The Lufthansa heist was a robbery at John F. Kennedy International Airport on 11 December 1978. An estimated $ 5,875 million ($ 22.0 million today) was stolen, with $ 5 million in cash and $ 875,000 in jewelry, making it the biggest cash robbery done on American soil at the time. In popular culture, this is the main subject of two famous television movies - The 10 Million Dollar Getaway (1991) and The Big Heist (2001) - and is a key plot element in film Goodfellas (1990). The magnitude of the theft makes it one of the longest-running crimes in the United States; the latest arrest related to the robbery was done in 2014. Jimmy Burke is known as a robbery mastermind, but he has never been formally charged in connection with the crime.
Video Lufthansa heist
Planning
The robbery was planned by Jimmy Burke, a colleague of the Lucchese crime family, and was done by several colleagues. The plot begins when Martin Krugman's bet tells Henry Hill (a Jimmy Burke colleague) about millions of dollars in untraceable money: American currency is flown once a month from monetary exchange for military and tourist soldiers in West Germany. The currency will arrive via Lufthansa and then stored in a safe at Kennedy Airport. The initial information came from Louis Werner, an airport worker who owed Krugman $ 20,000 for gambling debt ($ 81,000 adjusted for inflation) and from his coworker Peter Gruenwald. Werner and Gruenwald had previously managed to steal $ 22,000 in foreign currency ($ 95,000 adjusted for inflation) from their company Lufthansa in 1976.
Louis Werner helped Krugman during the planning, even telling where the robbers had to park. A Ford Econoline 150 van will be used for carrying cash and an "accident car" will accompany the van to run a vehicle interruption if the plot is interrupted and police chase will occur. Burke decides Tommy DeSimone, Joe Civitello Sr., Louis Cafora, Angelo Sepe, Tony Rodriguez, Joseph M. Costa, and Burke's son, Frank James Burke, as insiders. Paolo LiCastri, a Sicilian shooter, was later included as Gambino's family crime representative, who had promised tribute payments for criminal sanctions. Parnell "Pile" Edwards is a black colleague of the Burke gang who serves as a "messenger" and a driver, and he is also included to dispose of the van used in the theft.
After everyone was together, Jimmy told the Lucchese underboss family Paul Vario, who sent his son, Peter, to collect the "final" booty. Vincent Asaro, the head of the Bonanno family crew at the airport, will also owe money because Burke, a Lucchese colleague, commits a robbery in the territory of the Bonanno family.
Maps Lufthansa heist
Execution
On December 11, 1978 at 3:12 am, when cargo agent Kerry Whalen returned from making a transfer on American Airlines, he saw a black Ford Econoline van retreating to the street door. Whalen walks toward the van to investigate, and two men without a mask or glove hit his head with a gun. Whalen lowered his hat to his chin and hurled it into the van, where the third robber was waiting. Another person takes his wallet and says that they know where his family is and they have others ready to visit them. Whalen nodded to show that he would work with the robbers. But later, when investigators showed Whalen a series of police archive photos, he positively identified Angelo Sepe as the one who had cornered him.
The senior agent, Rolf Rebmann, heard a noise in the street loading and went to investigate. Six armed masked robbers forced him in and handcuffed him. They then use the key provided by Werner and walk through the labyrinth of corridors to collect two other employees. That was achieved, two armed men ventured down to search for unexpected visitors. Other robbers herded employees into the lunchroom, where another employee was resting.
The gunmen came into the dining room waving their firearms. They showed Whalen covered in blood as an indication of their intentions if anyone came out of line. They know every employee by name and force them to the ground. They made John Murray, a senior cargo terminal agent, called Rudi Eirich on the intercom. The robbers knew that Eirich was the only guard at night who knew the combination of the double door dome. Murray was made to pretend to Eirich that there was a problem with a charge from Frankfurt, and he told Eirich to meet him in the cafeteria. As Eirich approached the cafeteria, he was met by four men with rifles and saw other employees bound and clogged on the floor of the cafeteria. A gunman oversaw ten employees, and the other three took Eirich at gunpoint down two flights of stairs to the two-door dome.
Eirich later reported that the robber was notified and knew all about the security system in the vault, including a double door system, where one door had to be closed so that the other was opened without activating the alarm. The robbers ordered Eirich to open the first door to a room measuring 10x20 feet. They know that if he opens the second door, he will activate the alarm to the Port Authority Police unit at the airport. Once inside, they ordered Eirich to lie on the ground and began sorting out invoices and shipping items to determine which packets they wanted from amongst the many wrapped similar.
