It was just the kind of place Jimmy has used in the past for hits. The place was controlled by one of the crew. It had a back entrance, and there was a parking area in the rear where you could take out a body bag in a rug without anyone seeing. Forget it. If Jimmy thought I was meeting him in that place on Wednesday he was nuts.
Instead, I showed up at Jimmy’s sweatshop on Liberty Avenue on Monday. I had been out all morning trying to raise money. In the afternoon I had Karen drive me over to his shop. While I waited in a bar across the street, she went inside and told him I wanted to see him.
He came right over with Karen. I could see that he was nervous and surprised. He wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Then he said if he gave me the name and address of Bobby Germaine’s kid in Florida, would I go down there with Anthony Stabile and whack him. This was crazy, but I wasn’t going to argue. Jimmy had never asked me to do anything like that before. And he’d never asked me to do something like that in front of Karen. Never.
I went along with him, but I reminded him that the kid was Germaine’s son. I mean we were going to whack the guy’s kid. Jimmy shook his head and said it was okay. He said that one of the lawyers had gone to see Germaine in the can and had told him that his kid was the informant and that Germaine had told the lawyer to “hit the rat.” This was where we were. We were putting hits on our own kids.
Meanwhile Jimmy’s at the bar waving around the piece of paper with the kid’s alias and address on it. He wants me to go to Florida and whack the kid with Stabile. But I know that Stabile and Sepe were the two the feds had mentioned who were pushing Jimmy to whack me. If I go to Florida with Stabile, I know I’m not coming back.
I dropped Karen at the house and went out looking for more money. I gave her the gun that I had been sleeping with ever since I got out on bail. I had a small rented car that could not be traced to me, and I even got her a rental so that we wouldn’t be driving around in cars that were known. The Nassau DA had confiscated my Volvo.
My plan was to stay on the street as long as I could and to make as much money as I could. I felt I was pretty safe because Jimmy was expecting me to go to Florida. But my plan didn’t work. When I pulled up to the house later that afternoon I was surrounded by eight agents. They had found out I was loose. McDonald wasn’t taking any chances. They arrested me as a material witness in Lufthansa. I was going to cut a deal or I was going to sink.
Twenty-two
Karen: As soon as they picked him up, the kids and I went to the FBI office in Queens. We had FBI men and federal marshals all around us. My mother, who was going crazy by now, came along. I went into Ed McDonald’s office, and he said that we all had to go into the witness program. He explained that we were all in danger. Henry. Me. The kids. He said that the only chance we had was for Henry to cooperate. We had to start a new life. I asked, what if I let Henry go into the witness program and the kids and I stayed at home? McDonald said we would still be in danger, because they might try to get to Henry through me and the kids.
McDonald made it plain. He had federal marshals with him. They all explained. They said that when Henry appeared in court, the people he was testifying against would be looking for us. Henry was the only thing that stood between those people being free and spending the rest of their lives in jail. If they thought my parents or my sisters knew where we were, their lives wouldn’t be worth two cents. They would make them tell where we were, and then we would be killed.
Then McDonald started his little blackmail. He said that there was enough evidence to indict me in the narcotics case. He said that we would all be on trial, and he asked what I thought the effect of that might have on the kids.
I was pretty much in a daze, but when I walked out of his office I knew I was going into the program. Henry had told McDonald he would cooperate if I agreed to go into the program with him. He said he wasn’t going in alone.
I had no choice. They’re going to prosecute my husband and me. “How could you look after the kids?” McDonald asked me. They made it impossible for me to make any other decision.
The minute I walked out of McDonald’s office Henry grabbed me and said I had to stay with him. He didn’t want to go into the program alone. He wasn’t going to go without me.
My mother had been waiting outside McDonald’s office with the kids. She was very upset. She wanted Henry to go into the program alone. I said what other choice did I have if my life was in jeopardy? They could kidnap me and the kids just to get to Henry. She started yelling about Henry, how he had never been any good, how he had brought all this upon us.
McDonald had said that they would pack me and the kids right then. They’d take me home under guard and pack me. We would be gone. It meant leaving everything immediately. My mother. My father. My sisters. I couldn’t believe how fast it was all happening. We wouldn’t be able to even contact them again, ever. It was like a death.
My mother and I and the kids were driven home by the marshals. When we got home there were marshals inside the house and out. They had four cars. They had shotguns and rifles. I had to pack enough stuff for two or three weeks or until they could move us into another place. My father and sisters were waiting at the house. They all helped me pack. We were all packing and crying. When they were not looking I whispered to my mother that she should give us some time. We’d get in touch. My father was very good. He held together.
The kids were excited. All they knew was that we were going away. They thought of it all like a vacation. I said that it was more than that. We had to go away so that some people who wanted to hurt us couldn’t get to us. I said that they could not call any of their friends and they couldn’t go back to school and get their books or sneakers or gym clothes.
The kids had read the papers. They knew about all the people who had been killed. There were stories every week about Jimmy and Paulie. They knew about Stacks and Marty Krugman. They knew Tommy had disappeared. They could see that everything we had was falling apart. Remember, there had been about a year of craziness between Lufthansa and their father’s arrest.
