On May 3, 1988, inside a cell at a federal prison in Fort Worth, Texas, a 73-year-old man took his final breaths. His lungs were filled with cancer, and his body lay 1,500 miles from the Brooklyn streets he once ruled. His name was Paul Vario. For more than two decades, he was one of the most powerful captains in the Lucchese crime family.
He ran a crew that reportedly earned $25,000 a day, controlled the cargo terminals at JFK Airport, authorized the largest armed robbery in American history—the 1978 Lufthansa heist of $5. 875 million—and mentored a young half-Irish associate named Henry Hill, who would eventually betray him to the FBI and help secure 50 federal convictions. Two years after Vario died in that Texas cell, a film told his story to the world—and got nearly everything about his family wrong. Goodfellas turned him into the character Paul Cicero, played by Paul Sorvino, a calm, philosophical mob boss who slices garlic with a razor blade while in prison.
The real Paul Vario was nothing like that. He stood 6-foot-3, weighed 250 pounds, had a violent temper, and once beat a restaurant manager unconscious simply for spilling wine on his wife’s dress. The film showed the heists and the parties, but it never showed his sons. One was burned alive at age 27, refusing to talk even as he died.
Another walked away from that world entirely and spent his final years making homemade pasta in Florida. And one personally escorted Tommy DeSimone to his execution, then vanished from public records forever. Paul Frank Vario was born on July 10, 1914, in New York City. His parents, Pietro and Mary Vario, were immigrants from Sicily who settled in the Old Mill Basin section of Brooklyn and raised five sons.
By the time Paul was 11, he was already in trouble. In 1925, a judge sentenced him to seven months in a juvenile reformatory for chronic truancy. He never returned to school. His entry into organized crime was swift and violent.
In 1937, at age 23, Vario and a partner were convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl from Howard Beach. The court sentenced him to 10 to 20 years in Sing Sing prison. He received parole twice during that period and was sent back both times—once for robbery, once for dealing in stolen goods. He was not released for good until 1962.
By then he was 48 and had spent most of his adult life behind bars. But prison gave him something: connections, a reputation, and a name that carried weight inside the Lucchese family. Upon release, he was immediately accepted as an official member. When the Brooklyn crew leader stepped down, the position was offered to Joseph Siafro, who refused and nominated Vario instead.
A man who had spent 25 years moving between prisons became the head of what would be known as the Vario crew, or the Canarsie crew, a position he held for the remaining 26 years of his life. His territory stretched across East New York, Brownsville, Canarsie, and Flatlands in Brooklyn, into Queens and Long Island. His criminal portfolio covered everything that generated money: truck hijackings from JFK Airport, illegal gambling, loan sharking, labor extortion, fencing stolen goods, and bribery. During the 1980s, FBI wiretaps caught Lucchese mobsters saying they owned Kennedy Airport.
They actually did. As Henry Hill later put it, the airport was better than Citibank. Vario operated from two locations. The first was Geffken’s, an old German bar on Flatlands Avenue in Canarsie where he held court.
The second was a trailer inside the Vario Auto Parts store, a junkyard at 5702 Avenue D that functioned as a workshop for dismantling stolen cars. His brother Vito, known as “Tuddy,” ran a cab stand on Euclid Avenue and a pizza restaurant called Bresto’s, legitimate fronts that served as neighborhood headquarters for the gang. The cab stand sat directly across from where Henry Hill grew up. That geographic coincidence would shape three decades of criminal history.
What set Vario apart from most mob bosses was his paranoia—and how useful it was to him. He never used the phone. He never met with more than one person at a time. His rule was absolute: never put your name on anything.
Real estate, businesses, even his boat—nothing was registered in Paul Vario’s name. When arrested, he gave his mother’s address. That discipline made him extremely difficult for law enforcement to target. It also meant that when he finally fell, there was little to tie to the family.
At the height of his power, Vario was said to be making $25,000 a day from all his operations combined. He once showed Henry Hill a converted bank vault he claimed held more than $1 million in cash. He controlled most of the illegal gambling in East New York and took a cut from everyone working his territory: bookmakers, loan sharks, and fences. He also received tribute from his crew’s hijacking operations at JFK, where stolen goods flowed through the airport like water from a broken pipe.
Truck drivers knew the routine: leave your truck unlocked in a certain spot, walk away for 20 minutes, then come back and report it stolen. Insurance companies paid the claims while the goods sat in a Canarsie warehouse. Everyone profited except the businesses that never knew they were being robbed. Beyond his rank as captain, Vario held influence that reached the top of the Lucchese family.
He served as an informal advisor to boss Carmine Tramunti in the late 1960s and early 1970s, offering counsel on family business and mediating disputes between crews. For a captain, that level of influence was extraordinary. It made Vario untouchable within the organization and gave his crew a level of protection other leaders could only dream of. The real Vario, though, was no philosopher.
