According to multiple media reports, Vincent Asaro, a reputed mobster associated with the 1978 Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport — a robbery made even more infamous by its portrayal in the movie “Goodfellas” — died Saturday. He was 86.
In 1937, Asaro was born in Queens. A future captain of the Bonanno crime family, he took after his father in joining the organized crime business, as noted by the New York Post.
Asaro was among the infamous crew accused of the armed robbery of a Lufthansa Airlines cargo building at JFK Airport in December 1978. The heist, which saw the mobsters allegedly make off with $5,000,000 cash and nearly $1,000,000 in jewelry was immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s hit mobster film, “Goodfellas.”
In 2015, decades later, Asaro appeared in court, accused of an array of mob-related misdeeds, among them the cinematic heist at Kennedy Airport, extortion, robbery and the 1969 murder of Paul Katz. Despite the prosecution calling upon four former mobsters turned stool pigeons, including Asaro’s own cousin, the mobster was found not guilty of the charges pitted against him.
FILE – In this Dec. 13, 1978, file photo, a police car is parked beside a stolen black van discovered in the Brooklyn borough of New York as forensics experts examine the vehicle, believed used in a robbery at Kennedy Airport. The government used opportunistic Mafia turncoats to make its case against aging mobster Vincent Asaro in the decades-old airport heist immortalized in the hit gangster movie “Goodfellas,” a defense attorney said in closing arguments on Monday, Nov. 9, 2015, at Asaro’s racketeering trial. (AP Photo/Ken Murray, File)
However, freedom would be fleeting for Asaro, as the mobster was charged of dispatching a crew to burn the vehicle of a driver who had cut him off at a traffic signal back in 2012, according to the New York Post.
Upon pleading guilty to the charges against him, Asaro was sentenced to eight years in prison. While serving time, Asaro suffered a…
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