| Henry Hill, Jr. | |
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FBI mugshot taken in 1980. |
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| Born | June 11, 1943 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Residence | Basking Ridge, NJ |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Former Mobster |
| Spouse | Lisa Caserta Karen Friedman 1965-2002 (filed for divorce in 1990, finalized in 2002) |
| Children | 3 |
| Parents | Henry Hill, Sr. (Irish-American) Carmella Hill (Italian-American) |
Henry Hill (born June 11, 1943)[1] is a former American mobster, Lucchese crime family associate, and FBI informant whose life story was documented in the book Wiseguy, written by crime reporter Nicholas Pileggi, and in the 1990 Martin Scorsese film, Goodfellas, in which Hill was played by Ray Liotta.
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Henry Hill, Jr. was born on June 11, 1943, Brownsville, Brooklyn. Hill grew up in a poor working class family in East New York, Brooklyn. His father, Henry Hill, Sr., was an Irish-American electrician, and his mother, Carmella Costa Hill, was Italian American. Henry and his seven siblings lived in a small house. From an early age Henry admired the local mobsters who socialized across the street from his home, including Paul Vario, a "capo" in the Lucchese crime family. In his early teens, Hill began running errands at Vario's cabstand, shoe shine stand, and pizzeria.
Hill's first experience in gang life began with parking cars and doing odd jobs like cleaning out Paul Vario's boat and supplying Vario's crew with cold beer and wine. When Hill turned fourteen in 1957, Paul Vario's younger brother, Vito "Tuddy" Vario, and older brother, Lenny Vario, presented Hill with a union card in the bricklayers' local on a construction site, and told Hill he would get paid $190 a week. He was given the card so that he could be put on a building contractor's payroll as a no-show and his salary divided among the Varios. The card also allowed Hill to facilitate pickup of daily policy bets and loan shark payments from local construction sites. Hill would earn deep respect, not only because he knew Paul Vario, but also because he was a member of the union.
Once Hill had this "legitimate" job, he dropped out of high school, devoting all his time to work for Vario's gangsters. Hill has said that he got home from the cabstand one night to find his father with a belt in one hand, and a letter from his truant officer in the other. The letter stated that Hill hadn't been to school in months; it earned him a beating from his father. The next day Tuddy and his crew drove Hill over to the nearby post office to point out which mailman was his. According to Hill, once he pointed him out, "Out of the blue, two guys got out of the car and snatched the mailman." Tuddy warned him that if he delivered any more truancy notices to Hill's house, Tuddy was going to shove him into a pizza oven, feet first. Thereafter, until Hill's mother complained to the post office, no mail was ever delivered to Hill's house,
Hill's first encounter with arson occurred when a cabstand, the "Rebel Cab Company," opened on Glenmore Avenue, just around the corner from the Varios's cabstand. The owner of the "Rebel Cab Company," formerly of Alabama, was new to New York City. Tuddy invited him to shut down his cabstand, citing not enough business for two, but he refused. Sometime after midnight, Tuddy, accompanied by Hill, drove to the rival "Rebel Cab Company" in Tuddy's car with a drum full of gasoline in the back seat.
Hill smashed the cab windows while Tuddy got gasoline-soaked newspapers. Hill was given match books by Tuddy, which, at a given signal, were to be tossed, lit, into each cab. Hill has stated that he heard one explosion after another, but was running so fast, he never had a chance to look back.
Hill's first arrest took place when he was 16. Hill and Paul Vario's son Lenny, who was fifteen, attempted to use a stolen credit card to buy snow tires for Tuddy's wife's car at a Texaco gas station. Tuddy had inadvertently given them a stolen credit card. When Hill and Lenny returned to Tuddy's, two police detectives grabbed Hill; Lenny took off. The police took Hill to Liberty Avenue station where Hill gave his name and nothing else. The police roughed him up but let him go, believing that a kid named Henry Hill would hardly hang out with the likes of Paul Vario. His refusal to talk earned Hill the respect of the Lucchese family associate Jimmy Burke; Jimmy saw great potential in young Henry. Burke, like Hill, was prevented from becoming a made member of the Mafia because of his half-Irish ancestry. The Vario Crew, however, were happy to have associates of any ethnicity, so long as they made money and failed to cooperate with the authorities.
