Home
Random
Recent changes
Special pages
Community portal
Preferences
About Real-Life Villains
Disclaimers
Real-Life Villains
Search
User menu
Talk
Contributions
Create account
Log in
Editing
Jimmy Burke
(section)
Warning:
You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you
log in
or
create an account
, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.
Anti-spam check. Do
not
fill this in!
===After the Lufthansa Heist=== Burke never expected the robbery to bring in more than $1 million and was shocked by combined with the cash and jewelry $8.5 million haul and became paranoid about all the publicity. He was aware that a robbery of this magnitude would attract the intense attention of local, state and federal authorities, causing a lot of problems for everyone involved as well as organized crime in New York in general. There were a number of murders and disappearances following the Lufthansa robbery, as Burke became increasingly concerned that there were too many witnesses who knew his involvement who became greedy once learning the true amount of money stolen in the heist. Burke was being pressured for more money by the participants of the Lufthansa robbery, so he decided to murder everyone connected to it. Parnell Edwards was found shot to death in his apartment in South Ozone Park, Queens on December 18, 1978, only one week after the robbery. Henry Hill, who was not involved in the robbery, recounts that "Stacks" forgot to dispose of the van used in the robbery at a New Jersey compactor, instead getting high and passing out at a girlfriend's house, leaving the truck outside in a no parking zone. The next day the van was discovered by police with his fingerprints all over it. [[Louis Cafora]], known as Fat Louie, and his newlywed wife Joanna were reported missing in March 1979 by her parents. They were never seen again. It was alleged that Cafora agreed to become a police informant and either Burke or Angelo Sepe murdered them and disposed of the bodies. [[Robert McMahon]] and his close friend [[Joe Manri]] were found shot dead in a Buick Electra parked on a Brooklyn street on May 16, 1979. Paolo LiCastri a gambino soldier was found shot to death, his half-naked body smoldering in a garbage-strewn lot in Brooklyn on June 13, 1979. A cosmetologist and part-time cocaine dealer named [[Theresa Ferrara]], who often frequented Robert's Lounge and who was a sometime mistress of Tommy DeSimone and Paul Vario, was murdered on February 10, 1979, when it was discovered that she was an informant. Her dismembered torso was found floating in the waters off Barnegat Inlet near Toms River, New Jersey, on May 18, 1979. She had met with the FBI, and was informed that members of the Vario Crew wanted her murdered. She listened patiently, then asked them politely if she could leave. Several months later her dismembered body was found. Thomas Monteleone, an Italian-Canadian mobster, used $250,000 of Lufthansa Heist money to become involved in a drug deal with Burke and Richard Eaton (a noted hustler and con-man). The drug deal didn't work out as planned. Monteleone was found dead in Connecticut in March 1979. Not directly related to the Lufthansa Heist, Monteleone's murder is appears to have been collateral damage. Martin Krugman, the bookmaker who provided the tip to Henry Hill and Burke's Robert's Lounge crew, vanished on January 6, 1979. Henry Hill stated that Krugman was killed on the orders of Burke, who did not want to pay Krugman his $500,000 share of the stolen money. Said Hill, "It was a matter of half a million bucks. No way Jimmy was going to deny himself half a million dollars because of Marty Krugman. If Jimmy killed Marty, Jimmy would get Marty’s half a mill. So Jimmy murdered him, and kept the half-a-million dollars.” The only robbers that survived Burke's murderous rampage following the Lufthansa Heist were Burke's son, Frank James Burke, Thomas DeSimone, Henry Hill, and Angelo Sepe (a protege of Burke). Burke knew that Sepe would never cooperate with the authorities under any circumstances, and he never pressed Burke for a bigger share of the robbery proceeds. Sepe had been brought in for questioning by the police about the Lufthansa Heist, and the only thing he told them was "I don't know whatcha talking about". Sepe was later murdered, in 1984, shot in the head when he answered the door one morning at his Brooklyn apartment. This was in retaliation for having robbed a mafia-connected drug dealer. Frank James Burke was found shot to death on a Brooklyn street on May 18, 1987, over a drug deal gone bad.
Summary:
Please note that all contributions to Real-Life Villains may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see
Real-Life Villains:Copyrights
for details).
Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!
Cancel
Editing help
(opens in new window)