 Welcome back into the original gangsters podcast. I'm your host Scott Bernstein, along with my co-conspirator and partner in crime, the Dr. Jimmy Bucciolato. Hi, everyone. This week, we're going to do what we kind of love to do here at the OG. We're going to mix it up. We're going to go current breaking headlines, and then we're going to go backwards and give some context and talk about a very iconic film and iconic crime. We're going to talk about Vinnie Asaro, the longtime banana crime family skipper from Queens, who passed away this last week. He was 88 years old, died of a heart attack. His kind of claim to fame in terms of, you know, outside of his borough is that he was an alleged participant in the Lufonza Airlines terminal heist that was depicted in the movie Goodfellas. At the time, it was the highest grossing arm robbery in American history, $6 million in cash and valuables, December 11, 1978. And then in the coming months, you had the cleanup of that crime and the cutting of all ties and loose ends being taken care of by the guy that masterminded it, Jimmy the Gent Burke, played by Robert DeNiro in the movie. And Asaro was very close with Jimmy Burke and they were together the whole, according to court testimony and FBI files, were together the night of the robbery. Only one person has ever been convicted in that robbery. One of the reasons is a lot of the people that pulled it are dead. They were murdered in a hip parade orchestrated by Jimmy Burke and aided by Vinnie Asaro, allegedly. And then Asaro was brought up on charges related to the Lufonza heist in the last decade, 2014, but ended up beating the case at trial in 2015. His first cousin and former right-hand man Gaspar Valente was the star witness. He was one of the perpetrators. So let's just kind of start off. I'm going to throw it over to Jimmy and we're going to do just kind of a quick bio of Vinnie Asaro. And let's just say before we start, you know, the Asaro crew in Queens is still allegedly active. So this is kind of a legacy that will live on well past Vinnie's passing. Yeah, I mean, we want to talk about the Lufonza stuff and some of the current stuff. But just to start off, I think it's a good place to think about this legacy. And by the way, I'm not feeling well. So I'll do my best to get through this, but my voice is kind of scratchy. But the Asaro clan is a group that I'm very interested in as a case study because they trace their origins to Castellamare, which is my primary case study that I researched. That's where my family is from. And there's actually connection. And the way I've heard it pronounced in Sicily is Asaro, but you know, here we say Asaro. But Vinnie Asaro, who we're talking about now, his son, whose name is Jerry, who's an active member of the Bonanno family, is fifth generation mafiosi. So the Asaro clan has very deep roots both in Sicily and New York. And as a matter of fact, I've even uncovered some things from like the mid 1800s that this clan was pretty prominent in the evolution of the mafia in Castellamare. And probably the biggest name that comes out of this documentation is Girolomo Asaro, who is this gets confusing, but that's Vinnie's great grandfather. And his son was Vincenzo. His son was Jerry. His son was Vinnie, the one we're talking about. And then his son, so you know, the Sicilian tradition, everyone has the same names. But Girolomo, I have some court documentation on him that going back to the 1800s that he and my great, great grandfather, Salvatore Buccellaro, were jammed up on the same murder case. And it's pretty interesting because I can see when they when they raided my great grandfather, great, great grandfather's farm, when they arrested him, I think it was around 11 o'clock at night. And they murdered a guy that they suspected was an informant, even back in the late 1800s, they were worried about that. And Girolomo eventually migrates to the United States, which like a lot of my relatives did too. That's why I'm here. And so that legacy continued being involved in the Castellamare's mafia, not only in Sicily, but in New York. And it goes down goes down the line. And Vinny's father was a mafioso connected to Joe Bonanno. If you look at those court documents, Joe Bonanno's baptism with Godfather, one of my relatives, distant relatives, Feligio Buccellaro, he's in those court documents, it's pretty, pretty good stuff. But anyhow, so he has these deep connections to Sicily and New York. Vinny's uncle, Joseph Asaro was a member of the Montreal DeChina. And later on, when we get into some of the stuff of the 70s and 80s, we'll revisit some of this in terms of connections to Sicily and the Zips. But I think it's pretty compelling. I find these case studies, it's just my thing. I think these case studies are fascinating, where it's like Godfather shit. It's multiple generations of people in one specific family who have a tradition. And Vinny Asaro, who we're talking about here, we're talking a half century of him being a major player in the American mafia. So you're going all the way back to the golden era of American La Cosa Nostra, when all the stuff you saw in movies was going on and these guys were rubbing elbows with celebrities and didn't have as much attention from the FBI, at least early in Vinny's career. But you mentioned his family, it should be noted that one of his uncles was also was Michael Zafferano, they called Mickey Z, who was the Bonanno's pornography king. And it was based in between New York and Los Angeles, owned the Pussycat Theater in Times Square. So this is a guy that, he can trace his roots over to the other side and he obviously had a rich bloodline that he leveraged forward. We know that he was inducted in a summer 1977 ceremony Jimmy's got some kind of in depth, unknown tidbits from from that making ceremony that we want to share with you. Yeah, and I just want to give a shout out to the mob archaeologists, they helped me with with a lot of this information. But according to Valenti's testimony, excuse me, Vinny was made by Carmine Galante in the mausoleum of a cemetery. And I think that's pretty interesting and it's sort of macabre and I'm not sure why maybe it's an ideal location to avoid scrutiny, I suspect is one reason. But someone, an off the record source of mine, mentioned to me that if you know Vinny, it's very apropos, he was made in a mausoleum, because he was a pretty serious, pretty serious dude. Yeah, and again, I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves here. But it will be as the show goes on, and we're going to get into the real story of the Lufonza heist. And Martin's as much as over the podcast, we've eviscerated Scorsese for taking so many so much dramatic license in the Irishman with with good