In 1960, Hill joined the Army; he was stationed at Fort Bragg, near Fayetteville, North Carolina. Throughout his three-year enlistment, in the 82nd Airborne Division, Hill maintained contact with Vario and others in New York. He continued to hustle while still in the service. He sold extra food, loan sharked salary advances to fellow soldiers, sold tax-free cigarettes. Before his discharge, Hill spent two months in a military stockade for brawling with a farmer and Marines in bars, and stealing a sheriff's car. Hill claims the reason he joined the army was to stay away from his old friends; that the "heat" was too hot.
In 1963, Hill returned to New York and began the most notorious phase of his criminal career. Hill, along with Burke, 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; The Air France Robbery in 1967 was one of their largest heists in history until the huge Lufthansa heist in 1978. The crew also committed numerous mob-related murders.
In 1965, Paulie Jr., Paul Vario's younger son, wanted to go out with a girl named Diane, but only with another date, with a girl named Karen Friedman. Paulie Jr., desperate, made Hill go on a date at Frankie the Wop's restaurant, Villa Capra. The dinner turned out to be awful, according to Karen. When the next date came up, Hill stood her up. (In the movie, Goodfellas, it was Tommy DeSimone with Diane, Henry, and Karen) After, the two began going on dates at the nightclub Copacabana, where Karen was introduced to Henry's lifestyle. She was impressed. In Wiseguy, she states: "We always sat up close at the stage, and Sammy Davis Jr. sent us champagne." (In the movie, Goodfellas, it was Bobby Vinton who had sent them the champagne). The two later eloped to North Carolina where they had a large wedding, attended by most of Hill's gangster friends.
On April 7, 1967, Hill and Thomas DeSimone pulled the Air France robbery. Hill had heard from Robert "Frenchy" McMahon that his employer, Air France, was handling a shipment of $420,000. The main problem was a guard with a key to the safe. They identified the guard's weakness as women. They got the guard drunk and took him to a motel, where a prostitute waited to distract him. When the guard took off his pants, they took the key, copied it, then replaced it without his knowledge.
At 11:40pm on a Saturday, Hill and DeSimone drove to the Air France cargo parking lot in a rented car sporting false plates. They left with the $420,000 haul. Hill and DeSimone paid a $60,000 tribute to each mob chief who considered Kennedy Airport their turf. They were Sebastian "Buster" Aloi, the 57-year-old capo for the Colombo crime family, and to their own capo, Paul Vario.
After the birth of their second child in 1969, Hill and Karen rented an apartment in a two-family home in Island Park, New York, and bought a restaurant called "The Suite" in Jamaica, Queens. Hill had intended for the restaurant to remain legitimate, but it soon became a hangout for his former mob friends. On June 11, 1970, Hill and his crew threw a "welcome home" party at Robert's Lounge (owned by Jimmy Burke) for William "Billy Batts" Devino. Devino was a made man in John Gotti's crew near Fulton Street, and a member of the Gambino crime family. He had just finished a six-year term for drug possession. The problem was that Devino and Burke had a beef at the time, Burke had taken over Devino's loanshark business while Devino was in prison. Not wanting to return the business, Burke decided to kill Devino instead. Hill states that Devino, not knowing that he's wanted dead, saw Tommy DeSimone and asked him if he still shined shoes; DeSimone took it as insult. Several minutes later, when the issue was apparently forgotten, DeSimone leaned over to Hill and Jimmy Burke and said "I'm gonna kill that fuck."
