Actor Robert Funaro plays the role of Eugene Pontecorvo. Eugene is married to Deanne who desperately wants to leave New Jersey; and they have two sons, Robby and Ally who are both addicted to drugs. Eugene operates within the Aprile business. Unfortunately, many of the men with in the Aprile group has been disappearing and some of them were openly known to have died.

Jackie Sr. died as a result of cancer, while his brother Richie was killed by Janice Soprano. Richie and Janice, who is Tony Soprano’s sister, had known each other in their younger days. So when they all ended up back in New Jersey the attraction that they had for each other was rekindled. Christopher Moltisanti was engaged to Richie’s niece Adriana La Cerva, but on occasions he has been physically abusive to her. Richie told him to stop it. However when he and Janice got into an argument about his son, he punched her in the mouth. Janice in returned, without any warn, retrieved a gun from the kitchen cabinet and killed him.

Tony took care of disposing of Richie’s body which he did not mind doing because Richie was planning on killing Tony. However Tony had found out about it and was planning to kill him first.

Everyone thought that Richie had went over to the side of the FBI and was now in the witness protection program.

Jackie JR. was then killed as a result of a heist that he tried to carry out but failed. It is thought that drugs dealers killed him. Tony killed Ralph Cifaretto during a physical fight between the two of them.

So as a result of these deaths Eugene was quickly moving up the ladder within the Soprano crew. Vito Spatafore had taken control of the crew and Eugene was next in line. However, Eugene had inherited over two million dollars from his aunt and so he decided that it was time that he got out of the Mafia business. He had his sights set on Florida. So he approached Tony Soprano with the request to leave the business. Tony told him that he would think about it.

In the mean time though he had to carry out some order of shooting Teddy Spirodakis. After the job was carried and he returned home he found out that Tony had denied his request. His wife wasn’t too happy about this so they argued.

Eugene though had been working with the FBI for a long time. So when Raymond Curto, who was going to testified against Tony disappeared the Feds wanted him to remain in New Jersey as well. So unable to see a way out of the Mafia business and another chance at a more peaceful life, he went down to his basement. There in the basement he hung himself.

Robert Funaro was born on the 23rd January 1959 in Brooklyn New York. He has also appeared in Law and Order and Law and Order Criminal Intent.