Infamous America - LUFTHANSA HEIST Ep. 6 | “Wiseguys and Goodfellas”

Episode Date: August 18, 2021

Henry Hill testifies against his friends and begins a new life in the witness protection program. But he doesn’t completely give up his old life, and it causes problems with law enforcement. He writes a book that becomes an iconic movie and he reinvents himself as a wiseguy celebrity. Then in 2014, the FBI suddenly receives a chance to arrest someone who was connected to the robbery. In 2015, Vincent Asaro goes to trial as one of the few remaining men who claimed to know about the heist. 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

My relentless sleep problems have always come from an overactive mind. I lay in bed at night with my mind racing from one thing to another, and then, of course, I have a brainstorm about something new. That lights the fire, and then I'm in real trouble. To calm my mind, the only things that have ever worked with any consistency are sleep gummies. Sleepy Time Advanced Gummies from Mood.com come in various combinations of THC, CBD, and CBN, so you can get something that's very low in THC, but higher in CBD, which helps turn off the stress, and CBN, which is the thing that makes you sleepy.

The brain shuts up, the racing thoughts stop, and it's off to sleep. Mood is federally compliant. The gummies are legal and delivered right to your door. At Mood.com, get 20% off your first order with our promo code, Infamous. Go to Mood.com and use the code infamous to get 20% off your first order with our promo code infamous. to get 20% off your first order, and they have a 100-day satisfaction guarantee. Mood.com promo code infamous. Henry Hill loved to talk, and one of the benefits of talking was that it could lead to money. Of course, it could also lead to trouble, and Henry's former mob associates obviously hated him

for being a rat. But talking could also be a good way to earn some cash if you talk to the right people about the right things. When Henry was arrested in 1980 for selling drugs, he entered the Witness Protection Program so that he could provide evidence in the Laftanza case. When he was asked if he could provide an alibi for his whereabouts during the heist, he said he'd been in Boston working on a college basketball gambling conspiracy. Henry wasn't able to give very much useful information about the Laftanza heist,

but he was able to give enough information about the basketball scandal to send Jim Jimmy Burke to prison for a long time. Jimmy was involved in the scheme to fix basketball games at Boston College, and the authorities were happy to build a case against him for anything. It wouldn't be as satisfying as convicting him for masterminding the Leptonza robbery, but it was better than nothing. And then Henry's love of talk and money almost derailed the case. He sold the basketball gambling story to Sports Illustrated.

The magazine paid him $10,000 to be interviewed for an article called How I Put the Fix in. Henry spoke candidly about the case. He gave away names, dates, and amounts of money. But he didn't tell the prosecutor or the FBI about the article. They found out as it was going to print. The prosecutor, Ed McDonald, freaked out. The only case against Jimmy Burke was in jeopardy, Because, ironically, Henry couldn't keep his mouth shut.

McDonald and the investigators spent hours comparing Henry's confessions to the FBI with the statements in the article to see if the case had been compromised. Luckily, the case was intact. Jimmy went to prison and Henry disappeared into the witness protection program. But Henry only spent a few years, as he put it, living like a schnuck. The allure of money and drugs was too strong. But when Henry's life changed again, he wasn't as worried about his survival as he had been several years earlier.

According to Henry, the mob was not the animal it had been when he was younger. From Black Barrow Media, this is infamous America. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. And this season we're telling a six-part story about one of the biggest robberies in U.S. history, the 1978 Lufanza Heist. This is episode six. Wise guys and good fellows. Henry Hill had his demons.

He had drug and alcohol problems. He had multiple affairs. And his kids said he was physically and emotionally abusive to his wife Karen. In 1987, Henry was arrested in Seattle for conspiracy to sell narcotics. He was sentenced to five years probation and expelled from the Witness Protection Program. That same year, Nick. Nicholas Pilegi, the man who wrote Henry's biography, Wise Guy, said the mob was in total disarray. He cited two main reasons. One was simple incompetence.

Pilegi had been a crime reporter for 30 years, and he had seen how much more easily each successive generation of compos and made men got caught. The other reason was closely related. Over the years, law enforcement cracked down harder and harder, on organized crime. There's no exact moment when organized crime in the United States began its long, slow decline. But there were important developments in the middle of the 20th century that led to its degeneration. One development was the Joseph Volachi hearings. In 1963, Joe Volachi, a low-ranking member of the Genovese family, became an informant.

His testimony before a committee of the U.S. Senate, provided. some of the first official proof that the mafia wasn't just a loose collection of hoodlums, but an entire world unto itself. Valachi revealed the hierarchy of the mafia, its governing bodies, and the extent of its involvement in American business and society. Much of what we know today about the mafia comes from the Valachi hearings. Another important development was the increase of the power of law enforcement. In 1968, Congress established procedures for obtaining warrants to tap phone lines and plant secret listening devices.