A couple weeks later, Devino went to "The Suite" where he drank with DeSimone's crew which included Henry Hill, DeSimone, and Jimmy Burke. Later that night, DeSimone left to take his girlfriend home. Burke then proceeded to make Devino comfortable. The only people who were present at the time besides the four men was Alex Coricone, who was with Hill's crew and was seated in the back with his girlfriend. Twenty minutes later, DeSimone returned with a .38 revolver and a plastic mattress cover. DeSimone walked over to Devino at the corner of the bar and yelled "Shine these fuckin' shoes!" and pistol-whipped him and while Jimmy Burke held him down. Devino was so inebriated that he couldn't defend himself. By now Alex Coricone saw what was going on and started to walk over. Burke glared at Alex. "You want some?" Burke said. Hill said "Jimmy was ready to drop Billy and go after Alex." Hill then grabbed Alex and his girlfriend by the shoulders and maneuvered them out the door and locked it. Along with Hill, they later concealed Devino with the mattress cover and placed him in the trunk of Hill's car. Needing a shovel, they stopped at DeSimone's mother's, who made them coffee and breakfast. Later, on the Taconic State Parkway, DeSimone at the wheel, they heard banging from the trunk and realized Devino was still alive. "We're on our way to bury him and he wasn't even dead," Hill said. Angrily, DeSimone stopped the car, reaching for the shovel. Once there were no more headlights behind them, DeSimone opened the trunk and smashed Devino with the shovel, while Burke beat him with a tire iron. When they were sure he was dead, they drove on.
They buried Devino; due to the frozen ground, the grave was shallow; they covered him with lime, and drove back to New York. Three months later, when the land was about to be developed into a housing project, Hill and DeSimone dug up Devino, tossed the decomposed remains into the back of Hill's brand-new Pontiac Catalina convertible and dumped them in a New Jersey Junkyard (owned by Clyde Brooks). According to Hill, the car stank so badly after that, he later had to scrap the car.
The penalty for killing a made man without permission is death.
Karen and Hill split up for a while; Hill had been cheating with a woman named Linda. Hill then went with Casey Rosado and Jimmy Burke on a vacation to Tampa, Florida. They went to Casey's parents', and met with Casey's cousin to collect a debt from a man named John Ciaccio.
Before entering Ciaccio's bar, Rosado's cousin handed Hill a .38 revolver. The cousins walked in first, followed by Hill and Burke. The cousins were yelling at Ciaccio in Spanish while Hill and Burke sat four tables away. Burke subsequently got up, grabbed Ciaccio and said, "Shut your mouth and walk out the door." Hill later reported: "There must have been twenty-five people in the place, but nobody did anything. Later they were all witnesses at the trial."
There was a retired New York police officer at the scene who took their license plate number. With the four men beating and pistol-whipping him, Ciaccio finally said he'd pay up, but only half, since the rest was owed to a doctor who beat him on a bet. Casey's cousin believed him because he knew the doctor from whom they later got the money. The four men spent the rest of the weekend drinking.
A month later, Hill, on his way to Robert's Lounge, found twelve cars blocking the street. He turned on his radio and heard that the FBI were "arresting union officials," with "Jimmy Burke and others being sought." It turned out that Ciaccio's sister worked for the FBI. They were later arrested and put on trial for kidnapping and murder. On the stand, Rosado convinced the jury that Ciaccio was a liar, and they were able to beat the rap. However, the police went after them for an extortion charge. Just before the three were to go to trial, Casey Rosado dropped dead from a heart attack while bending over to tie his shoe laces. He was forty-six. Since Rosado could no longer testify, Hill and Burke lost their chance to beat the charge.
On November 3, 1972, Hill and Burke were found guilty of extortion.
Hill and Burke served six years of their 10-year sentences in different prisons. The first real prison Hill ever went to was the United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg. At the time, Lewisburg had a large population of organized-crime members, including Paul Vario, doing two and a half years for income tax evasion, and Johnny Dio, serving a long stretch for the acid blinding of newspaper columnist Victor Riesel. Hill later lived with Vario, Dio, and Joe Pine, the boss of Connecticut. There were two-dozen rooms on each floor, all of them affiliated with the mob: the whole John Gotti crew, Jimmy Doyle and his crew, "Ernie Boy" Abbamonte and "Joe Crow" Delvecchio, Vinnie Aloi, and Frank Cotroni. By bribing guards, they got away with sleeping on comfortable beds, drinking wine, and cooking with stoves crafted by Vario. Hill befriended a man from Pittsburgh, who taught Hill how to smuggle drugs into prison. They often played tennis with Jimmy Doyle, Bill Arico, and some of the shooters from the East Harlem Purple Gang. Hill then used his Pittsburgh connection for drug smuggling in order to support Hill's family on the outside.
