Results 1 to 4 of 4

Thread: FBI, cops in body hunt at Queens home of 'Goodfellas' mobster played by Robert De Niro

  1. #1
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014

    FBI, cops in body hunt at Queens home of 'Goodfellas' mobster played by Robert De Niro

    FBI, cops in body hunt at Queens home of 'Goodfellas' mobster played by Robert De Niro

    By LARRY CELONA, JAMIE SCHRAM and JEANE MACINTOSH

    Organized-crime investigators swooped in on the Queens home of James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke yesterday — digging for human remains in the driveway, back yard and basement of the late Luchese killer made famous by Robert De Niro in the film “Goodfellas.”

    Acting on a tip, FBI and NYPD agents showed up at the Ozone Park triplex at around 8 a.m., carrying sledgehammers, trowels, a pickax, work gloves and other excavation items, sources said.

    The dig is part of “an ongoing organized-crime investigation,” one source confirmed.

    “They’re looking for a body,” another source told The Post.

    One source said the search is connected to a “very old’’ case dating back at least three decades.

    Regina Belardinelli, the daughter of the couple who’ve been renting the home for 40 years, said probers told her they were focused on the basement.

    Burke, a tough Irish-American thug who became a Luchese family associate, was the reputed mastermind of the 1978 robbery of $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewels from a Lufthansa vault at Kennedy Airport.

    Burke, who died of cancer behind bars in 1996, was believed to have later executed many of the men who helped carry out the plot, then the biggest heist in US history.

    In the 1990 Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas,” De Niro played Jimmy Conway, a character clearly influenced by Burke, from the adaptation of Nicholas Pileggi’s book “Wiseguy.”

    The film and book were based on the life story of Henry Hill, a fellow Luchese associate, played in the movie by Ray Liotta. Hill first began working with Burke as a teen and later became a government witness against him and their Luchese boss, Paul Vario, played by Paul Sorvino in the movie.

    Law-enforcement sources said yesterday’s dig is not related to the Lufthansa case or subsequent crew-member murders.

    “But they wouldn’t mind if they came across a coffee can full of the money,” cracked one source.

    Only $20,000 from the massive theft was ever recovered.

    The rental home, on 102nd Road, is still owned by Burke’s daughters, Robin and Catherine.

    Catherine is married to Bonanno crime capo and convicted hit man Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato.

    Burke’s widow, Mickey, who lives with daughters at a different home in Howard Beach, was surprised to hear about the dig.

    “The FBI didn’t tell me, I have no idea what’s going on [or] what they’d be looking for,” she said.

    Yesterday afternoon, FBI agents could be seen sifting through dirt, scooping it into 4-foot-long boxes, shaking it and then scooping smaller amounts into another container.

    In the back yard, a 1-foot deep, grave-sized hole was dug and marked with orange flags, covered by a blue tent.

    At one point, diggers hit a water main that forced a shutdown of service to some homes on the street.

    Investigators also put up a blue tent in the driveway of the home, with a tarp that extended to the curb, It drew a steady stream of neighborhood onlookers.

    “I hear they’re looking for the money, too,” said neighbor Miguel Torres. “They never found the money from JFK. It’s possible it’s here, it’s possible.”

    Investigators said they aren’t looking for the remains of Tommy DeSimone, who was Burke’s best friend and believed to have been murdered in January 1979 in retaliation for the 1970 killing of Gambino member William “Billy Batts” Devino.

    DeSimone, portrayed by Joe Pesci, who won an Oscar for his “Goodfellas” role, was reported missing by his wife and never seen again.

    Devino was a Gambino made man whom DeSimone and Burke beat to death after a drunken confrontation.

    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/q...DxgupYGdx0j8pM

  2. #2
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JimKay's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Posts
    1,122
    FBI finds possible remains at gangster "Jimmy the Gent's" NYC home

    The FBI has found possible human remains in a dig at the New York City house once occupied by a famous gangster.

    An FBI spokesman confirmed Wednesday that agents found material that they want to test as part of an investigation. He declined further comment.

    The digging started Monday in Queens' South Ozone neighborhood. It was home to James Burke, a Lucchese crime family associate known as "Jimmy the Gent" for his tendency to tip heavily.

    A character based on Burke was played by Robert De Niro in the movie "Goodfellas."

