Joseph Carmine Testa was born on January 24, 1955, and raised in Brooklyn, New York. One of nine children born to a truck driver father and a homemaker mother, he grew up in a working-class environment. During adolescence, Testa formed a tight bond with Anthony Senter—they became inseparable and later earned the nickname “Gemini Twins” due to their closeness and constant presence together at the Gemini Lounge.

By age 15, Testa (and Senter) were involved in car theft, accruing juvenile convictions that were later dismissed because of their youth. These early crimes became the springboard into organized criminal activity. Through a mutual friend, Chris Rosenberg, Testa and Senter were introduced to mob boss Roy DeMeo.

Testa quickly became a trusted enforcer in one of the mob’s deadliest rings. The DeMeo crew perfected a horrifying execution method: lure victims through the Gemini Lounge, shoot them with a silenced pistol, wrap a towel to halt the bleeding, stab the heart, then dismember and dump the remains in the Fountain Avenue landfill.

One of their first known murders occurred on June 13, 1975, when the DeMeo crew, led by DeMeo, Rosenberg, Borelli, Testa, and Senter, abducted Andrei Katz under the guise of a date. Katz was taken to a supermarket meat department where he was savagely stabbed, dismembered, decapitated, and his remains had to be forensically identified by dental records due to the gruesome nature of the cruelty.

Over the following years, Testa was involved in multiple cold-blooded murders. In the late 1970s, the crew systematically targeted suspected informants and those who troubled them: Jerome Hofaker was killed in June 1977 over a personal grudge; John Quinn and his girlfriend Cherie Golden were executed that same summer when Quinn was suspected of snitching; Danny Grillo, a fellow crew member grappling with gambling debts and addiction, was murdered on November 14, 1978; and another suspected informant, Peter Waring, was executed in early 1979.

The crew’s reign of terror reached a turning point in January 1983, when Gambino boss Paul Castellano ordered DeMeo’s murder. Unable to find a willing executioner within the Gambino ranks, Castellano passed the contract to Lucchese underboss Anthony Casso. Casso recruited Testa and Senter, promising them safety in exchange for loyalty. 

On January 10, 1983, Roy DeMeo was lured to Patrick Testa’s body shop under the guise of a meeting. Testa and Senter ambushed him, shooting him multiple times, his body discovered days later on January 20 in the trunk of his Cadillac, topped with a chandelier as a sinister calling card.

Following this high-profile hit, both men integrated into the Lucchese crime family. There, they continued their lethal roles which was most notably assassinating Russian gangster Vladimir Reznikov on June 13, 1986, reportedly under orders from Casso, as Reznikov posed a threat to Lucchese-aligned Louis Marat Balagula’s gasoline bootlegging operations.

Ultimately, on September 14, 1989, Testa was convicted of racketeering and ten counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. After more than three decades behind bars, Testa’s fate came full circle where he was released on parole in April 2024.