Within months, Hill started booking. Hugh Joseph Addonizio, the former mayor of Newark, was one of Hill's best customers. Hill recalled him as "...a sweetheart of a guy but a degenerate gambler." Two years later, Hill was transferred to Federal Correctional Complex, Allenwood, where, with Karen's help, he continued to smuggle drugs and food. On July 12, 1978, Hill was granted early parole for being a model prisoner. He walked out of prison wearing a five-year old Brioni suit, seventy-eight dollars in his pocket, and drove home in a six-year old Buick sedan.
Hill and his Pittsburgh connection set up a point shaving scheme by convincing Boston College center Rick Kuhn to participate. Kuhn encouraged teammates to join the scheme. It was to become quite a scandal. Hill claimed to have an NBA referee in his pocket. He worked games at Madison Square Garden during the seventies. The referee had incurred gambling debts on horse races.[2]
Two months after Hill's release from prison, Hill's bookmaker Martin Krugman described the Lufthansa Heist. "There were millions upon millions of dollars in untraceable fifty- and hundred-dollar bills, sitting out there in a cardboard vault at Kennedy Airport just waiting to get robbed," he stated. "It was the ultimate score."
At Robert's Lounge, the crew met to discuss the heist. Afterwards, Hill became obsessed with Lufthansa. The only problem, Jimmy Burke hated Martin Krugman. Burke never trusted him again since an incident with Marty's commercial in the early 1970s.
In November, Burke had everything planned for the robbery but wanted to wait until Christmastime. On Monday, December 11, 1978, at 3:12 in the morning, it was done. It turned out to be the biggest robbery in history at the time. Three days after, the FBI and NYPD determined it was the work of the Robert's Lounge crew. They set up surveillance in Robert's Lounge and followed the crew 24/7. The crew soon began to fall apart. Some associates and witnesses "ratted" out some associates affiliated with the robbery. Jimmy Burke killed half the people involved in the robbery for their share of the money and to make sure they didn't "rat". The bodies of more than 12 suspects and witnesses were discovered in various places. Then Burke's son Frank James Burke, who was also involved with the robbery, was killed in a drug deal gone bad. Martin Krugman was killed in "Vinnie's fence Company." His body was never found. Five people became informants.
Hill became increasingly paranoid; Burke had killed several of his friends following the Lufthansa Heist. He also believed that his close friend Tommy DeSimone had been delivered by Vario into the hands of, (and murdered, by) the Gambino crime family, for killing two "made" members without permission.
Hill began wholesaling marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and quaaludes; he earned enormous amounts of money. A young kid who was a "mule" of Hill's "ratted" Hill out to narcotics detectives Daniel Mann and William Broder. "The Youngster" (so named by the detectives), informed them that the supplier [Henry Hill] is connected to the Lucchese crime family and is a close friend to Paul Vario and to Jimmy Burke and "had probably been in on the Lufthansa robbery". Now knowing who Hill is and what he does put surveillance on him by taking pictures. They found out that Hill's old prison friend from Pittsburgh ran a dog-grooming salon as a front. Mann and Broder had "thousands" of wiretaps of Hill. But Hill and his crew used coded language in the conversations. Hill's wiretap on March 29 is an example of the bizarre vocabulary:
Pittsburgh Connection: You know the golf club and the dogs you gave me in return?
Hill: Yeah.
Pittsburgh Connection: Can you still do that?
Hill: Same kind of golf clubs?
Pittsburgh Connection: No. No golf clubs. Can you still give me the dogs if I can pay for the golf clubs?
Hill: Yeah. Sure.
[portion of conversation omitted]
Pittsburgh Connection: You front me the shampoo and I'll front you the dog pills....What time tomorrow?
Hill: Anytime after twelve.
Pittsburgh Connection: You won't hold my lady friend up?
Hill: No.
