Frank James Burke-Conway (Rockaway, Queens c. 1960/61 - May 18, 1987 Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, United States) was a Gambino crime family mob associate and the son of mobster Jimmy Burke.
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Burke was the first of three children of Jimmy Burke, also known as Jimmy The Gent and "Mickey", born in 1960 or 1961, the dates vary on the sources given. In Goodfellas (1990), his father is portrayed by Robert DeNiro and his mother, "Mickey Conway", is portrayed by Julie Garfield. In The Big Heist, he is portrayed by actor Jamie Harris as "Frankie Burke".
Since his father, James, had no family or relatives, the Vario Crew and members of the Lucchese crime family were deemed his "uncles" and "aunts". This included "uncles" Henry Hill, Anthony Stabile, Thomas DeSimone and Angelo Sepe and "aunts" like Theresa Ferrara and Karen Hill. When he was born, Francis James, like his brother and two sisters, adopted a hyphenated last name: Conway, the last name of their unidentified paternal grandmother; and Burke, the last name of the kind adoptive family that cared for his father during his years as a troubled adolescent.
Like his father, he was a career criminal and a suspect in the famous Lufthansa heist. He was the older brother of Bonanno crime family associate Jesse James Burke born c. 1960 and Catherine, who was wed to the mobster Anthony Indelicato in 1992 and another daughter who remains unidentified. As of 2006 Catherine is still living in Howard Beach, Queens, New York.
Frank James was said to have a striking physical resemblance to his father. His father named him after the famous American outlaw Frank James;[1] his brother was named for Jesse James. When Bonanno soldier and enforcer Frankie Saggio years later asked Frank's brother, Jesse James Burke, why their father named them after the notorious outlaws, Jesse said "Because he thought it was funny."
It is also suspected by Henry Hill that Jimmy Burke used Frank as a "stickup man" in the Lufthansa heist. The police later named him as one of the top suspects but was eventually ignored. The constant verbal and physical abuse from his father was seen as a way to turn him to become an informant against his father. These attempts were unsuccessful.
The body of Frank James Burke was found by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in front of 1043 Liberty Avenue in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn at 2:30 a.m. on May 18, 1987.[1] He had been shot multiple times.[2] He was the last of several suspects in the Lufthansa heist murder of Angelo John Sepe to be found murdered.[2] The remaining witnesses or participants were his father, Jimmy Burke (who was imprisoned for murder), Paul Vario (who was in prison for racketeering), and three others who had disappeared into the Witness Protection Program by this time: Henry Hill, Lufthansa Air John F. Kennedy International Airport employees Louis Werner, and Peter Gruenwald. Frank's death was not suspected to be related to mob activity, but was attributed to a fight in a bar.[3] A drug dealer named Tito Ortiz (not to be confused with Tito Ortiz, the mixed martial arts fighter) was arrested for Burke's murder[4] and later convicted.
During the production of Goodfellas, Catherine Burke, the sister of Frank James, threatened to attempt to force the production company to pay $100,000 for the use of the name Burke, so they used Conway, which was her father's birth name instead. Catherine is suspected of being the one who saw to it that her late brother was excluded totally from the film.. However, this may also be a decision made by director Martin Scorsese.
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