Infamous America - LUFTHANSA HEIST Ep. 5 | “Witness for the Prosecution”

Episode Date: August 11, 2021

The bloody fallout from the Lufthansa Heist continues as the police discover dead mobsters all over New York. People with direct knowledge of the robbery fear for their lives, but Henry Hill feels safer than most. He makes tons of money in the drug business, but it leads to his downfall. Soon, he also fears for his life, and he feels he has no choice but to make a painful decision to save his family. Thanks to our sponsor, Simplisafe. Get free security camera and a 60-day risk free trial at SimpliSafe.com/infamous Sign up for Bespoke at BoxOfAwesome.com and enter the code “infamous” for 20% off your first box! 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

Federal prosecutor Ed McDonald lost count of how many interviews had gone like this. His witness, Henry Hill, would tell some story, then he would lose track of the details, then complain, and then forget what he was talking about. Henry's brain was so fried that he couldn't remember anything, yet he still expected to receive star treatment. It was exhausting. Today, Henry brought a woman along, possibly a girlfriend, possibly an associate from his narcotics operation, or both. McDonald asked a simple question,

where were the two of you on the day of the Leftonza heist? December 11, 1978. Accounts vary as to who answered first, but neither Henry nor the woman remembered right away. Then, for one of them, it clicked. It came out easily as though it weren't even a crime. They were in Boston, fixing Boston University basketball games. That didn't sound right to McDonald.

He knew there was no racketeering activity at Boston University. He asked if they meant Boston College. Henry said, yeah, that was it. By coincidence, McDonald played basketball his freshman year at Boston College 16 years earlier. It must have been deeply offensive to learn that Henry Hill had interfered with his team. But in the heat of the moment, McDonald didn't realize that that little detail, little detail was the key to finally catching the criminal mastermind behind the Leftanza Heist.

Jimmy Burke. From Black Barrel Media, this is Infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling a six-part story about one of the biggest robberies in U.S. history, the 1978 Leftanza Heist. This is episode five. Witness for the Prosecution. Lewis Werner, the inside man for the Leiftonza Heist, was arrested in the last year.

in late February 1979, a little over two months after the robbery. The FBI was confident that there had been an inside man on the job, and it hadn't taken long to focus on Lewis. Agents rounded up people who were close to Lewis, and they all confirmed that he boasted about the job. But when Lewis was interrogated about the crime, he continuously denied any involvement. It's possible he wanted to be thought of as one of the wise guys.

But it's also possible that he wanted to avoid the fate that awaited him if he talked about or otherwise crossed the mafia. Two days before Lewis was arrested, the police were called about a grisly example of what might have been in store. There was a dismal part of Brooklyn known as the pit. A box trailer was parked along one of the streets. That's the trailer that's attached to a semi-truck. This particular trailer was used to store frozen meat.

Slabs of beef were hanging from hooks. And two days before Lewis Werner was arrested, the body of a dead man was found lying on the floor of the trailer or hanging from one of the hooks, depending on which version of the story you want to believe. The first detectives on the scene didn't know the identity of the dead man, but it was clear that he'd been bound and strangled to death somewhere else and then dragged into the trailer.

And apparently he'd been there for quite some time, time because his body was frozen solid. The man didn't seem to possess anything to help with his identification. No keys, no wallet, no nothing. But when the police were able to examine the man's jacket a little further, they discovered something that seemed like it had been sewn into the lining. They cut open the lining of the jacket and pulled out a small address book. When they flipped through it, they saw a familiar name.

James Jimmy the Gent, Burke. Whoever the dead guy was, he had at least some association with the mob. Detectives contacted a dentist who was also in the address book and learned the dead man was Mr. Richard Eaton. Further investigation revealed that Eaton was definitely connected to the mob. Eaton was one of Jimmy's associates. They'd known each other for a while and had worked on various schemes together. One of the schemes involved a restaurant in Manhattan that Eaton managed.

