Infamous America - LUFTHANSA HEIST Ep. 1 | “The Robert’s Lounge Gang”

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

Henry Hill becomes a New York mob associate at a young age. By the 1960s, he’s part of the Robert’s Lounge Gang, a crew run by the notorious Jimmy Burke. The five major crime families in New York make money from illegal operations at JFK Airport. In 1967, the Robert’s Lounge Gang works with a cargo employee to rob Air France at the airport and it nets a big payday. But the heist pales in comparison to the next one on the horizon... Join Black Barrel+ for bingeable seasons with no commercials : blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join For more details, please visit www.blackbarrelmedia.com. Our social media pages are: @blackbarrelmedia on Facebook and Instagram, and @bbarrelmedia on Twitter. This show is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Please visit AirwaveMedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin’s World, Once Upon A Crime, and many more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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for all audiences. In April of 1967, a cargo supervisor at JFK Airport couldn't believe his luck. He worked for Air France, and ordinarily he led a quiet life. He went to work, earned modest pay and returned home to stacks of magazines that piled up over time. But tonight was nowhere near ordinary. He was currently in the steam room of the Jade East Motel, right across from the airport, and he wasn't alone. A beautiful woman named Clementine was in the steam room with him. One of his co-workers was also there, and that might be a drag, but it probably wouldn't be

for long. The co-worker had introduced him to come. Clementine. And if tonight was anything like the past couple weekends, the co-worker would take off and leave the supervisor and Clementine to have a private evening together. But there were just a couple things the supervisor didn't know. First, none of this was luck. It was all part of a plan. Second, Clementine was being paid to distract him. Because third, while the three of them relaxed in the steam room, two men were upstairs stealing the supervisors keys so that they could relieve Air France of the burden of storing hundreds of thousands of untraceable dollars.

From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling us six-part story about one of the biggest robberies in U.S. history, the 1978 Leftanza Heist. This is episode one, the Roberts Lounge Gang. This story starts with Henry Hill, for a relative. simple reason. When it was all said and done, he was one of only three people, as far as we know, with direct knowledge of the Lufthansa heist who could have talked about it. The list was much larger in the beginning, but as you'll hear, it shrank rapidly. Parts of this story were immortalized

in the classic film Goodfellas, starring Robert De Niro, Ray Leota, and Joe Pesci. But a single movie can never tell the whole story, so get ready for lots of new information. And we'll begin with Henry Hill Jr., who grew up in Brownsville, a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood. Henry's father was Irish, and his mother was Italian. His father was a union man, an electrician for a New York construction company. Henry Hill, Sr., tried to impart a good work ethic on his sons and daughters. There were eight in all, and Mr. Hill was probably proud when his son, son Henry announced at the age of 11 that he had a part-time job at the cabstand across the street. But dad would learn too late that Henry had just begun life as a gangster.

The cabstand fascinated Henry. Right in the middle of the old neighborhood, the men who hung around there always seemed to have the best of everything. They wore elegant coats and drove luxury cars. They played card games late into the night. They traded jokes and flashy accessories and Henry wanted to be part of it. The men had money and commanded respect, and it started with the man who owned the cabstand, Paul Vario Sr. Vario was a mobster who built a small empire on illegal gambling. He had a vast network of loan sharks, bookmakers, and numbers runners who paid him protection money. He also had a hand in the labor unions, thanks to two of his brothers who were ranking officials.

Another brother ran the cab stand, and one more ran illegal gambling while paying off the police. If anything illegal was happening in southeast Brooklyn, Paul Vario probably had a hand in it, and he was taking a cut. But in addition to his own operation, Vario was an influential and respected Capo, or captain, in the Lucchese crime family. The Lucchesees are one of New York's five-farmes. families, and they're still active today. The others are the Bonanno, Colombo, Genevese, and Gambino families. In 1931, to prevent turf wars, the families divided New York City into several territories.

