James Burke (gangster)

• 1. Introduction

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  James Burke, nicknamed Jimmy the Gent, spent his criminal life beside the Lucchese crime family without ever being allowed to join it. He was born on the 5th of July 1931. He is believed to have organized the 1978 Lufthansa heist. His story raises hard questions. Why did a man shut out of the Mafia's inner ring plan one of its most famous crimes? What happened to the men who carried it out? And what finally put him behind bars until his death? The answers begin in his earliest years.

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• 2. A Childhood in Foster Care

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  At the age of two, Burke was sent to a foster home. Over the following years, dozens of foster parents had charge of him, and he was exposed to violence and sexual abuse in their care. When he was 13, a quarrel with his foster parents broke out inside a car. The vehicle crashed, and his foster father died.

  In 1962, Burke married his girlfriend Mickey. He had learned that an ex-boyfriend was pestering her. On the wedding day, police found that man's remains, in more than a dozen pieces, scattered inside his car.

  Burke fathered three children: Frank James Burke, Jesse James Burke, and Catherine Burke. Catherine later married Anthony Indelicato, a member of the Bonanno crime family.

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• 3. Outside the Family

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  Because Burke was of Irish descent, he could never become a made man in the Italian-American Mafia. He stayed an associate, answering to the capo Paul Vario. During the 1950s he dealt in untaxed cigarettes and liquor, among other illegal activities.

  In the 1960s, Burke took Thomas DeSimone, Henry Hill, and Angelo Sepe under his wing as a mentor. He also owned Robert's Lounge, a tavern in South Ozone Park, Queens.

  In November 1972, Burke and Hill were arrested in Tampa, Florida, for beating a man named Gaspar Ciaccio. Ciaccio allegedly owed a large gambling debt to their friend, the union boss Casey Rosado. Both men were charged with extortion and convicted. Each received ten years at the United States Penitentiary in Lewisburg. Hill was released two years before Burke, who was paroled after six years and returned to crime.

  Both men then began trafficking narcotics. The Lucchese family had banned the trade because it feared that arrested associates would trade information for shorter sentences. That fear came true when Hill became an informant in 1980.

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• 4. The Welcome Home Party

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  The most notorious killing tied to Burke comes from the book Wiseguy, in which Henry Hill tells the story. Everything in this chapter is Hill's account.

  William "Billy Batts" Bentvena was released from prison in 1970. Hill said that Burke's tavern, Robert's Lounge, hosted a welcome home party for him. At the party, Bentvena spotted Tommy DeSimone and joked about whether he still shined shoes. DeSimone took the remark as an insult. According to Hill, he told Hill and Burke that he intended to kill Bentvena.

  Two weeks later, on the 11th of June 1970, Bentvena visited The Suite, a nightclub owned by Hill. Late that night the place was nearly empty. DeSimone pistol-whipped Bentvena while shouting at him to shine his shoes.

  The three men believed Bentvena was dead and put him in the trunk of Hill's car. They stopped at DeSimone's mother's house for a shovel and lime. Then they heard noises from the trunk and realized Bentvena was still alive. DeSimone and Burke stopped the car and beat him to death with the shovel and a tire iron.

  Burke had a friend who owned a dog kennel in Upstate New York, and Bentvena was buried there. About three months later the friend sold the kennel to housing developers. Burke ordered Hill and DeSimone to dig up the body and get rid of it elsewhere.

  In Wiseguy, Hill said the body ended up in a mechanical compactor at a New Jersey junkyard owned by Clyde Brooks. On the commentary track for the film Goodfellas, he told it differently. There, the body lay in the basement of Robert's Lounge before it went into a car crusher.

  Hill's shifting versions would matter later, because his word in court became the weapon that ended Burke's freedom.

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• 5. The Lufthansa Heist

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  A bookmaker named Martin Krugman had a tip, and he gave it to Burke's associate Henry Hill. Lufthansa flew currency into its cargo terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The information had first come from Louis Werner, an airport worker who owed Krugman $20,000 in gambling debts. Werner's co-worker Peter Gruenwald was also a source.

  Burke planned the job and chose the robbers: Tommy DeSimone, Angelo Sepe, Louis Cafora, Joe Manri, Paolo LiCastri, and Robert McMahon. His son Frank would drive one of the backup vehicles. Parnell "Stacks" Edwards had the task of getting rid of the van afterward.

  Payments were set according to each person's role, from $10,000 to $50,000. Werner was promised a flat 10% of the take. Those figures rested on an estimated haul of only $2 million.

  On the 11th of December 1978, the crew stole $5.875 million, nearly three times that estimate. The loot was $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry. It was the largest cash robbery on American soil at the time.

  Burke is alleged to have committed or ordered the murders of many of the robbers, so that none could implicate him. The first victim was Edwards, on the 18th of December, after he failed to dispose of the van. Burke was never implicated or charged in the robbery. The stolen cash and jewelry were never recovered.

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• 6. Hill Takes the Stand

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  In 1980, Burke was arrested for violating his parole. Two years later he was convicted of conspiracy for his part in the 1978-79 Boston College basketball point-shaving scandal. The court sentenced him to 12 years. The case rested mainly on the testimony of Hill, a former mob associate.

  Hill's testimony in federal court produced fifty convictions across this case and others. They included Burke and their boss, the capo Paul Vario.

  While Burke served that sentence, prosecutors charged him with the 1979 murder of a drug dealer named Richard Eaton. Hill testified at that trial too, and Burke was convicted. In 1985 he received a further sentence of 20 years to life.

  Burke's son Frank James Burke was a cocaine dealer and an associate in the Gambino crime family. On the 18th of May 1987, he argued with two men outside the Suncrest Tavern on Liberty Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn. Another drug dealer, Tito Ortiz, shot him dead. Frank was 26.

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• 7. Death and Legacy

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  Burke was serving his sentence at Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, when he developed cancer. He died on the 13th of April 1996, while being treated at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York. He would have been eligible for parole on the 3rd of November 2008, twelve years after his death. He was buried at Saint Charles Cemetery in East Farmingdale, New York.

  In 2013, investigators from the FBI and the NYPD who work on organized crime unearthed possible human remains at his former home.

  Burke also lives on in film and television. Martin Scorsese's 1990 film Goodfellas features a character based on him, Jimmy Conway, played by Robert De Niro. John Mahoney played Burke in the 1991 television film The 10 Million Dollar Getaway, which follows the Lufthansa heist. Donald Sutherland took the role in the 2001 television film The Big Heist.

  In October 2014, the ESPN 30 for 30 episode "Playing for the Mob" discussed Burke's part in the Boston College scandal. Its narrator was Ray Liotta, the actor who played Henry Hill in Goodfellas.

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