While Eaton was the manager, Jimmy was paid $300 a week as part of a no-show contract. No-show contracts are common in the mob world. On paper, someone has a job and collects a paycheck, but never shows up for work. The scam was often used for guys who were fresh out of prison and needed proof of employment for their parole officer. The restaurant that gave Jimmy his no-show job was overseen by a mobster named Thomas Montalione. Montalioni also owned a business in Florida called the Players Club, and that business held the answer to Eaton's death. The Players Club was in Fort Lauderdale, and it was a common hangout for the Lucchese family and its associates,

associates like Jimmy Burke. It also turned out to be the base of operations for Richard Eaton's confidence schemes. Eaton was a mob associate and a con man, and for some reason, he thought it would be a good idea to trick mobsters out of their money. In the weeks following the Leftonza heist, Jimmy was flush with cash, and he needed somewhere to put it. Eaton claimed to have just the thing, connections to a cocaine operation that promised exponential profits to anyone who could buy in. That sounded good to Jimmy, and he put up 250,000. thousand dollars. But the investment opportunity was a lie. There was no cocaine operation. Richard Eaton just stole a quarter of a million dollars from Jimmy Burke. And there was also a

story going around that Eaton had essentially robbed Paul Vario as well, the capo above Jimmy's crew. Vario had also received a cut of the Lovtanza Hall, and, like Jimmy, he was looking to invest it. Eaton told Vario that the players club was up for sale. Buying it would be a good way to launder some money. Apparently Vario agreed, and he bought the business from Eaton. The problem was, Eaton didn't own it. Thomas Montalioni did. Montalioni was trying to sell the place at the time,

but according to the story, Eaton tricked Vario into buying it from the wrong guy. Jimmy and Henry went to Florida in early 19-7. to look for Eaton, but Eaton went into hiding, so Jimmy and Henry returned to New York. Sometime in February, Jimmy heard that Eaton had been spotted at a restaurant in the city. Jimmy wasted no time. He instructed his crew to kill Eaton and leave his body in the pit. But after Richard Eaton was eliminated, Jimmy started to wonder about Thomas Montalioni. Eden had used Montalioni's businesses in his schemes.

Maybe Montalioni had been in on it the whole time. The short, unsatisfying and yet common answer that we get so often in this series because we're dealing with the mafia is, we don't know. But it's clear that someone thought Montalioni was involved with scams to rob, Jimmy, and maybe Paul Vario. Or Jimmy and or Paul thought Montalioni was a liability because he might have been laundering some of the heist money.

The end result was that Thomas Montalioni was killed in March 1979. After him came Louis Kaffora and his wife Joanna. Unlike Eaton and Montalioni, Kaffora was directly involved in the heist. He was one of the robbers. And like the previous two dead men, he was also helping launder the money. Jimmy funneled some of his cash through Kaffora's business

that owned a parking lot in Astoria. But it wasn't the money laundering that got Kifora killed. He made the classic dumb mistake of spending too much money. Lewis Koffora lived a flashy lifestyle. He drove a new Cadillac every year, and he regularly took his wife Joanna out for high-priced dinners. And, like Marty Krugman, he had a habit of talking to his wife about all his criminal activities.

Somewhere around this time, the FBI received a tip from an informant that led to Kifora. Agents began applying pressure on Kifora until he agreed to talk. But unfortunately for Kifora and the FBI, Jimmy found out about the arrangement. And Louis Koffora and his wife, Joanna, disappeared. And if you're trying to keep a tally, in the first three months after the robbery, seven people who were somehow connected to the heist died or disappeared. and we're not even close to Dunn.

April of 1979 was a lull in the chaos, but it picked back up again in May. That month, the body of Teresa Ferrara washed up on the shore of the Tom's River in New Jersey, or at least part of her body did. It was just her dismembered torso. The medical examiner had to compare x-rays of the torso to Teresa's medical records to figure out it was hurt.

She had been missing since February, and she followed a winding path to end up as a casualty in this story. She was one of Jimmy's associates, and she sold cocaine in the territory of the Lucchese family. In 1977, the year before the heist, she unknowingly sold to an undercover cop, and he quickly turned her into an informant. In doing so, the police took advantage of three things. First, lots of guys in Paul Vario's crew, including Vario himself, were attracted to her.

