Everybody knows that the mob murders gay people dead — we can thank The Sopranos for that nugget of knowledge — so when a former gunman for the Gambino family member used a recent court hearing to publicly come out of the closet, he wasn’t just hoping to get on the cover of the next month’s The Advocate. Robert Mormando — called John Doe in court documents — was hoping to get a sentence reduction for the 2003 murder of a Queens bagel store owner, a murder which he has already plead guilty to. The idea is that his cooperation in the case is riskier because as a mobster, his sexual orientation is a death sentence.

The fact that he was listed as John Doe in court documents has led to speculation that he in fact that he did not mean to come out, but was outed as someone tipped off the media as to who this “John Doe” was. Whoopsy. But if you don’t have any sympathy for the gay hitman, does this put his partner in peril?

According to the New York Times, “He’s in an absolute state of fright,” said the person with knowledge of the case. “You have to understand that his partner is totally freaking out. His partner has no connection to any of this. You can just imagine how fraught the whole thing is.”

No word on how this will play out, but the ballsy move did get a reaction from Actor Joseph Gannascoli, who played gay mobster Vito Spatafore on The Sopranos: “Having never been gay or a mobster, I can still tell you that it’s got to be hard,” said he said. “Almost like a kind of triple life.”