The Lucchese territory included Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx, with influence in parts of Queens and New Jersey. They controlled trucking, clothing, shipping, and to a certain extent, labor unions like the Teamsters. The Lucchesees were powerful, and when the family's namesake, Tommy Lucchese, died in 1967, his funeral was attended by officials and criminals alike. That was the world that 11-year-old Henry Hill stepped into when he began work at the cabstand.

His job started small. He ran errands for Paul and his brother. He delivered pizzas for the restaurant Paul owned around the corner. He picked up coffee and sandwiches for the men at the cabstand. Sometimes he cleaned the interiors of limousines and cabs. Henry was dedicated. He made sure to follow orders quickly and correctly, and Paul and his crew noticed. Soon, Paul's brother trusted Henry to drive cars around the cabstand parking lot, to the awe and delight of Henry's friends. Over time, but when he was still a young man,

He made enough money that he could buy a pinstriped, double-breasted suit with, as he put it, lapels so sharp you could get arrested just for flashing them. Eventually, Henry spent all of his time at the cabstand instead of paying attention to school. Henry's father was angry, and he started beating Henry to get him to stay away from the cabstand, and it didn't work. Henry soon dropped out of high school to become more involved with the Vario, crew. He began a new operation, selling cartons of cigarettes that had been stolen on their way out of the airport. He was making hundreds of dollars a week, but his rise up the criminal ranks was interrupted by a

three-year stent in the army. After his service, he went right back to the crew and started living a lavish lifestyle. He took regular trips to Las Vegas and went to famous clubs like the Copa Cabana. And during these years of hustling, he met two people who helped change his life. One was a young up-and-comer, Tommy D. Simone, and the other was a savvy veteran, Jimmy Burton. Tommy was a brash, ambitious, hot-headed young man who was born into the mobster life. He was portrayed by Joe Pesci and Goodfellas, but with two key differences. He was much younger than Joe Pesci was when the movie was filmed, and the filmmakers changed the character's name to Tommy DeVito. The real Tommy was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, not New York, and his grandfather

and uncle were prominent members of the Los Angeles underworld. Two of Tommy's brothers were associates of the Gambino crime family in New York. So Tommy's family was connected to the mafia from coast to coast, and Tommy had the most important qualification for promotion. He was full-blood Italian. To become a made man, which meant to be fully inducted in the into one of the five families. A candidate had to be able to trace his family history back to Italy, and usually Sicily. Tommy was eligible to become a soldier,

and then potentially a captain, and maybe even a boss one day. And that was something he wanted badly. And Tommy's heritage was what separated him from Henry. Henry was only half Italian, which meant he could never be more than an associate. Tommy was just 17 years old when he began working with Henry and John.

Jimmy Burke. He was anxious to prove himself, and he had a naturally violent temper. And he also carried with him a healthy dose of insecurity because one of his brothers became an informant for the FBI. Tommy's characteristics proved to be a lethal combination for Michael Gianco. One of the most infamous scenes in Goodfellas happened in real life. Tommy seemed to take pleasure in tormenting others, and Michael Gianco, who was nicknamed Spider, learned that the hard way. Spider did odd jobs around a bar restaurant called Roberts Lounge, which was owned by Jimmy Burke. One night, a few of the gang were drinking in the basement of the lounge, and Spider was serving the drinks. Tommy wanted to have a little fun. He told Spider to dance. When Spider refused, Tommy

shot him in the leg. One of the men took Spider to the hospital, and the doctor put Spider's leg in a cast. A week later, some of the gang were back in the basement drinking and playing cards. Tommy, Jimmy, and Henry were all there, and so was Spider with his cast. Tommy started teasing Spider about his leg, and then Spider made the last mistake of his life. He reportedly told Tommy to go fuck himself. Jimmy was impressed. Tommy was not. The gang briefly teased Tommy about his life.

pleased Tommy about the incident and that pushed Tommy over the edge. Just as they resumed their card game, Tommy pulled out a gun and shot Spider-3 times in the chest. Michael Spider Gianco died on the basement floor of Robert's lounge. Jimmy, as the owner of the bar, was probably furious. But because Tommy was so well connected, there probably wasn't much Jimmy could do about it. Like Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke had Irish Am. ancestry, which meant he could never be a full member of a crime family, and he had to walk a fine line with those who could, like Tommy. Jimmy was 12 years older than Henry, and 20 years older than Tommy.

