02x05 - The Mob: The Addict Who Took Down the Mafia

[bunniefuu]

♫ ♫

MAN: Yo, what's going on?

MAN: As you can see

MAN: Me and my crew have this,

we compress it,

we cut it and we distribute

it to other vendors.

MAN: We're breaking it down,

use like baking soda,

cutting it up and everything.

It'll value up to more,

like double or triple,

depends how you cut it.

But you can't (bleep) it up.

MAN: Would you

like to try some?

CAMERAMAN: I'm okay thank you.

MAN 2: Make sure you

cover my face up.

CAMERAMAN: Yep,

I'm not filming ya.

MAN: Okay, okay relax.

Just finish with him so we

can get him out of here.

MAN: Well, I knew the

Mafia were in this game,

but I don't know

if they still are.

Okay, that's it, too much.

You can cut it.

MAN: Yes, that's enough.

REPORTER: Shake this

square world and blast

off for kicksville.

NIXON: America's public enemy

number one is drug abuse.

NANCY: Just say no.

MAN: The Mafia is a major

player in the international

drug underworld.

MAN 2: At the end of the day,

it's all about the dollar,

it's all about the dollar.

REAGAN: American people

want the mob and its associates

brought to justice and

their power broken.

HARRIS: There's now an

understanding that the w*r on

drugs was an abject failure.

REPORTER: You have to

stop and ask yourself,

how did we get here?

Brought to you by Sailor420

!!! Hope you enjoy the film !!!

(overlapping chatter)

WILLIAMS: Just so we

all agree here,

it's never good

to glorify a mobster but if

you're a fan of the genre,

it's okay to love Goodfellas.

REPORTER 2: Henry Hill is not

nearly as handsome as actor

Ray Liotta who played Hill in

the film Goodfellas.

CREW: We're rolling cameras.

RICK: My name is Rick Leahy.

I was the first FBI Agent

that operated Henry Hill.

I don't think anybody could

have predicted the role

Henry would ultimately play,

and I don't just mean

in the movie Goodfellas.

ED: Henry Hill became this

infamous character, you know,

in organized crime lore.

Henry was one of

those that really made

cooperating a thing.

RICK: Henry sent over

50 people to prison.

(sirens)

KAREN: It's been

40 years since I've,

since I've spoken about this.

You know, I was very young,

just 18, going on 19,

when I met him.

I'm Karen Hill and I was

the wife of Henry Hill.

He did take me to

like the Copacabana.

You know we'd get to

see the shows there.

We met Peggy Lee,

Sammy Davis Jr,

one of my favorites,

the Supremes.

It was like something

from a movie, I think.

He was just happy-go-lucky,

and I was raised

a little stricter and

it was like sunshine,

you know, he was like sunshine.

I laughed a lot.

We got married in 1965.

I didn't know who

Paul Vario was.

I really didn't know until

after we were married

and who these people were.

GINA: My dad from the time

I can remember, he never

called me by my first name,

he always called me Princess.

My name is Gina Hill and

I'm Henry Hill's daughter.

My father had a terrible

time paying attention in

school and it's ultimately

what led him to the cab stand.

Uncle Pauly ran

the cab stand and it was

basically the headquarters

for all their operations,

legal and ill*gal.

Pauly was like a

dad to my father.

GINA: There's five families,

five mafia

families from New York.

Uncle Pauly was a Capo

and the Lucchese family.

My father could not

be a made man because of

he wasn't 100% Sicilian,

but it didn't matter.

Uncle Pauly gave him

basically the key to the city,

as they say in the mob world.

It gave him the respect and

it gave him the protection

that my father would need to

continue criminal

activities going forward.

Everything from gambling,

prostitution, arson,

you name it, they were doing it.

Except drugs.

My Uncle Pauly was very

against drug dealing.

RICK: Mafia rules were

don't get engaged in

narcotics trafficking.

They were very concerned

about somebody being prosecuted

under the narcotics laws and

subsequently turning informant.

RICK: I was in

the Queen's office.

We're very, very

close to Kennedy Airport

and a significant portion

of the air traffic into

Kennedy is freight.

BOB: (over TV)

Billions of dollars' worth of

merchandise from all over the

planet passes through

Kennedy Airport's cargo area.