The stated purpose was to root out mobsters who conducted business in back rooms and on clandestine phone calls. Then in 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer-influenced and corrupt Organizations Act, which thankfully is just known as the RICO Act. Before 1970, it was difficult to charge mafia bosses for the crimes they ordered their soldiers to commit. But under the RICO Act, the authorities didn't necessarily have to prove that a specific boss ordered a specific crime. They just had to prove that the boss was part of an organization that committed certain types of crimes. Suddenly, agencies like the FBI could connect mobsters and their crimes to each other and build a network of associations, and then bring down the whole network at once. And punishments under the RICO Act were harsh. Guys were suddenly looking at prison sentences of 20 years or more and fines of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Wise guys were used to take in a pinch in doing a few years in prison. It was a badge of honor. But when the prison sentences were regularly measured in decades instead of individual years, that changed the game. It made lower-ranking mobsters think twice about going to trial. And as one guy put it, and we'll hear much more from him later, the life just wasn't as profitable as it used to be. The days of prohibition were long gone.

For our international listeners who might not know, America banned the production, sale, and consumption of alcohol from 1920 to 1933. And that basically created the mafia. The mob rose to prominence through the illegal production and sale of alcohol. But over time, almost all the hallmarks of the mafia became more difficult. Illegal alcohol, illegal gambling, illegal loans, and robberies of cargo buildings. And in the mid-80s, with the mafia, struggling relative to its former power, Henry Hill saw an opening for a new life.

In 1984, he testified against his former capo, Paul Vario, and sent Vario to prison. That same year, he testified against Jimmy Burke for the second time, this time in connection with the murder of an associate named Richard Eaton. Jimmy was already in prison for the college basketball scandal, and with a new murder conviction, he would be there forever. And also in 1984, two more bodies made headlines. Angelo Seppi was the last remaining person with direct knowledge of the Laftanza Heist, who was not dead or in prison or in the witness protection program. He was one of the robbers, and he and his wife were killed in their apartment. But it didn't appear to be connected to the

heist. Seppi had a long list of enemies. and the murders were probably revenge killings. So, with Paul and Jimmy behind bars and everybody else dead, Henry Hill decided to write a book. He still had a reckless nature, and he wasn't as scared of reprisal as he used to be. His biography, Wise Guy, was published in 1985, and it was a hit. But Henry had to go all the way to the Supreme Court to get his money.

Henry was supposed to receive hundreds of thousands of thousands of, of dollars for story rights and royalties from his publisher, Simon & Schuster. But the publisher wasn't the problem. The state of New York was the problem. In 1977, the state passed laws that were known as the Son of Sam laws. They were named for the notorious serial killer David Berkowitz, who was nicknamed the son of Sam. The laws were designed to prevent people from profiting off of the publicity they received because of crimes they committed. Simon and Schuster sued the state of New York, arguing that it was a violation of Henry's First Amendment rights.

The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, and the court agreed with the publisher, 8 to 0. Justice Clarence Thomas didn't participate. Henry received his money, and then Hollywood bought the movie rights to the book, and Henry received nearly $500,000 for his involvement in the production of Goodfellas. Henry invented a second life for himself, and he became a minor celebrity. The movie was released in 1990, and it was incredibly popular.

But if you know the movie well and you've been able to keep track of all the craziness in this series, you'll recognize several differences. The most obvious changes are some of the names. Marty Krugman became Mori Kessler for the movie. Paul Vario became Paul Cicero, and he was played by Paul Servino. Tommy D. Simone became Tommy DeVito, played by Joe Pesci. And Jimmy Burke became Jimmy Conway, played by Robert De Niro. Sometimes the changes were a simple matter of artistic liberty,

but in Jimmy's case, it was more than that. According to Henry, Jimmy's daughter objected to the film's use of her father's name. She wanted $100,000 for its use. The filmmakers decided it would be easier and change. cheaper to just change the character's last name to Conway. Other characters are composites of multiple people, like the character of Frankie Carbone. Carbone has some of the qualities of Angelo Cepi. In the film, Carbone is the guy who was found in the truck trailer, hanging from a meat

hook, frozen solid. And that was the real life death of Richard Eaton. And in real life, before the movie, Henry became fairly close with some of his hands in law enforcement, even though he frustrated them to no end. Occasionally, when Henry was sick of the food he was provided, he cooked for himself and the investigators. Against all odds, he became pretty good friends with the lead prosecutor, Ed McDonald. They stayed in touch after Henry moved to Southern California and had dinner together in New York. And McDonald undoubtedly had the most interesting experience related to the film.

He's actually in the movie, playing himself. By the time of the production, McDonald had gone into private practice. When an assistant visited him to talk about the film, he joked that he would play himself for the sake of authenticity. Martin Scorsese, the director, liked the idea. McDonald showed up for screen tests and found himself whisked back in time.