Journalist Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wiseguy, described him as a man radiating the torpor that sometimes accompanies absolute power. Federal prosecutors called him one of the most violent and dangerous professional criminals in New York City. When a restaurant manager at Don Peppe’s Vesuvio spilled wine on his second wife’s dress and tried to clean it with a dirty rag, Vario struck him twice and chased him into the kitchen. That same night, he sent two carloads of men armed with pipes and baseball bats to attack the restaurant staff after closing.
That was the man behind the Paul Cicero character. Goodfellas never showed that. His crew resembled a cast list for Goodfellas because, in fact, it was. Jimmy Burke, known as “Jimmy the Gent,” was the Irish-American mastermind behind the hijackings who could never become an official member because of his heritage.
He ran a semi-independent operation from Robert’s Lounge in South Ozone Park under Vario’s umbrella. Tommy DeSimone, “Two-Gun Tommy,” was a psychopath who carried two pearl-handled pistols and killed without hesitation. And Henry Hill, half-Irish and half-Sicilian, was the protégé Vario had raised since he was 11 years old. Vario married his first wife, Vita Rizzo, around 1935, just before the rape conviction sent him to Sing Sing.
She bore him three sons: Peter, Paul Jr. , and Leonard. The marriage did not survive the decades he spent behind bars. They divorced at an unknown date.
Vita lived quietly for the rest of her life, away from the orbit of the Lucchese family. She died on November 24, 2008, at age 93, outliving her ex-husband by 20 years. Vario’s second wife, Phyllis Joan Maccone, was not Italian—unusual for a Lucchese boss of his standing. She became the center of his home life during his peak years.
The family lived in Brooklyn and later in Island Park, Long Island, during Vario’s parole period in Florida. The deadly weakness in this blood-money life was not the FBI, a rival family, or a street war. It was the man Paul Vario raised like a son. On December 11, 1978, at about 3 a.
m. , six masked men entered Building 261 at the Lufthansa cargo terminal at JFK. In 64 minutes, they stole nearly $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry—the largest successful cash robbery in American history at the time, equivalent to about $28 million today. The tip started with Louis Werner, a Lufthansa cargo supervisor drowning in gambling debts.
Werner told his bookmaker, Martin Krugman. Krugman told Henry Hill. Hill told Jimmy Burke. Burke called Paul Vario in Florida to ask permission.
Vario approved immediately. Burke was told to oversee the operation himself. Afterward, Vario sent his eldest son, Peter, to collect his share, estimated at $450,000 or more. What followed was a massacre.
Jimmy Burke, panicked by FBI attention, began systematically killing anyone who could link him to the robbery. On December 18, 1978, just seven days after the heist, Parnell “Stacks” Edwards was shot five times in the head. The order came directly from Vario—Edwards had failed to dispose of the getaway truck. On January 6, 1979, Martin Krugman disappeared; Burke and Angelo Sepe killed him.
Louis and Joanna Cevallos vanished in March 1979. Robert “Frenchy” McMahon and Joe “Buddha” Manri were found shot execution-style in a Buick in Brooklyn. By the end of the purge, at least nine people connected to the Lufthansa heist had been murdered. Around the same time, in late December 1978 or early January 1979, Tommy DeSimone was killed.
The murder was approved by the Gambino family in retaliation for DeSimone’s unauthorized killings of Gambino associates Billy Batts and Ronald “Foxy” Jerothe. DeSimone believed he was being taken to his induction ceremony as a made member of the mob. Instead, he was driven to his death by two men: Bruno Facciolo, a Lucchese associate, and Paul Vario’s eldest son, Peter. The wave of killings terrified Henry Hill.
When he was arrested on drug charges in April 1980, he faced a minimum of 25 years in prison. He knew Vario wanted him dead for drug dealing—a direct violation of the rules—and that Burke was planning to kill him to keep the Lufthansa case quiet. Federal agents played Hill recorded conversations confirming Burke’s intentions. Hill made the decision that would echo through decades of mob history.
He became an FBI informant and entered the Witness Protection Program. His testimony led to 50 convictions, destroyed the Vario crew, and put Paul Vario in prison for the rest of his life. In February 1984, Vario was convicted of defrauding the federal government by arranging a no-show job at a restaurant to secure Hill’s early release from prison. He was sentenced to four years and fined $10,000.
In February 1985, while already serving that sentence, he was indicted again for extorting more than $350,000 from air freight companies at JFK through his control of the freight handlers’ unions. He was convicted and sentenced to an additional 10 years. His lawyers tried to secure early release on medical grounds as his health declined, but the request was denied. On May 3, 1988, Paul Vario died of respiratory failure caused by lung cancer at the Federal Correctional Institution in Fort Worth.