RICK: If you were

someone who was inclined

to be a truck hijacker,

you had literally

just wandered into

the enchanted forest.

Well, Jimmy Burke was very

big in truck hijackings.

GINA: I really

loved Uncle Jimmy.

I loved him so much.

KAREN: He was a

smiling Irishman.

He loved the song, Danny Boy.

That's what we'd put

on and he loved it.

GINA: Every one of

my dad's friends had

a great side to them,

just like my dad.

ED: Jimmy Burke, Henry Hill,

were part of that crew.

And that crew generates

money, illicitly.

RICK: These guys

had their fingers pretty

deeply into the airport.

They had been dealing with

truck hijackings for years.

RICK: And then they'd

kick up the chain a

certain percentage to the Capo,

Paul Vario, and

that's how it works.

GINA: Things start looking

up and my dad was able to

own the restaurant-bar and

we lived in a luxury

apartment building in Queens.

And it was in that

same luxury apartment that my

mother told me that daddy has

to go away for a while.

KAREN: He went into

Lewisburg not on drugs.

He didn't even think about

that, mainly because Pauly

didn't want him to do it,

so he thought that

that was a closed door.

GINA: Everybody's on their

own when the breadwinner

goes away, so to speak.

As far as any help from

my father's associate,

an occasional handout

from Uncle Pauly.

No consistent

help financially.

GINA: My father realized

how much money he could make

dealing heroin through his

associate that he

met in Lewisburg.

When he came home,

the risk versus the reward,

I guess he saw it as worth

it at that point in time.

ED: Pauly Vario didn't

want drugs in his crew.

And Henry now was always

in a drug induced stupor.

Jimmy Burke

became very nervous.

RICK: Jimmy Burke was not a

man to be pushed particularly.

After getting the

green light to conduct

the Lufthansa robbery.

REPORTER: The biggest robbery

in our country's history and

it happened right

here in New York.

ANTHONY:

Federal agents are calling

it the largest cash robbery

in the nation's history.

ED: That day,

December 11th, 1978,

a regular day for me.

I report to the office but

as soon as I got there,

we were being dispatched to the

Lufthansa cargo building

and that's when we started

to realize that there was an

extensive robbery,

the Lufthansa Robbery.

REPORTER:

Six-million-dollar robbery.

A band of robbers,

six and perhaps seven

men wearing ski masks,

drove around to

the loading dock.

The robbers p*stol-whipped

one guard and handcuffed

nine others before escaping

in a black van.

They took 30

shipments of gold,

pearls, jewelry and checks.

RICK: This was a big one.

We knew who had done it.

What we couldn't

do was prove it.

REPORTER: So far, the

Lufthansa Robbery seems like

the almost perfect crime,

except there could be

one important weak link.

RICK: The van that was

used was turned over

to Stacks Edwards.

Stacks' job was to

take that van to a facility

in New Jersey where

it would be crushed.

Stacks that evening

came up with another plan;

see a girlfriend,

celebrate the success of

the robbery and he parked

in a no-parking zone.

REPORTER: Police have

recovered the getaway van.

A Brooklyn traffic cop

on routine patrol spotted

it abandoned on a street

in East Flatbush.

RICK: Within the matter of

about 48 hours, Stacks took

about four or five b*ll*ts

into the back of his head,

and they found his

body the next morning.

That was the first one.

GINA: I didn't hear any

conversation about Stacks,

other than he disappeared,

no one's heard from Stacks.

ED: We were FBI Agents

and there is no other

way to investigate this

but to interview people.

But every time we'd

go out to interview someone,

they would get m*rder*d

or hit within days.

REPORTER: Today,

another man turned up dead

in the trunk of a car,

the sixth victim in

less than a week.

Police found the bodies of

two known hoods down a quiet

street corner in Brooklyn.

There's a lot of speculation

they may have been k*lled

because they knew too much

about that big Lufthansa

Robbery at Kennedy Airport.

RICK: A large number of

the players that we knew

were involved in it,

ended up very dead.

So there weren't anybody that

we could turn as a source.

ED: They would appear in

some gruesome locations and

manner in which they died.

REPORTER: Nassau County

businesswoman has been missing

for the past four days.