I made up a long list of things for my mother to do. There was still stuff at the dry cleaner’s. I had bills to pay. My mother cleaned out the refrigerator. There were pictures of a party we’d had. When my mother called about the pictures, the word was out that Henry had turned, and the photographer, who was a friend of Raymond Montemurro’s, didn’t want to give her the pictures. She said if he didn’t give her the pictures she’d send over the marshals. He said okay, but when she went to pick them up he threw them at her. He wouldn’t even take the money.
We had packed up everything in large black garbage bags. The kids and I were driven by marshals. There were four or five marshal cars all around us. They took us to a motel in Riverhead. It was a very nice, clean place. They moved us every couple of days. They always had the reservations made and we went right to our rooms. The marshal just gave us the keys, but they always stayed outside the door. They stood around with walkie-talkies and rifles in slings under their raincoats.
We’d stay as far away as Connecticut or Montauk. In the morning they would drive us all to the FBI headquarters in Queens or to McDonald’s Strike Force offices in Brooklyn. I would sit around doing needlepoint, and the kids would play or read, and Henry would sit inside talking to the investigators.
We were just hanging around while the Marshal Service recreated us as different people. The paperwork took time. They asked us if we had any choices for our new names. They had shredded everything about our past. It was an amazing moment, sitting there in one of the Strike Force corridors with the kids, trying to dream up new names.
We got new Social Security numbers, and the kids got new identifications for school. The marshals explained that the kids would keep their grade records but that the transcripts submitted to the new school under our new name would be blank where the previous school was asked for. Also, when the girls registered in their new school, a marshal would go to the principal and exp
lain that they were part of a family involved with government security. They would make it sound like their daddy was a government master spy or something very important.
The marshals were very nice. They were very good with the kids. They talked to them and played cards with them and kidded around with Ruth. They treated everyone with great respect. They were always gentlemen. The way they did it helped enormously.
After a couple of weeks I went back to the house in Rockville Centre. There were marshals all over the place. They had arranged for movers. There were trucks waiting and so were my parents. I still didn’t feel as though I was leaving them behind forever.
But my family, and mostly my mother, had always been telling me what to do. All my life her nudging had driven me crazy. She was one of those smothering people. She did it out of love, but she smothered you anyway. My mother is one of those people who has got to be in control of everything twenty-four hours a day. I had this little notion in the back of my mind that maybe if we had a new life and new names and new everything it wouldn’t be too bad. I would be really independent for the first time in my life. If Henry and I were to go away and get new names and new identities, I’d be able to breathe and take over my own life.
I thought a lot of things might change. There’d be no more Jimmys and no more drugs and no more Robins. Our lives would have to be different. Henry would live normally for the first time in his life. He’d be home at night. We would have regular friends. It could be like wiping everything clean.
On May 27, 1980, Henry Hill signed an agreement with the United States Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force (Eastern District of New York) that read:
* * *
This will serve to confirm the agreement reached between Henry Hill and the Organized Crime Strike Force for the Eastern District of New York.
This office is conducting an investigation of possible illegal activities on the part of James Burke, Angelo Sepe and others in connection with the theft of several million dollars in cash and jewelry from the Lufthansa Cargo Building at John F. Kennedy Airport. You have agreed to inform officials of the Department of Justice of everything you know concerning the above-mentioned crimes and any other criminal activity in which James Burke and Angelo Sepe have participated. In addition, you have agreed to testify, if called, before all federal grand and petit juries hearing these matters.
It is understood that no information or testimony given by you (both before and after the making of this agreement), or evidence derived from information or testimony given by you will be used against you in any criminal proceeding other than as indicated below. As you know, at the present time, you are under investigation for your involvement in the robbery at the Lufthansa Cargo Building. It is understood that this office will forgo any prosecution of you which could arise out of this matter in light of your cooperation in these matters. In the event that any other law enforcement authorities contemplate prosecuting you in connection with your involvement in the Lufthansa robbery we will recommend they not do so. In addition, it is understood that this office will forgo any federal prosecution of you which could arise out of a narcotics investigation presently being conducted by the Nassau County District Attorney’s Office and in connection with which you were arrested.
It is understood that in the event that you are prosecuted by any other law enforcement authorities in connection with any violation of the law, this office will bring to the attention of the prosecuting authorities the cooperation which you furnished in connection with this agreement.
It is further understood that this office will seek to place you in the Federal Witness Protection Program along with your wife and children and any other associates who become in need of protection as a result of your cooperation with this office.
This understanding is predicated upon your complete cooperation with the Government including the immediate, full and truthful disclosure of all information in your possession which is relevant to these matters. This agreement will not prevent the Government from prosecuting you for perjury should it be discovered that you have given false testimony in connection with these matters. In addition, in the event that you do not fully comply with all the other terms of this understanding (immediate, full and truthful disclosure, testimony, etc.), this agreement will be nullified. Should this occur, the Government will be free to prosecute you with regard to any and all violations of the federal criminal law in which you may have participated, and to use against you any and all statements made by you and testimony you have given prior and subsequent to the date of agreement.