He was 73. He died two years before Goodfellas was released and never saw Paul Sorvino’s portrayal of the character inspired by him. The first person in Paul Vario’s family to pay the full price was his second wife. Phyllis Joan Maccone was born on October 10, 1936.
She married into a world where being the boss’s wife meant being both protected and imprisoned. Vario carried on his extramarital affairs openly, and anyone who threatened to expose them was silenced. When a waitress at a bar threatened to tell Phyllis about one of his affairs, Vario drove to the woman’s apartment and beat her with a baseball bat. That was the kind of marriage Phyllis lived in.
The man who would destroy a restaurant to defend her honor was the same man who had none. Phyllis managed the home while Vario ran the streets. She raised his sons from his first marriage alongside whatever life they tried to build together. On July 30, 1975, Phyllis Vario died.
She was 38 years old. The cause of her death was never publicly documented. No obituary with medical details appeared. No news reports covered the circumstances.
In a city where the death of a prominent mobster’s wife would normally draw at least tabloid attention, Phyllis simply vanished from the records. She was buried in the Vario family plot at St. John’s Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens—the same plot where Paul Sr. would be buried 13 years later.
Whatever happened to her—illness, accident, or something the family never discussed—died with her. The tragedy said to have broken Paul Vario more than any arrest or conviction occurred two years before Phyllis’s death. On July 20, 1973, his youngest son, Leonard A. Vario, born March 21, 1946, was left at the emergency room entrance of Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn.
Two unidentified men carried him through the doors. He was wearing only a charred pair of shorts. Burns covered more than 90 percent of his body. The men vanished without giving their names or any explanation.
Six blocks away, investigators found evidence of an explosion and fire. The incident was classified as arson. Leonard was said to be involved in torching property as part of a union insurance scheme—the kind of low-level criminal work that was routine in Vario’s orbit. Leonard was 27 years old.
He had been involved in “this life” since his teens, running stolen credit card scams with Henry Hill as a teenager. He was, by most accounts, the favorite son of Paul Sr. —the one who followed in his footsteps most closely, the one most willing to do the work this life required. Now he was dying in a hospital bed, burned beyond recognition.
Investigators came to him. They asked who had been with him. They asked what had happened. They asked for names.
He gave them nothing. Even as he died, he did not speak a word. Leonard lingered for nearly three months. He died on October 6, 1973.
His funeral was a scene from the world that consumed him. Mourners attacked television cameramen who appeared outside the wake and beat a police detective present to monitor the crowd. Leonard was buried in St. John’s Cemetery, the same ground that would eventually hold his father, stepmother, and all four uncles.
According to those who knew Vario, he was never the same after Leonard’s death. The man who controlled a criminal empire worth $25,000 a day, who could order a killing with a nod, could not protect his child from the life he created. Paul Vario Jr. was born on June 2, 1938, in Brooklyn, the second of Vario’s three sons.
Among all family members, he maintained the lowest profile. He appeared in historical records only once in any meaningful way. In 1965, his father arranged for Henry Hill to accompany Paul Jr. on a double date.
That night, Hill met a woman named Karen Friedman. They eventually married, and Goodfellas dramatized the evening. After that single appearance, Paul Jr. became invisible.
He married a woman named Marsha around 1961. They stayed married for years, raising four children together. At some point, the family left Brooklyn entirely, moving south to Delray Beach, Florida—more than 1,200 miles from the Canarsie streets where Paul Jr. grew up watching his father run operations from a trailer in a junkyard.
Paul Vario Jr. died on August 28, 2019, at age 81. His obituary described a devoted grandfather known as “Bubba,” who enjoyed hosting holidays and gatherings and was a skilled cook with a passion for perfecting homemade pasta and bread. It mentioned his wife, children, and grandchildren.
It said nothing—not one word—about the Lucchese family, his father, Goodfellas, Henry Hill, JFK Airport, or the Lufthansa heist. The obituary read like it belonged to any ordinary retired grandfather in South Florida. Paul Vario Jr. managed what almost no one born into that world manages to do.
He walked away, stayed silent, and died peacefully 31 years after his father died in a federal prison cell. Peter Vario, the eldest brother, chose a different path. He is the most mysterious figure in the entire Vario lineage—and possibly the most dangerous. In late December 1978 or early January 1979, Peter and Bruno Facciolo escorted Tommy DeSimone.
DeSimone had been told the night he had waited for had finally arrived: he was about to be made. He dressed for the occasion and got into the car voluntarily. He never reached any ceremony. He was taken to an undisclosed location and killed.
The Gambino family had demanded the hit. Paul Vario Sr. , who had known DeSimone for years, profited from his violence, and watched him rise in his crew, approved the sentence. He sent his son to do the job.
