People of The State of New York v. Vincent Asaro, et. al., Indictment 6007-94, Queens State Supreme Court.
People of The State of New York v. James Burke, Indictment 395-84, Brooklyn State Supreme Court.
U.S. v. Vincent Asaro, 14-CR-26, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
U.S. v. Salvatore Santoro, et.al., 85-CR-100, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
U.S. v. Paul Vario, 72-CR-424, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
U.S. v. Paul Vario, 83-CR-289, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
U.S. v. Louis Werner, 79-CR-89, United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Government Publications
New York State Joint Legislative Committee on Crime, Its Cause, Control and Effect on Society. Report for 1970, September 1970.
Organized Crime Involvement in California Pornography Operations. California Department of Justice, Division of Law Enforcement. July, 1976.
Hearings Before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee of Government Operations, Organized Crime: Stolen Securities, Part 1, Ninety-Second Congress, First Session. June 8–10 and 16, 1971.
Newspapers and Periodicals
Daily News (N.Y.)
Long Island Daily Press
Long Island Star Journal
Newsday (Long Island)
New York Magazine
New York Newsday
Newsweek
Rome Daily Sentinel (Rome, N.Y.)
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle
The Leader-Observer (Queens, N.Y.)
The New York Times
Time
Websites
www.biography.com
www.bop.gov
www.findagrave.com
www.fultonhistory.com
www.ganglandnews.com
www.infamousnewyork.com
www.loc.gov
www.nexis.com
www.usinflationcalculator.com
www.wikipedia.com
www.youtube.com
James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, Lucchese crime family associate and the mastermind of the Lufthansa heist, seen in a federal mug shot.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Thomas DeSimone, the crazed killer and associate of James Burke and Henry Hill, who was one of the gunmen involved in the Lufthansa heist. DeSimone disappeared in January 1979 and is believed to have been killed because he murdered Gambino crime family member William “Billy Bats” Bentvena.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Henry Hill, the legendary mob associate, in an undated FBI mug shot. Hill became a government witness and gave a great deal of information about the Lufthansa heist, although he was not present at the December 11, 1978, robbery. He was a close associate of James Burke, the man who organized the heist. Hill’s life story was the inspiration for the Martin Scorsese film GoodFellas. Hill died in 2012.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Parnell “Stacks” Edwards, an associate of James Burke and a credit card swindler, who botched his job of disposing of the black van used in the Lufthansa heist. For his screwup, Edwards was shot dead in his apartment a few days after the airport robbery.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
This scale model of the Lufthansa cargo terminal and JFK International Airport was used at the 2015 federal trial of Vincent Asaro. The model depicts the terminal, known as Building 261, as it was at the time of the December 11, 1978, heist.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
The area on the Brooklyn–Queens border known as “The Hole” because of its topographically low position. This neighborhood was where Vincent Asaro and his cousin Gaspare Valenti grew up. It is also a place where Mafia families buried the bodies of murder victims. Some of the Lufthansa heist crew tried to hide the body of drug dealer Richard Eaton in a trailer in the area.
(Author’s collection)
Surveillance photo showing Lucchese crime family captain Paul Vario (left) at his Brooklyn junkyard, which had been the target in 1972 of a long-term electronic surveillance operation by Brooklyn District Attorney Eugene Gold. Vario is believed to have been the main mobster overseeing James Burke and his plan to pull off the Lufthansa heist. Officials believe Vario received some of the proceeds of the heist. The man at center in the suit and tie is Vario’s defense attorney, Joel Winograd. The man on the right is unidentified.
(Photo courtesy Joel Winograd)
Vincent Asaro (center) walking down an alley that led to a Bonanno family social club on Grand Street in Maspeth, Queens, operated at one time by Sal Vitale. The man Asaro is conversing with is unidentified.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Undated photo showing murder victim Paul Katz with his wife, Dolores. Katz was murdered in 1969 on orders from James Burke after it was learned that Katz was an informant. He was buried under the basement floor of a house in Queens, and some of his remains were found by the FBI in 2013.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorneys Office, Eastern District of New York).
