What Happened After the Goodfellas Heist?

Around three in the morning on Monday, December 11, 1978, six masked men walked into the Lufthansa cargo building at JFK Airport. Eleven employees were rounded up and cuffed in the lunchroom, and about an hour later the men drove off in a black van with roughly five million dollars in cash and nearly a million in jewelry. It was the largest cash robbery in American history at the time, and by most accounts nobody was shot. Then the people around it began to disappear. Within a week, the man who was supposed to get rid of the van was found shot to death. Within a month, the man who passed along the tip had vanished. By that summer, at least eight people tied to the job were dead or missing, and nobody was ever charged with any of it as part of the heist. So why did the robbery that inspired Goodfellas end with only one conviction, and who was it? What this covers: Louis Werner, the Lufthansa cargo worker with gambling debts who had already stolen from the same building in 1976 The armored-car pickup he stalled on the Friday before, so five million dollars sat there all weekend The chain from Werner to a bookmaker to Marty Krugman, and, in Henry Hill's account, on to Jimmy Burke The getaway van, the fingerprints, and why the death count runs anywhere from eight to sixteen Werner's 1979 trial: still the only conviction for the robbery Henry Hill turning informant, Burke's unrelated convictions, and how Wiseguy became Goodfellas What the court record says compared with the version everyone repeats The 2014 case against Vincent Asaro, his cousin's wire, and the 2015 not-guilty verdict Everyone remembers the robbery. Almost nobody paid for it. The money was never found. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ❤️ It's just me making these. If this one was worth your time, a like helps more than you'd think. If not, all good. See you in the next one. Wren ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ S O U R C E S ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ THE ROBBERY AND THE INSIDE MAN United States v. Werner, 620 F.2d 922 (2d Cir. 1980). The court record: the masked men, the eleven employees, the stalled Friday pickup, the 1976 theft, the bookmaker and Krugman, and Werner's conviction. History.com, "Millions stolen from JFK Airport in infamous 'Lufthansa heist'," This Day in History, December 11. The hour on site, the forty boxes, and the count of eight dead or missing by summer 1979. "Lufthansa heist," Wikipedia. Amounts, the van and Edwards, Krugman's disappearance, and the record "at the time." THE CREW AND THE INFORMANT "James Burke (gangster)," Wikipedia. Burke's role as an associate, his later convictions and his death in 1996; never charged with the heist. "Henry Hill," Wikipedia; Associated Press obituary, The Washington Times, June 13, 2012. Hill's 1980 arrest, his turn as an informant, and his death at 69. "Goodfellas" and "Wiseguy (book)," Wikipedia. Pileggi's book, Scorsese's 1990 film, and the character based on Burke. THE DEAD AND THE MISSING Long Island Press, "Lufthansa Heist: Nassau Cop Breaks Silence on Mob Case that Left 16 Dead, $6M Missing," November 28, 2013. The highest count, and how few were ever prosecuted. Miner, C., interview with Anthony DeStefano, Patch, December 10, 2017. Another count, nine, and the money never recovered. THE ASARO CASE U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York, Asaro indictment announcement, January 2014; CBS News and Long Island Press, January 23, 2014. The racketeering charges, including the heist and a 1969 murder. NBC News, CBS New York and CNN, November 12, 2015. The cousin's testimony and wire, the defense's attack on the cooperators, and the not-guilty verdict. Simone, D., The Mob Museum blog. A co-author with Hill arguing that Hill never named Asaro. One author's view, not a finding. "Vincent Asaro," Wikipedia; New York Daily News via The Spokesman-Review, October 23, 2023. Asaro's other acquittal and his death in 2023. TODAY Morris-Grant, B., "One conviction and millions still missing, the Lufthansa heist revisited," ABC News (Australia), December 11, 2025. The case nearly half a century on. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #truecrime #history #goodfellas #mafia #documentary