On June 11, 1970, William Bentvena, a made man in the Gambino crime family, celebrated his release from federal prison at the Bamboo Lounge in Queens. By midnight, he had been beaten unconscious, wrapped in tablecloths, stuffed into a car trunk, and buried in a shallow grave upstate. The 1990 film Goodfellas, told through the eyes of Henry Hill, explained the murder as the work of a psychopath, Tommy DeSimone, who snapped when Bentvena, known as Billy Bats, mocked his past as a shoeshine boy. That version reached tens of millions of viewers.
But the killing was not a crime of passion. It was a business decision, and the reason matters more than the violence itself. Bentvena was born in New York City in 1933 and rose through the ranks of the Gambino family, the most powerful crime organization in the country under boss Carlo Gambino. As a soldier, Bentvena was a dependable earner.
His operations centered on loan sharking, bookmaking, and hijacking, and he had deep connections at Idlewild Airport, later renamed Kennedy, where he cultivated relationships with dock workers, cargo handlers, and freight employees. Those contacts produced consistent income that flowed upward through the family structure, enriching capos and bosses who took their share of everything he generated. In 1962, Bentvena was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison on a heroin conspiracy charge. While he sat in a cell, his rackets did not disappear.
In the logic of organized crime, they were redistributed. Someone had to collect the loan shark payments, manage the bookmakers, and keep money flowing to the bosses. That someone was Jimmy Burke. Burke was an associate of the Lucchese family, not a made man, because he was not Italian.
That limitation defined his entire career. He could never be formally inducted into the life, so he built something else instead: influence. Operating out of Robert’s Lounge in South Ozone Park, Burke ran hijacking, fencing, loan sharking, and bookmaking. He paid off truck drivers, airport workers, Port Authority contacts, and police officers who took small bribes to keep investigations quiet.
Over the years Bentvena spent in prison, Burke expanded, bringing Henry Hill and Tommy DeSimone into his crew and building an organization that earned consistently and grew year after year. Much of that growth came from operations Bentvena had originally built. The airport contacts Bentvena had developed were now Burke’s. Burke had stepped into that world, made it his own, and had no intention of giving it back.
When Bentvena walked out of prison in early 1970, Burke faced a problem. Standard mafia practice held that a man who did his time came home and reclaimed what belonged to him. Bentvena would ask questions, make calls, and begin taking back his territory. Burke understood that immediately.
He could sit down with Bentvena and negotiate, returning some territory and some income, letting the Gambino family stay satisfied. Or Bentvena could simply not come home, and Burke would keep everything. There is no wiretap or documented conversation that proves Burke planned the murder. But the cold logic of how these men operated makes the calculation clear.
Burke could not kill a Gambino made man himself. As a Lucchese associate acting against another family, that would have been a death warrant. But Tommy DeSimone was different. Everyone in the life knew about Tommy’s temper.
If Tommy killed Bentvena in a rage over an insult, that was Tommy being Tommy, a psychopath losing control. Burke could stand back, disclaim responsibility, and survive the fallout, especially if the body was never found. The night at the Bamboo Lounge unfolded accordingly. Bentvena, out of prison for less than two months, was holding court, celebrating, accepting handshakes and drinks.
Henry Hill, then twenty-six, was watching. Tommy DeSimone, twenty years old, walked in with his girlfriend. He had been earning since his teens, had already killed men, and carried a reputation that made people nervous. In that world, an associate who let a man diminish him in public became a target, so Tommy’s sensitivity to disrespect was constant.
Bentvena greeted him and then began commenting on Tommy’s youth, specifically his days shining shoes. It was the kind of dig older men used to remind younger associates of their place. Tommy sat down, had a drink, and said nothing. Bentvena kept going, pushing the same button, reminding Tommy that he was not a made man, that he was only an associate.
In a room full of men, that was not harmless ball busting. It was a power move. Tommy eventually reached his limit. The bar cleared out.
