- This page is on the American gangster. For the American soccer player see Jimmy Conway (soccer).
Jimmy Burke (July 5, 1926–April 13, 1996), was an Irish-American gangster who is believed to have organized the Lufthansa heist in 1978. Nicknamed Jimmy The Gent, Burke is familiar to most people via Robert De Niro's depiction of him in the movie Goodfellas.
Early life
He was born James Conway in New York City in 1931 and, for reasons unknown, was placed in a foster home when he was two, never to see his natural parents again. He was shuttled around various homes and orphanages, suffering physical and sexual abuse at the hands of various foster fathers and foster brothers. He eventually adopted the name of Burke after one foster family.
When he was thirteen, Burke's foster father died in a car crash; he lost control of the car when he turned around to hit Burke, who was riding in the back seat. The deceased man's widow, who was in the car as well but survived, blamed Burke for the accident and gave him regular beatings until he was taken back into care.
As he approached adulthood, Burke began to get in trouble with the law, spending considerable time in jail. In 1949, aged eighteen, he was sentenced to five years for embezzlement. This was, ironically, to turn out to be his break into the underworld of New York: his refusal to "rat" (inform) on his accomplices giving him a reputation as a "stand up guy", meaning he would not cooperate with the police and therefore could be trusted by other criminals. Behind bars he mixed with a number of Mafia bosses and made many contacts. (Being of Irish descent, Burke could not become a full-fledged member of the Mafia, as they only accept Italians into their ranks, but they were happy to have associates of any ethnic background—so long as they made money and did not cooperate with the authorities.). Burke was an immense presence: stocky, tall and with brick layer arms as result of earlier work.
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"Jimmy The Gent"
It is rumoured that Burke committed a number of murders for the Mafia during the 1950s, in addition to plenty of other crimes such as importing cheap cigarettes and buying even cheaper liquor. He got married in 1962 to a woman called Mickey . He fathered a daughter and two sons, Frank James Burke and Jesse James Burke, (named after the famous outlaw brothers of the Old West). Burke is rumored to have murdered and dismembered an ex-boyfriend of his bride because he was being a nuisance
Burke was a mentor of Thomas DeSimone and Henry Hill, who were both teenagers in the 1960s. They carried out errands for Burke, such as selling stolen merchandise. When they were older, the pair helped Burke with the hijacking of delivery trucks. According to Hill, Burke would usually give $50 to the drivers of the trucks they stole, as if he were tipping them for the inconvenience, which lead to his nickname Jimmy The Gent.
He owned Robert's Lounge Bar, which was on next to the Van Wyck Expressway in South Ozone Park. He sold it just before he went away to prison for six years for the Florida extortion caper with Henry. It was a favorite hangout of Burke and Fortuna (before his marriage to Lisa), along with many other mobsters and criminals. Burke eventually began a loan shark and bookmaking operation that was based at the bar.
In 1972, Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill were arrested for beating up a man who owed a Boss a large gambling debt. They were charged with extortion, convicted, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Burke was paroled after six years, then went straight back to crime, as did Hill, who got out around the same time. Hill shortly began dealing in drugs, and Burke allegedly was soon in on this new enterprise, even though the Lucchese Family, to whom they were loosely attached, did not authorize any of its members to deal in drugs. This ban was made because the prison sentences imposed on anyone convicted of drug trafficking were so lengthy that the accused would often become informants in exchange for a lighter sentence. This is exactly what Henry Hill would eventually do.
The Lufthansa Heist
The crime Burke is most famous for is the Lufthansa heist, the theft of approximately $6,000,000 from the cargo terminal at Idlewild Airport (now JFK Airport). This was the largest robbery in American criminal history at the time. He carried it out with the help of a crew of accomplices he put together, including Tommy DeSimone. The robbery took place on December 11, 1978. Because it took place in the territory of the Gambino Mafia family, Burke had to get their permission (his contact in the Gambinos was John Gotti) and agree to pay them a portion of the stolen money. This included having Paolo LiCastri as the sixth gunman for the robbery.
