Carmine's parents, Gustave and Lena, were first generation immigrants from Italy, and he lived with them and his brother Gaetano, in Little Italy in Lower Manhattan. He had a police record that dated back to 1940. He got married, had two children, and worked as a machinist, or a millwright, and then sometimes as a painter and a plumber’s helper, a salesman and once, as a shipping clerk. For a while he also became a tailor.