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Henry Hill
Henry Hill, Jr. was an American criminal. Between 1955 and 1980, Hill was associated with the Lucchese crime family. In 1980,
Hill became an FBI informant, and his testimony helped secure 50 convictions, including those of mob capo Paul Vario
and James Burke on multiple charges. Hill's life story was documented in the true crime book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi.
Wiseguy was subsequently adapted by Martin Scorsese into the critically acclaimed film Goodfellas, in which Hill was portrayed by Ray Liotta.
Early life
Henry Hill, Jr. was born on June 11, 1943, to Henry Hill, Sr. an immigrant Irish-American electrician, and Carmela Costa Hill,
a Sicilian-American. The working-class family consisted of Henry and his eight siblings who grew up in Brownsville,
a poorer area of the East New York section of Brooklyn. From an early age, Hill admired the local mobsters who socialized across the street
from his home, including Paul Vario, a capo in the Lucchese crime family. In 1955, when Hill was 11 years old,
he wandered into the cabstand across the street looking for a part-time after-school job. In his early teens, he began running errands
for patrons of Vario's storefront shoeshine, pizzeria, and dispatch cabstand. He first met the notorious hijacker and Lucchese family associate James
"Jimmy the Gent" Burke in 1956. The 13-year-old Hill served drinks and sandwiches at a card game and was dazzled by Burke's openhanded tipping.
"He was sawbucking me to death. Twenty here. Twenty there. He wasn't like anyone else I had ever met." The following year,
Paul Vario's younger brother, Vito "Tuddy" Vario, and older brother, Lenny Vario, presented Hill
with a highly sought-after union card in the bricklayers' local. Hill would be a "no show", put on a building contractor's construction payroll,
guaranteeing him a weekly salary of $190. This didn't mean Hill would be getting or keeping all that money every week.
He received only a portion of it, and the rest was kept and divided among the Varios. The card also allowed Hill
to facilitate pickup of daily policy bets and loan payments to Vario from local construction sites. Once Hill had this "legitimate" job,
he dropped out of high school, working exclusively for the Vario gangsters. Hill's first encounter with arson occurred
when the Rebel Cab Company cabstand opened just around the corner from Vario's business. The competing company's owner was from Alabama, new
to New York City. Sometime after midnight, Tuddy and Hill drove to the rival cabstand with a drum full of gasoline in the back seat of Tuddy's car.
Hill smashed the cab windows and filled them with gasoline-soaked newspapers, then tossed in lit match books. Hill was first arrested
when he was 16; his arrest record is one of the few official documents that prove his existence. Hill and Lenny, Vario's equally underage son,
attempted to use a stolen credit card to buy snow tires for Tuddy's wife's car. When Hill and Lenny returned to Tuddy's,
two police detectives apprehended Hill. During a rough interrogation, Hill gave his name and nothing else;
Vario's attorney later facilitated his release on bail. While a suspended sentence resulted, Hill's refusal
to talk earned him the respect of both Vario and Burke. Burke, in particular, saw great potential in Hill. Like Burke, he was of Irish ancestry
and therefore ineligible to become a "made man". The Vario crew, however, were happy to have associates of any ethnicity, so long as they made money
and refused to cooperate with the authorities. In June 1960, Hill joined the Army, serving with the 82nd Airborne Division
at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Hill claimed the timing was deliberate;
the FBI investigation into the 1957 Apalachin mob summit meeting had prompted a Senate investigation into organized crime, and its links
with businesses and unions. This resulted in the publication of a list of nearly 5,000 names of members
and associates of the five major crime families. Hill searched through a partial list, but could not find Vario listed among the Lucchese family.
Throughout his three-year enlistment, Hill maintained his mob contacts. He also continued to hustle: in charge of kitchen detail,
he sold surplus food, loan sharked pay advances to fellow soldiers, and sold tax-free cigarettes. Before his discharge,
Hill spent two months in the stockade for stealing a local sheriff's car, and brawling in a bar with a civilian and Marines. In 1963, Hill returned
to New York and began the most notorious phase of his criminal career: arson, intimidation, running an organized stolen car ring,
and hijacking trucks. In 1965, Hill met his future wife, Karen Friedman, through Paul Vario, Jr.
Paul insisted that Hill accompany him on a double date at Frank "Frankie the Wop" Manzo's restaurant, Villa Capra. According
to Friedman the date was disastrous, and Hill stood her up at the next dinner date. Afterward, the two began going on dates at the Copacabana
and other nightclubs, where Friedman was introduced to Hill's outwardly impressive lifestyle.
The two later got married in a large North Carolina wedding, attended by most of Hill's gangster friends.
 Air France Robbery 
On April 7, 1967 Hill and Tommy DeSimone executed the Air France robbery following a tip-off from Robert "Frenchy" McMahon.
The robbery was initially proposed to Hill in January 1967 as an armed heist of several bags containing $60,000 each
from the Air France cargo terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The targeted money was stored in a strong-room inside the Air France cargo hold, permanently protected by a security guard.
