Robert McMahon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Robert "Frenchy" McMahon (Wantagh, New York July 24, 1936 - Brooklyn, New York, May 16, 1979) was the night-shift cargo supervisor for the Air Cargo Center at JFK Airport from 1957 to his death in 1979. He helped orchestrate the 1967 Air France Robbery and is a suspect in the 1978 Lufthansa heist.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
McMahon was an Irish-American who had the stereotypical appearance of an accountant of Wall Street banker. He was a thin man with curly black hair who was always seen wearing a suit and perscription glasses. McMahon was an associate of mafia associate Jimmy Burke, as well as that of Henry Hill, an underling of Caporegime in the Lucchese crime family, Paul Vario. He was a notorious womanizer who in 1979 was involved in his third marriage. Robert was not a mobster, or a career criminal, but idolized the lifestyle and enjoyed associating with the likes of Jimmy Burke and Tommy DeSimone. McMahon was one of the Robert's Lounge crew who organised and perpetrated the Lufthansa Heist working on a tip-off from illegal bookmaker Martin Krugman. He was a large boisterous and very comedic man with rich family in Hempstead, Long Island. He was the one responsible for obtaining the keys for the storage room that helped Henry Hill and Tommy DeSimone pull off the 1967 Air France Robbery. He was a womanizer who was neglectful of paying child support and alimony payments to two ex-wives and into the Manhattan disco rave scene. Robert once came across a small 24-by-48-inch box of silk dresses, which Jimmy Burke unloaded at the Manhattan garment center for $18,000 and which McMahon got a piece of.
[edit] Employment at JFK Airport
At the time when McMahon was first employed at the airport in the late 1950's, it was the largest such facility in the world. His duty was to look over the thirteen-building complex of warehouses and truck loading ramps that was spread over 159 acres. The building leased its space out to twenty-eight different airlines, air express agencies, customhouse brokers, federal inspection services, and carting companies. Each of the twenty-eight airlines kept its own valuables in specially guarded security rooms, some of them enclosed by steel, cinder blocks or wire cages. The first accounting of thefts from the Air Cargo Center revealed in 1967, during McMahon's employment showed that $2.2 million in cargo had been stolen during the preceding ten months. This amount though did not include the hundreds of hijackings of airport cargo stolen outside the vicinity of the airport, from transport trucks nor did it include thefts in the airport valued less that a $1,000. During the ten-month period in the 1967 survey forty-five major robberies were committed at the Air Cargo Center, including thefts of clothing, palladium ingots, pearls, watches, musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, cigarettes, phonograph records, pharmacueticals, wigs and diamonds. All these robberies were suspected to have been orchestrated with information or assistance given by McMahon. He also gave information to Burke telling him about the airline security personnel, the individual airline guards, the Port Authority, customs inspectors, FBI field agents and 103rd Precinct NYPD officers that patrolled the facility on a fairly regular basis.
[edit] Major Robberies
He was a hijacker accomplace who had been the 'inside man' on the Air France Robbery of 1967 and another $200,000 robbery that occurred in 1972. By far, his most famous robbery was the infamous 1978 Lufthansa Heist, in which it is widely believed he partook. He is portrayed in Goodfellas by Mike Starr. In the movie Goodfellas his wife is played by LoNardo. McMahon is not to be confused as being a member of the prestigious McManus family that had been involved in New York City politics since 1905, of which Jimmy Coonan married into.
[edit] Stolen Airline Tickets
McMahon, Joe 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.
They would sell these to legitimate businessmen and friends. After buying the tickets, they would either sell them for 50% off, or call in for a cancellation and cash in the tickets for a full refund.
[edit] McMahon & Manri Execution
McMahon was killed along with twelve others allegedly on the orders of Jimmy Burke, who either didn't wish to give McMahon a fair share of the estimated $6-8 million loot or was afraid that he would become an FBI informant. It is also in the book Wiseguy by Henry Hill that McMahon was very talkative and had a boisterous nature about him. His friendship with co-worker Joe Manri also caused a worry with both Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke from the very beginning of the robbery, while still in planning that McMahon might unintentionally tell or brag about his involvement in such a large robbery as, the Lufthansa heist. He also could implicate Burke in the 1967 Air France Robbery that was still unsolved at the time.
On May 16th, 1979 a school boy walking to school passed a two-door 1973 Buick Riviera, stationery in the Mill Basin section of Brooklyn, New York. Inside where two men who looked to be sleeping, when he peered closer he saw that they had both been shot through the back of the head, one was McMahon and the other was his best friend Joe Manri. After the Lufthansa heist his fellow employees had named McMahon and Manri as likely 'inside men' that had motive and means to help pull of the Lufthansa heist. The two Lufthansa employees were not shot and dumped in a dumpster to be discovered to sanitation workers, as portrayed in the movie Goodfellas.
The murder is still officially unsolved.
[edit] References
- The Heist by Ernest Volkman and John Cummings