Jimmy was born in New York and had a hard childhood. He entered the foster care system when he was two years old, and suffered physical, emotional, and even sexual abuse as he transferred from home to home. Like Henry, Jimmy's involvement in the criminal world, started small. He had a little money and he got into loan sharking and bookmaking. And for the uninitiated, that meant he loaned people money who couldn't get a loan from a place like a bank and he charged hefty interest rates. And he accepted bets on things like sporting events and political races. Jimmy was friends with Paul Vario, who owned the cab stand where Henry got his start. With Paul's help, Jimmy's business grew and Jimmy became

one of the most respected and notorious criminals in the city. His nickname was Jimmy the Gent, because of his charm, his lively attitude, and his generosity in certain situations. Jimmy would arrive at a nightclub and give the doorman a $50 tip just for opening the door. He tipped everyone generously from the bartenders to the servers, but his generosity didn't extend to people who couldn't pay back their loans or their gambling debts. Jimmy was ruthless when it came time to get his money, which meant most people paid on time, which meant Jimmy was a good producer for the crime families.

Jimmy started to guide Henry's career when Henry was 16 years old. The police arrested Henry in connection with a credit card scam. It was Henry's first arrest, and he refused to give the police any information that would implicate the copo, Paul Vario, or his first. crew. Henry earned instant respect and spent the next few years learning from Jimmy. By the late 1960s, Jimmy, Henry and Tommy, as well as other associates, were a crew of their own. They operated out of Jimmy's bar, Roberts Lounge, which was close to JFK Airport. And in 1967, the Roberts Lounge

gang learned of a possible score that would be its biggest to date by far. JFK. Air Force The FK Airport was the Mafia's piggy bank. It had been a tempting prospect since its construction in the 1940s, back when it was known as Idlewild Airport. For one thing, the airport was built on 5,000 acres of land. It was a massive complex, and hard to monitor all at the same time. And for another, from the second it was built, it became as important to New York as the docks had been at the turn of the century. Scores of people and products moved through the airport. at an incredible rate. By 1975, the value of goods that traveled through JFK in a year were estimated at $35 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that's roughly $174 billion today.

And the mafia regularly carved off pieces for itself. Security was as tight as possible inside the airport complex. But when items left the airport, they were easy targets for hijackers. Most items were driven out on trucks. The gang would pull over the truck, take the stuff, and either threaten the driver or give him a cut of the profits. Other money-making ventures revolved around gambling. More than a few workers at JFK had gambling habits, which crews like the Roberts Lounge gang were all too happy to enable. The workers often bet more than they could afford, and that left a crew like Jimmy's with a problem. If a person truly didn't have the money and had no way to get it, then a beating wasn't going to magically produce it.

So Jimmy and Paul Vario developed a system. If a debtor couldn't pay in cash, Jimmy would forgive the debt in return for a small service. That usually meant providing information about valuable cargo at JFK Airport. And that's how the Roberts Lounge gang learned about shipments of money that went through the Air France cargo building. Robert McMahon worked the night shift at the Air France cargo building. He liked expensive things, and to finance his lifestyle, he participated in a series of hijackings, robberies, and frauds. He was an inside man and a valuable associate of the gang. It was normal for Henry to stop by JFK and talk to McMahon. And one day in 1967, McMahon had some juicy information.