Detectives searching for

the woman suspect foul play.

ED: Her name was

Theresa Ferrara.

She wasn't physically

involved in the crime,

but she happened to

have been told about some

of the details of the

Lufthansa Robbery.

ED: Her legs, her arms,

her head, her breasts were cut

off and she was recovered in the

Hudson River

somewhere in New York,

and we were able

to identify her through an

appendix scar that she had.

GINA: Marty Krugman

was the big one.

I overheard my mom and my

dad fighting terribly over

what happened to Marty.

I'm listening to this

like around the corner,

you know, eavesdropping.

All I heard was,

"Karen, I don't (bleep) know,

he's probably cut up into

a million pieces by now."

KAREN: He begged for

Marty Krugman's life.

He said, "Jimmy, what is he

gonna do? He was harmless."

ED: Anybody who had

any information about

the robbery was k*lled

by Jimmy Burke.

Marty brought the scheme

to rob Lufthansa to Henry.

Henry of course brings

it to Jimmy Burke who

actually commits it.

Henry was the linchpin.

RICK: Henry was a

very valuable witness.

So our concern was somebody

was gonna get to him and

there would go our prime

witness in a case that we're

having a very difficult time

finding prime witnesses,

'cause we were pulling

too many of them out of

the trunks of their cars.

GINA: The reality of his

friends disappearing and

doing recreational drugs,

it all came together

like a perfect storm.

It was clearly frying

his brain and affecting

his decision making.

KAREN: He made his

connections out of state.

I saw cocaine and some heroin,

pills, people coming in

and out, and I'd say to him,

"what are you doing?"

GINA: It was just

a hot mess, as they say,

and I don't think he could

see his way out of it.

ROBERT: All kinds of narcotics

come through Kennedy Airport.

Seizures have been

primarily coke and heroin

for a number of years now.

ROBERT: We try to stay one

step ahead of the smugglers

and we do a pretty good of it.

So, if you're thinking

about coming to Kennedy

Airport with narcotics,

you'd better be well prepared.

ROBERT: How long do you think

you're gonna be here sir?

MAN: Only two weeks.

ROBERT: Any food?

MAN: No, no, no.

ROBERT: And what's this?

We're gonna open it

up and hopefully for

you it's just fruit.

Does that look like

fruit salad to you?

This is the can that

we started to open

out at the exam table.

This is a positive

test for cocaine.

It's about five kilos.

We're looking at a retail

value probably over $500,00

by the time it's all

chopped up and sold.

GEORGE: Long Island has

always tried to avoid the

problems of New York City.

It's very suburban,

lots of trees, parks.

When I first started

in the narcotics squad,

the drug use really

started to increase.

REPORTER: Narcotics of

all kinds may be coming

in through Long Island.

JERRY: There was a

local level drug dealer,

that he didn't

drive a fancy car,

he didn't live in a fancy home,

so he was pretty much

under the radar so to speak.

GEORGE: Unbeknownst to us,

the FBI was running

a case on him and so

the FBI didn't know

we were running one,

we didn't know the

FBI was running one.

GEORGE: That's as

good as I can do it.

JERRY: We used

every resource we had;

electronic surveillance,

aerial surveillance

with helicopters,

static surveillance.

DETECTIVE: (over speaker)

Detective Aylward, shield numbe

469, conversation between

Karen Hill and Henry Hill.

KAREN: (over phone) Hello.

HENRY: (over phone) Yeah.

KAREN: (over phone) Hi, hold on

KAREN: You know a

neighbor, he said,

"I saw people going through

your garbage and then

they took bags of it away."

GINA: And I went to

him and I said,

"daddy, there's guys filming

the house, guys in suits."

He just looked

at me and he says,

"yeah I know and they're

also listening to the phones."

KAREN: If I go to make

a phone call, you know,

they're just talking

to one another.

KAREN: I said,

"excuse me I'd like

to make a phone call."

And I heard click,

and of course I put the

phone down and I picked it up,

there was a dial tone.

JERRY: They had arrest

warrants and they also had

search warrants for his

residence and his,

you know, stash house.

And it was time to shut it

down and make the arrests.