Hill determined that an armed robbery would involve unnecessary risk and would be unlikely to succeed; instead, Hill devised a plan
to steal the keys to the strong room from a security guard who carried them at all times. Hill conducted surveillance on the security guard
during his leisure time and found the guard had a weakness for women. Hill and McMahon succeeded in getting the guard drunk before driving him
to the Jade East Motel where he was introduced to a prostitute. While the guard was distracted, Hill retrieved the guard's set of keys
from his discarded trousers and had copies made before returning the original keys, thus leaving the guard
and his employers unaware of any breach in security. Hill entered the cargo terminal with Tommy DeSimone on April 7, 1967 following a tip-off
from McMahon about a shipment of between $400,000 and $700,000 being made to the strong-room. Using the duplicate key, Hill
and DeSimone stole $420,000 in cash from the strong-room, loading the money into a large suitcase. They entered
and exited the cargo terminal unchallenged and unnoticed while the security guard was on a meal break. No shots were fired
and the money was not reported missing until April 11, 1967. Hill shared the take from the heist with senior Mafia members, giving $120,000 in total
to Paul Vario and Sebastian Aloi of the Columbo crime family, in recognition that the cargo terminal fell within the Columbo family's 'turf'.
 Restaurant ownership and murder of William "Billy Batts" Devino 
Hill used his share of the robbery proceeds to purchase a restaurant on Queens Boulevard, The Suite, initially aiming
to run it as a legitimate business and provide 'distance' between himself and his mob associates. However, within several months,
the nightclub had become another mob hangout. Hill later said that members of Lucchese and Gambino crews moved into the club en masse,
including high-ranking Gambino family members who "were always there".
One incident in the restaurant which Hill considered the most significant was the murder in 1970 of Gambino family member William "Billy Batts"
Devino [ who had been recently released from prison. After an altercation in The Suite between Tommy DeSimone and Devino
during a 'welcome-home' party for Devino on June 11, 1970, Hill stated that DeSimone and Jimmy Burke began planning his death.
Devino was murdered inside The Suite several weeks later by DeSimone and Burke, with Hill assisting in the disposal of his body.
Hill later claimed that "We knew what was coming" and he had deliberately cleared out The Suite in anticipation of Devino's murder.
Burke had got Devino heavily drunk before he was assaulted by DeSimone, who then pistol-whipped Devino into unconsciousness. Assuming he was dead,
they drove to Pennsylvania to ensure that the body wouldn't be found. During the drive there, noises were coming from the trunk. Hill pulled the car
over to open the trunk to find Devino still alive. The bloody and bruised Devino cried Hill's name before Hill stepped back and witnessed Burke
and Desimone stab Devino to death. The actual motive for the murder involved loan-sharking rackets which Devino had run before being incarcerated;
while he was in prison, the rackets had been taken over by DeSimone and Burke, who did not want to relinquish them.
Witnessing the murder of Devino would haunt Hill for the rest of his life.
Drug business
Hill began wholesaling marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and quaaludes based on connections he made in prison; he earned enormous amounts of money.
A young kid who was a "mule" of Hill's "ratted" Hill out to Narcotics Detectives Daniel Mann and William Broder. "The Youngster"
informed them that the supplier [Henry Hill] was connected to the Lucchese crime family and was a close friend to Paul Vario and to Jimmy Burke and
"had probably been in on the Lufthansa robbery". Knowing who Hill was and what he did, they put surveillance on him, taking pictures.
They found out that Hill's old prison friend from Pittsburgh ran a dog-grooming salon as a front. Mann and Broder had "thousands"
of wiretaps of Hill. But Hill and his crew used coded language in the conversations.
Hill's wiretap on March 29 is an example of the bizarre vocabulary:
Basketball fixing
Hill and two Pittsburgh gamblers set up a point shaving scheme by convincing Boston College center Rick Kuhn to participate. Kuhn,
who was a high school friend of one of the gamblers, encouraged teammates to participate in the scandal. Hill also claimed
to have an NBA referee in his pocket who worked games at Madison Square Garden during the 1970s.
The referee had incurred gambling debts on horse races.
1980 arrest
On April 27, 1980, Hill was arrested on a narcotics-trafficking charge. He became convinced that his former associates planned
to have him killed: Vario, for dealing drugs; and Burke, to prevent Hill from implicating him in the Lufthansa Heist.
Hill heard on a wiretap that his associates Angelo Sepe and Anthony Stabile were anxious to have Hill killed,
and that they were telling Burke that Hill "is no good", and that he "is a junkie". Burke told them "not to worry about it". Hill was more convinced
by a surveillance tape played to him by federal investigators, in which Burke tells Vario of their need to have Hill "whacked."
But Hill still wouldn't talk to the investigators. While in his cell, the officers would tell Hill that the prosecutor, Ed McDonald, wanted to speak
with him, and Hill would yell: "Fuck you and McDonald". Hill became even more paranoid, because he thought Burke had officers on the inside
and would have him killed. While Karen was worried, she kept getting calls from Jimmy Burke's wife, Mickey, asking when Hill was coming home,
or if Karen needed anything. Hill knew the calls were prompted by Jimmy. When Hill was finally released on bail, he met Burke
at a restaurant they always went to. Burke told Hill that they should meet at a bar Hill had never heard of or seen before, owned by
"Charlie the Jap". However, Hill never met Burke there; instead they met at Burke's sweatshop with Karen and asked for the address in Florida
where Hill was to kill Bobby Germaine's son with Anthony Stabile. Hill knew he was going to get killed in Florida, but he needed
to stay on the streets to make money. McDonald didn't want to take any chances and arrested Hill as a material witness in the Lufthansa robbery.
Hill then agreed to become an informant and signed an agreement with the United States Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force on May 27,
1980. In 2011, former junior mob associate Greg Bucceroni alleged that, after Hill's 1980 arrest, Jimmy Burke offered him money
to arrange a meeting between Bucceroni and Hill at a Brooklyn grocery store so that Burke could have Hill murdered gangland fashion,
but Bucceroni decided quietly against having any involvement with the hit on Hill. Shortly afterwards, Burke
and several other Lucchese crime family members were arrested by federal authorities.
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