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III
The trade, of course, was referred to above: Car theft and murder
on a massive scale.
DeName's background was a humble one, growing up on the wrong side
of the tracks as it were, in an area of Brooklyn called Canarsie in
Long Island. "Broadway Freddy" grew up in "Pig Town.," the poor side
of Canarsie Blvd., which featured swine farms as late as the early 1960s.
DeName was dyslexic and never made it past the fourth grade, but even
with that handicap, he proved to be a genius at fixing cars and making
them run. He couldn't read the manuals, but he proved to be a natural
with the tools.
Sometime in the early 1960s he eventually got a job at a gas station
in Canarsie close to a bar called Phil's Lounge and it was there that
Roy DeMeo hung out. You can see where this is going. The Lounge was
filled with criminal types and DeName soon got into car theft in such
a big way that money he made stealing Volkswagens (his specialty) financed
his first race cars.
Like any involvement with organized crime, an ambitious person can
branch out. Narcotics, pornography, loan-sharking and eventually murder
came into the picture and DeName was swept up in the tide.
"Broadway Freddy's" first involvement with murder came right around
the time he was wrapping up his Funny Car career. In either 1977 or
1978, DeName and Rosenberg were at DeMeo's Gemini Lounge on Troy Ave.
in Brooklyn on a snowy winter afternoon waiting for a Frederick Todaro,
who was being muscled out of the X-rated film business. Someone had
hired DeMeo to get rid of him so that the guy's nephew could take over
the film business. DeMeo was up for it.
In the Mustain/Capeci book, it's reported that Todaro enters the building,
which features a Venetian-blinded picture window to the right of the
front door. DeName looks out and reports to his cronies that Todaro
is coming.
There is a living room in the back of the lounge off the hallway that
leads to the kitchen. As soon as Todaro walks into the living room,
DeMeo shoots him in the face. Before Todaro hits the floor, DeMeo has
caught him by the head with a towel to keep blood from spurting all
over the place. Rosenberg, meanwhile, jumps out and begins stabbing
Todaro in the heart to keep it from pumping out more blood. DeMeo orders
Freddy into the bathroom with him and DeMeo shows him how to dismember
the body for removal. DeName gets in his cuts, the body is wrapped up
in plastic, stuffed in a stolen car and driven to some wiseguy's junkyard
where it's crushed into a large metal block.
And that was a big part of Freddy's life until his death in 1986.
MORE ILLUSTRATIVE ANNECDOTES OR "CRAZY FREDDY" VIGNETTES
Like a lot of wild kids, Freddy (known in his youth as "Crazy Freddy")
DeName loved to shock the people of Canarsie and the neighboring area
of Flatlands by having a friend speed around in his Cadillac, while
he mooned the stunned masses. However Mustain and Capeci reported other
interesting antics (and I quote) "After a dispute with the owner
of a live chicken market next to the gas station, he broke into the
market, opened the cages, and sent 800 birds madly squawking into the
street. At the gas station [now called "Broadway Freddy's" Diagnostic
Center} he also kept a pet monkey, "Susie," that he trained to pump
gas. When a dice game he ran there was busted, he took Susie to court
and caused a scene when a judge refused to let her take the stand in
his defense." - "Murder Machine" by Gene Mustain-Jerry Capeci Onyx
True Crime Books
DeName's portfolio was filled with similar, less violent incidents.
One racer told this writer how "Jungle Jim" Liberman was in a lounge
with two hotties under his arms and he saw DeName walk through the door.
He picked up on that and gestured to DeName, fingers pointing to the
two girls and thumb aimed at the justifiably pleased "J.J." DeName walked
over to their table and offered to shake hands with the trio ... unfortunately,
not with his hands … as was attested to by the screams that filled the
bar.
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