GEORGE: I was assigned with

my fellow detective Richie Hip,

to sit on Henry's house,

and we're all set

up and Richie leans

over to me and says,

"that's Henry,

coming out of the house.

Take him down."

GINA: The next thing I knew,

I saw all these lights,

and strange men are

ordering my mother around.

From that moment, that was

the beginning of the end.

GEORGE: We put the cuffs

on him and we all headed

back to narcotics.

He's really being

defiant, he's saying,

"you got nothing on me,"

and he's being a real wise guy.

And I walked over to the

evidence box and inside

there was a big sifter,

they used it to cut the drugs,

and I took that sifter out

and I walked over to him and I

bopped him on the top

of the head with it and

the powder came all over

his head and shoulders and says,

"now we got plenty on you."

And all of a sudde, his

whole complexion changed,

he just said, "you got me."

Later on that evening,

the FBI came to Police

Headquarters to interview

Henry without our knowledge.

RICK: I was in bed

when the phone rang.

It's the middle of the night.

We gotta drive over to the

Hempstead County Prison,

Henry's been arrested.

I was like, "whoa."

So we headed over

to the Hempstead County

lockup and there was

Henry, bouncing all over

the wall and ceilings.

He's going a mile a minute,

he's speaking so quickly,

I'm trying to take notes,

it was like trying to

get a drink of water

from a fire hose,

and all he kept screaming,

and he would

literally scream it,

"Burke is going

to blanking k*ll me.

Burke is gonna k*ll me."

Henry knew he was

a dead man walking.

He was headed

for a dirt nap.

He was desperate to get out.

REPORTER: Organized criminals

punished treason by death.

The witnesses who do testify

against them know they

are marked for execution.

For them, the

Federal Government

has a unique program.

ED: We had to keep Henry

safe and also his family safe,

because he was a

target of Jimmy Burke.

GINA: My father said,

"Princess, if it

meant getting to me,

he would have stuffed

you and your brother

into a refrigerator."

KAREN: And that was it.

I went on the program.

RIVERA: They can't

hurt you, because once

you testify against them,

you're going to become

invisible, disappear,

go underground.

KAREN: Turning over birth

certificates, driver's license,

being told I don't exist,

broke my heart.

ED: Within days, two days,

Henry, he had already signed

his cooperation agreement,

to fully cooperate

on all matters.

MCDONALD: We were having

Henry come to my office every

day and we were debriefing him

about the Lufthansa Robbery.

I'm Edward McDonald,

I was the attorney in

charge of the Federal

Organized Crime Strike Force

in Brooklyn.

And, of course Henry said,

"well yeah, of course Jimmy

was involved in the whole thing,

he planned the whole robbery

and Vario knew all about it."

"Alright, well what

corroboration do

you have for that Henry?"

"Well, I don't have any

corroboration for that."

Because Burke had cleverly

gone out and ex*cuted

many of the people who

made him vulnerable.

I figured out pretty quickly

that we were not gonna

be able to make a case on

Burke for the Lufthansa robbery.

MCDONALD: His memory,

off the top of his head,

wasn't so good.

He had a significant narcotics

problem by the time we began

to deal with him in mid-1980.

He started using coke and

he was doing Quaaludes.

ED: You could tell when

he was on something.

This guy couldn't

concentrate on a topic.

He knows enough to

go down a road but

doesn't know the details.

I asked him,

"Henry, what were you

doing with Jimmy Burke and

Paul Vario to put

food on your table,

in other words, what crimes

were you committing?"

And he said, "oh nah,

I wasn't committing any crimes,

I was just fixing

some basketball games."

And I said,

"you were doing what?"

He said, "I was fixing games."

And I said, "Henry, that's

against the law, alright."

We brought him into

McDonald's office and

we sat in front of him,

I says, "Henry, tell

Ed what you told me."

MCDONALD: And Henry looked

at me and said, "oh yeah,

in them days we was

fixing college basketball

games up in Boston."

I said, "you were fixing

college basketball games?

What team?"

I said, "could it have been BC,

could it have

been Boston College?"

ED: A light lights up in

Henry's head and says,

"yeah, yeah, it

was Boston College."

MCDONALD: And I said,

"alright, the joke is over."

And Henry says,

"what are you

talking about, what joke?"

