"Never rat on your friends, and always keep your mouth shut," says Robert De Niro as Jimmy "The Gent" Burke in the mob classic Goodfellas. The real-life Burke is long gone, having died in prison in 1996, but the aftermath of the crime he's believed to have masterminded, the infamous "Lufthansa Heist," continues even today – and someone is definitely not keeping their mouth shut.
Vincent Asaro, 80, a reputed mafia captain in New York's Bonnano crime family, goes on trial Monday for receiving a cut of the $6 million heist at Kennedy Airport in 1978, according to The Guardian.
Asaro was arrested in 2014 after his cousin wore a wire and allegedly coaxed the elderly mobster into talking about the crime. Court documents reportedly show that Asaro was recorded complaining that Burke, a Lucchese family associate, never handed over a full cut of the stolen money to the Bonnanos. "Jimmy kept everything," Asaro allegedly says.
Here's Asaro during his arrest in 2014 (via CNN):
So it's going to be quite a the full-blown display of mobsters at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn next week. Among the other witnesses set to testify against Asaro is former Bonanno boss Joseph Massino. Massino would be the only boss of one of New York's infamous Five Families to ever turn state's evidence.
The Lufthansa Heist, of course, is a major plot point in Martin Scorcese's film Goodfellas. In case you need a quick refresher, here's how the movie portrayed it before the crime went down:
And here's how Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) reacts when he realizes that Burke has actually pulled off the massive robbery.
