Editing Thomas DeSimone (section)

== Murder of William Bentvena ==
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After his release from prison in 1970, according to the mafia memoir ''[[Wiseguy (book)|Wiseguy]]'', [[Henry Hill]] describes the "welcome home" party for [[William Bentvena]] at [[Robert's Lounge]], a nightclub owned by [[James Burke (mobster)|Jimmy Burke]]: Bentvena jokingly asked DeSimone "if he still shined shoes", which DeSimone perceived as an insult, and leaning over to Hill and Burke intoned, "I'm gonna kill that fuck."<ref name="Pileggi2011">{{cite book|author=Nicholas Pileggi|title=Wiseguy: The 25th Anniversary Edition|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pfOEmndgHCgC&pg=PA116|date=September 27, 2011|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-1-4516-4278-0|pages=116–}}</ref> Two weeks later, on June 11, 1970, Bentvena was at ''The Suite'', Hill's nightclub in Queens. With the club nearly empty, DeSimone pistol-whipped Bentvena, yelling "Shine these fucking shoes!" before beating him bloody.<ref name="Pileggi2011" /> After Bentvena was severely beaten and presumed dead, DeSimone, Burke, and Hill placed his body in the trunk of Hill's car, stopping at DeSimone's mother's house for a knife, [[Agricultural lime|lime]], and a shovel. Hearing sounds from the trunk, they realized that Bentvena was still alive, so DeSimone and Burke beat him to death with the shovel and a tire iron. Burke had a friend who owned a dog kennel in Upstate New York, and Bentvena was buried there.<ref name="Pileggi2011" />

About three months after Bentvena's murder, Burke's friend sold the dog kennel to housing developers, and Burke ordered Hill and DeSimone to exhume Bentvena's corpse and dispose of it elsewhere.<ref name=wiseguy /> In ''Wiseguy'', Hill said the body was eventually crushed in a compactor at a New Jersey junkyard, which was owned by Clyde Brooks. However, on the commentary for the film ''[[Goodfellas]]'', he states that Bentvena's body was buried in the basement of Robert's Lounge, and that it was only later put in the compactor.