Karen Hill

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Karen Friedman (born circa 1946) is one of three daughters of a strict Jewish family and grew up in Nassau County, New York. In 1965 she was working as a dental hygienist, and after work she and a friend would go to the Villa Capra on Cedarhurst Avenue in Brooklyn, New York for drinks. It was there that she first met Henry Hill, a reputed associate of the Lucchese crime family, on a double date.

After four months of dating they eloped to North Carolina, where they married on August 29, 1965. They had first tried to wed in Maryland, but could not get a blood test right away so they kept going. The newlyweds returned to Karen's mother's house, where they lived upstairs in a large remodeled bedroom suite. Henry, who grew up Catholic, decided to pretend to convert to Judaism, because her parents wanted them to remarry in a Jewish ceremony.

The marriage was tumultuous, and both Karen and Henry were involved in drugs and extramarital affairs over the years. They raised two children, Gregg and Gina, first in New York and later in various locations while they were in the Witness Protection Program, including Omaha, Nebraska, Lexington, Kentucky, and Redmond, Washington.

Karen and Henry officially separated in 1989; she filed for divorce in 1990, but it was not finalized until 2002.

Today she lives under a new name and runs her own business. The events of her life were portrayed in Martin Scorsese's 1990 film GoodFellas by actress Lorraine Bracco.

[edit] References

Hill, Gregg and Gina (2004). On the Run: a Mafia Childhood. Time Warner Book Group. 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. 

Pileggi, Nicholas (1985). Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671447343.