For the Sins of My Father: A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life

by Albert Demeo (Author)

• New

  Illustrated
  2003

  $17.02

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.45

  Roy De Meo was one of the Mafia's most cold-blooded killers - personally responsible for up to 200 murders. His grisly methods of disposing of his victims appear to have been an inspiration for similar killings enacted in TV's hugely popular The Sopranos . In For The sins of My Father , Roy's son Albert recounts the chilling rise and fall of his father - the man who led the Gambino family's most fearsome killers and thieves. Coming of age in an opulent Long Island house where money was abundant but its source was unclear, Al became Roy's confidant, sent to call in loans at age 14 and gradually coming to understand what his father actually did for a living: loan shark, car thief, porn purveyor and, above all, murderer. But when Al was 17, Roy's body was found in the trunk of a car, a gangland slaying that placed Al between federal prosecutors seeking his testimony and a mob crew determined to keep him quiet. In 1992, a fellow trader at the New York Stock Exchange, where Al had by then made his own career, taunted him with a copy of a hot new book that chronicled the full extent of his father's horrific criminal life. Facing up to these revelations led Al De Meo to suffer a nervous breakdown. How could he have spent his life looking up to, and loving, a vicious killer? Desperate to abide by the father-son bond, but equally determined to escape Roy's dangerous and doomed life, Al embarked on a courageous quest for the truth, reconciliation and honour. With the narrative drive of a thriller and the power of a painfully honest memoir, For the Sins of My Father presents a startling perspective on the underworld of organized crime, exposing the cruel legacy of a mafia life.