    Burke died behind bars in 1996, two decades after authorities say he masterminded a nearly $6 million robbery at New York's Kennedy Airport.

    The Queens house is still owned by the Burke family, but others now live there.

    Burke is said to have buried victims in familiar places — including under the nearby saloon he ran.

    Neighbors were stunned by news that the house once occupied by Burke may contain evidence of criminality.

    "I woke up hearing the helicopters above," said Shah Alam, 34, who lives next door.

    Alam said he is a Muslim, as is the family in the house next to him.

    "We're like, what? Are they looking for one of us?" asked the limousine driver, who counted Pakistanis, Palestinians and Bengalis among the block's residents.

    Detroit FBI spokesman Simon Shaykhet said Wednesday that there was no connection between the excavation Tuesday at the house once occupied by Burke and another dig in Michigan for controversial labor leader Jimmy Hoffa's remains.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-...ents-nyc-home/

  3. #3
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Arrest Made in Fabled ’78 ‘Goodfellas’ Heist

    By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

    Several organized crime figures have been arrested as part of a federal investigation into a series of unsolved crimes, including the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist at Kennedy International Airport, according to a racketeering indictment unsealed Thursday morning.

    The indictment reads like a greatest hits collection of the Mafia: armored truck heists, murder, attempted murder, extortion and bookmaking. But the crime that garnered the most attention was the Lufthansa robbery, where a group of robbers stole about $5 million in cash and nearly $1 million in jewels from a Lufthansa cargo building in December 1978 — the largest cash robbery in the nation’s history at the time.

    The robbery, a key plotline in the movie “Goodfellas,” was also infamous for how it frustrated investigators; the only person ever convicted in the heist was a Lufthansa cargo agent, described as the “inside man” in the plot. Other suspects were found slain, or disappeared; the man thought to be the mastermind of the robbery, James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke, died in 1996 in prison, where he was serving a life sentence for an unrelated murder.

    Some of the alleged crimes in the indictment predated even the airport heist, including a homicide committed in 1969. The federal investigation first became public in June, when F.B.I. agents descended on a home in the South Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens owned by Mr. Burke’s daughter, and began digging in the basement, soon finding human remains, a person familiar with the investigation said.

    One of the men who has been arrested, Vincent Asaro, 78, was accused of participating in the airport robbery, according to the indictment. It is not immediately clear what investigators believe to have been his role.

    The other men under arrest are not accused of that particular crime.

    Mr. Asaro was also charged in connection with the murder of Paul Katz in December 1979; in addition, Mr. Asaro and his son, Jerome Asaro, 55, were charged with hindering an investigation into Mr. Katz’s death.

    The defendants, who investigators believe to be linked to the Bonanno crime family, were expected to be arraigned in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.

    The investigation into the Lufthansa heist seemed to be gaining steam by mid-1980: Henry Hill, an associate in the Lucchese organized crime family, admitted his involvement in the robbery and was quickly swept up into the witness protection program when he agreed to cooperate.

    But other suspects kept turning up dead and convictions were elusive. By the time Mr. Hill began cooperating, the corpses of at least six people connected to the robbery or to its participants had been discovered.

    The only person convicted of the Lufthansa robbery was the Lufthansa 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 the robbers, prosecutors said.

    Investigators came to suspect that the heist was masterminded by Mr. Burke, who was a close associate of top members of the Lucchese crime family. Mr. Burke was sent to prison on information provided by Mr. Hill, but the crime was not related to the Lufthansa heist: it involved fixing Boston College basketball games. While in prison, Mr. Burke was tried and convicted in the slaying of a drug dealer, Richard Eaton.

    Only a fraction of the money stolen at Kennedy Airport was ever recovered.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/ny...-heist.html?hp

  4. #4
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    A Mob Life, on the Margins and Out of Favor

    By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN

    You think you’ve got problems?

    Put yourself in Vincent Asaro’s shoes.

    He’s never been one of the bosses’ favorites in his decades of service in the Bonanno crime family, according to federal prosecutors, and has slid up and down the family’s hierarchy. He once pushed for his son to become a captain in the family, and for what? Now his son barely talks to him.

    He once put out a contract on a cousin because he suspected that he had become an informer, court records show. Even that didn’t work out (the contract was never carried out).

    Now Mr. Asaro, 78, is in a federal jail, being held after his arrest on Thursday for a slate of charges that includes the legendary $6 million Lufthansa heist in 1978, a case so cold that it had been marked closed in 1989.

