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| Brendan Mcdermid/Reuters |
The mob is still alive and active back east!
I just happened to catch the movie "Goodfellas" again on TV this afternoon. It was a very good movie and now we know how the real story turned out.
New York update: Article thanks to and
The
crime gripped the public’s imagination, for both its magnitude and its
moxie: In the predawn hours of Dec. 11, 1978, a group of masked gunmen
seized about $6 million in cash and jewels from a cargo building at
Kennedy International Airport.
The Lufthansa heist, as it was known, was billed as the biggest cash robbery in United States history, and it played a starring role in the 1990 Martin Scorsese movie “Goodfellas.” It remained unsolved for four decades, perhaps because many of those who might have known something turned up dead.
But
more than 35 years later, federal authorities on Thursday charged a
78-year-old man, Vincent Asaro, with playing a role in the robbery,
saying they had four cooperating witnesses from organized crime families
who linked Mr. Asaro, a reputed capo in the Bonanno crime family, to
the robbery.
It
is an unexpected turn in a famously unsolved case that had long been
attributed to the Lucchese crime family. The indictment makes clear that
the authorities now are convinced that the Bonanno family was also
involved.
The man thought to be the mastermind, a Lucchese associate named James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke, died in 1996 in prison, where he was serving a life sentence in a different case.
The only person ever convicted in the robbery was a Lufthansa cargo agent, described as the “inside man” in the plot.
The
indictment, alleging a racketeering conspiracy from 1968 to 2013,
represents the first time an organized crime figure has been charged in
the $6 million robbery — the equivalent, adjusted for inflation, of
$21.4 million today. But Mr. Asaro, a resident of Howard Beach, Queens,
does not appear to have grown rich from the crime; as late as 2011, he
was recorded complaining about his take, according to prosecutors.
“We
never got our right money, what we were supposed to get,” Mr. Asaro
said to another mob figure, who is cooperating with the government.
“Jimmy kept everything,” he added, apparently a reference to Mr. Burke, according to legal filings by prosecutors.
The
indictment charges Mr. Asaro; Jerome Asaro, 55, his son; Jack
Bonventre; Thomas DiFiore; and John Ragano with a conspiracy that plays
like a Mafia highlights reel: robbery, extortion, murder and more.
Mr.
Asaro, for example, was accused in the far-ranging indictment of
muscling his way into the pornography business, and of robbing Federal
Express of $1.25 million worth of gold salts, which are sometimes used
in medicinal treatments. The indictment also accuses him of seeking to
have his cousin murdered after the cousin testified in court about an
insurance swindle.
“Those
suspected of cooperating with law enforcement paid with their lives,”
said the United States attorney in Brooklyn, Loretta E. Lynch, whose
office is prosecuting the case.
Some of the crimes alleged in the indictment predated even the airport heist, including a homicide committed in 1969.
The
federal investigation became public in June, when agents with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation descended on a home owned by Mr. Burke’s
daughter in the South Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens and began
digging in the basement, soon finding human remains.
The
remains, the indictment states, belonged to Paul Katz, who was
identified in court papers as an associate of Mr. Burke’s who had a
warehouse used by Mr. Asaro and Mr. Burke to store stolen goods. After
the warehouse was raided, Mr. Asaro began to suspect that Mr. Katz was
an informant. He later told a government informant that he and Mr. Burke
had killed Mr. Katz in 1969 with a dog chain and buried him under
cement in a vacant house, according to a legal filing submitted by
prosecutors.
Years
later, according to a filing, after a police detective reopened the
Katz murder case, Mr. Asaro directed his son and another man to dig up
the remains, which were then buried under the home of Mr. Burke’s daughter.
The
five defendants, who investigators said were all linked to the Bonanno
family, were arraigned in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, where they
were ordered held. Each stood with his hands behind his back. Vincent
Asaro, who wore a black sweatsuit, running shoes and tinted eyeglasses,
pleaded not guilty.
His
lawyer, Gerald J. McMahon, said in an interview outside the courtroom,
“Literally and truly this is the sequel to ‘Goodfellas.’ ”
“Marty
needs a screenplay; Loretta said she would help him out,” Mr. McMahon
said of Mr. Scorsese and Ms. Lynch, the prosecutor.
“We’re confident,” he said, noting, “Vincent Asaro said categorically, ‘We’re going to trial.’ ”
Prosecutors
say that Mr. Asaro is currently a captain in the Bonanno crime family,
but that his standing has varied over the years, and that at one point
he was demoted for taking too much money from his underlings.
The
legal filings by prosecutors do not say precisely what Mr. Asaro’s role
in the Lufthansa heist might have been, although he is charged with the
robbery itself as well as with planning it.
“Asaro
himself was in on one of the most notorious heists — the Lufthansa
robbery in 1978,” the F.B.I. agent in charge of the New York field
office, George Venizelos, said. “It may be decades later, but the
F.B.I.’s determination to investigate and bring wiseguys to justice will
never waver.”
Prosecutors
believe that Mr. Asaro gave some of the stolen jewelry to a superior in
the Bonanno crime family. That superior later became an informer and is
helping prosecutors with the current case, according to a legal filing.
The cooperator is not named in court papers but appears to match the
description of a former boss of the Bonanno family, Joseph C. Massino.
The
F.B.I. agent who supervised the investigation decades ago, Steve
Carbone, said in an interview that he had always suspected that Mr.
Asaro was “in the mix as a player” who had connections at the airport.
But Mr. Carbone, who retired in 1998, said it would be a surprise to him
“if Asaro was physically involved in the heist” as one of the gunmen.
Investigators
believe that about a half-dozen gunmen were involved in the robbery.
Among the suspects, Mr. Carbone said, were Frank Burke, James Burke’s
son; Thomas DeSimone; Angelo Sepe; and Anthony Rodriguez. They all are
dead or presumed dead.
Mr.
Burke was eventually sent to prison on information provided by Henry
Hill, the mobster-turned-informant of “Goodfellas” fame, who helped plan
the Lufthansa heist. But the conviction was unrelated: It involved
fixing college basketball games. While in prison, Mr. Burke was
convicted in a murder.
The
only person convicted of the Lufthansa robbery was the cargo agent,
Louis Werner, who had gambling debts to pay off. Mr. Werner took the
idea for the crime to his bookmaker, who introduced him to another
bookmaker, a beautician from Long Island, who is believed to have passed
along the tip to Mr. Burke’s crew. Mr. Werner was indicted in March
1979, within four months of the robbery.
Only a tiny fraction of the money stolen at Kennedy Airport was ever recovered.
By
1980, when Mr. Hill began cooperating, several corpses of people
connected to the robbery or to its participants had already been
discovered.
Mr.
Hill died in 2012, having had heart disease and other health problems.
It is thought that Mr. Rodriguez might have died from a bite by one of
the dozens of pet snakes he kept in his home, according to his lawyer,
Marvyn Kornberg. But Mr. Carbone said that over the years, “I got to
believe 15 people were killed solely because of this case.”
Reporting was
contributed by Kitty Bennett, Sheelagh McNeill, Nate Schweber and Mosi
Secret.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/nyregion/arrests-in-cold-case-investigation-including-78-lufthansa-heist.html?_r=0
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/nyregion/arrests-in-cold-case-investigation-including-78-lufthansa-heist.html?_r=0
