Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Real Story of Goodfellas

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke was a ruthless Irish-American associate of the Lucchese crime family who masterminded the 1978 Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport, netting over $5 million. Driven by paranoia, he subsequently orchestrated the murders of numerous accomplices to keep the stolen money and avoid prosecution.

You know that movie Goodfellas? Well, it's based on a true story. But the real story is actually crazier than the movie. And it all starts with this guy, Jimmy. And Jimmy's about 46 when all this begins, and he's living in New York City. And in the movie, Jimmy is played by Robert De Niro. And so, Jimmy, he's a mid-level member of the mafia. And he loves stealing from people.

It's all he really cares about. And he'll do anything to pull off a good heist. And so one day, in 1978, Jimmy finds out of... about an opportunity to rob a Levanzah cargo terminal at JFK Airport. A cargo terminal is where the airline Lufthansa receives and stores all the commercial freight. It's just a big warehouse. It looks like this. And so Jimmy gets together with his buddy and they start planning this heist. His buddy is actually played by Ray Leota in the movie.

And so Jimmy, he gets access to the warehouse floor plans and all this other inside information that they'll need to pull this off. and they plan it all out. Once he's ready, he rounds up the perfect crew of goons to help him out. Meanwhile, a Latanza cargo plane arrives at JFK from Germany, and it's hauling a bunch of money and jewels. Once it lands, the crew take all the cargo off the plane straight to a vault in the cargo area.

Then Jimmy gets a call, tipping him off that the shipment has arrived. And so Jimmy and his crew, they're all ready, and he has them put on black ski. masks and they load into a van and they drive to the cargo warehouse area. But Jimmy, he doesn't go with them. Apparently, he just oversees the operation and he orders all the goons to go. Anyway, then they use bolt cutters and they cut the padlock off the fence so that they can enter and get their van inside. Then they park and they get inside the building and once inside, they gather up all the other workers at gunpoint and they heard them all upstairs to the cafeteria. Then they forced

manager on duty to disable the alarm for the storage vault where all the goods are and open it for them. Once inside the vault, the crew start hauling out cartons of cash and jewels and putting them into their van. And after filling the van with 40 cartons, a couple of the goons jump back into it and they drive away, while the others get into a different car and they flee the scene as well. And so Jimmy's heist worked. His crew stole around $6 million in cash and jewels, which is about $29 million in today's money. And during this time, this is the biggest heist in U.S. history. So immediately the FBI gets involved in this and they start investigating along with the police. And quickly they realize that there are only a few people in New York who could

pull off this kind of job. And through their police informants, they find out that it was Jimmy and his crew. But neither police nor the feds have any real evidence against them. So they can't charge anyone or make any arrests and they'll have to wait. But here's where everything starts to go wrong. Now that Jimmy and his crew have pulled off this big robbery, they have to get rid of all the evidence, including the van they used. So the getaway driver, who we'll just call getaway driver, it's his job to drive the van to the local junkyard and get it crushed. That way no one can link it to the crime. But before he does that, he does this, he drives to his girlfriend's apartment in Brooklyn, and he parks the van outside,

and he goes inside to get high and crash. Well, he ends up getting so high that he misses his appointment with his associates at the junkyard. So now this van is parked out front, and getaway driver, he doesn't know what to do with it. Well, it turns out that the van is actually parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant. So when officers arrive to issue a parking ticket, They run the van's license plate through their system, and the plate immediately comes back as a stolen van wanted by the FBI in connection with the LeBanza heist two days prior. Police also find getaway driver's fingerprints inside.

So now they're specifically looking for him. But they can't find him. Then Jimmy finds out that police recovered the van, and he gets super pissed at getaway driver for screwing up, and he realizes the police might find. him and he might flip. So Jimmy sends a few mob guys over to getaway driver's apartment and blam, blam, blam, they murder him. And from this point Jimmy, he starts getting really paranoid. I mean, he's convinced that anyone involved in the

robbery will eventually flip to the feds. So when one of the goons starts complaining a lot about not getting his share of the money yet, Jimmy sent some other goons after him one night and blam, blam, they shoot him and they hide the body where it will never be found. Another guy, whose mob name is Roast Beef, roast beef is supposed to help Jimmy launder the money. Well, he actually ends up wanting to spend a bunch of his cut, which would be fine except Jimmy tells him not to spend so much

as it will draw attention to them. And roast beef is like, all right. But then he immediately goes out and he buys his wife, this expensive custom pink Cadillac, and he also tells her all about the heist. And so eventually, blam, blam, Jimmy has both of them killed, and he makes sure their bodies are never found.

And from here, Jimmy just continues to clean up anything that could lead to him. He has two goons executed while they were sitting in a parked car. He has another goon executed, and they leave him burning on a trash heap in Brooklyn for police to find. Another guy he has hogtied, and they leave him in a refrigerator. meat truck to freeze to death. And so he just keeps going. He keeps having people killed until his body count is at nine people. And now the feds, they've been watching him. But they still

don't have enough evidence to connect him to the heist or to the murders. So it looks like Jimmy might actually get away with all this. Until. Until 1980. When Jimmy's friend, the guy who he planned the whole heist with, the guy who's played by Ray Leota in the movie. His name's actually Henry. And one day, Henry gets caught trafficking drugs. And so, bam, he gets arrested, here's his mugshot. But after he's arrested, the feds, they play a tape for him. And on that tape is a wiretapped conversation where Jimmy is talking about how he's going to murder Henry. And so Henry makes a deal with the feds to rat out as many crimes and people as possible, and in exchange, he and his family will be put into the witness protection program. So he rats out dozens of mob guys, including Jimmy, and a bunch of

the crimes they were involved in. And so, bam, a bunch of the mob guys get arrested. And of course, bam, Jimmy gets arrested too. Here's his mugshot. And ultimately, Jimmy goes to trial, and he's found guilty and he gets sentenced to life in prison, while Henry and his wife, they're put into the witness protection program and they're relocated to a new state and they get new names and new identities and they start a new life. But pretty quickly, he starts trafficking drugs and he gets caught again and again and again and eventually the feds kick him out of the witness protection program. I've never heard of that happening. And he has to go on living his life under his real name and identity. Well, lucky for him, the mob, never actually

retaliates against him. They never go after him and he ends up living a full life.