Chris Rosenberg

Harvey "Chris" Rosenberg (October 6, 1950 – May 11, 1979), also known as Chris DeMeo and Christopher Rosalia, was an American gangster who was member of the DeMeo crew run by Gambino crime family soldier Roy DeMeo.

Rosenberg was dealing in small amounts of marijuana and hashish when he first met Roy DeMeo at a Canarsie gas station in 1966.

DeMeo recruited Chris to steal cars, which would then be sold off through connections DeMeo had within Canarsie junkyards.

Rosenberg was also the first crew member to interact with DeMeo socially at family barbecues and get-togethers at DeMeo's house.

Between his adept car abilities as well as his fledgling drug business, Rosenberg became successful and opened his own car shop named Car Phobia Repairs, which soon became a hotspot for stolen vehicles.

The gang is suspected of between 75–200 murders in the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.

Following a failed narcotics deal with a Cuban drug cartel that Rosenberg stole from, DeMeo killed Rosenberg as restitution.

Chris Rosenberg grew up in Canarsie on a block dominated by Italian-Americans.

He attended Samuel J. Tilden High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn.

Despite the Mafia rule that only full Italians could be made, or officially inducted into the organization, Rosenberg reportedly believed that his earning abilities and willingness to murder might eventually lead to his becoming a member of Cosa Nostra.

He reportedly did not like his Jewish last name and preferred people call him "Chris DeMeo" instead.

Rosenberg's criminal career began at the age of 13, when he began dealing marijuana.

His first arrest was in 1970 for car theft, which started out as a felony case but was reduced to a misdemeanor.

He was given probation rather than jail time.

He was arrested again in 1971 for possession of the drug hashish, then again in 1972 for the attempted theft of a snow plow.

Both cases were dismissed.

By 1972, Rosenberg had his friends stealing cars for him.

Two of these friends were the Gemini twins, Joseph Testa and Anthony Senter, who Rosenberg would introduce to DeMeo and become two core members of the DeMeo crew.

Testa and Senter, who were both full-blooded Italians, had known Rosenberg since their teenage years.

By 1974, a 23-year-old Rosenberg began selling cocaine and quaaludes, again backed by DeMeo.

He acquired the Quaaludes through a pharmacist connection, as well as the cocaine, which at the time could be prescribed for medical purposes.

Through this pharmacist, Chris Rosenberg and the rest of the early DeMeo crew met 22-year-old Andrei Katz, a man who became what was most likely the crew's first murder victim.

When Katz was arrested due to a stolen vehicle he purchased from the crew, he blamed Rosenberg for his predicament.

The situation soon escalated to violence when Katz was pulled from his vehicle and severely beaten by two men and put in the hospital.

Andrei's brother Victor later testified in court that Andrei claimed the two men were Testa and Senter.

Victor also testified that while still in the hospital recovering from his injuries, Andrei swore to his brother that he would get revenge on Chris and the others.

The revenge came on November 13, 1974, when Rosenberg opened his garage door and was struck with 3 bullets fired from an automatic rifle.

Rosenberg survived through sheer luck, one bullet hitting him in the lower jaw, another his right arm and a third that was aimed for his chest merely glancing off.

Surviving what should have been a fatal shooting, Rosenberg was reportedly furious.

His jaw was left disfigured from the bullet wound.

Despite undergoing reconstructive surgery, from that point on Rosenberg wore a beard to mask the scars that resulted from this attack.

The man who had shot Rosenberg that morning was never seen but it was assumed by Rosenberg and the rest of the DeMeo Crew to be Andrei Katz.

After this incident, and while Rosenberg was still in the hospital recovering from his gunshot wounds, DeMeo met with his followers and it was decided that Katz had to be murdered.

Directly taking care of Katz was considered by the men to be too much of a risk due to the back and forth violence that had already occurred.

Henry Borelli, who had become involved with the crew shortly after Chris was shot, suggested that he use a woman friend of his to bait Andrei to a location where he could be abducted and then dealt with discreetly.

Arriving at the woman's apartment complex expecting to take her out on a date, Andrei was forcefully abducted by Rosenberg, Borelli, Testa and Senter and taken to the meat department of a grocery store, where DeMeo was waiting.

It was this night, Friday, June 13, 1975, that the DeMeo crew is first known to have been involved with murder and dismemberment.

While first-hand accounts of the incident are unavailable, information provided by crew members who cooperated with the government years later as well as the actual remains of Andrei Katz provided clues that were used by law enforcement as well as author Jerry Capeci to reconstruct the events.

Andrei was stabbed multiple times in the heart with a butcher knife, presumably by Rosenberg in revenge for the shooting that had ruined his face.

After he was already dead, he was then stabbed over a dozen times in the back, again presumably by Rosenberg.