MOB TALK: James “Jimmy The Gent” Burke On June 6, 1980, a human leg bone & a portion of a human shoulder bone were excavated from the basement of Robert's Lounge
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- 6 days ago
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On June 6, 1980, a human leg bone & a portion of a human shoulder bone were excavated from the basement of Robert's Lounge, a saloon located at 114-45 Lefferts Boulevard, in South Ozone Park, Queens, New York. Authorities said the bones were thought to have been those of 2 of Lucchese crime family associate James “Jimmy The Gent” Burke's associates, Thomas DeSimone & Martin Krugman, who went missing a short time after the Lufthansa heist. Several notable figures of the American Mafia owned shares in the establishment, including Burke & Vincent Asaro, a caporegime in the Bonanno crime family. Burke used the location, which included an attached building with a cellar clubhouse & mosaic floor, as a hub for illegal operations, including the 1978 Lufthansa heist, the largest cash robbery in American history at the time & the Boston College basketball point-shaving scandal. The group responsible for truck hijackings in Brooklyn & Queens & heists at John F. Kennedy International Airport were known as the "Robert's Lounge group". The saloon was used as a hangout by Paul Vario, & the basement was a graveyard for mob victims.
In 1980, Lucchese associate Henry Hill was arrested on a narcotics-trafficking charge. He became convinced that his former associates planned to have him killed: Paul Vario, because Henry had been dealing drugs; & Jimmy Burke, to prevent Hill from implicating him in the Lufthansa heist. Hill heard on a wiretap that his associates Angelo Sepe & Anthony Stabile were anxious to have him killed, & that they were telling Burke that Hill "is no good" & "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 told Vario of their need to have Hill "whacked". When Hill was finally released on bail, Burke told him they should meet at a bar, which Hill had never heard of or seen before, owned by "Charlie the Jap". But Hill never met Burke there; instead they met at Burke's sweatshop with Karen & asked for the address in Florida, where Hill was to kill Bobby Germaine's son with Anthony Stabile.
Hill knew he would be murdered if he went to Florida. Edward A. McDonald, the head of the Brooklyn Organized Crime Strike Force, arrested Hill as a material witness in the Lufthansa robbery. With a long sentence hanging over him, Hill agreed to become an informant & signed an agreement with the Strike Force on May 27, 1980. Robert's Lounge was already under control of new owners by 1980, & was known as the South Side Inn. Burke & his partners knew Henry would tell the feds about the lounge & had removed the bodies buried there in the basement. But they obviously left a few bones under the soil & they were discovered by the federal forensic digging personnel.
Hill testified against his former associates to avoid impending prosecution & being murdered by his crew. His testimony led to 50 convictions. Hill, his wife Karen, & their 2 children (Gregg & Gina) entered the U.S. Marshals' Witness Protection Program in 1980, changed their names, & moved around to several undisclosed locations. Jimmy Burke was given 12 years in prison for the 1978–79 Boston College point-shaving scandal, involving fixing Boston College basketball games. Burke was also later sentenced to life in prison for the murder of scam artist Richard Eaton. Burke died of cancer while serving his life sentence, on April 13, 1996, at the age of 64. Paul Vario received 4 years for helping Henry Hill obtain a no-show job to get him paroled from prison. Vario was also later sentenced to 10 years in prison for the extortion of air freight companies at JFK Airport. Paul died of respiratory failure on November 22, 1988, at age 73 while incarcerated in the FCI Federal Prison in Fort Worth. Henry Hill died of complications related to heart disease in a Los Angeles hospital, on June 12, 2012, after a long battle with his illness, a day after his 69th birthday.