I said, "I went

to Boston College,

I played basketball

in the Freshman team there

when I was in college."

And he says, "oh (bleep),"

he says,

"you've gotta be kidding me."

So then I said,

"well what about Jimmy,

was Jimmy involved."

He said, "I didn't do

anything without Jimmy,

I had to clear everything

with Jimmy Burke."

(cheering)

REPORTER: Trouble

at Boston College.

The Federal Organized Crime

Strike Force is investigating

accusations that some members

of that team accepted

money from gamblers to

alter the outcome of games.

GINA: I wasn't in

love with Omaha, but I

didn't hate it either.

MCDONALD: Henry and

his family get moved

to Nebraska, you know,

Henry told me about

what the experience was,

it was they were

fishes out of water and

he was having a

tough time fitting in,

and at the same time

he was also coming back

constantly to be debriefed

by us and by the agents.

KAREN: A neighbor said to me,

"what does your husband do?

You know because he's

not there, you know,

so he doesn't have

a job like locally."

I said, "he works

for the government."

GINA: When my father went

back to New York to testify,

Jimmy said to my father,

pointing right at him,

"I bet that (bleep)

is in the Midwest.

I know that (bleep)

is in the Midwest."

MCDONALD: Henry was going to

bars in Omaha and getting drunk.

Once he got drunk,

he would start

telling people he was a

big-time gangster from

New York and that he might

even say he was in the

witness protection program,

involved in all

these big cases.

GINA: My mother said,

"Uncle Jimmy and Uncle

Pauly know where we are."

And we were whisked away like

the next day, the next morning.

GINA:

I fell in love with Kentucky

immediately, immediately.

I knew enough to know

that that was horse country,

plus Dukes of Hazard

was one of my favorite

television programs at the time.

My dad had these big

trials coming up, you know,

you've gotta hold up

your end of the bargain.

This is it now.

REPORTER: Prosecutors first

learned of the point cheating

scheme from Henry Hill,

an informant with a

long criminal record.

REPORTER 2: A New York grand

jury will be hearing Hill's

story in the coming weeks.

ED: The courtroom was packed.

It was a major event.

And Henry, he dreaded

sitting before Jimmy Burke

and testifying against him.

Absolutely dreaded it.

MCDONALD:

Let's put it this way,

he was a terrible witness.

ED: He was awful, particularly

after the first day.

He would automatically

go into this thug

impression, you know,

and that's not what we wanted.

MCDONALD: Burke's lawyer was

Mike Quero who had represented

Henry about eight years earlier.

He knew Mike Quero for years.

He'd yell at him and

Quero would yell back, and

he'd be fighting with him.

ED: We almost k*lled him

because he was just so bad,

he just came off

so bad as a witness.

MCDONALD: Our challenge was to

corroborate what Henry said.

Well, we got the

telephone numbers of all

the significant players and

we got their telephone records.

We had an hour or two or

three before significant

Boston College games,

a flurry of phone calls.

ED: And all these

phone calls were either

going from Jimmy Burke's home

out to members of

this conspiracy,

or phone calls going in.

Henry, he was the connection

between the basketball players

and the organized crime.

MCDONALD: There was

no way that Jimmy Burke

could distance himself

from Henry Hill.

They had to say that

Henry was over at the house

and Henry was the one who was

making the phone calls.

Well, the jury's saying,

"well what's he doing

hanging around Jimmy Burke's

house using his phone?"

ED: And in the end, that's

the only piece of evidence

besides Henry's testimony that

convicted Jimmy Burke

on Boston College,

and for which he got

20 years imprisonment for that.

So, we didn't get him

on Lufthansa, but we got

him on Boston College.

BILL: The man suspected

of masterminding the $5.8

million Lufthansa Robbery

is behind bars tonight.

James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke.

MCDONALD: Jimmy Burke was an

incredibly powerful organized

crime figure in New York in

the late 1970s and that was

a significant moment for us.

ED: So Henry, he

became a very infamous

cooperator for the FBI.

Agents who had their own

cases would rotate in and out

to ask Henry specific questions.

Everybody wanted to

get a hold of him because

he had been involved in

organized crime all his life.

