Henry Hill
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| Henry Hill | |
 FBI mugshot of Henry Hill taken in 1980.
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| Born | June 11, 1943 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
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| Residence | Malibu, California |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Former Mobster |
| Religious beliefs | Jewish |
| Spouse | Lisa Caserta |
| Children | Gregg Hill Gina Hill |
| Parents | Henry Hill, Sr. (Irish-American) Carmella Hill (Sicilian-American) |
Henry Hill (born June 11, 1943)[1] is a former American mobster, Lucchese crime family associate, and FBI informant whose life was immortalized in the book Wiseguy, written by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi, and the 1990 Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas, in which Hill was played by Ray Liotta. He was the owner of a restaurant called The Suite. My Blue Heaven is also a film influenced by his story.
He is of Irish and Italian descent.
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[edit] Early life
Henry Hill grew up in a poor working class family in Brownsville, Brooklyn, then a largely Jewish-Italian neighborhood. His father, Henry Hill, Sr., was an electrician of Irish descent, and his mother, Carmella Hill, was of Sicilian descent. Henry and his seven siblings lived in a small house. From an early age he admired the local mafiosi that socialized across the street from his home, which included Paul Vario, a capo in the Lucchese crime family. In his early teens, he began running errands at Vario's cabstand, shoe shine stand, and pizzeria.
Hill's first experience in gang life began parking cars and doing other odd jobs for the Lucchese crime family. Henry stopped going to school soon after to pursue a life of a gangster. Hill's first arrest came when he attempted to use a stolen credit card to buy tires at a Texaco gas station. Refusing to say anything to the police, he earned the respect of Lucchese Family associate Jimmy Burke, who saw great potential in young Henry. Hill soon dropped out of high school to devote all his time to working for gangsters. Burke, like Hill, was unable to become a made member of the Mafia due to his Irish ancestry, but the Mafia was happy to have associates of any ethnic background as long as they made money and did not cooperate with the authorities.
In 1960, Hill joined the Army and was stationed at Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, North Carolina, for three years. He was a member of the 82nd Airborne paratrooper unit there, but maintained contact with Vario and his other friends in New York throughout his enlistment. Hill continued to hustle while in the service, selling extra food, loan sharking salary advances to his fellow soldiers, and selling tax-free cigarettes. Before being discharged, Hill spent two months in a military stockade for brawling and stealing a sheriff's car.
In 1963, he returned to New York, beginning the most notorious phase of his criminal career. Hill, along with Burke and Tommy DeSimone, and others in Burke's Robert's Lounge crew, hijacked trucks, sold stolen goods, imported and sold untaxed cigarettes, engaged in loan sharking and bookmaking, and planned airport robberies, carrying out the Air France Robbery in 1967 and the huge Lufthansa heist in 1978, as well as committing numerous mob-related murders.
In 1965, Hill met his wife, Karen. The two first eloped to North Carolina, and later had a large Jewish wedding, to which most of Hill's gangster friends were invited. After the birth of their two children they rented an apartment in a two-family home in Island Park, New York (1968).
[edit] Fallout between Hill, Vario, and Burke
Hill was paroled in 1978 after serving six years of a ten-year prison sentence for extortion. Hill and Burke had severely beaten and pistol-whipped a gambler in Tampa, Florida (Gaspar Ciacco) who owed union official friends of theirs (Luis and Raul Charbonier) a large gambling debt. Burke was also released on parole around the same time as Hill.
While in prison, Hill had made contact with a Pittsburgh drug dealer named Paul Mazzei. Hill had sold drugs while in prison to help support his wife and two children on the outside. After his parole, Vario revealed that he knew about Hill's drug dealing in prison and warned him not to continue with this now that he was out. Vario strongly opposed the trade of drugs in his crew because prison sentences imposed on anyone convicted of drug trafficking were so lengthy that the accused would often become informants in exchange for a lighter sentence. Hill nevertheless started a major interstate drug trafficking operation with Mazzei, the potential to earn large amounts of money being too great to resist.
Hill began wholesaling marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and quaaludes, earning enormous amounts of money. After the murders of several of his friends by Burke, following the Lufthansa Heist, and the disappearance of his close friend Tommy DeSimone, who, Hill believed, had been delivered by Vario into the hands of (and murdered by,) the Gambino crime family for killing two made members without permission, he became increasingly paranoid.
Hill and Mazzei also set up a point shaving scheme, which was put in place when Mazzei convinced Boston College center Rick Kuhn to participate. Kuhn encouraged teammates to join the scheme, which became a scandal. Hill also claimed to have an NBA referee who worked games at Madison Square Garden during the seventies in his pocket because of the debt the referee had accrued gambling on horse races.[2]
In 1980, Hill was arrested on a narcotics trafficking charge, bonded out of jail, and shortly afterwards, was re-arrested as a material witness in the Lufthansa robbery. 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 robbery. This was confirmed by a surveillance tape played to Hill by federal investigators, in which Burke tells Vario of their need to have Hill "whacked."[3]
[edit] As an informant and after
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Hill chose to become an informant to avoid a possible execution by the Mafia. Henry Hill's testimony led to 50 convictions. Jimmy Burke was given 20 years in prison for fixing Boston College basketball games and 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. He was 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 extortion of air freight companies at JFK Airport. He died, aged 73, on November 22, 1988 while in a Texas prison, of respiratory failure.
