The Big Heist

by Anthony M. DeStefano

  Actually others had the big problems, including three Boston College basketball players who were ordered to testify to a Brooklyn federal grand jury about the fixing scheme. Among those subpoenaed were the team’s starting center Rick Kuhn, who came from Pennsylvania. The investigation revealed how some Pittsburgh area mob associates had linked up Hill and Burke in an effort to get some front money for the scheme and to assure that Hill then went to Boston to recruit Kuhn and any other player who wanted to be part of the conspiracy. Essentially, the fix was aimed at making sure the number of points by which Boston College won or lost a game worked in the betting syndicate’s favor. The bets were laid off on unsuspecting bookmakers around the country. To assure that members of the syndicate weren’t hassled by bookmakers who had to pay out, Hill said that he mentioned his ties with Paul Vario.

  The fix wasn’t flawless. When Boston College lost to traditional rival Holy Cross University by only two points, that margin of victory was less then the seven-point spread that gamblers like Burke had expected from the fix. Burke lost $50,000, and at the end of the televised game put his foot through the television at his home in Howard Beach. For a moment, Burke wanted Hill to go up to Boston to give the players some punishment, something that never happened.

  With Hill’s evidence, as well as that of other witnesses, the grand jury indicted Burke, Kuhn, and several others on racketeering conspiracy and other charges. The trial in 1981 was in its own way a major event and was the first time Hill was publicly unmasked as a cooperating witness. With Hill giving solid testimony, corroborated by others as well as admissions made by Kuhn, a jury convicted Burke and a number of other defendants including Kuhn. Burke was sentenced to twenty years in prison, while Kuhn got a ten-year term, later reduced to just over two years.

  “To me and McDonald, this was bigger than Lufthansa,” Carbone recalled later about the significance of the college-fixing case. “This was the first sports-bribery racketeering case.”

  James Burke had finally taken a fall—although not for Lufthansa, and he had Henry Hill to thank for it. Then according to federal investigators, Burke began a relentless campaign to find out where Hill had been sent as a federal witness, which turned out to be Omaha, Nebraska. Somehow, Burke found out where Hill, his wife Karen, and their children were living. In the nick of time, the U.S. Marshals Service, which was responsible for Hill’s safety, discovered the security leak and in a matter of hours moved him and his family further out west.

  While Hill was safely ensconced in the bosom of the witness protection program, his old associate in crime Angelo Sepe enjoyed no such benefit since he never cooperated. Despite weeks of a concerted effort in early 1979 by federal prosecutors to get Sepe to implicate himself in the heist, he was able to get out from under an arrest, which was the FBI’s way of pressuring him. He was then sent back for ten months in prison for violating his parole on a federal bank robbery conviction by associating with Burke. But once that short stint in prison ended, Sepe was seen by those in the mob—suspicion fell mostly on Burke—as a liability. So, on July 18 in an apartment at 8869 20th Avenue in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the forty-two-year-old Sepe and his girlfriend Joanne Lombardo were found shot to death. Both had been shot in the head, and cops uncovered drug paraphernalia and a loaded gun in the basement apartment. With Sepe’s death, the body count for the Lufthansa people had risen to six. (The two women, Theresa Ferrara and Joanne Lombardo were likely collateral damage.) By late 1984, of the people publicly named by Hill as having participated in the heist, only Burke survived.

  Frustrated in the Lufthansa investigation, McDonald and the Brooklyn Strike Force was able to use Hill to make a major case involving JFK’s air-freight industry, a business that for decades was viewed by law enforcement as a fiefdom of the mob. The modus operandi of the gangsters was extortion, squeezing the air-freight companies for payments to insure labor peace. A key player in the system was alleged to be Harry Davidoff, vice president of Teamster Local 851 and the founder of Local 295. Davidoff was a powerhouse in the New York City labor scene, and his locals represented clerical workers and truckers at the air-freight companies, which moved much of the cargo coming into and out of JFK.

  The key to Davidoff’s power was his alleged ties to the Lucchese family, in particular Henry Hill’s old mentor and protector Paul Vario. The Lucchese family squeezed the companies the old-fashioned true and tried way done by all labor racketeers: ask for a payoff or else threaten that the unions would enforce onerous terms of the Teamster contract and cause other labor unrest. Once the payments were made, the unions would relax their insistence on strict compliance with the contracts. The shakedowns and other schemes pulled in millions of dollars.

