{"id":8562,"date":"2012-06-14T19:47:21","date_gmt":"2012-06-14T19:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dropcents.com\/blog\/?p=8562"},"modified":"2012-06-14T19:55:34","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T19:55:34","slug":"henry-hill-dies-at-69-mob-informant-was-subject-of-goodfellas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.dropcents.com\/blog\/henry-hill-dies-at-69-mob-informant-was-subject-of-goodfellas\/","title":{"rendered":"Henry Hill dies at 69; mob informant was subject of ‘GoodFellas’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Henry Hill, the infamous ex-mobster turned informant whose life of crime was portrayed in the film classic “GoodFellas,” was quick to admit that he did “a lot of bad things back then.”<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"Henry“I shot at people. I busted a lot of heads, and I buried a lot of bodies,” \u00a0Henry Hill<\/em><\/span> told the London-based Daily\u00a0<\/strong>Telegraph in 2010. “You can try to justify it by saying they deserved it, that they had it coming, but some just got whacked for absolutely no reason at all.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Henry Hill<\/strong>, 69, who was in the federal witness protection program in the 1980s and later made various attempts to cash in on his notoriety as an ex-mobster,past away last Tuesday in the\u00a0West Hills Hospital in West Hills.<\/span><\/p>\n

He recently underwent open-heart surgery last year, and died of complications of heart problems\u00a0related to smoking, Nate Caserta said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Henry Hill was a onetime member of the Lucchese crime family in New York. His criminal endeavors included participating in the 1978 heist of $5.8 million from the Lufthansa air cargo terminal at John F. Kennedy airport\u2014 the largest single cash robbery in U.S. history \u2014 and helping fix Boston College basketball games in the 1978-79 season.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1980, after narcotics agents busted the cocaine operation Henry Hill was running, he chose to betray the sacred Code of Silence ( Omerta) and become a prosecution witness against his former mob associates and entered the witness protection program.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the time, Henry Hill also feared for his life: Jimmy “The Gent” Burke, the reputed mastermind of the Lufthansa heist, reportedly began killing\u00a0<\/strong>those who had been involved in the robbery to keep them from sharing the profits.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I knew I was going to get whacked and it came pretty close,” Henry Hill told the Telegraph in 2010. “So it was either me or them. I knew it, and they knew it.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Initially, I had a lot of remorse and it took me a long time to forgive myself for what I did, for being a rat. But I knew I saved a lot of lives by putting a lot of horrible people away. You live by the sword, you die by the sword.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The testimony of Henry Hill on the 1978 heist, murders and other crimes led to about 50 convictions, including those of Burke and Paul Vario, a Lucchese crime family captain. (Both died in prison.)<\/p>\n

After entering the witness protection program, Henry Hill, his wife Karen and their two children were relocated to Omaha. It was the first of numerous moves to different locations across the country, where Hill lived under a variety of assumed names.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While still in the witness protection program, Henry Hill was convicted of burglary, assault and three DWIs, according to a 2001 Associated Press story, which said he was tossed from the program in 1987.<\/span><\/p>\n

The criminal career\u00a0Henry Hill \u00a0in the mob \u2014 it included extortion, truck hijackings, auto theft, illegal gambling, armed robbery and time in prison \u2014 was chronicled in journalist Nicholas Pileggi’s bestselling 1987 biography “Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The former mobster’s celebrity profile received an even bigger boost with the release of director Martin Scorsese’s\u00a01990 movie “GoodFellas,” which was based on Pileggi’s book and starred Ray Liotta\u00a0as Hill.<\/span><\/p>\n