In the summer of 1978, Joseph 'Joey' Scorney, a 25-year-old Irish-American man from Brooklyn, New York, was deeply enmeshed in the lucrative world of grand theft auto as a member of the notorious DeMeo crew. His success afforded him a high-rise apartment in Bensonhurst and a collection of luxury cars, a testament to the thousands of dollars he was making weekly.
However, his association with the criminal underworld would ultimately lead to his untimely and brutal death.
On September 28, 1978, under orders from crew leader Roy DeMeo, Joseph Scorney was murdered. The reasons behind the order remained murky, even to those who carried it out. The execution was carried out by Vito Arena and Richard DiNome. Inside an auto shop in East Flatbush, Arena shot Scorney. Despite being wounded, Scorney was still alive until DiNome delivered the fatal blows with a sledgehammer.
Following the murder, Scorney's body was placed into a fifty-gallon oil drum which was then filled with cement. The barrel was subsequently rolled off a pier in Center Moriches, New York, in an attempt to conceal the crime. For years, the fate of Joseph Scorney remained a mystery until his body was recovered in 1982. The investigation into his death eventually led to the conviction of one of his killers. In 1985, Vito Arena was sentenced to eighteen years in prison for the murder of Joseph Scorney.