  In an investigation known as “KENRAC,” an acronym for “Kennedy racketeering,” over thirty organized-crime figures were indicted, including Vario, another Lucchese crime family member Frank Manzo and Davidoff. In making the case, McDonald used some of what he had extracted from Hill, although some of his evidence was shaky.

  In a trial which was supposed to last about two months, prosecutors promised it would be a window into a lengthy shakedown operation involving the Lucchese family and the unions. Hill, of course, testified, and was called a “rogue, scalawag and a scoundrel” as well as a liar by defense attorneys. But by that time in his life Hill was impervious to the insults. In reality, Hill’s testimony was important but largely circumstantial. He wasn’t around for the shakedowns, but he told about conversations he had had with Vario’s son Lenny.

  “He was very excited,” Hill told the jury. “He said the airport is ours.”

  Another conversation Hill said he had overheard involved Paul Vario and Manzo in which they said if there were any problems at the airport involving hirings or firings “you go through Harry.” Prosecutors had promised that Hill’s testimony would put Davidoff right in the middle of the conspiracy. While tantalizing, Hill’s testimony was hardly the knock-out stuff he had delivered for the prosecution in the Burke trial in the point-shaving case. It seemed, as one appeals court would say, that it “fell far short of living up to its advance billing.”

  Still, as the case unfolded, the evidence presented by Hill and other witnesses show how Vario and the other members of the Lucchese family, as well as some businessmen, were involved in the complex extortion schemes. Before the case went to the jury, Vario decided at the age of seventy-three to fold up, and he pleaded guilty to running the extortion scheme. He received a sentence of six years in a federal prison.

  Vario was not in a good position after the airport extortion case since his six-year sentence came at a time when he was physically ailing. On top of that, Hill had put the screws to him in an earlier case in which the turncoat had actually been the recipient of Vario’s help. When Hill had come out of prison in 1978 he was in need of a job to show his parole officer that he was doing legitimate work. Of course, Hill had no intention of going straight and at that point was orchestrating drug deals on Long Island. Through Philip Basile, the owner of a nightclub, Vario got Hill a no-show job in a company in Island Park.

  When it came time for Vario to stand trial in the fake-employment case, Hill testified that it was his old mob mentor who had ordered Basile to take him on as a sham employee, complete with phony pay stubs to trick federal parole officials. Basile, Hill testified, had been paying Vario large amounts of money for years. While defense attorney Joel Winograd told jurors that Hill was a person who would lie to anyone in authority when it suited him, Vario was nevertheless convicted.

  Both federal convictions effectively put Vario, the man who gave the nod of approval to Burke to do the Lufthansa job, in prison for what would turn out to be the rest of his life. It was a consolation prize of sorts for the government, which was unable to bring the elderly mob boss to justice for the heist. Vario would die in federal custody at a prison in Fort Worth, Texas, on May 3, 1988. He was buried in a family plot in St. John Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens. Just like the se
cretive way he lived his life, in death Vario’s final resting place is easy to overlook. His name is etched into the concrete base of the tombstone at the very bottom in small letters.

  Jimmy Burke might have been able to see the light of day after his conviction in the Boston College basketball-fixing trial. But then Hill put freedom out of reach for him for good. It all came down to the murder of Richard Eaton in 1979, a killing that Burke thought he might get away with.

  After Eaton had provided Hill and Burke with some poor-quality cocaine, he wound up dead in a trailer in Brooklyn. When Hill turned into a cooperator, he told investigators what he knew of the killing. Hill was not around when Eaton was murdered but he had been part of the drug deal and knew the extent of Burke’s anger over being screwed by what Eaton had provided in terms of the cocaine and not getting a full refund payment. Not only did Hill recall Burke’s remarks in February 1979 about having “wacked” Eaton, Burke also said, “This would be a lesson to Buzzy [another drug dealer] and the other guy and I will get the balance of my money.” As it turned out, the killing of Eaton was a sufficient lesson because, according to Hill, Burke did get most of his money back.

