Joe Manri
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Guiseppe 'Joe Buddha' Manriquez-Manri (b. December 1, 1932 Ozone Park, Queens - May 16, 1979 Brooklyn) was a suspect in the Lufthansa heist. He is portrayed in Goodfellas by Clem Casserta. Manri is not to be mistaken for the musician Joe Maneri who has a similar name.
Joseph Manri was originally christened as "Guiseppe (Joe) Manriquez". His family's surname is derived from Manresa, a commune in Catalonia. Joe suffered from weight gain as a child, and earned the nickname "Buddha" from his Buddha-like stomach; he did not take offense to the nickname. Long before the heist in 1979, Joe legally changed his surname from "Manriquez" to "Manri" in an attempt to pass his Spanish looks as being of Italian descent, but was unsuccessful.
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[edit] Stolen Airline Ticket Sales
He first became involved in the gang by helping steal airline tickets with stolen credit cards with Parnell Edwards. Manri and Henry Hill would purchase thousands' of dollars worth of airline tickets which they would either cash for a full reimbursement or sell them at 50% discounts to willing customers. Frank Sinatra Jr.'s manager "Dante Barzotinni", known to mobsters as "Tino Barzie" was one of Manri and Hill's best customers. One time he bought $50,000 worth of tickets from them to fly Sinatra Jr. and a group of eight friends accompanying him around the country. Barzie was eventually caught and convicted of the charges, but did not implicate Manri or Hill.
[edit] Work At the Airport
For an immigrant with limited education, Joe was successful, and found a job at the JFK Airport as a incoming cargo foreman, where he became friends with Lufthansa employees cargo supervisors Zurich, Switzerland born Louis Werner and a Peter Gruenwald who was a distant relative of Michael Kidd and JFK Airport Air Cargo Terminal Building foreman Robert McMahon. McMahon was the one who introduced Manriquez to Jimmy Burke. Over time Manriques became a close friend of McMahon, and when McMahon fell on financial troubles with child support, gambling, and alimony payments, the two workers moved in together in an Ozone Park, Queens apartment to split the costs of living. Manriquez was a member of the "Robert's Lounge Crew", an associate of Irish mobster Jimmy Burke. Manri allegedly participated in the 1978 Lufthansa Heist as a "stick-up man" and one of the original orchestrators of the robbery, in which an estimated $6,000,000 was taken from a cargo bay at the JFK Airport.
Manri was murdered because he was the only member of the crew who had met with Lufthansa freight supervisor Louis Werner to discuss the robbery plans. Manri, if he turned state's evidence, could implicate Jimmy Burke, Tommy DeSimone, and Angelo John Sepe, who were positively identified by Lufthansa employees who witnessed the robbery, and whoever else had orchestrated the Lufthansa heist.
It is thought that McMahon was murdered because of his boisterous and natural swagger, which worried Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke. Manri had been sent by Jimmy Burke to check out Louis Werner's plan that Werner had sketched out, huddled outside the Kennedy Airport Diner on the hood of his car. Burke had also placed Manri responsible for leaving $85,000 at the airport motel for Werner, which was his payment. Had Louis Werner chosen to cooperate with the FBI he could have only implicated Manri. On the afternoon of May 16th, 1979 in Brooklyn, just over half a year after the robbery, Manri and McMahon were found dead in a 1972 Buick Riviera. Each had received a single gunshot wound to the back of the head from a .45 caliber pistol.
[edit] Trivia
There is a rap artist from the Ukraine named "Freestyle Frenzy-Joe Buddha" which was though up when watching Martin Scorcese's Goodfellas.[citation needed]
[edit] References
[edit] External Sources
- Gangsters and GoodFellas, Henry Hill and Gus Russo
- The Heist, Ernest Volkman and John Cummings