    In the operatically messy history of the five organized crime families, other mob figures have been more coldblooded or colorful — Mr. Asaro does not even have a nickname, unlike two of his co-defendants, known as Tommy D and Bazoo.

    But there may not be one under greater strain right now than Mr. Asaro, who seems even better suited for a therapist’s couch than Tony Soprano.

    Start with his relationship with his son, Jerome Asaro, who was charged in the indictment with participating with his father in various crimes: arson, an attempted robbery of an armored car, a $1.25 million FedEx robbery and conspiracy to cover up a murder.

    Not exactly the usual father-son bonding exercises. Indeed, Mr. Asaro, in recordings made by federal agents, complained about his son’s greed.

    “Jerry’s for Jerry,” the father said. “I lost my son when I made him skipper.”

    Then there were the anger issues. After confronting a handful of young men who had thrown a bottle toward a social club in Ozone Park, Queens, that Mr. Asaro and his friends frequented, Mr. Asaro took off his glasses, ripped off his shirt and challenged them to a fight.

    “Let’s go,” he said.

    The young men responded that they would not fight an old man, according to a legal filing that recounts the episode.

    In August 2012, he told a friend how, in the span of a few weeks, he had hit one man in the head with a bottle, punched another man in the face at the Belmont racetrack and kicked a third man.

    “I punched a guy in the face,” Mr. Asaro said of the incident at Belmont.

    “Yeah, it’s a whole big thing,” he added. “Nothing happened.”

    At a meeting over how to best collect a debt, Mr. Asaro gave a quick order: “Stab him today.”

    When a younger mobster asked him, “When?” Mr. Asaro responded, “Today, today,” later expressing frustration that it was taking so long.

    “How come I get results? Understand,” Mr. Asaro said. “I get results right away.”

    His track record, however, was less successful in his bosses’ eyes.

    Mr. Asaro was demoted after his superiors concluded he was a habitual gambler who was “robbing” his subordinates — taking more than his share of the loot, according to a legal filing.

    Yet Mr. Asaro complained in a recording about having money troubles.

    “I blew it, gambling,” he told a fellow mobster about the profits from a recent payoff. “What are you making a face? Why, who are you, you better than me?”

    Despite his troubles, Mr. Asaro’s long familial history with the mob — his father and uncle were “made” members of the Bonanno family — taught him how to be a survivor.

    He lived through mob wars and mob defections, staying out of prison for more time than he was in it. He gained a reputation among prosecutors for being unusually sly or lucky, or both, and managing, from the storefront of his fence business in Ozone Park, to remain safely on the periphery of major investigations.

    Gerald McMahon, Mr. Asaro’s lawyer, said that accused mobsters often fell into two categories: the flashy guys, like John Gotti, and people like Vincent Gigante, the boss of the Genovese family, “who didn’t ever want to be photographed."

    “Mr. Asaro falls into the category of not wanting to be in the limelight,” Mr. McMahon continued, “and that’s how you get to be 78, still out on the street and still alive.”

    While he has been arrested some 21 times since 1957, on charges including bank robbery and assault, prosecutors noted in a filing on Thursday that “many of the charges for which he was arrested in these cases were later dismissed.”

    Now he finds himself charged with one of the biggest cases of all. His lawyer said Mr. Asaro, who has pleaded not guilty, intends to prevail at trial.

    He most likely had an idea that federal agents were onto him in June when they began digging at the home of a late associate’s daughter. The associate, James Burke, known as Jimmy the Gent, was long believed to be the mastermind of the Lufthansa heist. At Mr. Burke’s daughter’s home, near Liberty Avenue in South Ozone Park, authorities found the remains of a man who investigators believe was murdered by Mr. Asaro and Mr. Burke in 1969.

    Another mobster, who is believed to have buried the body, wore a recording device for the government and met with Mr. Asaro when the dig had begun and hinted to him that the federal agents were at the site.

    “I’ll see you later,” Mr. Asaro said soon after, ending the meeting. “Don’t call me!” From there, Mr. Asaro drove past the dig sight. Later that day, an F.B.I. surveillance team watched as Mr. Asaro, perhaps shaken up, drove into a metal pillar, without suffering serious injuries.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/ny...&rref=nyregion

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •