Robert "Bobby" Germaine

Robert "Bobby" Germaine, Sr. (October 1, 1925 – April 1986), the son of French-Canadian immigrants, was a drug trafficker, burglar, and freelance writer in New York, NY. He was friends with Henry Hill and involved in his criminal activities following the Lufthansa heist up to Hill's incarceration. Germaine was also a friend of Jimmy Burke.

He was an excellent stick-up man and burglar who Henry Hill met in Fort Leavenworth in 1972. Robert had been married and gave birth to one son, a chemistry salesman and small-time drug dealer, Robert Germaine, Jr. His son would later become the confidential informant that led to the arrest of Henry Hill and subsequently his own father. At the time of his drug trafficking arrest he had been an unsuccessful self-proclaimed freelance writer working on a manuscript. He is portrayed in Goodfellas as the uncredited drug dealer played by Paul Herman.

Biography

Robert was a self-proclaimed German-American freelance novelist, an expert "stick up man" who accompanied his mobster partner on hijacking jobs and later Henry Hill's partner in his $2.5 million heroin and cocaine trafficking ring in New York. At the time of his partnership with Henry Hill he was also a fugitive in connection with a botched armed robbery of a multi-million dollar wholesale jewellery store on East Fifty-Seventh Street in New York. He had been a close friend of Henry Hill after Henry hired his son, Germaine Jr. to do some landscaping at Hill's Rockville Centre, New York home.

His arrest and capture

Nassau County investigators raided his Long Island home wearing bulletproof vests and welding riot shotguns. When the cops walked in Germaine Sr. insisted they had the wrong man and showed them his false identification and insisted he was a freelance writer. He even showed the investigators the manuscript he was working on. The police brought him to the station house for questioning where they exposed his police record that he had received for a robbery conviction in Albany, New York proving otherwise. His son a high-school drop-out who worked as a chemistry store salesman named after his father, Robert Germaine Jr. testified against his father and Henry Hill during their trial. It was found out that after Germaine Senior's arrest, when Germaine Jr. informed for the police because of his own arrest for traffing in Cocaine and Barbiturates supplied by his father, which subsequently led to the arrest of his own father.

Robert Germaine Jr of Commack NY was thrown from the top of a building and killed by associates of his father in Queens on orders from his father in 1980. Robert Germaine Jrs teen age partners were either arrested and served long prison terms or went on the lam from both the mob and authorities. Several were arrested throughout the United States in the subsequent years

Germaine's writing career

Robert Germaine Sr. was never successfully accepted by a publisher after his drug trafficking incarceration in 1980. The subject of his manuscript he had been working on before was never disclosed. He was released and moved with his hidden illicit drug funds to somewhere in Dade County, Florida and died of unknown causes.

References

• My Life Inside the Mafia: Henry Hill by Nicholas Pileggi
• US Social Security Death Index