Gaspare Valenti testified on October 21, 2015, in a New York federal court, that he approached the FBI in 2008, & was paid to wear a wire & record conversations with Vincent Asaro, who was on trial for the $6 million Lufthansa robbery at JFK Airport in 1978. The mobster involved in the legendary heist retold in the film "Goodfellas" said he became an informant because he was broke. Testifying in a case accusing his gangster cousin of helping plan the $6 million Lufthansa robbery at Kennedy International Airport, Valenti said he also was fed up with the Mafia. “I was just tired of that life," Valenti, 68, said at the trial in federal court in Brooklyn. "I was having nightmares about things I had experienced." In exchange for the government covering his living expenses, Valenti agreed to wear a wire to record conversations with Vincent Asaro, a former captain in the Bonanno organized crime family who was the witness' mob boss. Prosecutors say the 80-year-old Asaro made statements implicating himself for the first time in one of the biggest armed robberies in U.S. history. Valenti testified that his gambling habit put him in such deep debt that it estranged him from Asaro. After they were reunited in 2008, Asaro reminded Valenti that he had always tried to shield Valenti from law enforcement, according to one tape heard by jurors. “All this time you were with me, and I never got you pinched," Asaro said. In opening statements, a defense attorney accused Valenti & other turncoat Bonanno family members of framing Asaro to save themselves from long prison terms.
Asaro was born in Ozone Park, Queens on July 10, 1935, & in 1979, after the murder of Bonanno boss Carmine “Lilo” Galante, Asaro became a capo of a Queens crew in the Bonanno family. According to Henry Hill, Asaro oversaw the Bonannos’ interests in JFK airport. On January 23, 2014, Asaro was arrested by the FBI & indicted on federal racketeering charges stemming from the 1978 Lufthansa heist. The charges also included the theft of $1.25 million of gold salts, involvement in the pornography industry, & for the ordering of the murder of a cousin who testified in court. Arrested along with Asaro were his son Jerome, acting boss Thomas DiFiore, acting capo Giacomo Bonventre, & soldier John Ragano. Controversially, author Daniel Simone, Henry Hill's co-writer of their book, The Lufthansa Heist, published on August 1, 2015 by Lyons Press, claimed that Hill asserted to him that "Asaro had no involvement in the famous robbery." In fact, Asaro does not appear nor is he mentioned in Simone's book. Furthermore, in the Author's Notes & Sources page of The Lufthansa Heist, Simone lists numerous law enforcement agents who collaborated with him in the development of the book &, he attests, none of these subjects ever mentioned Asaro in connection with the Lufthansa robbery. More strangely, those investigators had not known about a Gaspar Valenti, the informant cousin who testified against Asaro. In November 2015, Asaro was found not guilty of all charges related to the Lufthansa heist. Upon leaving the courthouse after his acquittal he was infamously heard joking to his lawyer "Don't let them see the body in the trunk".
Asaro was also a suspect in the 1969 death of Paul Katz. Katz owned a warehouse that Asaro & Jimmy Burke used to store stolen goods. When law enforcement raided the warehouse, Asaro & Burke immediately suspected Katz of being a government informant. The 2 men allegedly killed Katz with a dog chain & buried his remains under a vacant house. When the NYPD reopened the Katz case, Asaro & Burke allegedly moved the remains to the house of Burke's daughter & reburied them there. In 2013, a police search uncovered the remains. Asaro was arrested & tried for the murder of Katz, but was acquitted of all charges on November 12, 2015. In March 2017, Asaro was indicted & charged in an arson case. In June 2017, Asaro pled guilty in a case of ordering car arson against a motorist who had cut him off in Howard Beach, Queens, in April 2012.
Prosecutors alleged that Asaro enlisted a Bonanno crime family associate to execute the crime; but the associate then engaged the grandson of former Gambino crime family boss John Gotti, John J. Gotti (who also pleaded guilty in the case), & he carried out the order in his stead. The day after the incident, Asaro apparently contacted a Gambino crime family associate, who had access to a local police department database. The database linked the car plate to the home address of the driver. Prosecutors also alleged that Gotti was the getaway driver during a $6k bank robbery in 2012; he & another man pled guilty. Asaro was incarcerated at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn while awaiting sentencing. He faced the possibility of up to 20 years in prison, meanwhile prosecutors were seeking 15 years in prison. The Brooklyn prosecutors said that although Asaro had "participated in racketeering, murder, robbery, extortion, loansharking, gambling, & other illegal conduct, he has served less than 8 years in jail." In late December 2017, Asaro was sentenced to 8 years in prison. Initially scheduled to be released from the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in 2022, he was granted a compassionate release on April 14, 2020, & released 6 days later, due to his age & health vulnerability (he had a stroke the year prior) because of the risk of COVID-19 amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Asaro died in Queens, New York on October 22, 2023, at the age of 88.
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