Pittsburgh Connection: Somebody will just exchange dogs.[3]
On April 27, 1980, Hill was arrested on a narcotics-trafficking charge. 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 Heist. Hill heard on a wiretap that his associates, Angelo Sepe and Anthony Stabile were anxious to have Hill killed and that they were telling Burke that he "is no good", and that he "is a junkie". Burke told them "not to worry about it". Hill was more convinced by a surveillance tape played to him by federal investigators, in which Burke tells Vario of their need to have Hill "whacked".[2] But Hill still wouldn't talk to the investigators, while in his cell, the officers will tell Hill that the prosecutor, Ed McDonald, wanted to speak with him, and Hill would yell "Fuck you and McDonald." While Hill was in his cell he became even more paranoid because he thought Burke had officers in the inside and would have him killed.
While Karen was worried, she kept getting calls from Jimmy Burke's wife, Mickey, asking when Hill was coming home, or if Karen needed anything. Hill knew the calls were from Jimmy. When Hill was finally released on bail, he met Burke at a restaurant they always went to, Burke told him that they should meet at a bar Hill never heard or seen before owned by Charlie the Jap. Hill never met him there, instead they met at Burke's sweatshop with Karen and asked for the address to Florida to kill Bobby Germaine's son with Anthony Stabile. Hill knew he was going to get killed in Florida, but he needed to stay on the streets to make money. McDonald didn't want to take any chances and arrested Hill as a material witness of Lufthansa. Hill then agreed to become an informant and signed an agreement with the United States Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force on May 27, 1980.[4]
To avoid a possible execution by his crew or going to prison for his crimes; his testimony led to 50 convictions.
Jimmy Burke was given 20 years in prison for the 1978-79 Boston College point shaving scandal involving fixing Boston College basketball games and also later was 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 four 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 the extortion of air freight companies at JFK Airport. He died of respiratory failure on November 22, 1988, at age 73 while incarcerated in the FCI Fort Worth Federal Prison.
Hill, his wife Karen, and their two children (Gregg and Gina)[5] entered the U.S. Marshals' Witness Protection Program in 1980, changed their names, and moved to undisclosed locations in Omaha, Nebraska; Independence, Kentucky; Redmond, Washington; and Seattle, Washington.
Hill was arrested in 1987 on narcotics-related charges in Seattle, where he was living in the Wedgwood neighborhood under the name of Alex Canclini.[6] In 1989, he and his wife Karen divorced after 25 years of marriage.
Due to his numerous crimes while in witness protection, Hill (along with his wife) was expelled from the program in the early 1990s.[7] After the 1987 arrest, 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.
In the fall of 2006, Hill appeared in a photo shoot along with Ray Liotta for Entertainment Weekly. At Liotta's urging, Hill entered alcohol rehabilitation two days after the shoot.[8]
Hill sells his artwork on eBay,[9] and is a frequent guest on The Howard Stern Show.
He returned to rehab in 2008, but during that period was arrested twice for public drunkenness.
He was sentenced to two years probation on March 26, 2009.[10] December 14, 2009 he was arrested in Fairview Heights, Illinois, for disorderly conduct and resisting arrest which Hill attributed to his drinking problems.[11]
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.[12] Hill opened another restaurant, Wiseguys, in West Haven, Connecticut, in October 2007.[13]
In reference to his many victims, Hill, who claims that he has never killed anyone [though he did admit on The Howard Stern Show to being ordered by Burke to kill three people, which he says he did comply with), stated in an interview in March 2008 with BBC's Heather Alexander: "I don't give a heck what those people think; I'm doing the right thing now." [14]
Hill currently lives in Topanga Canyon approximately four miles from Malibu, California, with his Italian-American fiancee, Lisa Caserta. Both have appeared in several documentaries and have made public appearances on various media programs including The Howard Stern Show.[15] In 2010, Hill was inducted in the Museum of the American Gangster in New York City. On June 8, 2011, a show about Hill's life aired on the National Geographic Channel's Locked up Abroad.
In August 2011, Henry Hill appeared in the special "Mob Week" on AMC. He, along with other former mob members, talked about The Godfather, Goodfellas and other such mob films. Henry travels around with Frank Cullotta and Tony Montana and the promote their brand the original O G S.
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