The row house (second from right) at 81-48 102nd Street in Ozone Park where the remains of Paul Katz were found by the FBI in 2013. Testimony during the 2015 Lufthansa trial asserted that Katz’s body was buried in the basement by James Burke and Vincent Asaro.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
An anatomical array of the hand bones of Paul Katz, murder victim of James Burke, one of the organizers of the Lufthansa heist. During the trial of Vincent Asaro, the 1969 burial of Katz’s body in the basement of a house in Queens was described in the testimony of government witness Gaspare Valenti. The bones were retrieved by the FBI in 2013.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Lufthansa cargo worker Peter Gruenewald (right) is being led by an FBI agent from FBI offices in Queens, N.Y., in February 1979. Gruenewald would become a government witness and testify against co-worker Louis Werner, the only person convicted of the December 1978 Lufthansa heist.
(Photo courtesy Newsday LLC)
Vincent Asaro with arm around Gambino boss John Gotti outside Gotti’s former club on 101st Avenue in Ozone Park. Gotti likely wasn’t the boss when this undated photo was taken.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
FBI booking photo of former Bonanno boss Joseph Massino, who became a government witness and was slated to testify against Vincent Asaro but never did. Prosecutors contended that Asaro passed along some of the jewels stolen in the Lufthansa heist to Massino, presumably for the benefit of crime family boss Philip Rastelli.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Vincent Asaro outside the Maspeth business of Bonanno crime boss Joseph Massino. Photo was taken by FBI surveillance team, which included agent Pat Marshall, who testified at Asaro’s 2015 trial.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Michael Zaffarano, the Bonanno crime family captain and lord of Times Square porn shops and theaters in the 1970s. Zaffarano was the immediate boss of his nephew Vincent Asaro.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Jerome Asaro, a Bonanno crime family member and son of Vincent Asaro. Jerome, also known as “Jerry,” pled guilty to federal charges related to his participation in the disposal of the body of murder victim Paul Katz.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Gaspare Valenti (left), seen here with his cousin Vincent Asaro in happier times. Valenti became a government witness against Asaro
in the 2015 Lufthansa heist trial.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Mug shot of Vincent Asaro.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of New York)
Salvatore Vitale, former underboss of the Bonanno crime family, in an FBI mug shot dating from his arrest in 2003. Vitale became a government witness and testified at many trials, including the 2015 trial of Vincent Asaro.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
FBI mug shot of Peter “Bud” Zuccaro, a former mob associate who became a government witness and testified at the 2015 trial of Vincent Asaro.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Mug shot of Danny Rizzo, identified in testimony during the 2015 federal trial of Vincent Asaro as one of the men involved in the Lufthansa heist.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
Vincent Asaro on November 12, 2015, after his acquittal in Brooklyn federal court on charges related to the 1978 Lufthansa heist and other crimes. On the left is defense attorney Elizabeth Macedonio, and the woman on the right is her co-counsel, Diane Ferrone.
(Photo courtesy Newsday LLC)
Vincent Asaro (center, in overcoat) at a funeral home in Ozone Park, leaving the wake of a friend.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of New York)
While Paul Vario was large in life as a mobster, hardly any tangible reminder of him remains after his death. He is buried in a family plot in St. John Cemetery in Queens, but there are so many people in the grave site that his name is at the bottom of the pedestal supporting the tombstone, almost covered by earth and barely recognizable below the name of his brother Salvatore.
(Author’s collection)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For a book covering so many decades of organized crime history, I received a great deal of help from people I can acknowledge and some I can’t publicly but who nevertheless have my gratitude. They know who they are.
I did attempt to interview Gaspare Valenti, the cousin who turned against Vincent Asaro and helped the FBI and federal prosecutors get the 2014 indictment that provided much of the material for this book. However, Valenti’s attorney Scott Fenstermaker said his client wasn’t going to talk unless he got paid, so that ended that discussion.
Vincent Asaro was a different story. He did want to talk with me, particularly about Massino and Valenti but for reasons that were never clear didn’t feel he could do so. But one July evening I took a chance and drove out to Queens where he came to the door and gave me the courtesy of an impromptu interview at his home in Ozone Park. The story of that meeting is detailed in the Epilogue. He wanted nothing in return.
One person who gets a big thanks is Nicholas Pileggi. Over the several months I worked on this book, Nick proved helpful in many ways. It was his recommendation to take the story big, setting the scene with what the Mafia was like in New York City during the 1960s through the 1980s. This helped give the story a grander historical scope. His Wiseguy is cited in a number of places in The Big Heist and to my mind remains an iconic Mob story.
