Henry Hill, whose life as a mobster turned FBI informant was the foundation for Martin Scorsese’s film “Goodfellas,” passed away on Tuesday. He was 69. Hill’s death was attributed to long-standing cardiac problems brought on by his smoking, according to his long-term partner Lisa Caserta, who spoke to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
A heartbreaking but beautiful obituary for Henry Hill. What a wonderful young man and what a life well-lived. It was humbling to read of his courage and compassion. We will all miss you Henry. All our love to Lisa and Olivia at this most difficult time.
https://t.co/98Kl5a8wjQ
— Aylsham High (@aylshamhigh) February 21, 2022
An associate in the Lucchese criminal family in New York, Hill’s stories of life in the mafia emerged in the 1986 book “Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family,” written by Nicholas Pileggi, a journalist Hill sought out shortly after turning informant.
“Henry Hill was a hood. He was a hustler. He had schemed and plotted and broken heads,” Pileggi wrote in the book. “He knew how to bribe and he knew how to con. He was a full-time working racketeer, an articulate hoodlum from organized crime.”
In 1990, Pileggi and Scorsese adapted the book into the instant classic “Goodfellas,” starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta as Hill, a young hoodlum on the make who thrives in the Mafia but is eventually forced to turn on his criminal friends and lead the life of a sad suburbanite due to drug addiction.
The film is often cited as a cultural touchstone since it established the standard for contemporary gangster films. In contrast to earlier Mafia stories, which emphasised family and honour, “Wiseguy” and “Goodfellas” concentrated on the gangster as a rock star and how great it was to live the life of a criminal until the consequences caught up with you.
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster,” Liotta, as Hill, says in the movie. “For us to live any other way was nuts.”
Hill, who was born in Brooklyn to an Irish father and an Italian mother, met his first mob associates at the age of 11 when he went to a cab stand across the street searching for work in 1955.
“The men at the cabstand were not like anyone else from the neighborhood,” Pileggi wrote. “He had watched them double-park their cars and never get tickets, even when they parked smack in front of a fire hydrant.”
He started doing odd jobs for the guys at the stand, which progressed to petty theft and other misdeeds. At the tender age of 16, he was caught attempting to use a stolen credit card to purchase tyres for Paul Vario’s brother. His refusal to turn informant thrilled the gang’s superiors.
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The theft of $420,000 in cash from the Air France cargo terminal at JFK airport in New York in 1967 was among the largest cash heists in history, but worse crimes lay ahead.
In addition, in 1978, Hill played a significant role in the heist of $5.8 million in cash from a Lufthansa Airlines vault, which was masterminded by Jimmy Burke, the real-life mobster who served as the basis for De Niro’s character in “Goodfellas.”
“Whenever we needed money, we’d rob the airport,” Liotta says in the movie. “To us, it was better than Citibank.”
Later, Hill revealed to Pileggi that he was exceedingly concerned that he would be the next victim after the robbery crew turned on each other and several people were killed. In 1980, he was jailed for narcotics trafficking after selling cocaine behind his boss Vario’s back.
Hill was more worried about his associates than he was about going to jail, so he signed an agreement with a Department of Justice task force that ended up being more fruitful than anyone had hoped.
“The arrest of Henry Hill was a price beyond measure,” Pileggi wrote.” ”Hill had grown up in the mob. He was only a mechanic, but he knew everything. He knew how it worked. He knew who oiled the machinery. He knew, literally, where the bodies were buried. If he talked, police knew that Henry Hill could give them the key to dozens of indictments and convictions.”
After Hill’s testimony sent hundreds of men to prison, including those involved in the Lufthansa robbery, he and his wife Karen (played in the film by Lorraine Bracco) fled into hiding, where they remained for years while Hill lived in constant fear that one of his former coworkers would return to put a pistol to his head.
After several further drug-related arrests in the early 1990s, Hill was no longer allowed to remain in the witness protection programme. As his previous associates passed away, he became less afraid for his safety and began living a more open life, making appearances in documentaries and becoming a frequent caller to Howard Stern’s radio show.
TMZ was the first to break the news of his demise. His drug abuse problems would plague him for most of his life. In 2008, he admitted guilt on two counts of public intoxication in San Bernardino, California. In 2009, he was taken into custody in St. Louis on allegations of resisting arrest and disorderly behaviour.
“I’ve been on every drug humanly possible, and I can’t get a handle on alcohol,” he to ld The Associated Press in 2009. “I’ll go two, two and a half years, and I don’t know what triggers me.”
Both the novel and the movie depict his struggles to return to normalcy after a life of gangster excess.
“I had paper bags filled with jewelry stashed in the kitchen. I had a sugar bowl full of coke next to the bed. Anything I wanted was a phone call away,” Hill says in the film. “Today, everything is different. There’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food. Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody.”
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