Talk:Lufthansa heist

In Pop Culture?
Shouldn't there be a section on the heist in pop culture? There have been at least two films about the Burke crew and the Lufthansa robbery. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.218.221.152 (talk) 21:22, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

That would be a good section. Turtleshell3 (talk) 17:31, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Plagiarism
So does http://everyravlik.blogspot.com/2006/10/ten-greatest-robberies-of-all-time.html steal from this page or vice-versa? Afabbro 14:08, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry....what?

Aftermath
the way the aftermath reads gives the impression Frank James Burke's death was related to the crime and happened shortly there after. but in wiki's page on frank it says he was 26 when he was killed....8 years after, and apparantly unrelated to, lufthansa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_James_Burke

Heist not actually in Goodfellas
Actually, the Heist was *not* depicted in the film Goodfellas, only alluded to. The only thing that happens is that Henry Hill hears about it on the radio.

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0101243/maindetails However, the films the Big Heist and Ten Million Dollar Heist did depict the event.


 * That's a good catch, they only talk about the planning and aftermath in the movie. I think I combined a re-enactment of the heist I saw on the history channel with the movie :) --Fxer 20:24, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

5 million at an airport?
Seems like a lot to me. Was there a bank there? An explanation would be appreciated. =) Lantoka 05:32, 10 December 2005 (UTC)
 * The money was in the high value terminal/warehouse of the airport. For instance, all the paper money that needs to be destroyed or otherwise returned to the national mints (san fransisco, DC, philadelphia etc..), say when the new $20 were printed and old $20s removed from circulation, has to get there somehow, airports are generally reguarded as more secure than a Greyhound ;) In this specific heist I'm not sure where the money came from, but I believe it was mostly used, circulated non-sequential bills that were impossible to trace. --Fxer 08:23, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

No, it was money being exchanged in West Germany, being held there overnight, and according to Ernest Volkman and John Cummings it was actually closer to $8 million, Hill says $6 million.


 * Then tens of thousands of servicemen in West Germany (Wiesbaden, Kaiserslautern, Stuttgart etc.) were obviously paid in US$ and then exchanged their bills to Deutschmarks when they'd have a night on the town. Somewhere these $ where pooled and then bills that were beyond their lifespan would be taken out and sent back to the US for destruction. You couldn't really have a shredder/burner for $ in Germany, could you. That's how I understand it. 121.209.53.9 (talk) 04:43, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

No good sources here?
There's gotta be something better than three movie reviews and a conspiracy website. Where'd this material come from? Tychocat 11:04, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, let's see. How about every newspaper, magazine, history book and reference book from the era. This was HUGE news in 1978 and was covered extensively. There are extensive research sources and material simply from the contemporary media coverage. One can also check the FBI website under its history section, as well as numerous books about the principles involved on both sides (Wiseguy by Nicolas Pelleggi is particularly well researched and documented, which is one of the reasons it was used as major primary source material for the movie Goodfellas). Themoodyblue (talk) 07:35, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Not terribly encyclopediac
"A wiry man in a black ski mask pulled his mask over his face as the blood began to pour from Whalen's wound." I'll second that we need some sources here.


 * Agreed, theres a couple repetitions here also, I'm going to delete some.

Cancerous Contradiction
This article states that Jimmy Conway (Burke) died of Stomach cancer, but the article on Jimmy Burke states that he died of lung cancer. At http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=98 and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/trivia and http://www.crimelibrary.com/gangsters_outlaws/family_epics/lucchese2/1.html it's said that he died of lung cancer. Still, other sites from a Google search will say stomach cancer, however, it seems lung cancer is more popular. I don't have any solid reference material to verify one or the other, but am merely pointing out the contradiction. I see now that the article on Henry Hill also shows stomach cancer as cause of Jimmy Conway's death. GravityIsForSuckers 05:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, he probably died of one of the cancers you mentioned that then metastasized to other parts of his body. Metastasis is usually (not always but often) what makes a case of cancer a terminal case of cancer, as the cancer attacks and takes over other parts of the body. He could have died of lung cancer in his stomach, stomach cancer in his lungs, etc. The main point is that "Jimmy Conway" (actual name "Gentleman" Jimmy Burke) was a vicious multiple murderer who died in prison of cancer - is the specific cancer really material to the discussion? Seems a bit nit picky to me. Anyway, just my two cents. Themoodyblue (talk) 07:38, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

What Happened to the money
The article says only a fraction of the heist money was recovered, what happened to the rest? I assume Jimmy stashed it in an undisclosed location? Monkeyspearfish 12:36, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * From what I remember of a History Channel show on the topic, the mafia probably ended up keeping/spending most of the money. The mafias network would make it easy for all the money to disappear, flowing upstream to the bosses at the top, seeing as it was mostly untraceable used bills anyway. --Fxer 16:29, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Fxer is probably correct, as it is my understanding that whatever happened to the money, the FBI was never able to account for much of it. If traditional mob protocol was followed, Burke would have "kicked up" to both Paul Vario, his family's boss, and to the Gambino family (it was their turf), and then he would have been entitled to decide what happened to the rest. Considering the number of participants who were viciously murdered soon after the robbery occurred it seems logical that Burke kept most of the money for himself and a few trusted members of his crew (Goodfellas implies that Henry Hill got some of the money from Hill for his silence and assistance, in essence for being trusted by Burke, but there is to my knowledge no independent corroboration of this beyond what Hill has said - still it stands to reason). Tommy DeSimone and Hill would have been the logical recipients of some money to keep them happy, and more importantly quiet and "trusted" since DeSimone was Burke's main enforcer and Hill was his main go to guy. Burke's crew was very small and tight, and the other participants would have probably been viewed by Burke as expendable outsiders. Themoodyblue (talk) 07:49, 10 November 2009 (UTC)

Vandalism
Looks like the first paragraph has been vandalized (Cao crime family, Herzog Heist, etc...)...I don;t know how to revert... 162.136.192.1 (talk) 22:51, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Currently looks un-vandalized but the second sentence is missing something: "It began when bookmaker Martin Krugman told Henry Hill (an associate of Jimmy Burke's) about millions of dollars in untraceable money." Anyone more familiar with the subject able to fix it up? (John User:Jwy talk) 00:36, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Data from the burke article
This really belongs here: Jimmy Burke never expected the robbery to yield so much cash; his initial estimate was that it would be only about $2 million. He realized that a robbery of this magnitude would attract the intense attention of local, state and federal authorities, causing a lot of problems for everyone involved. There were a number of murders and disappearances following the Lufthansa robbery, as Burke became increasingly concerned that the others involved would lead the police to him, and because the robbers, having found out the amount of money they stole was a lot bigger than first thought, kept pressing Burke for a bigger share than was originally agreed upon. Burke decided to murder everyone connected to the Lufthansa robbery.

Parnell Steven "Stacks" Edwards was found shot to death in his apartment in South Ozone Park, Queens on December 18, 1978, only one week after the robbery, because instead of driving the van used in the robbery to New Jersey and having it compacted, he drove the van to a girlfriend's house, parked it in a no parking zone, got high and spent the rest of the night partying, then went to sleep. The next day the van was discovered by the police with his fingerprints all over it.

Tommy DeSimone's wife Cookie reported to the police that he had disappeared on January 14, 1979. He was never seen again. Police interviews right after the robbery with the Lufthansa employees who were victims revealed that even though all the robbers wore black ski masks, one employee remembered that one of the robbers was wearing highly polished shoes. Police immediately realized that robber was Tommy DeSimone, known to the police as a Lucchese crime family associate and Robert's Lounge crew member known to be a sharp dresser who always had a habit of wearing highly polished shoes, and that DeSimone would never be involved in a job of this magnitude unless Burke had something to do with it. Although it should be noted that Henry Hill, who became an informant against Burke, admitted that the death of Tommy DeSimone was the only occasion upon which he ever saw Burke shed a tear, and that the murder of DeSimone was in retaliation for the murder of two Gambino crime family members and Gotti associates William 'Billy Batts' DeVino, and Ronald 'Foxy' Gerote and was not connected to the Lufthansa heist murders.

Louis Cafora and his newly wed wife Joanna were reported missing in March, 1979 and never seen again.

Robert McMahon and his close friend Joe Manri were found shot dead in a Buick Electra parked on a Brooklyn street on May 16, 1979.

Paolo LiCastri was found shot to death, his half-naked body smoldering in a garbage-strewn lot in Brooklyn on June 13, 1979.

A cosmetologist and part time cocaine dealer named Theresa Ferrara, who often frequented Robert's Lounge who was at one time or another the mistress of Tommy DeSimone and Paul Vario, was murdered on February 10, 1979 when it was found out she was a police informant. Her dismembered torso was found floating in the waters off Barnegat Inlet near Tom's River, New Jersey on May 18, 1979.

Tom Monteleone, an Italian-Canadian mobster who was involved in a drug deal gone bad with Burke and Richard Eaton, a hustler and con-man, using $250,000 of Lufthansa robbery money, was found murdered in Connecticut in March, 1979.

Martin Krugman, the bookmaker who provided the tip to Henry Hill and Burke's Robert's Lounge crew, of Lufthansa insider Louis Werner who owed Krugman a large gambling debt and was willing to trade inside information in exchange for a share of the robbery proceeds and forgiveness of the gambling debt, vanished on January 6, 1979 and was never seen again. Henry Hill stated Krugman was killed on the orders of Burke who did not want to pay Krugman his $500,000 share of the stolen money. Said Hill, "It was a matter of half a million bucks. No way Jimmy was going to deny himself half a million dollars because of Marty Krugman. If Jimmy killed Marty, Jimmy would get Marty’s half a mill.”