From the law-enforcement side, I received help in securing public records and trial exhibits from assistant U.S. attorneys Nicole Argentieri, Lindsay Gerdes, and their trial paralegal Teri Carby. At the NYPD, deputy commissioner Stephen Davis and Lt. Eugene Whyte of the public information office provided assistance and historical perspective. Former Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes also provided me with perspective about the “Gold Bug” investigation. At Brooklyn federal court, Dennis LaSalle, courtroom deputy to Judge Allyne Ross, also helped in tracking down court exhibits, namely the whereabouts of the scale model of the Lufthansa terminal used in Asaro’s trial.
The National Archives is a font of information for researchers, and in doing this book I used the organization’s branch in Manhattan where Kevin Reilly helped me requisition many old federal criminal case files from archive repositories. Such files are national treasures of American legal history and the archives has very exacting standards for making sure the materials are used with care.
In terms of the criminal defense bar, Asaro’s two trial attorneys Elizabeth Macedonio and Diane Ferrone were interviewed and provided much useful information. I also want to thank defense paralegal Sam Tureff, investigator Ron Dwyer, and James Macedonio, Elizabeth’s son who worked as a paralegal.
Noted defense attorney Joel Winograd, one of those extremely knowledgeable lawyers with an encyclopedic memory about the history of organized crime, gets a special nod of thanks for regaling me with stories about Paul Vario and other characters in the history of La Cosa Nostra. Joel knows so much because, as a skillful attorney, he represented many reputed mobsters over the years. We had one of our interviews on the very day he appeared in court for the last time in 2016 before retiring as an active attorney, capping a career that began in 1967. Barry Levin and Steven Zissou, two defense attorneys I have known well over the years, also provided me with assistance.
Former Brooklyn federal prosecutor Edward McDonald left government service in 1989 and has gone on to a successful career as a defense attorney. But busy as he was, Ed would talk unceasingly about his investigation and prosecution of the early Lufthansa case with defendant Louis Werner as if it all happened yesterday.
I have often had the need as a journalist to speak with the Office of The Chief Medical Examiner in Manhattan and for this book had the assistance of Brad Adams and the office’s chief spokesperson Julie Bolcer. Jerry Schmetterer, former spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office under Hynes, also gets thanks.
Two retired law-enforcement officials provided help in telling the tale of the gang of Jimmy Burke and the Lufthansa Heist. One was retired FBI agent Steve Carbone, who was involved in the investigation of the heist and helped Ed McDonald put together the case against Louis Werner and tried to bring other suspects to justice. The other was Ed Vitty who, as a detective with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police, had investigated a number of people in Burke’s crew and had many useful recollections.
In an effort to get information beyond Burke’s criminal life, I sent letters to his daughter Catherine Burke and her husband, imprisoned reputed Bonanno crime-family member Anthony “Bruno” Indelicato. I never received a reply. I also sent email and telephone messages to his son Jesse but got no response.
Journalists whose work I relied upon in crafting this book include: Selim Agar, John Annesse, Jerry Capeci, Matt Chayes, Stephanie Clifford, John Cummings, Cy Egan, Kareem Fahim, William Federici, Chris Francescani, Martin Gottlieb, Robert Greene (Newsday), Pete Hamill, Edward Hershey, Edward Kirkman, Edward Kulik, Chau Lam, Leslie Maitland, Joseph Martin, John Marzulli, Owen Moritz, Alexandra K. Mosca, Nicholas Pileggi, Tom Renner, John Riley, Ray Sanchez, Corky Siemasko, Daniel Simone, Robin Topping, Ernest Volkmann.
Over at Newsday, I have to thank assistant managing editor Maryann Skinner who made the Newsday approval process for this book painless. My news editors Tim Drachlis and Monica Quintanilla helped me juggle my daily work load and the time off needed to produce the manuscript. Cathy Mahon, Newsday’s permissions coordinator, hunted down two photographs, which I was able to use.
My agent, Jill Marsal, gets special thanks for getting me through the negotiation process at a time when I was juggling two book proposals. Finally, I must thank my editor at Kensington, Gary Goldstein, for his perseverance in jumping on the project as soon as the verdict in the Asaro case was known. This had to be the fastest proposal I ever put together, and Gary made sure it resulted in this book, which is coming out in plenty of time for the thirty-ninth anniversary of the Lufthansa heist.
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