Second, that meant they bragged about criminal enterprises to get her attention. And third, in the macho world of the mafia, the guys didn't suspect a woman would be an informant. She also had the added benefit of being a former girlfriend of Tommy D. Simone. With Ferrara flipped, the police could keep a close eye on the Vario crew and the Roberts Lounge gang. And it's possible that information from Ferrara led to a massive drug bust the month before the Leftanza heist. The Drug Enforcement Administration raided a shrimp boat that was loaded down with literal tons of marijuana and 10 million quailudes. Altogether, the drugs were worth $30 million. The boat had been raided at a marina that was close to JFK Airport, where Paul Vario's people carried out crime.

crimes of all kinds. The boat had recently been bought by a fisherman in Florida, and Paul Vario was now retired down in Florida. So the theory was that Vario was the connection between this massive shipment of drugs in Florida and the New York market, by way of territory near JFK Airport. And it was suggested that Teresa Ferraro learned about the shipment and passed the information to the feds. By February of 1979, someone must have learned that Teresa was an informant. She worked a day job at a salon in Belmore, Long Island, and she received a call from an unknown person who told her to meet at a nearby diner. She left her keys, purse, and identification behind, and she told one of her co-workers to come get her if she wasn't back in ten minutes. And that was the last time anyone saw her alive. The carnage was briefly interrupted by the trial of the inside man, Lewis Werner,

and the trial was actually two trials in one. Lewis was facing charges from both the 1976 robbery, when he'd spontaneously stolen $22,000 worth of foreign currency, and the big one, the multimillion-dollar leftonza heist. Prosecutor Ed McDonald paraded a series of witnesses in front of Lewis that must have been disheartening. There was Lewis's friend Peter, who'd helped Lewis hide the money from the 1976 robbery, and helped with the early planning stages of the 1978 heist.

There was Peter's drinking buddy, whom Peter approached in the first attempt to find a crew to do the 1978 job. There was the middleman from the 1976 robbery, the guy who was dating Lewis's estranged wife. Lewis had talked about the 1978 heist with both the middleman, and his wife. There was Marty Krugman's courier, to whom Lewis had pitched the idea of the heist because Lewis couldn't pay his gambling debts to Marty. And finally, there was Lewis's girlfriend, Janet Barbieri. The most dramatic moment of the trial happened during Janet's testimony, though it wasn't intentional. It was actually emotional and somewhat tragic. McDonald asked her to confirm one thing, that when she testified before a grand jury earlier that year,

she said Lewis claimed he was the mastermind of the Lufthansa heist. Technically, all she had to say was yes, but the pressure of the moment was too much. Despite everything, Janet was still in love with Lewis, and she was now in the spotlight, in open court, and about to give testimony that could send her boyfriend to prison for decades. She started sweating. Then she started shaking. The judge asked the bailiff to get her a glass of water. Then McDonald repeated the question, but Janet still couldn't answer. Then she collapsed. After a few moments, she thought she was able to continue. McDonnell repeated the question. And Janet then began to sob uncontrollably, at which point the judge excused her for the day.

She eventually returned to the stand a day or two later, and she answered McDonald's question. She testified that Lewis had admitted his part in the heist. The trial was over quickly, lasting less than two weeks. The jury found Lewis Werner guilty on three of the six charges that were brought against him, two counts of conspiracy to obstruct commerce, and one count of theft. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and hit with a massive fine. Interestingly, two of the three counts were related to the smaller 1976 robbery, the one count of theft and one of the counts of conspiracy.

Lewis had not physically taken part in the 1978 heist, so he couldn't be charged with theft as it related to that crime, only the planning of it, conspiracy. But even so, he was still facing 15,000. years in prison. At the time of his conviction, Lewis was 46 years old. If he served his full sentence, he wouldn't get out until he was 61. Up to that time, he was the only one to face criminal charges. And in the grand scheme of things, he was a relatively minor player. He certainly wasn't the one dropping bodies every week to cover his tracks. And that kind of thought process

was what prosecutor Ed McDonald had hoped for. At some point, reality would sink in for Lewis, and he would realize that he wasn't cut out to be a wise guy. McDonald hoped it would happen before now, but better late than never. A few months later, Lewis agreed to talk in exchange for a reduced sentence. Like the other witnesses, he was then granted immunity. He confessed that he had provided the inside knowledge of Lufthansa cargo operations, but he also said that he had only ever spoken to one member of the Roberts Lounge gang,

