Joseph Guglielmo

Joey "Dracula" Guglielmo (d. 1983) was the elderly first cousin of Gambino crime family capo Roy DeMeo. He was as vicious a gangster as any of the DeMeo Crew and although his penchant was for the [...] rings that the crew operated out of the city, Joey was also an old hand at [...] dealing and [...]. In 1979, Guglielmo and Chris Rosenberg traveled to Miami, Florida to take delivery of half a million dollars worth of [...]. After taking the [...], Guglielmo and Rosenberg killed the suppliers to avoid paying. This incident scandalized the criminal underworld and may have precipitated the eventual downfall of the DeMeo crew.

Guglielmo's "Dracula" nickname has been attributed to Either the gangster's all-night revelries in [...] studios, or to the blood rituals he allegedly performed with the blood of mob victims in his apartment. By the end of the DeMeo Crew's reign, it had become well-accepted that Guglielmo and DeMeo were serial killers.

By the early to mid 1980s, the DeMeo crew was under heavy investigation by the US Government. Warrants were handed out for many of the core and periphery crew members. It was around this time that Joseph Guglielmo disappeared. Law enforcement originally suspected that the same crew members who killed DeMeo also murdered Guglielmo to prevent him from becoming a government witness. It was also assumed Guglielmo's lack of discretion was a contributing factor to his [...].

However, according to Albert DeMeo's book, "For The Sins of My Father", Guglielmo was not killed, but actually fled New York to avoid prosecution. Albert claims he drove Guglielmo to the airport and never heard from him again. However, this account remains unsubstantiated.

References

• Mustain, Gene, and Capeci, Jerry, [...] Machine 1993, ISBN 0-451-40387-8.
• DeMeo, Al, For The Sins of My Father: A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life, 2003.