Finally, they start throwing packs of cash through the door. About 40 parcels were removed. Eirich was then made to lock the door inside before opening the outside door. Two armed men were assigned to load the bundle into the van while the others tied Eirich. Employees are told not to contact the Port Authority until 4:30 am. When the robbers leave, at 4:16 am. According to the cafeteria hour, no call was made until 4:30, when the theft report was made. This 15 minute buffer is very important because the internal information of Werner makes robbers aware that the Port Authority Police can shut down entire airports within 90 seconds.
At 4:21 am, a van containing robbers and stolen money was pulled out of the cargo terminal and left JFK, followed by an accident car. The robbery took only 64 minutes and was the largest theft currency ever undertaken on American soil at the time.
The robbers drove to a garage in Canarsie, Brooklyn, where Jimmy Burke was waiting. There, the money was transferred to the third vehicle that was driven by Burke and his son, Frank. The rest of the robbers left and went home, except for Paolo LiCastri, who insisted on taking the subway to the house. Parnell "Pile" Edwards put the license plate stolen in the van and was supposed to drive it to the automatic dumpster in New Jersey, where it would be solidified into scrap metal.
Burke and his son, Frank, drive a third car with all the money stolen to the hiding house to count. This is when Burke realizes the true scope of robbery: he expects to bring no more than $ 2 million and be shocked by nearly $ 6 million haul.
Aftermath
Investigation
Parnell "Pile" Edwards should have taken the van used in a robbery to a New Jersey compactor to ruin it; on the contrary, rejoicing at a gang robbery, he smokes marijuana while on his way to junkyard. He then drove the van to his girlfriend's apartment, parked it in the no-parking zone, and spent the night drunk and snorting cocaine, apparently intending to deliver the van to the junkyard the next day. The next morning, while Edwards was still asleep in his girlfriend's apartment, the police found the van, confiscated it, and quickly identified it as a vehicle used in a robbery. Edwards himself managed to escape from the compound without being arrested. His fingerprints were later found on the steering wheel, and a muddy shoeprint found at the airport was matched with a pair of Puma AG athletic shoes owned by Edwards.
The FBI has two direct suspicions about who has connections and organizational skills to lead a brave robbery in the New York area, the first being John Gotti's crew, and the second is Jimmy Burke's crew. The FBI identified Burke's crew as a possible offender in a three-day robbery, largely due to the discovery of the truck, coupled with Edwards' already established connection with Burke's gang at Robert's Lounge. They do strict supervision, follow the gang by helicopter and tap their vehicles, call in Robert's Lounge, and even the nearest public phone to the bar. The FBI managed to record a few bits of seductive chat despite rock background sounds and discos, like Angelo Sepe telling an unknown man about "chocolate box and bag from Lufthansa" and he told his lover Hope Barron, "... I want to see... see where the money is... digging a hole in an inaudible [old] basement... "But this is not enough to connect Burke's crew with a robbery, and there is no search warrant. issued.
According to Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke became paranoid and agitated as soon as he realized how much Edwards's fate had been withdrawn, and decided to kill anyone who could implicate him in a robbery, starting with Edwards himself. With the ferocious deaths of most of the pirates and planners, little evidence and some witnesses still connect Burke or his crew into theft. However, the authorities were finally able to gather enough evidence to prosecute in human Louis Werner for helping to plan the theft. Lucchese's criminal family association Donald Frankos later expressed his disappointment by being a close friend of Burke and a regular in the room at Robert's Lounge but not involved in actual theft, in his biography Contract Killer: The Explosive Story of Mafia's Most Notorious Hit Man Donald "The Greek "Frankos .
According to a self-published book he sells online, Kerry Whalen, a whipped wielding Lufthansa employee, keeps records at his meetings with law enforcement, and is deeply disgusted by the behavior of the FBI and the US Attorney's office that he complains to federal judges. Cash and stolen jewelry is never found.
Vincent Asaro, a member of the well-known Bonanno criminal family, was 78 years old when arrested on January 23, 2014, along with charges that demanded he engage in Lufthansa theft. The case against Asaro was based on an informant called by Asaro's lawyer as "one of the worst witnesses I have ever seen." Daniel Simone, who co-authored The Lufthansa Heist, worked with Henry Hill to report to New York Post's Page Six that Bukit told him that Asaro "was not involved" in the robbery. On November 12, 2015, Asaro was acquitted of all charges related to Lufthansa's robbery by a jury in the Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
Loss of violence from fellow pirates
Burke realized that the robbery had scored $ 6 million, three times the amount he expected, and he knew that a robbery of this magnitude would draw intense attention from police at every level (local, state, and federal), causing many problems for everyone involved, as well as for organized crime in New York in general. Burke became increasingly concerned that there were too many witnesses who knew of his involvement, and too many became greedy after finding out the amount of money actually stolen in the theft.
