2020 · Published Apr 4, 2020. Real-life gangster Tommy DeSimone, played by Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, had a more mysterious death than that depicted in the Martin Scorsese classic. Martin Scorsese’s 1990 gangster film, Goodfellas, is a classic of the crime genre, but the death of Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito doesn’t reflect the real-life murder on.