Editing Jimmy Burke (section)

===Leading his own crew===
Burke was a mentor of [[Tommy DeSimone]], Henry Hill and [[Angelo Sepe]], who were all young men in the 1960s. They carried out jobs for Burke, such as selling stolen merchandise. They eventually became part of Jimmy's crew and worked out of South Ozone Park, Queens and East New York, Brooklyn. 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 led to his nickname "Jimmy the Gent".

Corrupt law enforcement officers, bribed by Burke, would tell him about any potential witnesses or informants. As many as 12 or 13 bodies a year would be found tied up, strangled, and shot in the trunks of stolen vehicles abandoned in the parking lots surrounding JFK Airport. Said Henry Hill about Burke: "Jimmy could plant you just as fast as shake your hand. It didn’t matter to him. At dinner he could be the nicest guy in the world, but then he could blow you away for dessert."

He owned a bar in South Ozone Park, Queens called Robert's Lounge. It was a favorite hangout of Burke and his crew, and many other mobsters, bookmakers, loan sharks, and other assorted criminals. Burke ran a loan shark and bookmaking operation that was based at the bar, and high stakes poker games in the basement, of which he would receive a cut. 

Burke also owned a dress factory, also in South Ozone Park, Queens, called Moo Moo Vedda's, which kept him awash in laundered money. While not part of the [[American Mafia]], Burke had one Mob member as friend and associate, Paul Vario. In 1972, Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill were arrested for beating up Gaspar Ciaccio in Tampa, Florida who allegedly owed a large gambling debt to their friend the union boss Casey Rosado. They were charged with extortion, convicted, and sentenced to ten years in federal prison.

Burke was paroled after six years, then went straight back to crime, as did Hill, who got out around the same time. Henry Hill shortly began trafficking in drugs; Burke was soon involved in this new enterprise, even though the Lucchese crime family — with whom they were associated — did not authorize any of its members to deal in drugs. This Lucchese 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. It is claimed by some that he was involved in at least 50 murders during his career.

He supposedly killed nine people following the Lufthansa Heist. After Jimmy Breslin had written a disparaging and accusative article on Paul Vario, Burke strangled the journalist almost to death in front of a bar full of witnesses. He ordered the murder of his best friend, Dominick "Remo" Cersani, who became an informant and helped the New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrest Burke on a truck hijacking charge. Burke had Remo's body buried next to the bocce court behind Robert's Lounge. It was said that whenever Burke played bocce there with friends, he would jokingly say "Hey Remo, how're you doing?"

Burke frequently liked to lock his victims, notably the young children of his victims, in refrigerators. When Burke had a problem collecting money he was owed, and the unfortunate debtor had children, he would pick the child up in his huge arm, open the refrigerator with the other, and say "if you don't do whatcha supposed to, I'm gonna lock your kid inside the fuckin' refrigerator".

Much later, Burke allegedly attempted to kidnap and possibly hold to ransom, or kill Henry Hill's wife, Karen, and their two children when he suspected Henry of being an informant. This is what Hill claims, no second source ever backed up the story, and many believe Hill became an informer primarily to save himself from prison.