He was sitting in a retro living room talking to Ray Leota and Lorraine. Bracco, who played Henry and Karen. In the scene, they discussed the terms of Henry's deal with the government and some of the realities of life in the Witness Protection Program. The actors gave McDonald some of the same complaints that were uttered by the real Henry and Karen 10 years earlier, and it was surreal. Over the years, as technology progressed and DVDs replaced videotapes, Henry Hill and Ed McDonald reunited to record a commentary track for the 10th anniversary DVD of Goodfellas. Henry thanked McDonald and Nicholas Pileggie for saving his life,

and went so far as to call McDonald his best friend. Henry continued to parlay his former life as a wise guy into more ventures in the 2000s, even as he continued to battle his demons. Throughout the late 1980s, in the first half of the 1990s, there were more signs that the old days were gone. Henry Hill and his wife Karen got divorced after 23 years of marriage. Without knowing too many of the details or getting into their personal lives, it's safe to say that it was a roller coaster. In 1988, Paul Vario died in prison,

four years after Henry testified against him. In 1996, Jimmy Burke died in prison. He had developed cancer and passed away while undergoing treatment. That same year, John Gotti went to prison. After a lifetime in the mafia and an uncountable number of crimes, possibly including the murder of Tommy D. Simone, Gotti rose to boss of the Gambino family. But he was caught on tape discussing criminal activities at convicted at trial. He also developed cancer while in prison and died just eight years later in 2002. By that time, Henry Hill had been enjoying his second life for more than a decade, and it was taking a toll. Henry made numerous appearances on the Howard Stern Show, and he was drunk for most, if not all, of them. And there was one in 2002 that was especially notable.

Henry and Howard discussed Henry's alcohol problem, and Henry admitted that he was was miserable. And then he volunteered some enticing information. He said one of the reasons he was in New York at the moment was to retrieve a shoe box he had buried in Rockville Center, about an hour from the city. He claimed there was $2 million in the shoe box, and it was left over from the Lefonsa heist. The hosts quickly said he was exaggerated. They asked why he would volunteer that kind of information on air if it was true. And they asked if his cut from the heist was really in the millions. He nodded, yes, and then shushed everyone in the room,

as if he were trying to swear them to secrecy. And unfortunately, that's as much as we know about the mysterious shoebox. It may have been a total lie, or a partial lie, or completely true. With Henry, it was impossible to know if you couldn't corroborate his story with other sources. And in those interviews, he displayed some of the old, unchanged Henry Hill. People called in and hassled him with all kinds of comments. One guy went so far as to threaten Henry's life. Henry was unfazed. He laughed and challenged the caller to make good on the

threat in person, and he boasted he was the only member of the Roberts Lounge gang who was still alive. Henry hit his low point a couple years later. In 2004, he was arrested for possession of methamphetamines. In 2006, he checked himself into rehab for alcoholism. His friend, actor Ray Leota, was largely responsible for Henry finally seeking help. But even during those difficult years in the early 2000s, he managed to publish a couple books to keep himself going. In 2002, he released a cookbook called The Wise Guy Cookbook. And in 2004, he lent his name and knowledge to a book called The Leptime.

Hansa Heist that focused more heavily on the robbery than his life story. In 2007, after he got out of rehab, he opened a restaurant in New Haven, Connecticut, called Wise Guys. But a month after it opened, it suffered a fire in the attic. It didn't completely burn to the ground, but there was serious smoke damage and water damage. Henry had personal experience starting fires in restaurants, and when he and the crew did it, they made sure the police. They made sure the place burned to the ground. So if it was a mafia arson job, it was poorly executed.

Sometime before his death, he worked with two more authors on the final book that bore his name, Gangsters and Goodfellas, which was published in 2015. But Henry didn't live to see its release. He died of heart disease in Los Angeles on June 12, 2012, one day after he turned 69 years old. But the story of the Leftanza heist didn't end with the passing of Henry Hill. Two years after he died, the heist made headlines once again, thanks to a listening device, some old wise guys, and an old murder allegedly committed by Jimmy Burke.

For more than 30 years, Lewis Werner was the only person convicted of a crime in connection with the Leftanza heist. Federal authorities hoped that streak would end in 2014 when they arrested Vincent Assaro. Asaro was a coppo in the Bonano crime family, and that's a family we haven't mentioned much in this story. Jimmy Burke's crew worked under Paul Vario, a coppo in the Lucchese family. And it looks like the Gambino family was directly involved in the heist, as well as other operations that were connected to Jimmy's crew through Paul Vario. But all the crime families took advantage of JFK Airport. They all made money through one illegal racket or another.

so it's not a complete surprise that a possible Bonano connection came to light. Vincent Asaro found himself at the center of the investigation, courtesy of his cousin, Gaspari Valenti. Valenti was an FBI informant. He was brought into the system in 2010 and started wearing a wire. He testified in court that he defected because he couldn't support his family. He said it was harder to get paid now than it used to be. and the money that was available wasn't worth the trouble or the nightmares that could follow.