fellows and with casino, he stuck pretty close to the facts. And what you saw on the screen was pretty similar to what happened in real life. And a sorrow according to his cousin's testimony and some other informants, the famous scene and good fellows where they find Frankie Carbone frozen in the meat locker. That was a Vinny, a sorrow special there. Allegedly, Jimmy Burke, Jimmy DeGent murdered a guy named Richie Eaton, who the Frankie Carbone character was a composite of a couple different guys, Richie Eaton being one of them, and lured him to a a warehouse in Queens tortured and murdered him and then handed the body over to Vinny, a sorrow and Gaspar Valente, according to Valente's testimony. And they're the ones that dispose of him in a portable refrigeration vehicle meat locker and hung him on a hook. And just like the raliata character with the voiceover, they had the coroner's office had to wait 48 hours for the body to defrost before they could do the autopsy. Yeah. I mean, he was a pretty serious guy. And you know, to be fair, I think there's a lot of intel we can gather from Valente's testimony to be fair. He was deemed in a lot of ways to have a lot of flaws as a character witness because so that's why Vinny was acquitted out of a lot of this stuff, including murder charges. Did we say that? I'm sorry if we buried that. Yeah, you said he was acquitted. Yeah. He beat the case in 2015. However, a couple years after that, he gets nailed in an arson revenge case where some guy cut him off in traffic. Right. That was later. He ordered one of his underlings to go torch this guy's car. So this was 2017. So he would have been 82. An 82-year-old Vinny Asaro had to go back to federal prison. He had a pretty stiff sentence that he got reduced during COVID. So he was in for about three years and has spent the last three years a free man but has been retired. His son allegedly runs that Queens crew for the Bananos. It should be also mentioned that him and his son had a very rocky relationship, very hot and cold. So I'm not exactly sure where they ended. I know not that long ago they weren't on speaking terms. So that's what I've heard too. Even though Jerry Asaro is allegedly the capo of the Banano queen, that queen's faction that his father was in charge of, as far back as the 70s, the FBI references a promotion for Vinny Asaro in 1979. He got bumped up to capo. And that was the fast track because he wasn't a soldier for very long before he was bumped up. And he was like the consummate mob politician in the sense that he was connected to a lot of different families, a lot of different people, both Sicilian, American-born, Irish. He was very close to Jimmy Burke, who was a Lucchese guy, the equivalent of a May guy or a capo, but because he was Irish, could not get made. Very close to the John Gotti and those the Queens Gambinos. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. I've heard that he was pretty friendly with Gotti, especially like back in the day. And so that kind of brings us into how he got involved in the Lufonze heist was that in the 70s and 80s, Vinny's regime and Vinny were in charge of the Banano airport rackets at JFK airport in Queens. And anything, any illegal activity that was going on at the airport, I think all five families had representatives that were in charge of airport affairs. So even though the Luccheses mapped out and carried out the Lufonze heist, they had to cut other families into the conspiracy and a piece of the pie of profits. At least we know the Bananos and the Gambinos were brought in by the Luccheses on the heist. Yeah, do we know why before we get into the details of it? Because Henry Hill talks about and Pallegi talk about a sorrow in wise guy. Do we know why Scorsese didn't include was it illegal thing or no, I think it was just he didn't want to get I think he didn't want to confuse the viewers with bringing in too many different people. You already had to introduce a lot of characters for the heist because most of those characters you don't meet except for Frenchy. I don't think you meet any of those characters until they introduce him in that scene at the bar where this is the guys or these are the guys that Jimmy put together to pull off the biggest robbery in American history and he kind of introduces them. So I think he probably wanted to cut down on how many people he wanted to introduce and not confuse the audience. That's just my amateur. If you're bringing it, he talked about all the guys that were in the Lucchesi crew that were involved in it and we'll go over those guys in a second. I don't think he wanted to start bringing in other crime families. Yeah, it gets more challenging to manage because you're going to get into the details, but my understanding is that Vinnie was an integral part of this conspiracy. He was a major player in this heist. Yeah, well, he spent the entire evening or early morning hours of December 11th, which was when the heist was pulled off 1978. He was with according to the testimony, informants, FBI records. He was with Jimmy Burke the entire time before, during and after and walked away with $1.5 million of the $6 million score. Again, this is off the record, but I heard that he went through a lot of that money just like the show in the movie. Well, I know Asaro himself went through a lot of that money really quick, gambled a lot of it away. Right. That's what I've heard. Yeah, it didn't take him long, but just to give people to do the kind of tale of the tape when you're talking about the movie Goodfellas and what really happened. You see in the film, the wig guy, Mori, the wig guy, present Henry Hill this opportunity to rip off the Lufonza terminal. Henry Hill and that crew had years earlier using a couple of the guys that they would use in Lufonza ripped off Air France. Yeah. And came away with a nice chunk of change that kind of solidified Henry Hill and Tommy DeSimone as players and Tommy D in the movies, Tommy DeVito. In real life, his name was Tommy DeSimone. And Joe Pesci won an Oscar for playing the character. And there was a lot of similarities, but there was also some, at least physically, there were some differences. Tommy DeVito, obviously Joe Pesci is a tiny guy. Tommy DeSimone, they called two gun Tommy was a strapping like a six foot athletic, looking like six foot two broad shoulders, but had the same kind of hair trigger temper. Known as a cowboy. Was a real cowboy. And just like you saw in the film with the Billy Bats scene, it was more than just Billy Bats. Tommy DeSimone had murdered two pretty influential figures in the Gambino crew or sorry, in the Gambino family, part of the Gotti crew. And that would be Billy Bats. And another guy by the name of Foxy Jirothi, who were