  Burke was indicted for Eaton’s murder in 1984, and Hill was a key witness for the prosecution when the case went to trial in 1985 in Brooklyn state court. Hill’s testimony was the only thing tying Burke directly to the Eaton killing. (At the time of the trial, prosecutors did not have the benefit of Valenti’s cooperation, and if they had, they would have heard him say, as he later told the FBI, that Vincent Asaro told him that Eaton was murdered by Burke at his home.) To buttress their case, prosecutors also tried to show Burke’s previous business dealings with the dead man as well as autopsy findings on how Eaton died. Eaton and Burke clearly knew each other, witnesses stated. The issue of how Eaton died was important because the prosecution alleged that he had been strangled and beaten.

  According to then-deputy medical examiner Michael Baden, Eaton was already dead from strangulation when he was placed in the cold trailer, something that conflicted with the earlier prosecution claim that he froze to death. Burke seemed to favor strangulation as a way of dispatching people. He had done it with trucker Paul Katz years earlier. Baden’s finding, based on a review of the autopsy report, was at odds with that of defense expert Dr. Milton Wald, who believed Eaton died from exposure to the cold. In another wrinkle, cops didn’t find any of Burke’s fingerprints on a rope found around Eaton’s neck or in his apartment.

  Nevertheless, Burke was convicted by a jury on February 25, 1985. He appealed his conviction to both state and federal judges, raising the issue of the circumstantial evidence being flimsy and the fact that the autopsy didn’t support the prosecution theory that Eaton was strangled and beaten. For good measure, Burke complained that he had an ineffective defense attorney. The judges didn’t buy Burke’s arguments and he was consigned to state prison to serve a twenty-five-years-to-life sentence for Eaton’s murder

  Burke died on April 13, 1996, from the effects of cancer while he was at an upstate New York prison hospital. By the time he died, Burke had already lost his son Frank, who was killed in May 1987 after being shot on a Brooklyn Street. He was survived by three other children, his daughter Cathy who was married to Bonanno crime family soldier Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato, another daughter Robin or Robina and a second son Jesse James Burke who went on to be a real-estate attorney on Long Island.

  James “Jimmy” Burke was never prosecuted for the Lufthansa heist. The rumors were that he had stashed millions of dollars of the loot in a bank safe deposit box, a fortune allegedly squandered by his son-in-law Anthony and his crime family captain Vincent Basciano. That claim of the secret fortune and its loss was made by Basciano’s former close associate Dominick Cicale in an e-book he published in 2015. It was an allegation never proven, although it was entirely possible that Burke did stash cash he had accumulated from a life of crime—be it from Lufthansa, drugs, cigarette smuggling, or hijacking—in such a repository. Burke is buried at Saint Charles Cemetery in East Farmingdale, Long Island. He and his son Frank share a plot in the western area of the cemetery which happens to be across the road from a small airport. The headstone is modest. Old flowers and faded notes show the grave still gets visitors.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE SHAKEDOWN GUY

  THE EASIEST WAY TO BECOME A CRIME VICTIM in the Borough of Queens in the 1990s was to own a car. Auto theft was simply out of control in many parts of New York City. In 1990, over 145,000 vehicles were reported stolen, and in some parts of Queens cops would monitor shopping-mall lots and nearby streets with binoculars to get a jump on the car thieves. By 1994, things had improved somewhat with police logging in a reduced number of stolen cars, nearly 95,000 or almost 260 vehicles a day on average.

  Auto theft had been a gravy train for the mob. Before he was assassinated, the late Gambino boss Paul Castellano lorded over a stolen car ring that from about 1977 to 1982 stole hundreds of cars per day. The vehicles were taken off the streets of Brooklyn and shipped to Kuwait. Castellano didn’t get his hands dirty, but instead reaped the cash from the operation, money that was brought to him in big wads at his palatial home known as the “White House” in the Todt Hill section of Staten Island.

  Castellano was ultimately indicted on charges he ran the ring and was actually on trial in Manhattan federal court in late 1985 when he was gunned down on December 16 outside Sparks Steak House on 46th Street in Manhattan. Six of his associates, including Gambino captain Anthony “Nino” Gaggi, were convicted of being part of the car-theft conspiracy on March 1986. Thieves were paid $150 for each car, which had their vehicle identification numbers changed before they were taken to Port Elizabeth in New Jersey for shipment to the Middle East.