Joe Manry, known as Joe Buda. Unfortunately for investigators, that revelation wasn't overly helpful. They already suspected that Manry was Lewis's contact within the crew. But worse than that, it sounded like Lewis couldn't give them direct information about their main target, Jimmy Burke. And still worse news was that if Joe Manry, was the only link between Lewis and Jimmy, then the whole case against Jimmy relied on Joe Manry. And if the FBI knew it, then so did Jimmy. And that was bad news for Joe Buda. The day after the trial, the police found two dead bodies in a car in the flat bush neighborhood

of Brooklyn. Both men had been shot in the back of the head, which meant they probably knew and trusted the killer or killers. And the car was a two-door-night-old. Bueck, which meant the killer or killers might have had to shove one or both of the dead men forward to exit the car. It would have been a claustrophobic double murder. The dead men were Joe Buddha Manry and Robert McMahon. McMahon was the longtime associate who had organized the Air France robbery 12 years earlier that really put Jimmy's crew on the map. And both men participated in the Laftanza heist. With their murders, two more insiders were silenced, and the link between Lewis Werner and

Jimmy Burke was cut. A common theory was that Jimmy ordered Angelo Sepi or Paolo LeCastri to commit the murders, though investigators never found out for sure. And like several parts of this story, there's conflicting information and missing pieces. Authorities had bugged Seppi's car back in January or February, and it appears as though he was arrested sometime in February. He refused to cooperate, and then he was back out on the streets to be eligible to commit the newest murders. Sepi was part of Jimmy's crew, but LeCastry wasn't. He was a member of the Gambino family. Jimmy was forced to bring him into the

heist to appease the Gambino's. So whether or not Jimmy could have used La Castry for the hit is an open question. But like so many other facets of the investigation, it soon became irrelevant. In June of 1979, one month after police found the bodies of Joe Manry and Robert McMahon, they found the body of Paolo Lacastry. He had been shot to death and left to decompose in a vacant lot in Brooklyn. Within six months of the heist, 11 people had been killed who were either directly involved or were somehow connected, even if the connection was incredibly loose. That left Jimmy, Jimmy's son, Frank.

Frank, Angelo Sepi, and Henry Hill who were alive and free and involved in the heist in some way. But that didn't mean investigators were ignoring those guys. In April, the month before Lewis Werner's trial, the police arrested Jimmy for a parole violation so that they could interrogate him about the robbery. Prosecutor Ed McDonald offered Jimmy a deal to entice him to reveal the truth about the heist, but Jimmy refused. Then, over the next two months, virtually everyone who was left and who knew about the heist and could connect it to Jimmy turned up dead. Angelo SEPI and Henry Hill were the last two, other than Jimmy's son, whom Jimmy obviously wasn't going to hurt.

Angelo's time would come, but Henry's situation flared up first. While Henry was in Lewisburg Federal Prison in Pennsylvania, he developed a connection to a drug syndicate in Pittsburgh. When he got out in July 1978, six months before the Lafansa heist, he used the connection to start selling drugs all over the Northeast United States. He made tons of money, and that's probably one of the ways he stayed safe from Jimmy for so long. He didn't really need his small share of money from the heist, and he didn't bug Jimmy about it. Up to this point, the guys who were involved in the heist and had died checked three boxes. Number one, obviously, if they died, they couldn't talk to the cops. Number two, because the heist was so much bigger than everyone thought it would be,

they all wanted bigger shares, and they kept bugging Jimmy for bigger shares, and that made Jimmy mad. And number three, if they died, Jimmy didn't have to pay them, and he could keep more money for himself. Because Henry was making so much money from his drug business, business, he didn't have to talk about Laftanza at all, and that suited Jimmy just fine. But Henry was starting to unravel. He was snorting cocaine and drinking heavily and having affairs with the women who were helping him cut and sell the drugs. His recklessness made him a focal