Air France was in the process of replacing the old storage room, which was just a wire cage in the lost luggage area. The cage was going to be replaced by a new strong room that was made from cement blocks. This wasn't really news on its own, but here was the key. During construction, all the high-value cargo was going to be stored in the cargo warehouse right up front. That included bags of cash, sometimes several of them at once. and in this instance, the bags contained packages of $60,000 each. McMahon assured Henry that taking the money would be easy. They would just need a few guys with guns,

and in short order, they'd walk out with at least $240,000. Henry passed the information to Jimmy. Jimmy liked the idea and gave the go-ahead. That very weekend, Henry, Tommy, and two associates rented a getaway car tacked on some phony license plates and drove to the airport. And that's when they realized it wasn't going to be as easy as McMahon said. There were lots of people at the cargo office, and this wouldn't work at all. In an armed stick-up, one or two witnesses were acceptable.

You could get a handle on them by convincing them that if they talked to the cops, it would be the last conversation they ever had. But with this many people, there was no way to guarantee silence from the witnesses. So Henry and his crew left. They needed a different strategy, and while they brainstormed, they realized another problem. They needed more advanced notice of a shipment than they could get at the time. There were just too many things to organize, and it couldn't be done at a moment's notice. Eventually, so much time passed that the new strong room was done, and shipments of cash were now safely locked inside.

But the gang was undeterred. They needed another new plan. and soon enough, they figured it out. It sounded like something out of a spy novel, but it was real life. There were only two men with a key to the strong room, a security guard and the cargo supervisor. The security guard took his job very seriously and never let anyone touch the key,

so it would be incredibly difficult to get it from him. So Henry and his crew focused their attention on the supervisor, and after one trip to the man's apartment, they knew what to do. The crew waited until the supervisor had a day off. They thought he'd leave the key at home when he didn't need it. Robert McMahon took the supervisor out for a drink one evening, which gave Henry and another guy the chance to break into the supervisor's apartment. They searched for the key, but couldn't find it.

Henry realized the supervisor carried the key to the strong room even on his days off. Once again, this was going to be harder than they thought. But the break-in wasn't a total burden. bust. Henry and his partner noticed something. The supervisor lived a bachelor's lifestyle. His apartment was pretty small, and there were magazines everywhere. Some were true crime detective magazines, and some were erotic magazines. At that moment, Henry believed he spotted the supervisor's weakness. The goal was to distract the supervisor, steal his keys, make a copy of the one to the strong room, and then put them back before he noticed they were gone.

The first step was to prove that the supervisor could be distracted. McMahon and Henry hired an escort. McMahon told the supervisor that she was a friend, and over two weekends, she successfully distracted the supervisor. She was able to keep him busy for at least 90 minutes, which should have been enough time to make a copy of the key. After the second weekend, McMahon called Henry. He said he'd heard there was between $400,000 and $700,000.

coming into the airport next Friday. There was no more time for rehearsals, this was it. If all went smoothly, the plan would go like this. McMahon, the escort, and the supervisor would meet at a motel bar across the street from JFK. Then all three would go up to a rented room and change into bath robes that would be provided by the escort. When they changed into the robes,

the supervisor would end up leaving his keys behind, probably in his pants pocket. As they walked out of the room to go down to the steam room, McMahon would open the blinds a little bit as a signal that they were gone. At that point, Henry and Tommy would sneak into the room with a key that McMahon had hidden in the hallway. They would take the strong room key to the closest locksmith, make a copy, and return it without the supervisor suspecting a thing. The locksmith closed at 7 p.m., so the evening was set to start at 5.30.

but right away there were problems. McMahon and the supervisor arrived at the motel bar 30 minutes late. When the escort arrived, the supervisor was slow to go up to the room. It wasn't until 6.30 that the three of them finally went down to the steam room. Henry and Tommy raced up to the motel room, grabbed the supervisor's key ring, and hurried to the locksmith. When they arrived, he was already closing his shop. They begged him to take one last order. He reluctantly agreed and asked which key they wanted to copy.

Henry then realized a critical problem he had overlooked. He didn't know which key was for the strong room. The only solution was to copy all 18 keys on the ring. And that created another problem. The locksmith only had 15 spare keys available. The man got to work and copied 15 keys from the supervisor's ring. and Henry and Tommy just had to hope that one of them was for the strong room. They grabbed their copies and rushed back to the motel.

