Goodfellas prosecutor claims Henry Hill 'charming' but 'inept criminal'
· Toronto Sun
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“Don’t give me the babe-in-the-woods routine, Karen!” — Prosecutor Ed MacDonald to Karen Hill in Goodfellas
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The line was ad-libbed, but mob prosecutor Ed MacDonald says it was genuine.
He delivered the harsh truth to the mob wife in consultations before her husband Henry ratted out his pals. Director Martin Scorsese recruited MacDonald to play himself in the 1990 Oscar-winning mob movie.
Now, MacDonald’s upcoming memoir, Chasing Goodfellas: Lufthansa, Henry Hill, Point Shaving, and Making Movies (Post Hill Press), is slated for release on Oct. 13.
In a recent interview with The Toronto Sun , MacDonald pulled back the curtain on his mob-busting days. He said that far from being a master criminal, Henry Hill was, in reality, “incompetent.”
“He was at the right place at the right time,” MacDonald, 80, said in January from his Brooklyn, N.Y., home. “One of the problems with Henry was that he was seen as not being tough enough. But he and Jimmy Burke (the Lufthansa Heist’s mastermind) were very, very close.”
The score? $29 million in today’s dollars
Both Hill and Burke were members of Lucchese capo Paul Vario’s Brooklyn-based crew, and they “owned” JFK Airport. The crew frequently robbed the airport, but Hill got wind of a monster score at Lufthansa Airlines and on Dec. 11, 1978, the crew struck.
The take? Around $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry ($29 million today) — the biggest heist in American history.
“But Burke started eliminating everyone who could tie him to the heist and also to get their share,” MacDonald said. “By the spring of 1979, everyone who could tie him to the heist was dead.”
And then, Burke’s pal Henry Hill was busted in a Nassau County drug investigation.
“His choices weren’t great. He was facing life in prison or execution by the mob (for dealing drugs). Henry had nowhere else to turn. When he flipped, that’s when we got onto the Boston College point-shaving,” MacDonald said.
Hill and Burke had an All-American hoops star at BC shaving points, allowing them to bet the spread and make millions.
“I thought he was pulling my leg,” MacDonald laughed. “Henry was a very, very entertaining guy and we stayed in touch for years until he died in 2012. Some of the things he did were mind-boggling.”
Henry Hill was born a ‘bad seed’
Hill himself was “charming” but born a “bad seed.”
“He was enamoured with the criminal lifestyle and with Paulie as neighbour; it’s easy to see how he was into it by the age of 10,” MacDonald said. “But as a criminal, he was a screw-up, inept in all sorts of things.
“Everybody liked Henry and things happened for him because of his connections to Paulie and Jimmy.”
After Hill became a “cooperating witness” against his former pals, he went into the witness protection program. MacDonald said Hill “drove me crazy” and kept getting into trouble in the program and so the feds frequently moved him.
“He couldn’t stay out of trouble. Henry would blow his cover with women, drugs and other scams,” MacDonald said, adding “he called me once at dinner time on a Sunday and said he’d just gotten married. Of course, he was already married. It was a woman he met in Carson City, Nevada.”
Treated Hill like a son
As for Paul Vario, one of Hill’s mentors who treated him like a son, MacDonald said the rotund gangster was “right out of a movie.” Big in size, labour racketeering and hijacking, Vario arranged for a no-show union job for Hill when he emerged from prison.
“It was a minor crime but at the time it was the best we could do,” the former prosecutor said.
And when Paulie went on trial for Lufthansa and other crimes?
“At his trial, Paulie had a lot of supporters. He kept looking back at the family. One was an old lady I assumed was his wife. That was his mother-in-law, his wife was a very alluring young woman in the back of the Court,” MacDonald laughed. “He was a character but a ruthless, dangerous bad guy.”
As for Jimmy Burke, he too was “an exceptional character.”
Murder of Billy Bats
“But he was easily angered and people died because of his quick loss of temper and he was wild,” MacDonald said.” The murder of Billy Bats is a prime example. He was a made man and it was totally verboten to kill him.”
Bats — real name William Joseph Bentvena — was a member of the Gambino crime family. But at Hill’s bar on June 11, 1970, he was murdered by Tommy DeSimone and Bukre. Hill was present and later said Bats was stabbed more than 40 times.
While the Goodfellas prosecution wasn’t the end of the line for the Mafia, times were about to change and not for the better.
“Their big money was in labour racketeering and that’s all gone now and caused them to lose a lot of power. Now, they’re largely trafficking drugs,” MacDonald said, adding that gangsters are also engaging in the old standby of gambling and “Wall Street scams.”
Dramatic changes in the underworld
In addition, the old neighbourhoods that were mobsters’ sanctuaries have changed, causing a shrinkage in the criminal talent pool. Once powerful Italian-American redoubts like Bensonhurst, East Harlem and Howard Beach have undergone dramatic demographic changes.
There are no more neighbourhood shakedowns, MacDonald said.
“Still, they remain a menace to some parts of society, but it’s not like it was in the 1970s and ’80s,” the former prosecutor said.
MacDonald was in the Manhattan DA’s office for eight years before joining the U.S. Justice Department in 1977. After the Lufthansa Heist and Boston College point-shaving prosecutions, there were no further mountains for the prosecutor to climb. He went into private practice in 1989.
“As a prosecutor, I was proud to be part of these landmark investigations,” MacDonald said. “These cases were filled with some very interesting people.”