both close friends of the Gotti's. So. And what was that about? What was the Foxy one? What was it? It was over a woman. Oh, so it was another like impulsive. And then just to do the comparing contrast, Billy Bats told Tommy to go get a shine box. That really happened. It was when Bats was was his real name was William Bentavina had just come home from prison. But the timeline was was changed. They didn't murder him that night. They murdered him like two weeks later, where they lured it. They lured Billy Bats back to the suite, which was the name of the restaurant. Yeah, I don't want to get too far straight too far from the chronology here. But if those of the audience that follow us on Instagram, I just reposted something that was from another account, the scene where he shoots stacks, and you hear the two gunshots and that he's out of he's out of the camera. And you just hear Pesci go, What the fuck are you looking at? Make that make that coffee to go right that he starts walking out with the pot of coffee. He's like, What the fuck are you doing? I'm joking with you. I'm sorry that scene still is funny to me after how many times have we seen that movie 1000 between the two of us? Yeah, and that scene still cracks me up. But you know, just keep on on the same angle. You know, if you study the real story of Lufonza and the real story behind those characters. Parnell Stax Edwards, who was played by Samuel Jackson in the movie, was more than he was kind of presented in the film in the film. It was kind of Stax was a guy that hung around the bar and played the guitar and was into, you know, credit card scams or whatever. But Stax was somebody that was very deeply embedded in that Robert. It was called the Roberts Roberts lounge crew, which was the name of Jimmy the Gents bar. He was more than just kind of a hang around. He was very close friends with Tommy D. And even though Tommy D ended up killing him, I believe, at least in the movie he does, and doesn't seem to give a shit about it. I know in reality that Tommy D was very broken up when they had when they had to kill Stax because he was so close to him. That's interesting, which it doesn't seem like it fits, you know, a black con man and the, you know, the Tommy D character that you see in the movie. But in reality, you know, they were very close friends and Stax Edwards was a very trusted member of that crew, which is why they decided to include him, whether or not he should have been, I guess, is a different story. But what you saw in the movie is what happened instead of getting rid of the getaway car. He parked it in a no parking zone and went to his girlfriend's house and they got ticketed and and in white for fingerprints. And that's why Stax was the first murder in in these kind of aftermath killings, 12 murders, 12 murders that occurred in the aftermath of Lufonza because Jimmy Burke did not want to, A, share the money or B, have any connections that could be made between him and the actual guys that that stole the money and Vinny Asaro, according to the FBI, helped him not just steal the money, but also launder the money and then hide some of the money and then helped him. If he if he wasn't actually involved in the hits themselves, he helped with some of the conspiracies. So what was his role in the actual heist, like the actual mechanics of the heist, because we know he's brought in. But then we know what what his actual involvement in the mechanic was. He put Valenti with the the arm robbery team. Okay. So Valenti was on the scene. Yeah. He was with Jimmy Burke. I think I don't know if they were at Valenti's house. They were at someone's house to start when they all masked up and departed. Then he was with Burke in a crash car and a car that was monitoring police activity on a scanner about a block or two away from the airport. Okay. Valenti, who was Asaro's first cousin, right hand man, now Valenti's son is allegedly a soldier in the family that disavowed his father. Fat Sammy. But according to testimony, Gaspari's role in his job, his assignment, was when they got to the airport and they got onto the grounds and they needed access to get into the La Fonda Terminal parking lot, which gave them access to the building that Valenti with a pair of bolt cutters broke open the parking lot to let the hit team, or not hit team, I'm sorry, let the robbery team into the property that they then ended up sticking up. And we, a lot of the names that you heard in the movie were the guys that stuck it up, Tommy D. That another guy that was a part of the composite for Frankie Carbone, Carbone was like part Richie Eaton, and we'll get into who Richie Eaton is in a second, and then part this guy named Angelo Seppi, who was probably more of the Carbone, he spoke Sicilian like Carbone is always kind of making little quips. And so Angelo Seppi was one of the stick up men. And then you had Frenchy McMahon, who was the guy that helped them with the Air France and then was involved in this as well, he worked at the airport. And then you had a guy named Joe Manry, who they called Joe Buddha, was referenced in the film. And then you had another guy, by the name of Louis Keforra. In the movie, they called him, I think they called him Johnny Rosebeef. In real life, he was Louis Rosebeef. I think sometimes they called him Louis the Whale. And he was Jimmy Burke's former prison cellmate. And Valente went along, and then a Gambino figure, Apollo Lucastri, also went along. So you had most of these guys were Luccheses, and then you had one Bonanno and one Gambino on the actual robbery team. Yeah. And just to clarify, Vinny Asaro's mother was a Valente, which is, by the way, another name in Costa del Mar. Now, I don't know if they were Costa del Marais. Someone can fact check. I mean, not necessarily, but I wouldn't surprise me if they married into the Asaro family. And so his mom, her nephew was Gaspar Valente. So that's how their first primo Cugini. And that's why I think there's other documentation that suggests that they were basically inseparable. They were really close. That's why I think there's some valuable intel in his testimony, even though ultimately he was determined that he had a reputation as a degenerate gambler. And that really, I think that really hurt his kind of credibility as a witness. And by the way, that's what the one of the theories is why he was never made because he was on record, but he was never made because he was such a degenerate gambler, owed a lot of made guys money that that he might have been killed if it weren't for Vinny, basically smoothing. From what I understand, that's one of the reasons that he went scurry into the feds was because he was in so much debt and Vinny couldn't help him out. Right. Right. But it