Valenti was 63 years old when he became an informant, and it was probably a sign of the times that an aging mobster couldn't get his hands on enough illegal money to make a living. For the next three years, Valenti wore a wire, and the FBI recorded hours of conversations. Some of those conversations were with Valenti's cousin, Vincent Asarro, and it was clear that Asaro had no idea Valenti was an informant. Asaro talked openly about his involvement in several high-profile illegal operations, and at one point, he named dropped the name of all names, Leftanza. In 2013, the cousins were having a conversation,

and it wandered down several different avenues, as always. But it eventually led to Asarro complaining that he never received his cut of the money from the Lefanzah heist back in 1978. According to Asaro, at the time of the heist, he was in charge of operations at JFK airport for the Bonanno family. So, like Paul Vario of the Lucchese family, and John Gotti of the Gambino family, Asaro thought he should have been paid some sort of tribute.

And according to the Mafia Code, maybe he should have. But 35 years after the fact, he was still complaining that he never got it. In January 2014, the FBI arrested Vincent Asaro. He was charged with a long list of crimes, including arson, robbery, and racketeering in connection with the heist. He was also charged with murder, and that's where his connection to Jimmy Burke comes in. Way back in 1969, Jimmy and Vincent Asarro used to keep stolen goods at a warehouse that was owned by a guy named Paul Katz. When the warehouse was raided by law enforcement, Jimmy and Asaro suspected

Katz was an informant. Somebody called Katz and told him to go to a meeting, and that was about the scariest phone call you could get in that situation. Katz told his wife to call the police if he didn't return in a few hours. Cats went to the meeting and found Jimmy and Osro. At that point, allegedly, they strangled cats with a dog chain. Then they buried his body beneath a residence in Queens that was owned by Jimmy's family. When Cats didn't return home, his wife called the police and they started an investigation. But it led nowhere. Paul Katz seemed to be another guy who just disappeared, like Marty Krugman after the Lufthansa heist 10 years later. Then, 44 years later, in Valenti's final recorded conversation in June of 2013, Valenti told his cousin Asaro

that the FBI was going to search a location in Queens. According to Asaro, he and his son had moved the body of Paul Katz from its original hiding spot in Queens years earlier, but he was still concerned about this new search. Asaro quickly left the conversation and told Valenti not to call him. The FBI started digging under the house, and they found the remains of a human body. DNA tests showed that the remains were those of Paul Katz. Vincent DeSaro went on trial for multiple crimes, including involvement in the Leftanza heist in 2015. Vincent DeSarro was 80 years old at the time of the trial. A conviction on virtually any charge meant he would spend the rest of his life in prison, and he entered a plea of not guilty for all charges. Most of the witnesses against him

were former mob guys who were working with the prosecution as a way to get out of the life, just like Asaro's cousin Valenti, and the defense used it to their advantage. Asaro's lawyers argued that the witnesses were only testifying because of promises made by the prosecution. The witnesses were motivated by money, not a sudden willingness to correct the wrongs of the past. It was a smart tactic because it's been made abundantly clear over the last 100 years that money was the motivation for everything. It was Asaro's motivation to commit the crimes, and now it was his defense from the crimes. And it worked. The jury acquitted Vincent Asaro on all charges. It was a pretty stunning verdict. And that was the last chance, at least of right now in

2021 to convict someone for something related to one of the biggest heists in American history. The trial was inevitably linked to the movie Goodfellas. Every media story referenced the movie, and Asaro's lawyers played on the attention. After the arraignment, where Osoro pleaded not guilty, one of his lawyers joked that they'd received a call from Martin Scorsese about doing a sequel to Goodfellas based on the new trial. It's been said that the trial of Vincent Asaro was the last of the great mafia trials. Asarro walked out of the courthouse, reporters asked him what he was going to do now that the trial was over and his name had been cleared. He said he would be going home.

His daughter was going to cook dinner for him that evening and he was eager to see his family. There was a car waiting for him, and Asarro decided to have one last moment of fun in front of the media. He opened the door, and as he climbed inside, he said to his lawyer, Sam, don't let him see the body in the trunk. Thanks for listening to the story of the Laftanza heist here on the Infamous America podcast. This is just the first of many stories we're going to do about infamous robberies and mafia-related events, so I hope you enjoyed it. Next up is the story of the most infamous family feud in American history,

the Hatfields versus the McCorme. Stay tuned for that one. 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-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.