* * *
HENRY: The hardest thing for me was leaving the life I was running away from. Even at the end, with all the threats I was getting and all the time I was facing behind the wall, I still loved the life.
We walked in a room and the place stopped. Everyone knew who we were, and we were treated like movie stars with muscle. We had it all and it was all free. Truckloads of swag. Fur coats, televisions, clothes—all for the asking. We used Jimmy’s hijack drops like department stores. Our wives, mothers, kids, everybody rode along. I had paper bags filled with jewelry stashed in the kitchen and a sugar bowl full of coke next to the bed. Anything I wanted was only a phone call away. Free rented cars under phony names and the keys to a dozen hideout apartments we shared. I would bet thirty and forty grand over a weekend and then either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies. It didn’t matter. When I was broke I just went out and robbed some more.
We ran everything. We paid the lawyers. We paid the cops. Everybody had their hands out. We walked out laughing. We had the best of everything. In Vegas and Atlantic City somebody always knew someone. People would come over and offer us shows, dinners, suites.
And now all that is over, and that’s the hardest part. Today everything is very different. No more action. I have to wait around like everyone else. I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.
Epilogue
When Henry Hill joined the Federal Witness Program he became one of forty-four hundred other accused criminals who chose to testify against their former associates and disappear rather than stand trial. As far as Henry Hill was concerned, entering the Justice Department’s $25-million-a-year program was the only option he had.
Ed McDonald soon realized that Henry Hill had casually committed so many crimes himself that he sometimes failed to recognize that he had even done so. One day, for example, while being asked about the Lufthansa robbery, Henry said he had been in Boston. It was the third or fourth time he had mentioned Boston, so McDonald finally asked what Henry was doing there. Henry answered matter-of-factly that he had been bribing Boston College basketball players in a point-shaving scheme at the time and had had to keep everyone in line. “I played for the Boston College freshman team,” said McDonald. “I had been to a few of the games Henry had fixed. It was my school. I almost went across the table at him, but then I realized that to guys like Hill it was just a part of doing business. To Henry shaving points on college basketball wasn’t even illegal. He had never even thought to mention it. I came to realize Henry didn’t have too much school spirit. He had never rooted for anything outside of a point spread in his life.”
It is safe to say that the Federal Witness Program got its money’s worth out of Henry Hill. He took the stand and testified with such detached authenticity—he barely looked at the defendants against whom he appeared—that juries came back with one conviction after another. His testimony helped get Paul Mazzei seven years on drug charges, and his testimony in the basketball point-shaving case, which McDonald insisted upon prosecuting himself, got the twenty-six-year-old Rick Kuhn ten years, the stiffest sentence ever received by a college player convicted of fixing basketball scores. Hill’s co-fixer, Tony Perla, was sentenced to ten years and Perla’s brother Rocco to four. Rich Perry, one of the mob bookies known as “the fixer,” pleaded guilty to a gambling conspiracy when he realized Henry
would testify against him, and got away with a one-year sentence. Henry helped federal marshals track down and recapture Bill Arico, the suspected international hit man. Philip Basile, the Long Island disco owner, was sentenced to five years’ probation and a $250,000 fine for arranging the no-show job Hill used to get early parole.
Henry even went on tour. Surrounded by marshals and accompanied by Jerry D. Bernstein, the Strike Force prosecutor who got the Basile conviction, he went to testify in Phoenix, Arizona, in connection with the alleged organized-crime links of a major liquor wholesaler that had been about to become the largest wine and liquor distributor in the state. On the eve of Henry’s taking the stand, however, the company withdrew its application for licensing and agreed to withdraw from doing further business in the state.
On February 6, 1984, Henry took the stand against Paul Vario. Vario was being tried for having assisted Henry to gain early release from Allenwood by helping him get his no-show job. After a three-day trial, Paul Vario was found guilty of conspiring to commit fraud. On April 3, 1984, he was sentenced to four years and fined ten thousand dollars. After his appeals were exhausted, Vario entered a federal prison in Springfield, Missouri.
Later that year Henry took the stand against Jimmy Burke in connection with the murder of Richie Eaton. Henry testified that Jimmy had told him he killed Eaton over a $250,000 cocaine deal. When pressed on the matter by Burke’s attorney, Henry stared directly at Jimmy and said that when he had asked Jimmy about Eaton, Jimmy said, “Don’t worry about him anymore, I whacked the fucking swindler out.” On February 19, 1985, Jimmy Burke was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the murder of Richie Eaton.
Henry was never able to help McDonald crack Lufthansa—the case that essentially had gotten Henry into the witness program in the first place. By the time McDonald had Henry as a witness on Lufthansa, the people who could trace the robbery back to Jimmy were all dead. Except for Henry and Jimmy, there was no one left. Stacks Edwards, Marty Krugman, Richie Eaton, Tommy DeSimone, Terry Ferrara, Joe Manri, Frenchy McMahon, Paolo LiCastri, Louie and Joanna Cafora, Anthony Stabile, and even Angelo Sepe and his new girlfriend, nineteen-year-old Joanne Lombardo. And during Henry’s first year in the program, Germaine’s twenty-year-old son, Robert junior, was shot and killed on a Queens rooftop.