makes sense that he would be at that time, he would have been part of the heist because they were so close. Yeah. And the heist ends up taking about 90 minutes from about three in the morning to around four thirty. They take hostages, basically tie a bunch of people up, force them to give them access. They had gotten a tip. I think I started to say this earlier in the broadcast and I got sidetracked. But like you saw in the film, the tip, you see in the film, the tip goes from Maury the Whig guy to Henry Hill to Jimmy the Gent. But there was actually more of a longer kind of chain of custody there where there was a guy named Lou Werner, who was a degenerate gambler, who was a worked as a at the airport and worked in the Lufonza terminal and had stolen money from the terminal a couple of years before that. And in order to clear a $20,000 debt, which today would be considerably more, the $20,000 in 1978 is quite the sum. He owed that money to the Maury the Whig guy, whose real name was Marty Krugman. They called him Marty the Rug. And it was very, very similar to the character you saw played by actor Chuck Lowe played Maury in the Goodfellas movie. But Lou Werner traded the $20,000 debt for the tip on the money coming in and the security procedures that they would need to get around to get in there. So they had inside men, a number of inside men at the terminal before the robbery so that they could plan it and then during the robbery. Yeah. And I know it's annoying, but it's such a good scene where Burke is strangling. Fuck him in the ear. Fuck him in the other ear. You got the money for the commercial? Fuck and break my balls. Give me the fucking money. You think I agreed to what, like some percentage above the big one? Oh, yeah. Smuck on wheels. Smuck on wheels. That movie is just perfectly cast. I'm sorry to keep on going back to it, but it's just perfect. Jimmy, he's being an unconscionable ball bus. Yeah. It's the perfect way. I've said, there's nothing wrong with that movie. No. Start to finish. Yeah. It's outstanding. Because there are other movies that I consider all-time greats that if you gave me like editing responsibility, I would still go in there and cut a little here, cut a little there. Like Scarface, or even some of the Godfathers, I would trim a little here or there or add some here, take some here. Goodfellas are just unbelievably perfect in so many different ways. So Asaro and them, they started this, I believe it was, again, I believe it was Volente's residence. And then they actually end up at an auto shop in Canarsie where they unloaded a lot of the loot that they stole, which was owned by Jimmy Burke. So there's another tidbit about his relationship with Burke, and I just love this. It reminds me of the Tony Soprano character, another pop culture reference. Sorry to be so annoying. But I don't know if it was that garage or not, but I can't remember. I'd have to look at the documentation. But there was a guy who was abusing his dog, and he ended up killing the dog. And Asaro and Burke were going to kill him because of that. They were so, they were like, both like animal lovers and were so offended. The only time you saw Tony, Tony was more upset about that dog dying. Yeah, yeah. And the horse and the ducks. And I couldn't help when I read that to think if David Chase or somebody, if they had, I don't know if they were privy to that information, if that sort of inspired them. But Burke and Asaro were seriously contemplating killing this guy over abusing the dog. And it's just so, the irony is fantastic, right? Because these guys will kill other gangsters without other human beings without thinking twice, but they're offended by animal abuse. I just think it's just outstanding kind of anecdote. And I forgot to say that Jimmy the Gent's son, Frankie Boy, was also one of the robbers. And Frankie Boy was a lot of these, I think of him and I think of Neil de la Crochet's son. Obviously, Sonny Red Bruno, who was able to survive some of those early drug addled years. But it seems like some of these big shots have kids that have a difficult time following in the footsteps. And I know Frankie had a lot of, you know, those are big shoes to fill on his dad. But I know that he was somebody that kind of allegedly abused some of his power or the power that he thought that he had from his dad and was a big drinker and drugger. And so they brought him along as well. You know, like Stax Edwards, again, was told to get rid of the van. He was supposed to bring it to New Jersey. But instead, he went to his girlfriend's house and they find the van within like three days. The FBI has identified the Jimmy the Gent's crew as the guys that had done this. Now, it's interesting that so from December 14th, 1978 to October 2023, they've known pretty much from top to bottom what happened. But other than Lou Werner, who they got for being the tipster for letting the Jimmy the Gent's crew know what was going on and the fact that they could rob the airport, they've had no convictions, barely any arrests. Vinny, that was kind of grasping at straws back in 2015 when they put Vinny Asaro on trial, it seemed like. So it's interesting to see how quickly the feds were on to what exactly happened. Maybe you can make similar something analogous to the Jimmy Hoffa case that we talk about a lot. But just because you know it doesn't mean you can prove it. It doesn't mean you're going to actually bring people to justice and find them accountable. Yeah, you can't hear not necessarily going to bring forth a prosecution because of that. Yeah, I think it's also interesting that because I believe I'm not an expert on the case, but shout out that the Scott was part of the Goodfellas documentary on it was on Fox, right? On Fox Nation. It's called I think it's called the Lufthansa Heist. Yeah. And then I highly recommend Pelage's book Wise Guy. If you haven't read it, it's one of the greatest. And then our friend Tony DiStefano has a book about the Lufthansa Heist, which has a lot of stuff about Asaro. But my understanding is that Jimmy Burke was annoyed with some of the guys being so gaudy with spending their money. But a lot of it in the mafia and this suddenly Scott and I are really interested in is the sociology of but also the political science of it is that depends on your stature and your juice, right? You could get away with certain things like Vinny Asaro if you're made guy. Well, I think the fact that Asaro wasn't held as accountable as some other people that were acting reckless was the fact that he was so juiced in with so many people. Yeah. Louis Rosebeef and who really showed up at a Christmas party with a brand new pink Cadillac. That happened. What you saw in the movie where Jimmy the Gent loses his