He walked over to Bentvena and the beating began. It was savage, with steel-toed shoes, broken ribs, and head trauma. Burke did not pull Tommy off. According to Henry Hill’s testimony, the primary account of that night, Burke joined in, holding Bentvena down while Tommy finished the job.
That detail is the most important in the story. Burke was not a man who acted on instinct. He calculated. By the time he joined, Bentvena was already dying, and the line was already crossed.
The only way out was to ensure Bentvena never talked about what happened in that room. They wrapped him in tablecloths, placed him in the trunk of Henry Hill’s car, drove him upstate, finished him, buried him in dirt, and poured lime over the grave. The burial was not the end of the cover-up. It was the beginning.
The Gambino family knew Bentvena was missing and suspected foul play almost immediately. Men like him did not vanish. The people closest to the last place he was seen were Burke and DeSimone. But suspicion was not proof, and in organized crime, you do not move on suspicion.
You move on certainty, because killing someone connected to another family without justification could start a war. The Gambinos waited, logged the debt, and asked questions quietly. Burke and Tommy said nothing. Henry said nothing.
The silence held for six years. In 1976, the land where Bentvena was buried changed hands, and construction was planned. Burke got word and sent people to move the body. They dug it up and relocated it.
The remains were never found. There was no forensic identification, no physical evidence that ever reached a courtroom. The authorities had nothing until Henry Hill began cooperating with federal prosecutors in 1980, and even then, there was only the testimony of a cooperating witness without a body. Nine years after Bentvena died, on January 14, 1979, Tommy DeSimone received a phone call.
He was being made. The ceremony he had waited for his entire adult life was finally happening. He told people close to him, got dressed, and arrived at a house in Queens expecting wine, cigars, and a room full of made men welcoming him into the family. Instead, the room was empty.
Men he did not recognize moved toward him. Tommy understood instantly. He was not getting made. He was getting killed.
The door closed, multiple gunshots were fired, and DeSimone died in that room at twenty-eight. His body was never recovered. On paper, he became a missing person. Everyone in the life knew exactly what had happened and why.
The hit was ordered by the Gambino family, and the officially cited reason was Billy Bats. But Bats was not the only debt on the ledger. In December 1974, Tommy had killed Ronald Jerothe, a Gambino associate connected to John Gotti, then a rising capo. Tommy killed Jerothe over a personal dispute, another unsanctioned murder.
The Gambinos had two names on their list, and when they finally received permission to act, they cited both. Paul Vario, Tommy’s Lucchese capo, knew the hit was coming. Tommy had become too expensive to protect, having killed too many people and created too many enemies. When the Gambinos asked for permission, Vario either approved quietly or stepped aside.
Burke also knew, but even he could not shield Tommy from that debt. Gotti’s direct involvement in the execution was never confirmed in court, but multiple sources placed him close to it. He remembered Jerothe, waited years for the right moment, and collected what the Gambinos were owed. The cruelty of Tommy’s death was that he walked into that room believing the life had finally rewarded him.
He did not realize the bill had been accumulating for nine years. Goodfellas made him into cinema’s most terrifying psychopath, but the real story was never just about Tommy’s rage. The rage was real, and the insult landed. But Burke joining the beating was not passion.
Burke finishing it was not instinct. Burke helping dispose of the body, keeping his mouth shut for nine years, and letting Tommy take the weight while quietly keeping the operations built on Bentvena’s old territory, that was strategy. Billy Bats died because he came home after eight years in prison to a world that had reorganized itself in his absence. While he earned nothing and contributed nothing, Burke spent those same years building.
Bentvena’s return threatened everything Burke had built, and men like Burke did not respond to threats with negotiation. They responded with elimination. Tommy provided the rage. Burke provided the decision.
And Bentvena, a made man in the most powerful crime family in America, died not because of a joke about shining shoes, but because of money, territory, and the cold mathematics of organized crime that no movie could fully capture. His body was moved twice and never found. His killers walked free for years.
Only Tommy DeSimone ever paid, and even then, he paid for a different debt.