There were a number of murders and disappearances following the Lufthansa robbery, as the criminals involved began to turn on each other. The getaway driver Steven 'Stacks' Edwards was shot dead within a few days because he got high and forgot to dispose of the getaway van. Another robber was murdered, along with his wife. A cocaine dealer named Theresa Ferrara, who often frequented "Robert's Lounge" and had dated some of the Lufthansa Heist crew, was killed when it was found out she was an informant. Her dismembered body was eventually found dumped on a New Jersey beach.
Martin Krugman, who provided some of the inside information for the heist, vanished not long afterwards and was never seen again. Henry Hill states he was killed on the orders of Burke who did not want to pay Krugman the $500,000 share of the stolen money he was due, but close resources say the order was given by the hierarchy. Reasons for this would have been police all over the scene and with a few weak links in the heist crew a long jail term may cause people to become informants.
Downfall
In 1980, Henry Hill was arrested for drug trafficking. He became an FBI informant in order to avoid a long prison sentence. Also that year, one of the few criminals to have actually been prosecuted for the Lufthansa heist became an informant after serving just twelve months of a fifteen-year prison sentence in the hope of getting an early release.
Partly thanks to the testimony of these informants, Jimmy Burke was taken into custody on April 1, 1980, on suspicion of a number of crimes. In 1982, he was subsequently convicted of fixing Boston College basketball games as part of a gambling scam in 1978, and was sentenced to twenty years' imprisonment. Authorities knew he had organized the Lufthansa heist, but they did not have enough evidence to prove it.
The irony of the arrest of Burke was that he was suspected of over 50 murders and they only convicted him for one. If he'd have disposed of Eaton the way he disposed of most of his victims he could have been out of jail before he died. According to Hill a search warrant to search Robert's Lounge was given and when the police arrived Burke had re-located the 10s of bodies he'd buried in the basement and under the boccie court, such as Remo or Spider.
Burke was later charged with the murder of hustler/drug dealer Richard Eaton, based on evidence Henry Hill gave to authorities. At the trial, Hill took the stand and testified against his former friend. Burke was convicted and on February 19, 1985; he was given a life sentence. Although there was no hard evidence Burke was put away under the Habeas corpus act, which meant Henry Hill would testify that Burke told him he had murdered Eaton but would have to provide hard evidence later on, this would never happen. The only suspicious evidence was Burke's phone number was in Eatons pocket when his body was found. There was an attempt by Henry Hill and FBI agent McDonald to convict Burke of taking part in the murder, in 1970, of William 'Billy Batts' DeVino, but Hill was the sole witness to testify and the charge was dropped due to a lack of evidence.
Burke was serving his time in Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, when he developed lung cancer. He died from this disease on April 13, 1996, aged 64, while being treated at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York. Had he lived he would have been eligible for parole in 2004.
Movie Depictions
Burke has been portrayed in three movies. In Goodfellas, a 1990 film based on a book cowritten with Henry Hill, Burke was portrayed by Robert De Niro, and the character went under his birth name of Conway. He was also portrayed by John Mahoney in the 1991 television movie The 10 Million Dollar Getaway and again in the 2001 A&E television movie The Big Heist, in which he was played by Donald Sutherland.
In Goodfellas, Burke was portrayed as a powerful, arrogant, and shrewd gangster, but not as violent as he truly was. He was also a classic psychopath. In The Big Heist, Burke was portrayed as an aging immigrant gangster whose actions were primarily motivated to keep in the Mafia's good graces and to keep his son from being killed. In ... Getaway, which focuses solely on the Luthansa Heist, Burke is seen as a schmoozing but kind-hearted ex-con whose loyalty to his crew is only second to his loyalty to the Mafia. Here Burke has no hand in the Mafia-ordered murders of his "friends" who participated in the robbery, and is deeply saddened by their deaths.
External links
- Gangsters and GoodFellas, Henry Hill as told by Gus Russo