Peter was also said to have collected his father’s share of the Lufthansa proceeds in the days after the heist. As the eldest son, he was trusted to carry out the most sensitive tasks. He moved within the Lucchese structure with quiet authority derived from being the boss’s firstborn. But after these documented acts—escorting a man to his death and collecting stolen money—Peter Vario disappeared entirely.
No obituary has been found. No arrest records surface after the late 1970s. No court appearances, no federal indictments, no public statements, no interviews, no social media presence of any kind. Whether he is alive or dead, whether he stayed in New York or left the state, whether he lives under his real name or another—all of it remains completely unknown.
In an era of digital records, public databases, and internet searches that can locate almost anyone, Peter Vario achieved something extraordinary. He vanished completely. Vito “Tuddy” Vario was born in 1928, the youngest of the five Vario brothers. He was the family’s front man—the face the neighborhood saw every day.
In 1955, he made the most consequential decision in the crew’s history: he hired an 11-year-old kid from across the street named Henry Hill. Hill would later describe Tuddy as the man who first brought him into “this life. ” Tuddy paid Hill to run errands, park cars for the taxi company, and keep watch for police. He gave the boy an allowance and a sense of belonging.
He also introduced Hill to his brother Paul—the introduction that turned a neighborhood kid into a full-time criminal associate. In Goodfellas, Tuddy is played by Frank DiLeo, better known as Michael Jackson’s manager, appearing as a gruff but minor character. In reality, Tuddy kept the gang together during its most dangerous years. He served as acting crew boss from 1976 to 1980 while Paul was on parole in Florida—meaning he ran daily operations during the Lufthansa heist, the resulting string of murders, and the months of paranoia as Burke eliminated witnesses.
When Paul was arrested and Hill turned informant, Tuddy’s power base collapsed. He died in 1988, the same year as Paul. His legacy is one of the harshest ironies in mob history: the man who recruited Henry Hill was destroyed by Henry Hill. The other three Vario brothers followed similar paths.
Salvatore “Beb” Vario, born in 1919, ran the crew’s floating card and dice games and handled payoff deliveries to corrupt police officers. He served as acting crew boss from 1967 to 1970 during Paul’s legal troubles. He died in 1976, the first brother to go. Thomas Vario, born in 1917, ran the loan sharking operations and betting records.
He died in 1984. Leonard Vario, the eldest brother born in 1909, had the least documented criminal role but was part of the family structure from the beginning. He died in 1981. Between 1976 and 1988, all four brothers died.
A generation of Vario men was swallowed by the same machine they spent their lives feeding. They were all buried together in St. John’s Cemetery. The generations that followed scattered in every direction.
Leonard Vario Jr. , son of the man who died in the 1973 arson fire, reportedly became a soldier in the Lucchese family’s Brooklyn faction, carrying the Vario name into a third generation of organized crime. One grandson, also named Paul Vario, took a completely different path: he became an actor and appeared in the 2002 mob film This Thing of Ours alongside James Caan and Frank Vincent. The film itself was tied to real criminal connections, produced by Danny Provenzano, nephew of Genovese boss Tony Pro, with John “Sonny” Franzese listed as co-producer.
Even when the Vario name tried to go legitimate, it ended up back in the crime world. The four children and seven grandchildren of Paul Vario Jr. appear to live entirely outside that world, split between Staten Island and South Florida. No criminal records, no public ties to the Lucchese family, no interviews, no documentaries, no comments about their grandfather or the film that made him famous.
They are, by all available evidence, the branch of the Vario family tree that grew toward sunlight rather than shadow. The Vario crew itself no longer exists under that name. In the early 2000s, it merged with the Bensonhurst crew under Domenico “Danny” Cutaia to form the Lucchese family’s Brooklyn faction, but the crew’s bloodline still runs through the organization’s upper ranks. Patrick “Patty Red” DeRusso, described in federal documents as an old-timer from the former Vario crew, rose to captain and served as acting boss of the entire Lucchese family from 2017 to 2020.
That is a direct line of succession from Paul Vario’s original crew to the highest operational position in one of New York’s Five Families—more than 30 years after Vario died in a Texas prison cell. No surviving member of the Vario family has ever spoken publicly about Paul Sr. Not one interview, not one comment, not one documentary appearance. Henry Hill spent his final years calling into Howard Stern’s show, selling mob-branded pasta sauce, painting mobster portraits, and giving interviews to anyone who would listen.
He died in 2012 at age 69—broke, addicted, and completely exposed. The Varios chose the exact opposite. Paul Vario’s one unbreakable rule—never put your name on anything, never use the phone, never let anyone hear what you say—became the family’s lasting legacy.
They said nothing.