They returned the supervisor's keys while the man was still in the steam room. Now they would have to wait until the next morning to find out if the plan had really worked. The next morning, Henry drove to JFK and gave McMahon the copied keys. Henry waited by himself while McMahon disappeared into the building to test the keys. Henry was sweating. If all that work had been for nothing, but then McMahon came back and he had a big smile on his face. He held up a key. They had a winner. And not only that, but there was money in the strong room right now. A shipment had arrived last night. If they were going to steal it, they should do it tonight. It was a Saturday, and a truck wouldn't pick up the money until Tuesday.

By the time someone noticed the money was gone, the robbers would be. free and clear. After all the false starts and headaches, the job could still end up as sweet as when McMahon first proposed it. So Henry and Tommy got to work. They rented a car under a fake name and replaced the real license plates with phony plates. At 11.40 p.m., they drove into the parking lot of the cargo office. They waited until shift change. That's when Henry and Tommy made their move. They got out of the car and walked to the building. Henry carried the largest suitcase he could find. Henry and Tommy walked into the building.

Robert McMahon was working that night, and they spotted him nearby. If anyone asked Henry and Tommy who they were, they would say they were passengers who were looking for their luggage, and McMahon would pretend he didn't know them. But if trouble came up, McMahon would be there to make sure Henry and Tommy got away. Henry and Tommy walked to the strong room. They made sure no one was looking. Then Henry inserted the key and gently, casually turned it, and the door opened.

Inside there were seven stacks of money. Henry grabbed all of them, stuffed them into his suitcase, and walked out as if nothing had happened. He and Tommy strode out of the building as easily as they had arrived. According to Henry, McMahon thought they were leaving empty-handed. Henry's suitcase must have weighed a ton with all that money in it, but he was so excited, he carried it as though he were floating. That was April 8, 1967. Sure enough, no one from Air France, other than inside man Robert McMahon,

knew about the robbery for three more days. The newspapers ran their first reports on Wednesday, April 12th, and when they did, all of New York City knew that $420,000, had disappeared from JFK Airport. Adjusted for inflation, that's almost $3.4 million today. The FBI jumped on the case, but the investigation was pointless almost immediately. Nearly a quarter of the money had gone to the crime bosses already. $60,000 to Paul Vario since he ran protection for the Roberts Lounge gang,

and $60,000 to Acopo for the rival Colombo crime family. According to Henry, it was insurance. In the complicated network of territories, the Lucchese family and its associates could rob trucks and storage rooms, but the Colombo's ran the airport itself. So paying off a Colombo captain kept everybody happy. Henry and Jimmy took some of the money and partied in Las Vegas. Henry started an illegal betting operation and opened a lounge of his own. He called it the suite.

It started as a legitimate business, but then quickly became an emporium for stolen goods. The Air France robbery was an impressive early victory for the gang, but there were hard times ahead, and the money wouldn't last. After some trouble in Florida, the gang would have to make fast money, and they would turn their sights to JFK Airport once again. Next time on Infamous America, Henry and Jimmy land in deep trouble down in Florida and end up doing hard time. A desperate gambler finds himself deep in the hole, and he devises a plan to steal millions. Just like Robert McMahon, he works in a cargo building at JFK Airport, and he wants to rob Lufthansa Airlines. That's next week on Infamous America. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program

don't have to wait week to week. They receive early access and the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This season was co-executive produced by Stephen Walters in association with ritual productions. Research and writing by Dante Flores. Original music by Rob Valier.

Audio editing and sound design by Dave Harrison. I'm your host and producer, Chris Wimmer. Find us at our website, blackbarrelmedia.com or on our social media channels. We're Black Barrel Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Beryl Media on Twitter. And you can stream all our episodes on YouTube. Just search for Infamous America Podcast. This show is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. Please visit airwavemedia.com to check out other great podcasts like Ben Franklin's World, Once Upon a Crime, and many more.

Thanks for listening.