people who were supposed to be on his

side. In the early 70s, Jimmy Burke grew suspicious

of one of his own best friends, a man named Dominic

Remo Sirsani. Burke had heard through contact

to the Queen's DA's office that Remo was talking

to the NYPD about a truck hijacking. Burke didn't

hesitate. He looked at Tommy and said, let's

take a ride. They met Remo at Robert's Lounge,

a place where friendship was supposed to mean

something. Remo got into the front seat of the

car, unsuspecting. while Tommy and Jimmy climbed

into the back. As the car rolled into a quiet

area, Tommy leaned forward and wrapped a length

of piano wire around his friend's neck. Henry

later recounted that Remo put up a hell of a

fight, kicking and swinging as the wire bit deep,

eventually losing control of his bowels before

he died. Tommy didn't flinch. He did the job

for Burke because that's what a loyal soldier

did. Even if the victim was a man he'd share

drinks with just an hour before. They buried

Remo right there, next to the bocce court behind

the lounge. For years afterward, whenever Tommy

and Jimmy played a game of bocce, they'd look

down at the dirt and jokingly call out, Hi Remo,

how you doing? It was a sick, shared secret,

a bond forged in the casual disposal of a friend.

The Queen's DA leak, Burke did not just guess

that Remo was a rat. He actively bought the information.

Burke maintained highly paid, corrupt contacts

inside the Queens District Attorney's Office.

These sources explicitly confirmed to Burke that

Remo was a scheduled witness who was providing

details to the New York City Police Department,

NYPD, in exchange for leniency on his own mounting

criminal. Tommy's lack of control eventually

led him to a line he couldn't cross. In 1974,

While Henry Hill was away in prison for extortion,

Tommy decided that Henry's wife, Karen, was fair

game. He didn't care about the brotherhood of

the crew, or the protection that was supposed

to be afforded to a partner's family. According

to Henry's later accounts, Tommy showed up at

the house, beat Karen, and attempted to rape

her. It was a betrayal of the highest order in

their world, but there was an even more dangerous

complication. Karen was reportedly having an

affair with the Lucchese capo, Paul Vario, the

man the movie called Paulie. When Karen told

Vario what Tommy had done, she wasn't just reporting

an assault. She was handing Vario the perfect

excuse to get rid of a man who had become a massive

liability. Tommy had already murdered two made

men from the Gambino family, Billy Batts and

Ronald Foxy -Gerroth, without permission, and

the Gambinos were screaming for blood. Paul Vario

made the call to the Gambinos. By January 1979,

the fuse Tommy had lit years earlier finally

reached the powder. He was told he was finally

going to get his wish. He was told he was being

made that on January 14th, Tommy dressed in his

finest suit, said goodbye to his mother, and

climbed into a car with Paul Vario's son, Peter,

and another mobster named Bruno Facciolo. He

thought he was heading to his coronation. Instead,

he was driven to a house where no ceremony awaited.

Some say John Gotti himself was there, waiting

to avenge his friends Billy Batts and Foxy Giroth.

Some say they shot him in the face so his mother

couldn't have an open casket. Others whisper

that he was tortured for hours, a slow end for

a man who had spent his life inflicting pain

for kicks. His body was never found, likely ending

up in a car compactor or buried in a nameless

hole in the marshlands of Queens. Tommy DeSimone

spent his life trying to prove he belonged in

the mafia. But in the end, the mafia decided

he only belonged in a grave. If this deep dive

into the real -life violence of the five families

stayed with you, please share this episode with

someone who thinks they know the whole story.

And that's the way I heard it.

The Story