Hill, his wife Karen, and their two children entered the U.S. Marshals' Witness Protection Program, changed their names, and moved to undisclosed locations in Omaha, Nebraska, then Independence, Kentucky, and eventually Redmond, Washington.
Hill was arrested in 1987 in Seattle, Washington on narcotics-related charges. In 1989, Hill and his wife Karen were divorced after 25 years of marriage.
Hill (along with his wife) was expelled from the witness protection program in the early 1990s.
After the Seattle incident, Hill claimed to be clean until he was arrested in North Platte, Nebraska in March 2005. Hill had left his luggage at Lee Bird Field Airport in North Platte, Nebraska containing drug paraphernalia, glass tubes with cocaine and methamphetamine residue.
Hill worked for a time as a chef at an Italian restaurant in Nebraska and his spaghetti sauce, Sunday Gravy, was marketed over the internet.[4]
Hill battled alcoholism for years, claiming at one point that prison had saved his life. In fall 2006, Hill appeared in a photo shoot along with Ray Liotta for Entertainment Weekly. According to the article, Liotta convinced Hill to enter alcohol rehabilitation.[5]
Hill lives in Malibu, California with his fiance Lisa Caserta. They will marry in 2008.
Hill opened another restaurant, 'Wiseguys', in West Haven, Connecticut in October 2007.[6]
Hill is currently selling his artwork on eBay.[7]
Hill is a regular on The Howard Stern Show.
In reference to his many victims, Hill, who claims that he has never killed anyone, stated in an interview in March 2008 with the BBC:s Heather Alexander that "I don't give a heck what those people think, I'm doing the right thing now."[8]
[edit] Books
Hill has co-authored three books:
- Hill, Henry; Priscilla Davis (2002). The Wise Guy Cookbook: My Favorite Recipes From My Life as a Goodfella to Cooking on the Run. NAL Trade. ISBN 0451207068.
- Hill, Henry; Bryon Schreckengost (2003). A Goodfella's Guide to New York: Your Personal Tour Through the Mob's Notorious Haunts, Hair-Raising Crime Scenes, and Infamous Hot Spots. Three Rivers Press. ISBN 0761515380.
- Hill, Henry; Gus Russo (2004). Gangsters and Goodfellas: Wiseguys, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run. M. Evans and Company, Inc.. ISBN 156731757X.
- Hill, Gregg and Gina (2004). On the Run: a Mafia Childhood. Time Warner Book Group. ISBN 044652770X.
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Pileggi, Nicholas (1986). Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. Simon & Schuster, 13, 28. ISBN 0671447343. Gives 1943 as year of birth.
- ^ Philbrick, Mike (2007-08-02). Reformed mobster believes Donaghy might not be alone. ESPN. Retrieved on 2007-10-29.
- ^ Philbrick, Mike (2007-08-02). Reformed mobster believes Donaghy might not be alone. ESPN. Retrieved on 2007-10-29.
- ^ The Associated Press (2005-12-01). ‘Goodfella’ Henry Hill says jail saved his life. MSNBC. Retrieved on 2007-10-29.
- ^ Entertainment Weekly (2006-10-06). True Twosomes: Actors reunite with the people they play. EW.com. Retrieved on 2007-10-29. “Published in issue #901-902 Oct 13, 2006”
- ^ Fire hits 'Wiseguys' restaurant in West Haven wtnh.com. Accessed 2007-11-6.
- ^ Henry Hill Goodfella artwork eBay.com. Accessed 2007-10-30.
- ^ Mafia king on the straight and narrow BBC News. Accessed 2008-03-29
[edit] Sources
- Volkman, Ernest; John Cummings (1986). The Heist: How a Gang Stole $8,000,000 at Kennedy Airport and Lived to Regret It. Franklin Watts. ISBN 0531150240.
- Pileggi, Nicholas (1986). Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671447343.
- Porter, David (2000). Fixed: How Goodfellas Bought Boston College Basketball. Taylor Trade Publishing. ISBN 0878331921.
- Hill, Gregg; Gina Hill (2004). On the Run: A Mafia Childhood. Warner Books. ISBN 044652770X.
- Hill, Henry; Gus Russo (2004). Gangsters and Goodfellas: Wiseguys, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run. M. Evans and Company, Inc.. ISBN 156731757X.
- English, T.J. (2005). Paddy Whacked: The Untold Story of the Irish-American Gangster. William Morrow. ISBN 0060590025.