mind because Johnny Rosebeef shows up with his brand new wife said, you understand Jimmy, it's my mother-in-law's name. And he really, that was his real excuse. But, you know, guys like Louis Rosebeef, the only guy they knew was Jimmy Burke. Yeah. Vinny Asaro knew all the big shots in the Bananos. Yeah. A bunch of the big shots in the Gambino's. He was super close to Jimmy the Gent as a contemporary as like an equal. Yeah. Wasn't a sell me. Right. Right. So, again, just like you see in the movie, the hip parade starts pretty quickly thereafter. They murdered Stax Edwards was the first to go exactly one week after the heist. So the heist takes place December 11th, 1978. Stax Edwards is murdered in December 18th. So one week past that, then to gun Tommy DeSimone is murdered similar to the way you saw it in in the movie. I believe he was lured under the pretense that he was going to get his button. And he's murdered on December 30th. So about two, two and a half weeks after. And it really didn't have anything to do with Lufonza per se. It had to do with the fact that he had killed those two Gambino's. And then another part of this story that I think it's lost in the shuffle or a lot of people don't know was there was kind of a love triangle would be the wrong way to say it like a quad, a love quadrangle between Henry Hill, Paulie, Vario and Tommy DeSimone when it came to Karen, Henry Hill's wife, who's played by Lorraine Braco in the movie. You don't see her stepping out on Henry. You just see Henry stepping out on her. Well, in reality, Henry was stepping out on her quite a bit, but she was in a relationship with Paulie. In the movie, he's Paulie Cicero. In the in real life, he was Paul Vario. And it was Henry Hill's wife. It was Paul Vario's side piece. And around this time of the Lufonza heist, Tommy De makes a play for Karen wanting to sleep with her. I don't know if he wanted to grab her as a girlfriend or whatever, but I think he just wanted to sleep with her one night. And she pushed him off and he like beat her up. So from my research, this was kind of the impetus that allowed the Gambino's to finally get revenge on Tommy D. Paulie had been protecting. Paulie and Jimmy had been protecting Tommy. Jimmy was very close to Tommy, just like you see in the movie. And Jimmy, I don't think knew that they were going to kill Tommy, just like you see in the movie. But Paulie, because of what happened with Karen, and I don't know what Henry Hill knew or didn't know, but from people that I that knew the situation told me that when that happened in the holiday season of 1978, that Paulie at that point stopped protecting Tommy D and allowed the Gambino's to kill him. But it had to do with him slapping around Karen. Yeah. And that's something that you and I talk about a number of times, like usually these situations are over determined. It's not it's not one thing. One thing might be the catalyst, the final straw. These are cliche. Excuse me, but they even acknowledge that in the film, right? Henry Hill's narration says it goes and a lot of other things. Yeah, right. So and then we're going to hit on this in a minute or two, talking about the the kind of snowball effect of someone that keeps on getting in trouble with various different dangerous people, and then they kind of coalesce to that person's murder. So besides all the stuff that was going on with Karen and the stuff that had gone on with Billy Bats and Foxy, Jimmy the gent needs to move this money that they got. So he's putting the money he's moving the money all around different parts of the country, sent some out West, sent some down south. And I know some of the money got sent down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida and put with a kind of a, you know, these these crews sometimes have subunits. So Tommy D, who was a member of the Jimmy the Burke or sorry, Jimmy the gent crew had a couple guys that he was working with that were down in Fort Lauderdale that were considered Lucchese associates. And one of the employees at this bar nightclub that these guys owned and moved coke out of and booked book bets and gave loans out was a woman named Teresa Ferrara, who was one of Tommy D Simone's girlfriends. And not only were they suspected of stealing the money that Jimmy the gent had given them to hide and launder. But they believed that she was informing for the FBI. So all those forces were pulling against Tommy D Simone when he was murdered, December 30, 1978, then we got into January. And the scene that you the more the more the the wig guy, you see gets killed, I don't know if that's the way they they killed him with a was like a screwdriver to the brain in a car. I don't know if that's actually how they did it. But January 17 1979. So five weeks after the heist that had generated from real name Marty and the character Maury, the the the roots that he planted the seeds that he planted that blossomed into the $6 million treasure trove that they were able to rip off from the Lufonza terminal. They didn't care that it came from him. Just like you saw in the movie, he wouldn't shut up about getting his cut. He felt like he deserved a bigger cut than Jimmy wanted to give him. They worried that he was going to, you know, talk to people you shouldn't have talked to if if they were going to ice him out of it. He did he saw just like in the movie, you saw a lot of the other guys that were would be considered underneath him in the pecking order of that conspiracy flashing money around. And, you know, they they decided to kill him. And so they killed him five weeks later. And it's such a macabre thing. I hate to have a smile on my face about it. But all I can think of is carbon warming the car up. What the fuck are you doing? We're gonna chop them up. We're not gonna chop them up here. Get the fuck out of here. What does he say? We'd be better off letting him drive. So he's killed January sick. Sorry, let me back up for a second. I miss he was killed January 6 1979. So that was about a less than a month. Then January 17. So about five weeks after Richie Eaton is murdered. And we talked about that earlier in the show. Richie was one of the characters that was one of the people that made up the composite of Frankie Carbone. And they find Richie eating in the meat locker on a Brooklyn side street. Jimmy the Jimmy the Gent had given Richie Eaton, Tommy Montalioni and Teresa Ferrara money to take down to Florida to put into a drug deal and then launder the proceeds through Tommy Montalioni's club bar down in Fort Lauderdale called the Players Club. It was a place where a lot of Luccheses would hang out whenever they were in Florida and Montalioni and Richie Eaton were working for Tommy D and Jimmy moving Coke, making loans and booking