RICK: Henry could be

the tip of the screwdriver

used to pry the lid off all

of these events all over

the United States.

RICK: Henry was probably doing

this for four or five years,

testifying in trials.

REPORTER: Henry Hill

broke the code of honor

to burn many a mobster.

HENRY: You live inside

a code all your life and

then you break that code,

you make that decision,

you know, for self-survival.

GINA: He basically said,

you know, it was him or them.

You know, you have

to save yourself.

MCDONALD: Paul Vario

was an extremely,

extremely powerful

member of the family,

the Lucchese Family.

He was probably the biggest

earner in the family.

This is the focus of our

attention, ultimately,

to get to Paul Vario.

KAREN:

Redmond, Redmond Washington,

was beautiful.

We had a house, when

you looked at it from the

front it looked like a ranch.

I was happy, for a moment.

GINA: There was always

the idea danger could

still be looming,

if you got too comfortable

or too trusting in the fact

that we were totally safe.

My father said,

"Princess, you don't see them,

I know they're there, you know,

Uncle Pauly and

the Vario crew."

KAREN: It was terrible.

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't want to get k*lled.

I didn't want my children hurt.

But he wasn't

giving up the drugs.

All Ed McDonald wanted

was Henry and what

he needed from him,

and we were just excess

baggage, that's how I felt.

MCDONALD: I remember his wife

calling me and saying,

"is there something you

can do, he's out of control."

I said, "look, I mean I

feel for you but there's

not much I can do.

We're not social workers,

we're prosecutors."

This is a significant case.

We could potentially

get Paul Vario.

RICK: Nobody would have ever

put a wire on Henry and said,

"hey, why don't you stop by

and strike up a conversation

with Paul Vario."

Henry would have left that

meeting in four separate boxes.

Henry became a

very credible witness,

but his value

was of a historical nature.

GINA: My father had

such a sense of loyalty

to Uncle Pauly and my

Uncle Pauly really

valued that from my dad.

He really felt that dad

was like a trusted son.

ED: He had falsified records

for Henry Hill to be given

a job so he can get parole.

He had no job, the records

were false, but Vario

produced all of that.

He was indicted for

what we call "1001",

which is lying to the FBI.

It was a simple prosecution.

Henry testified in that case.

Paul Vario, he

received five years.

KAREN: He was guilt ridden.

He was guilt

ridden about Pauly.

20 years of being the people

that were part of our lives.

I don't think he could

live with himself.

GINA: It hurt my

father to have to do

that to Pauly, it did.

And I think it had a lot

to do with his falling deeper

down that rabbit hole of drug

addiction and alcoholism.

Yes, I do.

I never said, "dad,

you're using heroin,"

but my own

father is in the driveway

passed out with track marks

in his arms and I said,

"I don't care who kills you,

'cause you're dead to me."

And of course I didn't

mean that but I was so

angry with him.

KAREN: You know I truly

believe that he surfaced

because he didn't care

if he lived or died.

HENRY: Howard,

I am so miserable.

STERN: Really?

HENRY: Yeah.

STERN: There's no

joy in your life?

HENRY: No joy in my life.

STERN: Listen to me.

HENRY: Do you want to

know something Howard?

STERN: You're in

a lot of pain.

HENRY: I'm a scumbag.

I want to get high

constantly, okay.

JERRY: He wasn't swathe,

he wasn't cunning,

he wasn't even a good

drug dealer, you know.

But the whole fiasco of

Henry Hill going down and

flipping it was historic,

that had never

happened before.

MCDONALD:

Many Mafia guys, significant

Mafia guys began to turn,

and it became a lot easier

for prosecutors to bring

significant prosecutions

against Mafia figures.

RICK: Guys like Henry deciding

to give up everything he knows

to save his life

and he ended up putting

50 people in jail to do it.

HENRY: Being part of that life,

being part of the Mafia was

the worst thing I ever did.

I wasn't a good father,

you know, a good husband.

I anaesthetized myself

with alcohol, with drugs,

constantly, you know,

to live with myself.

WILLIAMS: After a troubled life,

Henry Hill is dead

at the age of 69.

GINA: As his daughter,

I am just so grateful he

died of natural causes.

I mean how many people get

to do that in his situation?

Not too many.