Richard DiNome

Richard DiNome was born to Italian-American emigrants in Pigtown, Brooklyn. He was involved in stealing cars and worked at a chop shop in Staten Island, stripping cars for automobile parts. He lived at 2305 E 5th Street in Gravesend, Brooklyn. On an average day DiNome stole 6-7 cars from the rich neighborhoods in Brooklyn. He was known among criminal associates as an expert auto mechanic. He professed pure happiness when he was asked to work with his brother Frederick in his stolen car ring.

Fellow car thieves Anthony Senter and Joseph Testa used his family's station wagon equipped with his child's baby stroller, car seat and toys to hinder police suspicion of any wrongdoing when stopped by curious police officers out on the street. Anthony, Joseph, DiNome, and Vito Arena centered on the Jewish-populated neighborhood of Borough Park because the cars in the vicinity of that neighborhood were least likely to have non-leather upholstered seats due to religious practices. He would drive them to Flatlands, Brooklyn and leave them on streets near his brother Freddy's automotive shop, signalling which vehicles were stolen by leaving the passenger-side sun visor down.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, DiNome started adopting a wardrobe that consisted of New York City Police Department-style shirts, gold chains around his neck and a dungaree jacket. While attaching a silencer to a loaded automatic handgun in preparation for the murder of business associate Khaled Fahd Darwish Daoud, he accidentally shot himself in the hand.

He followed his brother into organized crime and become a key member of the DeMeo crew headed by Mafia capo Roy DeMeo; a dangerous group linked to hundreds of murders. In Murder Machine, authors Jerry Capeci and Gene Mustain described him as a "stumblebum". He did not suffer from dyslexia like his older brother, but was thought to be considerably less acute. He managed to successfully manage a Flatlands, Brooklyn automotive repair shop on Glenwood Road in Flatlands located directly around the corner from his brother's gasoline station, body shop and auto repair center. While his brother Frederick was offbeat with his eccentricities and idiosyncrasies but competent, Richard DiNome was a "whining bumbler".

He made most of his money from grand theft auto from Joseph Scorney, a former friend and protégé of Vito Arena. Scorney would slim jim and slap hammer the cars whereupon DiNome would drive the stolen cars away to the many chop shops in Canarsie, Brooklyn. Between DiNome and Scorney, they were making $1,000–2,500 a week for their stolen car parts of luxury vehicles. He owned three cars, including a Porsche 935, and lived in a newly furnished Bensonhurst, Brooklyn highrise apartment building where he kept $25,000 hidden underneath the hollow bottom of an artificial plant, for "in case I have to buy a cop off" as he would tell his associates.

He was more enthusiastic than Scorney about hiring Vito Arena into their car theft crew but he wanted to please his brother Frederick, by helping out his old friend. In the summer of 1978, Scorney, Arena and DiNome stole between four and seven cars a night. He murdered his brother's friend Joseph Scorney on September 28, 1978 for refusing to join their auto theft ring, by shooting him to death with the help of Vito Arena, Frederick and Ronald Turekian.

DiNome was found shot in the back of the head with an automatic handgun in his Gravesend, Brooklyn home along with his friends John Baida and Frederick Seiden.[1]

• Murder Machine by Gene Mustain and Jerry Capeci

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