The Lufthansa Heist
Behind the Six-Million-Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World
By (author) Henry Hill, Daniel Simone
Publication date:
01 October 2015Length of book:
384 pagesPublisher
Lyons PressISBN-13: 9781493008490
The inside story—from the organizer himself--of the largest unrecovered cash haul in history. This full account brings readers behind the heist memorialized in Goodfellas, a crime that has baffled law enforcement for decades. From Henry Hill himself, The Lufthansa Heist is the last book he worked on before his 2012 death.
On December 11, 1978, a daring armed robbery rocked Kennedy Airport, resulting in the largest unrecovered cash haul in world history, totaling six million dollars. The perpetrators were never apprehended and thirteen people connected to the crime were murdered in homicides that, like the crime itself, remain unsolved to this day. The burglary has fascinated the public for years, dominating headlines around the globe due to the story’s unending ravel of mysteries that baffled the authorities.One of the organizers of the sensational burglary, Henry Hill, who passed away in 2012, in collaboration with Daniel Simone, has penned an unprecedented “tell-all” about the robbery with never-before-unveiled details, particulars only known to an insider.
In 2013, this infamous criminal act again flared up in the national news when five reputed gangsters were charged in connection to the robbery. This latest twist lends the project an extraordinary sense of timing, and the legal proceedings of the newly arrested suspects will unfold over the next year, continuing to keep the Lufthansa topic in the news.
On December 11, 1978, a daring armed robbery rocked Kennedy Airport, resulting in the largest unrecovered cash haul in world history, totaling six million dollars. The perpetrators were never apprehended and thirteen people connected to the crime were murdered in homicides that, like the crime itself, remain unsolved to this day. The burglary has fascinated the public for years, dominating headlines around the globe due to the story’s unending ravel of mysteries that baffled the authorities.One of the organizers of the sensational burglary, Henry Hill, who passed away in 2012, in collaboration with Daniel Simone, has penned an unprecedented “tell-all” about the robbery with never-before-unveiled details, particulars only known to an insider.
In 2013, this infamous criminal act again flared up in the national news when five reputed gangsters were charged in connection to the robbery. This latest twist lends the project an extraordinary sense of timing, and the legal proceedings of the newly arrested suspects will unfold over the next year, continuing to keep the Lufthansa topic in the news.
For about a fourth of this remarkable true-crime story, readers will feel these low-level mobsters are the cutest little psychopaths ever. Boozing, gambling, wrenching, stealing- just guys having fun. Their charm fades, though, as we move into the meat of the story, the 1978 heist of $6 million from the Lufthansa safe at Kennedy Airport. The late Henry Hill- Ray Liotta played him in Goodfellas – was on the fringe of the action. With coauthor Simone’s help, he narrates much of the story- up to the end, when he turns snitch. Simone tells the rest of this engrossing tale directly, and he is one helluva writer. One man’s “temper ignited as easily as gasoline vapor.” A woman’s running mascara “made her look like a spider.” Simone spends much time on officialdom’s attempts to jail these reprobates, and maybe it’s unintentional that he makes the cops out as no brighter than the perps they chase. Like many of the most compelling true-crime tales, the distinction between cops and robbers is blurry at best. Fine reading. – Don Crinklaw