bets out of that bar. And these guys these two guys in a gal put their heads together and decided to steal from the Steelers. And they all paid the ultimate price. So Marty Krugman dies on January 6 79 January 17th. Richie Eaton is murdered in a Brooklyn warehouse by Jimmy the Gent and then according to Valente, Asaro and Valente hang him on the meat, hang him in the meat locker. And then February 10th Teresa Ferrara disappears. Nobody's ever found her body. She was Tommy D's girlfriend that was working down in Florida and was part of stealing what was estimated to be about a quarter million dollars that they took from Jimmy or from the money they were supposed to give back to Jimmy and invest into a drug deal they just pocketed. Well, I mean, someone might say, why would you do something that stupid? But I know we're not psychiatrists here, but these people are thieves and it's in their blood. And it's almost like a compulsion. Like I think they also cannot steal this money in front of me, even if I know that this could be really put me in a precarious position. A thief is a thief, right? It's in their blood. And I think I think there's two other things. I think there's a they can do mental gymnastics and convince themselves, well, there's so much money going around. Yeah, nobody's gonna be able to keep track of it all. Right. They won't notice. Yeah. And then B, I got it ripped off from me. Yeah, they stole it from me when in reality, nobody stole it from them. They just pocketed it. Right. So then the murder spree continues into the spring, March 8, 1979, Louis roast beef is found with his wife in their pink, pink colored Cadillac murdered Fleetwood, a fleet with a brand new Cadillac Fleetwood. And March 22, Tommy Montalione, one of the guys that stole that money down in Florida, the owner of the players club. He's murdered. And then on May 16, 1979, not exactly like you saw in the movie, but kind of similar when you saw Joe Buda and Frenchy together in the trash can. In reality, they were found in like a in a car together. And I think a parking structure in a parking in a parking garage. They were side by side. Frenchy and Frenchy and Joe Buda. And then June 13, Paul LaCastri, the Gambino soldier that was on that robbery team is thrown in a trash dump. So that's where they kind of played around with the facts. They never showed they never really had a character based on the castry. But LaCastri was the found that was the was the victim that was found in a trash receptacle. And he was a made guy. I'm not sure. That seems like you'd have to that could be very problematic. Yeah, I don't know if he was an associate or a big guy, but he was the Gambino point man at the airport in the same way that Vinny Asaro was point man at the airport for the bananas. Because it's difficult to imagine Castellano and Dela Croate signing off on something like that if he were a made guy. Unless they thought that it could trace back to them. Sure. Yeah. And then the last murder is like five years later, probably wasn't connected to LaFonza, at least not directly. But that was the Angelo Seppi mob figure that I talked about who was one of the guys that made up the Frankie Carbone composite. In a summer of 1984, it was alleged that he had ripped off higher ranking mob guys in a drug deal. And he was murdered along with his girlfriend in his bed, I believe. So, you know, those were 12. And I would call them, you know, either the Goodfellas hits or the LaFonza terminal, heist hits, Vinny Asaro was tied to some of the cleanup, some of the disposal. I don't believe he was tied to any of the actual homicides. He did beat a homicide case though in that same LaFonza trial in 2015. He was charged with a cold case murder from 1969 where him and Jimmy Burke allegedly strangled a Lucchese associate named Paulie Katz to death with a dog collar. They believed that he was snitching and he was somebody that worked in stolen, in the hijacking racket and was owned property where they stored stolen goods. So I haven't read Wise Guy in a long time. I haven't read DeStefano's book in a long time. So Henry Hill becomes a snitch. He ends up testifying against Vario and Burke. I don't remember why doesn't he implicate Asaro in the case. I don't remember. Sometimes you can have a situation maybe more than sometimes where a guy flips, he debriefs, he names, let's say, 10 people in a conspiracy and the prosecutors only feel comfortable charged in six. So you could be named and the finger pointed at you and the feds believing that you were involved in it, but somehow you skate. That's just my gut. Another kind of irony that I think is interesting to pull from this was that Jimmy the Gent was not convicted of the robbery. Jimmy the Gent wasn't convicted of any murders. Jimmy the Gent went to prison because Henry Hill inadvertently told the feds about a point shaving scandal that they weren't even looking at. And that Henry Hill in his warped criminal mind didn't think it was a crime. Or at least that's what he said. I thought it was just kind of being smart or something that you could get a basketball player on your payroll and get them to manipulate point spreads. And they reference it in the movie one time. If you don't know, if you're not looking for it, you wouldn't get it. I think right before the Morrie characters murdered, he says, did we tell you about the points we were shaving up in Boston? And I think right before, right after he says that they stick the screwdriver in the back. And didn't Michael Francie's on our show tell us he was involved in some of that BC stuff with Henry Hill? We asked him if he remembered Henry Hill and I think he mentioned that. Yeah, so you can go back and watch that video. There's a good 30 for 30 for, you know, those those ESPN documentaries, I'm sure you can get them on streaming platforms that that dives into that that point shaving scandal from was from the 78 79 season. So it was right when this was all happening. When Lufonza was going on, they were actively shaving points, I believe in that that 78 79 season, or might have been the 77 78 season, but it was that same time period. And they allegedly got two or three really stand out Boston college basketball players, three starters, I believe, two captains. And they manipulated a lot of point spreads that year is one of those examples where they overcharged Burke and Vario because I get it, you're not supposed to do this rule of law. It's problematic. But isn't some one of these examples where they overcharge them really for other things that they that they think? Yes, okay, yes. It was like someone said to me is going down a rabbit hole here, but I was doing a Facebook live on the Philly mob page. And they asked me about Georgie