Burke also realizes that Edwards's failure to "properly" dispose of the van has allowed the police to capture the crew, and Burke decides to kill anyone who can implicate him in the theft. The first to be killed, just seven days after the theft, was Edwards - shot and killed in his apartment on December 18, 1978, by Tommy DeSimone and Angelo Sepe. This is the first in a series of criminals and acquaintances of those who were killed after the theft on Burke's orders:
Others involved in the planning, execution, or follow-up of robberies were not killed in Burke's witness disappearance program in 1978-79 but suffered violently.
Informant
- Janet Barbieri , Louis Werner's girlfriend and future wife, who testified against Werner in front of the Grand Jury.
- William "Bill" Fischetti , the owner of a taxi shipping company and a mafia relative involved in the sale of stolen bonds. Fischetti had an affair with Beverly Werner.
- Peter Gruenwald , organizer of Lufthansa robbers, who testified against his colleague and colleague Louis Werner.
- Frank Menna , a number runner by Angelo Sepe and Daniel Rizzo for the incompetence of his boss Martin Krugman.
- Louis Werner , a Manhattan accountant who doubled as a money launderer.
Fourteen months after the theft, Henry Hill was arrested on other charges. He soon learns that Burke and Sepe are planning to kill him, and that his arrest makes others believe he is a threat to reveal details of the robbery. A month later, Hill enters the Witness Protection Program. He can not help the government gain confidence in Vario or Burke for Lufthansa robbery in particular, even though both are punished for murder because of his testimony.
Fate
- Jimmy Burke was sentenced and sentenced to 12 years for his involvement in the Boston College 1974-79 shaving scandal, in 1982. While in prison, he was found guilty and received a life sentence of 20 years in prison for the killing of a virtual human and the deceiver Richard Eaton. Burke died of lung cancer at the age of 64 at a Buffalo hospital after being transferred there from the Wende Prison Facility in Alden, New York, 13 April 1996. He would be eligible for release in 2004. He was never officially charged in the theft of Lufthansa.
- Henry Hill enters the Witness Protection Program; he died at a Los Angeles hospital on June 12, 2012, the day after his 69th birthday, after a long battle with heart disease.
- Paul Vario died at Fort Worth Federal Prison (FCI Fort Worth) respiratory illness on May 3, 1988, aged 73 years.
- Tony Rodriguez was found dead of natural causes, at the age of 30, at Plainview, Long Island, home on September 20, 1987.
- Joseph Costa's body was never found.
- Louis Werner, convicted on May 16, 1979, married Janet Barbieri after he was released from prison.
- Peter Gruenwald revived his relationship with his estranged wife and disappeared into the Witness Protection Program.
- Bill Fischetti divorced his wife and disappeared into the Witness Protection Program.
- Frank Menna disappears into the Witness Protection Program.
Books
On April 7, 2015, writer Robert Sberna released the book Mystery of Lufthansa Airlines Heist with collaborator Dominick Cicale, a former member of the Bonanno criminal family. According to Cicale, between $ 2 million and $ 4 million Lufthansa's stolen goods are kept in a safe deposit box by Jimmy Burke. The keys were given to his daughter, Cathy and Robin. Cicale reports that Cathy Burke's husband, Anthony "Bruno" Indelicato, a Bonanno capo, gained access to the box with Vincent Basciano, also Bonanno capo. Cicale says that Basciano spent $ 250,000 in money for a film that was never produced. The rest are lost in the casino by Basciano. In July 2015, Rowman and Littlefield published a book entitled The Lufthansa Heist, co-written by Daniel Simone and the man who became Henry Hill's informant. In July 2017, Kensington Publishing Corp. released The Big Heist: The True Story Of The Lufthansa Heist, The Mafia, And Murder by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Anthony M. DeStefano, who is the only history Robbery Lufthansa based on direct reports from the only survivors of the theft, Mafia don Vincent Asaro.
See also
- A list of major US robbery values ​​
References
Further reading
-
Hill, Henry; Daniel Simone (2015). The Lufthansa Heist: Behind The Six-Million-Dollar Money Shoot That Shook the World . Lyons Press. ISBN: 978-1493008490. - Hill, Henry; Gus Russo (2004). Gangster and Goodfellas: Wiseguys, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run . M. Evans and Company, Inc. ISBNÃ, 1-56731-757-X.
- Volkman, Ernest; Cummings, John (October 1986). The Heist: How Gang Steals $ 8,000,000 at Kennedy Airport and Lives to Regret It . New York: Franklin Watts. ISBN: 0-531-15024-0.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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