The only robbers that survived Burke's murderous rampage following the Lufthansa Heist were Burke's son, Frank James Burke and Angelo Sepe, a protege of Burke. Burke knew that Sepe would never cooperate with the authorities under any circumstances, and he never pressed Burke for a bigger share of the robbery proceeds. Sepe had been brought in for questioning by the police about the Lufthansa robbery and the only thing he told them was "I don't know whatcha talking about". Sepe was murdered years later in 1984, shot in the head when he answered the door one morning at his Brooklyn apartment, in retaliation for having robbed a mafia-connected drug dealer. Frank James Burke was found shot to death on a Brooklyn street on May 18, 1987, over a drug deal gone bad.

END OF COPY 71.56.118.64 (talk) 06:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

96.224.224.47 February 2012 edits/vandalism
I'm not sure if edits made between 04/2/12 and 08/2/12, in "The Ending" section, concerning Tony Rodriguez should be considered vandalism, but I don't think it is relevant to the article to mention that another encyclopedic entry from a different site has "wrong" information. Further, when comparing both biographies of the "same" man, one begins to wonder if there weren't two different people linked to organized crime in NYC known by that name, at that time... I didn't revert the edits since neither versions seemed to have valid citations proving its source and am not sure about Wikipedia's policy about unsourced material being replaced by other unsourced material. 69.70.14.130 (talk) 20:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Airport name
I could be wrong about this but at the time of the heist JFK was still called Idlewild International Aiport? So may I suggest that be changed to show Idlewild with a link to the John F. Kennedy International Airport Wikipedia page because technically at the time the name John F. Kennedy International Airport did not exist. TheGoofyGolfer (talk) 20:44, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

---

Actually, the airport was renamed in December 1963, the month after JFK was assassinated. It assumed the FAA code "JFK" on January 1, 1964. So at the time of the heist, the airport had been JFK for about 15 years.

Krugman's burial
In the detail of deaths, it says "Krugman was later discovered buried in the Robert's Lounge club along with Jimmy Burke's hijacker friend "Remo" and Michael Gianco who worked there as a waiter.[7]" - in the Jimmy Burke article, it states that Hill testified that the bodies buried at Robert's were relocated prior to execution of a federal search warrant. So, one or the other is wrong. Which? Irish Melkite (talk) 03:31, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Not the largest heist on U.S. soil at the time.
In 1923, Gerald Chapman and his gang robbed the Wilton Trust Co. of Wilton, ME. of $2.4 million. According to the BLS inflation calculator that's about $26 million in 2014 dollars.

Source: Lima News May 8, 1925. There are multiple other sources but I don't feel like citing all of them unless someone disputes this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 159.53.78.140 (talk) 16:03, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Inflation adjusted figures
There are several figures given with the inflation adjusted figures "today" - but when was today ? These are not much use if they don't say when. (Is there a policy about that sort of thing ?) -- Beardo (talk) 01:45, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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Orphaned references in Lufthansa heist
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Lufthansa heist's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "trutv": From Frank Capone: "AL CAPONE" TruTV Crime Library From Made man:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 04:35, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Charged v. Convicted
The first section states that Louis Werner was the only person "charged" in the robbery. However, Vincent Ansaro was arrested, charged, tried, and acquitted (and, coincidentally, was just ordered released from prison--where he was serving time for an unrelated crime--because of vulnerability to COVID-19 at age 85).

Perhaps the first section should read that Werner is the only person "convicted" in connection with the heist?
 * Good catch. Fixed. Vaselineeeeeeee★★★ 18:41, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

That DeSimone was not killed by Burke is very far from certain.
The article says without qualification that the 1979 death of Thomas DeSimone was a punishment for his unsanctioned killing of made men (Batts in 1970 and Jerothe in 1974). Please! The robbery and DeSimone's killing of "Stacks" Edwards was in Dec 1978. DeSimone disappeared soon after, and his girfriend finally reported him missing on 14 Jan 1979 she went missing weeks later and her chopped up body dumped in the bay. Moreover, DiSimone vanished soon before Krugman was murdered on Burke's orders s. March saw Burke putting an end to Louis Cafora and his wife (trademark similarity to DeSimone's girl being silenced). In mid-May 1979, Burke commissioned the double murder of Manri and McMahon. An article in the New Yorker (7Dec2020)p65-69 says that Burke having had DeSimone killed so Burke could keep more of the robbery money DeSimone had helped steal is one of the main theories of why his life was ended. Given the temporal priority of the robbery and rapid initiation of a string of demises deemed expedient by Burke, and which DeSimone's is in the thick of by timing and circumstantial evidence, I am not sure "theory" is a strong enough term. Overagainst (talk) 23:08, 22 January 2021 (UTC)