Vincent Asaro, a profession mobster who was discovered not responsible of homicide and of serving to to prepare the staggering $6 million Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy Airport — one of many largest money heists in American historical past — solely to be sentenced to jail when he was 82 over road-rage revenge, died on Sunday in Queens. He was 86.
His loss of life was confirmed by Elizabeth Macedonio, the lawyer who efficiently represented him within the Lufthansa case. No trigger was given.
The brazen theft in 1978 of $5 million in money and $1 million in jewels from a vault at a Lufthansa hangar at Kennedy Airport figured prominently within the e book “Wiseguy” (1985) by Nicholas Pileggi and the Martin Scorsese movie “Goodfellas” (1990).
The authorities had suspected the Mafia’s involvement, however the case remained unsolved and the investigation closed till Mr. Asaro was arrested in 2014, linking him and the Bonanno crime household to the theft. He was additionally accused of utilizing a canine chain in 1969 to strangle Paul Katz, the proprietor of a warehouse the place Mr. Asaro and James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke, who was suspected of masterminding the Lufthansa theft (and who was portrayed by Robert DeNiro in “Goodfellas”), saved their stolen loot. Mr. Asaro and Mr. Burke had believed that Mr. Katz was an informer after the warehouse was raided by the police.
The indictment implicated Mr. Asaro in a sweeping conspiracy during which he was additionally accused of robbing FedEx (then Federal Categorical) of $1.25 million of gold salts, which can be utilized in medicinal therapies; bullying his approach into the pornography enterprise; and searching for, unsuccessfully, to bump off a cousin who had testified about an insurance coverage rip-off.
Mr. Asaro’s 2015 trial was a sensation.
Although the theft had taken place greater than three a long time earlier, it had been immortalized within the e book and movie, and even for youthful New Yorkers it felt like a coda to the “Godfather” period.
Furthermore, the important thing witness towards Mr. Asaro was one other cousin, Gaspare Valenti, who had been a authorities informant since 2008 and had secretly recorded Mr. Asaro from 2010 to 2013.
Mr. Valenti’s testimony on the stand was a jaw-dropping breach of the Mafia’s code of silence.
It additionally revealed the devolution of a ruthless mobster who in his day job may recommend to clients which fences to purchase from his retailer in Ozone Park, Queens, whereas in his different life he may impatiently advise a youthful mob affiliate who had requested him how finest to gather a debt: “Stab him immediately.”
Mr. Asaro’s acquittal in 2015 was so gorgeous — not solely to the prosecution, however to Mr. Asaro himself — that as he left the courthouse and bought right into a automotive, he giddily joked, “Don’t allow them to see the physique within the trunk.”
Mockingly, the car reference returned to hang-out him two years later. He was accused of recruiting a mob affiliate, who in flip recruited John J. Gotti, the grandson of the previous Gambino household boss, to torch the automotive of a motorist who had reduce off Mr. Asaro at a visitors mild.
The motive force was pursued at excessive velocity by Mr. Asaro to no avail. The affiliate used regulation enforcement sources to trace the license plate, after which Mr. Gotti and two different males situated the automotive in Broad Channel, Queens, doused it with gasoline and set it ablaze. An off-duty police officer parked close by witnessed the auto-da-fe and pursued the arsonists, however they sped away in a Jaguar.
Surprisingly, after a lifetime of denying culpability in crime, Mr. Asaro not solely pleaded responsible but additionally apologized for what he acknowledged was “a silly factor I did.”
He may have been sentenced to twenty years in jail. The prosecution requested for 15, declaring that though he had “participated in racketeering, homicide, theft, extortion, loan-sharking, playing and different unlawful conduct, he has served lower than eight years in jail.”
In December 2017, U.S. District Decide Allyne Ross ordered him to serve eight years — which, at 80, Mr. Asaro described as “a loss of life sentence” — and to pay $21,276 in restitution to the proprietor of the automotive.
“If he had not aged out of a lifetime of crime on the age of 77,” Decide Ross stated, referring to his age in the course of the opening phases of the Lufthansa trial, over which she presided, “I’ve little hope that he’ll achieve this.”
Vincent A. Asaro was born on July 10, 1937, in Queens to Joseph and Victoria Asaro, who separated when he was a teen. His uncle, Michael Zaffarano, owned buildings housing grownup theaters, distributed pornography and labored as a bodyguard for Joseph Bonanno, who ran his eponymous crime household for practically 4 a long time.
In 1957, Mr. Asaro married Theresa Myler; they divorced in 2005.
Mr. Asaro’s survivors embody his son, Jerome. He was arrested together with his father in 2014, pleaded responsible to racketeering and was sentenced to seven and a half years’ imprisonment.
Mr. Asaro racked up quite a few fees and convictions over the course of his life. Amongst them, he was convicted in federal court docket in 1970 and 1972 for the theft of an interstate cargo and housebreaking of a put up workplace. In 1998, he was sentenced in state court docket in New York to 4 to 12 years in jail for enterprise corruption and legal possession of stolen property.
Three a long time after the infamous Lufthansa heist, the beggarly however nonetheless choleric gangster had, in line with prosecutors, squandered his $500,000 share of the loot on playing and depleted no matter he had collected from his unforgiving method of pursuing delinquent debtors. He had hocked his jewellery and was seen procuring at a Waldbaum’s grocery store for orzo and lentils.
In keeping with a dialog recorded by Mr. Valenti that was performed in court docket in 2015, he was even unwelcome on the native social membership the place he had celebrated the heist.
“Folks hate me in there,” Mr. Asaro stated. “I don’t pay my dues.”
Even his estranged son, whom he had initiated into the Mafia and had by then outranked him, rebuffed him when he desperately sought to borrow cash, in line with one other recording.
Mr. Asaro had a stroke throughout his imprisonment for ordering the arson, which left him partly paralyzed. In 2020, he was granted a compassionate launch from america Medical Middle for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo., due to his age and vulnerability to Covid-19.
“He clearly had 9 lives,” Gerald McMahon, a lawyer who represented him early within the Lufthansa proceedings, stated after Mr. Asaro’s loss of life. “However this will need to have been the tenth.”
Joseph Goldstein contributed reporting.