Cowboy, Martirano. How did he get 32 years just for a marijuana case? I said, the prosecutors and the judge sentencing him, that was a lot deeper than the fact that he got caught selling marijuana. They wanted to jam him for a murder, they thought he committed and stuff that his father had did. It really it was a lot. So yes, so I Jimmy, the gent went away longer than he probably would have gone away on a normal basketball point shaving case. He died in prison and both him and Paul, he both died in prison. Yeah. And it's interesting too with the sorrow that his stature really gets even bigger after all the dust settles because he doesn't go to prison. He's still alive. He's a captain. And he's he already has the pedigree, right? He's already a serious guy, well respected, well like guy. But now his legend is just, you know, the mythology where like, you know, he's the one who makes it out and is still on the streets. But isn't it interesting? I mean, unless you were unless you were a real Nick Palleggi nerd or Lufonza nerd, I didn't know that Vinny Asaro played any role in this until he was charged in 2014. I knew who Vinny Asaro was. So it's kind of interesting how like, those who knew knew, and it definitely benefited Vinny in his career. But he also benefited from the general public not knowing there was no like clamoring for for justice and accountability in terms of him and Lufonza, the way there was there was for, you know, the other Coke conspirators. And I remember his name reading Wise Guy. But I read that so long ago, that I didn't fully appreciate who he was, or the connections to Castellamari, because I really had not deep dived. I wasn't deep diving that case study yet. So to your point, I remember reading it in the paperback, but it just didn't like kind of resonate with me. And until later on, and then it was like, Oh, yeah, I'm all right. Now I'm now I'm researching this guy. He's a big deal. And then it's like, yeah, and he was also very important player in the Lufonza heist. And it was like, Oh, shit, you know, like you're putting it all together. Well, again, if you're not a nerd, if you're not someone I use that term, because I'm a nerd, I mean, I'm not using that derogatory. If you're not somebody that like really deep dives and stuff and studies this, you think of the the movie Goodfellas and Lufonza heist, you think of the Luccheses. You know, think of the Bananos or the Gambino's. Yeah. And if I can add a few other things, kind of tie it back to this Sicily stuff. So by the 80s, Asaro is a captain. He's a big deal. He survives all of this, doesn't go to prison. And I'm getting mixed intel on how much interaction was between him and the Zips, because he's got the pedigree going back to Castellamari. And I've heard from a source that he really didn't give a shit about the Zips. And for example, his cousin, Mariano Asaro, they call him Mariano Le Americano, because he travels to New York so often. He's a dentist, by the way. I don't know if people know this. It's a lot more common in Sicily for like professionals to be made, made guys. You hardly ever see that in here. Right. So he traveled to New York a lot. And apparently, you know, I was hearing that Vinny didn't interact with them very much, even though he was, they were cousins and Mariano Asaro is a heavyweight in the Bergada and Castellamari. But now I'm uncovering some other stuff that suggests maybe his relationship with the Zips was more complicated. For example, at some point in the early 80s, we don't know the year, but there's a sit down with Rustele, who's the boss of the Bananos. And on the other side of the sit down, it's Asaro with Baldo Amato and Cesare Bonventre. And at one point during the sit down, Asaro, Bonventre and Amato start conversing with each other in Sicilian. And Rustele views to this as like an affront, right? He's really offended and basically takes it as a fuck you, because he doesn't understand Sicilian. And I think that's an interesting little nugget of information about, first of all, suggesting Asaro may have had closer relations to his Sicilian Amici from Castellamari, but also the politics in terms of what guys like that, how they viewed Rusty. And we had the episode with Messino a few weeks ago with Frank Fiorolino, and he says that Bonventre and some of those guys, some of those Zips didn't have a lot of respect for Rusty, which is why Bonventre ends up getting killed. You know, go down that rabbit hole. So it may be more complicated, this relationship. And we also know that during the 80s, Asaro was visiting Bonventre's social club in Bensonhurst frequently. So at least maybe things had changed in the 90s and 2000s as he was getting older. Maybe those ties became less strong. But there's some intel here that suggests he had some relationship with the Zips, at least in the 70s and 80s. I think, and I don't want to claim to be an expert on the Bonanno Zips or on the granular machinations of some of the political wins of the 70s. But I do believe that Asaro got his promotion to Capo in the wake of Galante's assassination. So the Zips were on the side of the coup. Yes. So if you want, if you want to do the math in your head or, you know, play to connect the dots, you would think that Massino and Rustelli and the Zips were the decision makers at that point. And when we saw it in, we keep on quoting movies. In Donnie Roscoe, he said, you know, Rusty is going to run the whole thing from the can. Sunny Reds got little Italy, I got Brooklyn. So in that distribution of power, I believe that's when Asaro got the Queens group. Yeah. And also, according to Frank, who we had on a few weeks ago, he is arguing that Massino was not as pivotal in the three captains hit as traditionally thought that basically Rustelli wanted to, but he couldn't have pulled that off without the Zips to your point about at least at that point, there was somewhat of an alliance as fragile as that was. There was some type of alliance at least to take out Indelicato and the other two captains. But we know not long after that it falls apart and Bonventra ends up getting killed. The 79 is the assassination. 