point for law enforcement. The police tapped his phone and eventually heard one of his drug mules talk openly and plainly about the details of a transaction. In April of 1980, Henry was arrested on charges of drug trafficking. He posted Bond and was released, and then was quickly re-arrested as a witness in the Laftanza case. And that was the end of the road for Henry Hill. He was facing serious criminal charges. He was squarely in the crosshairs of Jimmy Burke because of his knowledge of the heist. And he was in the crosshairs of Paul Vario, the capo in the Lucchese family,

family who was Henry's earliest mentor. Vario didn't approve of the drug business, and he wanted Henry to stop, but Henry disobeyed. Henry became convinced that Jimmy wanted him dead because of the heist, and Vario wanted him dead because of the drugs. If he wanted to live and keep his family safe, there was only one choice. One month after his arrest, he called prosecutor Ed McDonald. Ed McDonald, and FBI agents, Steve Carbone couldn't believe their luck when Henry offered his total cooperation. Unfortunately, they quickly began to wonder if the only person who benefited from Henry's cooperation was Henry. He received protection from the mafia and immunity for a long list of

crimes. In return, he was supposed to provide the inside scoop on the crew from Paul Vario on down, and specifically the Lefonsa heist. But Henry was one of the most difficult witnesses that McDonald ever encountered. He mixed up his details or forgot them all together. He exaggerated and embellished. He would start one story, then veer off into another and then another and then another until he forgot where he started. And occasionally he insisted that he knew nothing about the world of organized crime at all. It went like this for months, until they were now into the new year of 1981, and still had virtually nothing about the Lefonsa heist.

But then, Henry casually admitted something that broke the case wide open. It was in the middle of an interview with Henry and one of his accomplices in the drug business. McDonald asked where the two of them were on the day of the heist, December 11, 1978. It took some remembering, but one of them reminded the other

that they were in Boston, fixing college basketball games. At first it sounded like an absurd lie. But as Henry gave more and more details, it became undeniable. During the planning and execution of the Leftanza heist, Henry and several others were fixing basketball games at Boston College. The scheme started with Henry's drug connection in Pittsburgh. Henry and the crew recruited two players from the team,

Rick Coon and James Sweeney. If the odds makers decided that Boston College should win a game by, let's say, five points, then Coon and Sweeney would make sure the team won by four points or fewer. Henry and the crew would bet accordingly and win their money. Ed McDonald, a Boston College graduate, was astonished. He asked about some of the moneymen, who helped finance this thing. Henry casually admitted that one of them was Jimmy Burke, and now investigators had a new thought.

If they couldn't get Jimmy on the Leftonza heist, maybe they could get him on this. The FBI interviewed the players, Rick Coon and James Sweeney, and they both confessed. Investigators quickly built the case, and at the end of 1981, the case went to court.

Jimmy was on trial, along with the guys in Pittsburgh and one of the players, Rick Coon. Prosecutor Ed McDonnell rolled out the evidence that proved the scandal, phone records, hotel receipts, and other documents. And he used two key witnesses, Henry Hill and the other player James Sweeney. Henry was erratic as always. He told the story of the basketball gambling conspiracy, and he named Jimmy Burke in open court. But the long, rambling tale included Henry's usual

digressions and misremembered details. It wasn't endearing to the jury. But James Sweeney counterbalanced Henry. Sweeney had a reputation at school as a fresh-faced, upstanding young man. When he corroborated Henry's story, it swayed the jury. The jury found everyone guilty, and Jimmy was sentenced to 20 years in prison. While there, he was indicted, tried, and convicted for the murder of Richard Eaton, the con man who had tricked him into investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into non-existent ventures. Jimmy's murder conviction was largely based on testimony from Henry Hill. Jimmy was in prison for the rest of his life, but not for the Leftanza heist. For 32 years, Lewis Werner was the only person put on trial for the heist, but that changed in 2014. Next time on

In Infamous America, Henry Hill goes into and then out of the Witness Protection Program. He helps write a best-selling book about his life that gets turned into an iconic movie, and all the while, Jimmy Burke rots in prison. And then finally, investigators get one last chance to convict someone for a role in the Laftanza heist. The season finale is 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 BlackBarrell Media on Facebook and Instagram and B-Barrell 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.