  The profits in stolen cars were also attractive to the Bonanno crime family. One operation run in part by family associate Gaetano Peduto had stolen over 2,100 vehicles, retagged them, and resold them to an army of willing buyers. Investigators believed the cars had an estimated value of $20 million. Even Albanian gangsters got involved. According to testimony given by Peduto in federal court as a government witness during a racketeering trial, Bonanno crime family captain Vincent Basciano, got kickbacks of between $1,000 to $2,000 for each stolen car.

  For Vincent Asaro, the benefits of stolen cars were in the steady stream of income he could get if he offered his protection to those who actually did the dirty work. By 1994, Asaro was one of the last denizens of Robert’s Lounge out on the street. Jimmy Burke was in prison and Henry Hill was living out west, courtesy of the witness protection program. Most of the others were dead or missing. As a member of the Bonanno family, Asaro had to keep his stature and earn money, for himself and his new boss Joseph Massino.

  If truth be told, Asaro wasn’t the apple of Massino’s eye. Part of the problem was Asaro’s volatility and temper, which pushed him to almost uncontrollable fits of anger in which he abused the men working under him. He also threw away money as fast as he made it at the race tracks, either Aqueduct or Belmont, both of which happened to be close to Howard Beach. Like many in the mob, notably the elder John Gotti, Asaro seemed to have a gambling compulsion, which for years kept his finances in peril and forced him to live close to the bone.

  After getting out of prison in 1992, having served six years for labor racketeering, Massino had taken over command of the Bonanno group after the death of long-time boss Philip Rastelli in 1991. Although Massino didn’t seem to care much for Asaro’s demeanor and busted him down from the rank of captain, he still saw usefulness in the aging soldier, particularly with what he was getting from certain stolen car operations in Queens and Long Island.

  While car thieves often took vehicles to sell to willing buyers in the United States or abroad, some of them saw just as lucrative a racket in chopping up the vehicles and selling off their parts. The places where this breaking apart of vehicles was done is known on the street as a chop shop. Sometimes the thieves would t
ake orders for a particular component of a car and have a model stolen to order that could provide the part. The rest of the vehicle would be dismantled, or chopped, with parts stockpiled as needed. A car in pieces was worth more than the price of the vehicle new.

  Guy Gralto, one of Asaro’s associates from Ozone Park, knew the virtues of a well-run chop shop. Asaro knew Gralto from knocking around the auto-body business. The thing was that Gralto’s auto businesses weren’t all legitimate; he had his own chop shops. One was on 101st Avenue near Rockaway Boulevard and another was on Wood Street in Oceanside on Long Island. Between his chop-shop actions and his regular auto parts, Gralto made a good living.

  “I was a good earner,” Gralto recalled in court testimony.

  Gralto had started in the chop-shop business in 1987 at a cousin’s junkyard in Jamaica, Queens. After a few years of dismantling cars, Gralto struck out on his own around 1992 and opened up Conduit Auto Parts on Cohancy Street in Ozone Park. His partner was his live-in girlfriend Vera who ran the office and answered the telephone. Eventually, Gralto took in Martin Bosshart and Darin Sirrota to get cars.

  But in this industry, which prospered in New York City from auto theft and chop shop action, the reality of the business was that you could expect a visit from the mob. So on a day in 1993 when Vincent Asaro stopped by and paid Gralto a visit, the businessman knew that he was talking to the Mafia. Asaro wanted to be paid for protection, Gralto remembered. At first Gralto blew off Asaro and refused to pay. Asaro yelled and screamed and even struck Gralto. But the chop-shop merchant still refused to pay.

  On Asaro’s second visit, Gralto recalled, his old Ozone Park acquaintance showed up and announced his visit by driving through the fence at Conduit Auto. Gralto still wouldn’t pay. Finally, Asaro called Gralto down to his club The Triangle and gave him a few smacks. According to Gralto’s later testimony in a federal court case, Asaro yelled that if he didn’t pay, Gralto’s mother wouldn’t be able to identify his body when he was done beating him. Hearing that, Gralto thought it best to start paying the guy.