81 is the three Capo's hits. And then spring of 84, or early summer of 84, was when they killed Cheserey. And we also know that there's some evidence later on that Asaro was one of the high-ranking Bananos who is having sit-downs with other high-ranking Bananos, like Grimaldi, to discuss the assassination of Sal Montagno, who was another customer of Marey's guy, who was the acting Banano boss at one point. Bambino, the Bambino boss. He was only 35 years old and he was acting boss of the Banano clan for a couple of years before he gets deported to Montreal, gets involved in the war up there, and that costs him his life. Yeah. And Asaro says Sal Montagno was one of the bosses in this Bergata. So he was being updated on that situation. And then there's the other great example where when they when they're talking about the murder of Nicolo, or one of the Rizzudos, and I can't remember if it was Nicolo or if it was one of the sons. I can't remember, someone could fact check me. But they said, what's going on in Montreal? And he says, I don't even know what the fuck's going on in Howard Beach. Let alone, let alone you want me to explain what the fuck's going on in Montreal. So he had, he was just a very popular guy. He had these great quips like that. And there's the other, came out in the testimonials was, he was upset about that one Banano guy, younger Banano guy who had an Instagram account. Yeah. And they're talking about back and forth, what he posted, was it incriminating? And Asaro says, forget all that. What the fuck is he doing on Instagram? Period. I don't care if it's incriminating or not. It's a bad look. Right. He shouldn't be on Instagram in the first place. Right. So he was just a real like, you know, a living legend in his, you know, in his time. Well, I enjoyed this episode. RIP to video sorrow. We're going to end. I'm going to kick it to Jimmy for a couple of minutes. We got some show news that Jimmy wants to address. And you know, let's hear it, Jim. Yeah. So this is with mixed feelings that I make this announcement. I've had a great time, five years working on this podcast with Scott, who's one of my best friends, I consider him family. And we've had a lot of fun and getting to know Benny, who's just a, you know, a great guy and a professional. But I've mentioned before, people I think know, at least some audience members know that I'm a faculty member at the university. And sometimes it's not easy for me to balance working on the podcast full time and taking care of my university responsibilities, because there's a lot of work that goes into this. I don't know if audience members, you know, not the bore you to death, but there's a lot of grunt work that goes into what, you know, but behind the scenes that the three of us do with scheduling and booking guest and editing and uploading things and managing social media. And it's becoming, it's gotten to the point where it's not sustainable for me. I have, I have a lot of obligations at the university that were just dumped in my lap. And I don't want to bore people with the details, but I have to take a sabbatical from the podcast. I'm not sure when I'll be able to return. I will be involved in some behind the scenes things, the things that we're talking about, I will still help with some of the production aspects of it. So I'm not disappearing, but I can no longer commit to a weekly, you know, episode, there may be some special appearances where I can jump on now and then. But I need to get, take care of this work at the university, get that out of the way. Hopefully, you know, I'll be able to return a full time at some point. But in the meantime, you're good hand, you're in good hands. Scott is a rock star. And Benny's is really professional and excellent at what he does. So I know you will be in good hands. I'm confident that the podcast will continue to prosper. And I may look different and sound different in some ways as we smooth all of this out. But I just wanted to thank everyone. It's been very humbling. We have almost 3 million audio downloads over a million views on YouTube. It's very humbling. It's been a lot of fun. I appreciate everyone's support and the kind words and you know, I'll be around, but I'm doing some other, some other things for a while. So thank you, Scott. Thank you, Benny. And thank you to the audience. Well, you know, I can't thank Jimmy enough. I mean, he really is the reason this podcast exists. You know, it's his baby and then he kind of gave me half of the baby and then it became our baby. And I wouldn't be here if it wasn't, you know, Jimmy was the genesis of all this. And I like, like he said, he he's not just my podcasting partner. He's he's probably my best friend and someone I consider a family. So I mean, we're still gonna, you know, be communicating and in contact and seeing each other. He's still gonna have, Jimmy's still gonna have a lot of input. Be a kind of like a console, like he's gonna be like the Tony Accardo of the of the Chicago outfit in his later days, where he's kind of heard, but not necessarily seen. But I'm hoping that this is this is a shorter term than longer term. I mean, only time will tell. Jimmy can come back at a full time basis anytime he wants. But we'll be holding the fort down. We're still going to be, you know, ramping up content. I'm going to be trying to give you more quick hitters, the shorter episodes to fill out the week and then still give you the one long form episode a week, probably going to be a little bit more interview based without a co host for these kind of episodes where we can go back and forth. So I'm thinking that most of the stuff like this where we're talking and dissecting and analyzing will be in the quick hitters. And then the 60 to 90 minute pod that we put out every week will just be really in depth interviews with the type of people that you guys want. And and I'm doing my best to deliver, you know, fresh, fresh subjects and fresh guests, not people that you've seen. And I'll do respect to all the other great content platforms there are. But I kind of want to be the guy that's giving you the first look at somebody before they make their way through the, you know, the circuit, if you will. So I got a couple people lined up that I think you're going to be really excited about between now and the end of the year, guys that have never done interviews before, some law enforcement, some actual wise guys, or X wise guys. So, you know, keep an eye out for that. And I just, I can't thank Jim enough. I love you, man. And I'll really miss us chopping it up together. Hopefully we can do it again together. Like I said, sooner than later. But, you know, this is, this is just life. And you got to roll with the punches. And all I can do is tip my hat to the doctor and tell him how much, how much I love him and how much I'll miss him and how integral he was to this entire brand that we're still going to be building. And hopefully 10 years from now, we can sit sit back with a with some some drinks and be doing the podcast with a lot more bells and whistles and talk. I remember that time 10 years ago, where you had to take a year off or six months off. But that would be great. Well, thanks again, thanks for the kind words. And we'll be back or at least Scott and Betty will be back next week. So I'm Jimmy Bucilato. And I'm Scott Bernstein, OGPod out.