In the early hours of December 11, 1978, a crew of armed men entered the Lufthansa cargo building at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. Within hours, they made off with millions of dollars in cash and jewelry, pulling off one of the largest and most brazen heists in American history. The man behind it all was James Burke, a violent and cunning mob associate known as Jimmy the Gent.
The robbery would make him infamous, but the paranoia and bloodshed that followed would ultimately destroy him. Burke was born on July 5, 1931, in Manhattan. His mother was a woman named Conway, and by the age of two, he had been classified as a neglected child and placed in the care of the Roman Catholic Church’s foster care program. Over the next eleven years, he was shuffled through numerous foster homes, experiencing a range of treatment that included beatings, abuse, neglect, and confinement.
He struggled to remember the names and faces of most of his temporary parents. His criminal record began early. At thirteen, he was arrested for juvenile delinquency after a disorderly incident in a Queens playground, though the charge was dismissed. The next year, he was arrested for burglarizing a house near his foster home and stealing $1,200 in cash, which sent him to the Mount Loretto Reformatory on Staten Island, a juvenile jail for incorrigible youngsters.
Serving time there was almost seen as a badge of honor among the young criminals he was beginning to associate with. In September 1949, at age eighteen, Burke was arrested for attempting to pass $3,000 worth of fraudulent checks in a Queens bank. Because of his youth and innocent appearance, he had been used as a passer by a Brooklyn hood named Dominic Cersami, who led a gang of professional check cashers. In the squad room of the 75th Precinct, detectives handcuffed Burke and punched him in the stomach, hoping to force him to implicate Cersami.
Burke refused to talk, and was sentenced to five years in Auburn prison for bank forgery. Upon arrival at Auburn, a massive stone prison in upper New York State, Burke was met by more than a dozen of the prison’s toughest inmates who had been anticipating his arrival. Two of them approached him. They were associates of Cersami, grateful for his silence, and told him that if he encountered any difficulties in Auburn, he should seek their assistance.
It was this encounter that introduced Burke to the mob. Cersami had a remarkable talent for generating income, so exceptional that both the Colombo family in Brooklyn and the Lucchese family in Queens agreed to share his services in an unprecedented arrangement. Burke’s association with these circles brought him into the orbit of powerful mob figures, including the Lucchese family capo Paul Vario. By the 1960s and early 1970s, hijacking had become a highly profitable venture in New York, with few legal consequences.
Airlines often preferred to downplay their losses, collecting insurance payouts rather than investing in security. Trucking companies claimed they were powerless against the unions, and New York legislators had not formally categorized hijacking as a distinct crime. As a result, hijackers were typically charged with related offenses such as kidnapping, robbery, or possession of stolen property, and few of those charges resulted in convictions. In 1966, a young man named Henry Hill, then twenty-three, was enlisted by Burke to help with one such job.
Burke had discovered three cargo trucks loaded with home appliances parked in a freight garage near the airport, and had arranged for a buyer, a friend of Paul Vario, who was willing to pay $5,000 per truck. The garage had minimal security, with only an elderly watchman on duty on Friday nights. Hill easily manipulated the watchman into opening the gate by claiming he had left his paycheck in one of the trucks. After gaining access, Hill subdued the watchman and secured him to a chair in a nearby shack.
With Burke’s precise knowledge of the trucks’ keys and locations, Hill, Burke, and another associate named Tommy DeSimone quickly navigated the trucks through the streets to where Vario was waiting. Within an hour, they were on their way to a weekend getaway, courtesy of reservations Burke had made under false names. According to Hill, most loads were sold before they were even robbed, and the customers were often legitimate retailers. Burke’s first move with a driver involved seizing his license or feigning to record his name and address, emphasizing that he knew where the driver lived and implying retribution if the driver cooperated with police.
Burke’s house looked like a department store, and the basement of the tavern he owned, Robert’s Lounge, was so loaded down with stolen goods that there was hardly enough room to play cards. By the 1970s, Burke was the king of hijacking at Kennedy Airport, and whenever he needed money, with Vario’s permission, he headed to the airport. The Lufthansa heist began with a tip from two insiders, Louis Werner and his co-worker Peter Gruenwald, who worked for the Lufthansa cargo airline. They provided detailed information about a massive haul arriving from Germany, including cash, jewelry, and other valuables estimated to be worth millions of dollars.
Burke meticulously planned the robbery, assembling a crew of trusted accomplices. Alongside Henry Hill, he recruited Tommy DeSimone and his own son, Frankie Burke, who served as one of the getaway drivers. Another individual involved was an African-American man named Parnell Edwards, believed to have been one of the drivers during the heist. Two days after the robbery, police discovered the van driven by Edwards.
They found his fingerprints inside, linking him to the crime, and the discovery quickly led authorities to connect Edwards to Burke’s crew. The crew came under heavy surveillance, significantly increasing the pressure on them. Amidst the scrutiny, Burke’s paranoia grew. He began to suspect that some of his associates might betray him, and to prevent any potential witnesses, he ordered the murders of several crew members.
Paul Vario ultimately gave Tommy DeSimone the order to take out Edwards. DeSimone, along with another gangster named Angelo Sepe, tracked Edwards down and fatally shot him on December 18, 1978, as part of the crew’s efforts to cover their tracks. The valuable cargo from the heist was never fully recovered, and the FBI launched a massive investigation. Despite their efforts, Burke and his crew managed to evade capture for several years.
The heist became legendary in criminal circles, not only for its scale but also for its repercussions, solidifying Burke’s reputation as a mastermind of crime and serving as a cautionary tale of the dangers of crossing him. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Burke became connected to another major scandal: the Boston College point shaving scandal. Through his ties to mobsters Henry Hill and Paul Mazzei, members of the Boston College basketball team, including Rick Kuhn, Jim Sweeney, and Ernie Cobb, conspired with gamblers to manipulate the outcomes of games by intentionally missing shots and committing turnovers. The scheme was uncovered in 1980 when an FBI investigation revealed the players’ involvement.
Burke was arrested for a parole violation in 1980. Two years later, in 1982, he was convicted of conspiracy and sentenced to twelve years in prison for his involvement in the point shaving scandal, primarily based on Henry Hill’s testimony. Hill’s testimony led to a total of fifty convictions, including those of Burke and Paul Vario. While serving his sentence, Burke was also charged with the 1979 murder of drug dealer Richard Eaton.
In 1985, he was convicted in a trial where Henry Hill again testified against him, and was sentenced to an additional twenty years in prison. The scandal had far-reaching consequences, leading to convictions for Kuhn, Sweeney, and Mazzei on charges of sports bribery and conspiracy. Cobb, who cooperated with authorities, received immunity. The affair exposed the dangers of gambling and corruption in sports and prompted efforts to prevent similar scandals in the future.
Jimmy Burke’s life of crime met its end in a stark and unforgiving manner. While serving his sentence at the Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, cancer crept into his body. Despite his tenacity, the disease ultimately overcame him. On April 13, 1996, Burke died at the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York.
His death marked the final chapter in a life defined by crime and deception, leaving behind a legacy of infamy and a cautionary tale of the perils of a life lived outside the law. His name would forever echo in the dark history of American organized crime, immortalized in the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, which served as the basis for the iconic film Goodfellas.