Editing Jimmy Burke (section)

===Early life===
James Burke was born in Bronx, New York as the illegitimate son to Jane Conway, a prostitute who was an immigrant from Dublin, Ireland. The father of James has never been identified. At age two he was placed in a foster home by his mother, where he spent most of his early years in a Roman Catholic orphanage run by nuns, never to see his birth parents again. He was shuttled around various homes and orphanages, where he suffered physical abuse, mental and emotional abuse and sexual abuse at the hands of various foster fathers, foster mothers, and foster brothers. 

When he was 13 years old, 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 severe beatings and repeatedly sexually abused him, on a daily basis, until he was taken back into care.

He was finally adopted by the "Burke" family and he took the family name of Burke during this time. Jimmy lived with them in a large wooden boarding house located on Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Ocean Promenade in Rockaway, Queens. His time spent there during the beginning of his adolescence was a time of peace and calm. He remained close to the Burke family and visited his adoptive mother and father each Mother's Day, Christmas and on their birthdays. On a monthly basis he would send them several thousand dollars in an unmarked envelope as appreciation for their attempt at raising him. It is rumored that he buried a portion of the loot from the 1978 Lufthansa heist which he orchestrated and helped carry out, on the site of his childhood foster home. Except for a quarter of the estimated millions taken in the heist the rest of the gold, silver and currency has never been recovered.

As he approached his teens, Burke began to get in trouble with the law and spent considerable time in jail. In 1949, aged eighteen, he was sentenced to five years in prison for forgery. He passed counterfeit checks for Dominick Cersani. Burke did not act as an informant for the authorities and that helped him gain favor amongst his [[Mafia]] contemporaries. Behind bars, he mixed with a number of Mafia members and other criminals of all nationalities in New York.