On January 14, 1979, Tommy DeSimone walked out of his house in Queens, climbed into a car with two men he knew, and vanished. He was twenty-eight years old. He believed he was on his way to be made a member of the Lucchese crime family. Instead, he was driving to his own execution.
His body was never found. DeSimone was one of three men who had beaten a made man to death nine years earlier. That murder, the killing of William “Billy Bats” Bentvena, would become famous decades later through the film Goodfellas. The three killers were Tommy DeSimone, Jimmy Burke, and Henry Hill.
When the bill came due, only DeSimone paid with his life. Burke died in prison years later. Hill lived to sixty-nine, became a government witness, and sold his story to the world. The question is why the mafia executed DeSimone and let the other two walk.
The answer lies in who DeSimone really was and what his violence had done to the family that protected him. DeSimone was born on May 24, 1950, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, into a family already steeped in organized crime. His grandfather was a mob boss in Los Angeles; his uncle was a member of the Gambino family. Crime was not a choice for him; it was an inheritance.
By his teens the family had moved to Brooklyn, and DeSimone was already running with criminals, already violent, already unpredictable. At fifteen he was introduced to Paul Vario, a powerful capo in the Lucchese family who ran a crew out of Brooklyn controlling truck hijackings and loan sharking. DeSimone became a Vario associate, as did Henry Hill, who was a few years older. They worked together, stole together, and eventually killed together.
From the beginning, DeSimone was different. Henry Hill later said the portrayal of him in Goodfellas was mostly accurate except for one detail: Joe Pesci was five foot three, while DeSimone was over six feet tall and built like a linebacker. He used that size to terrorize everyone around him. He was not just violent; he was reckless, impulsive, and uncontrollable, the kind of man who would pull a gun in a crowded room because of a perceived slight.
DeSimone’s first known murder came in 1968, when he was seventeen. According to Henry Hill, DeSimone shot and killed a random stranger named Howard Goldstein. There was no motive, no grievance, just violence for its own sake. By 1970 DeSimone was a full-time earner for the Vario crew, involved in truck hijackings at JFK Airport and fencing stolen goods, but he could not stop killing.
Worse, he was killing the wrong people. On June 11, 1970, at the Sweet Lounge in Queens, a Gambino family associate named William Bentvena walked in. Bentvena was a forty-nine-year-old made man nicknamed Billy Bats, recently released from prison after serving six years for narcotics trafficking. The gathering was his welcome-home party.
Years earlier, when DeSimone was a child, he had worked as a shoeshine boy, and Bentvena remembered. That night, in front of everyone, he decided to humiliate him. “Go home and get your shine box. ”
Bentvena was a made man; DeSimone was only an associate.
He was expected to take the insult. Henry Hill saw what was happening and walked DeSimone outside to calm him down. They waited until the bar emptied, then went back inside around three in the morning. DeSimone walked up to Bentvena and beat him unconscious with a pistol.
Jimmy Burke joined in, kicking and stomping the man until his skull cracked. They loaded the body into a car trunk, but Bentvena was still alive. They drove to a location in upstate New York near the Connecticut border. When they opened the trunk, Bentvena was still breathing.
DeSimone stabbed him repeatedly; Burke shot him four times in the chest. They buried the body, dug it up six months later, and reburied it somewhere else. They thought they had gotten away with it. They had not.
Killing a made man from another family without permission was an act of war. Bentvena was connected, and his friends in the Gambino family were not going to forget. The murder should have been a wake-up call. DeSimone should have kept his head down.
Instead, he did the opposite. Later in 1970, just months after killing Bentvena, DeSimone was in another bar where a young kid named Michael Gianco, known as Spider, worked as a low-level associate fetching drinks and running errands. One night, drunk and playing cards, DeSimone shot Spider in the foot for fun. Spider recovered and returned to work.
A few weeks later, Spider made a smart remark, and DeSimone shot him three times in the chest. Spider died on the floor. Hill later said that was the moment he realized DeSimone was a psychopath, not because of the murder but because of how unnecessary it was. DeSimone killed for sport, not business.
In 1974, DeSimone murdered another Gambino associate, Ronald “Foxy” Jerothe. The details were murky and the motive unclear, but the result was the same: another body, another Gambino connection, another reason for the Gambino family to want DeSimone dead. By the mid-1970s he had built a reputation as a killer and an earner, but also as a liability. He had killed two Gambino-connected men without permission.
The Gambino family was waiting, building a case for why he had to go. Then, on December 11, 1978, everything changed. Six armed men walked into the Lufthansa cargo building at JFK Airport and pulled off the biggest cash robbery in American history. They took $5.
875 million in cash and another $875,000 in jewelry, nearly $6 million total. The mastermind was Jimmy Burke. DeSimone was one of the crew. The plan succeeded, but Burke began killing the participants one by one, eliminating witnesses and keeping the money for himself.
By the summer of 1979, seven people connected to the heist were dead. Burke did not kill DeSimone. He did not have to; someone else was already handling it. The Lucchese family told DeSimone he was finally going to be made.
Becoming a made man was the ultimate goal, an oath of loyalty that made a man untouchable. DeSimone had been waiting his entire career. He got into the car with two men he trusted. They said they were driving to the ceremony.
Instead, according to multiple mafia sources including Henry Hill, DeSimone was taken to a house in Queens. The room that should have been filled with Lucchese family members was empty. It was a trap. John Gotti, a rising star in the Gambino family, was waiting.
Some reports say Gotti shot DeSimone three times in the head with a silenced pistol; others say another Gambino killer was also present. Either way, DeSimone was executed. His body was never recovered. The Lucchese family approved the hit.
They had no choice. The Gambino family demanded justice for Bentvena and Jerothe, and the Lucchese family could not protect DeSimone any longer. He had become too dangerous, too reckless, too much of a liability. They used the fake ceremony as bait, and DeSimone walked into it.
So why did Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill survive? Burke was Irish, the son of Irish American parents. In the mafia, only men of full Italian descent could be made. Burke could never take the oath, which meant he existed in a gray area: incredibly valuable but not technically part of La Cosa Nostra.
The Gambino family could not demand his death in the same way they demanded DeSimone’s. Burke was also too valuable to the Lucchese family. He was their best earner; killing him would cost them millions. And after the Bentvena murder, Burke laid low.
He did not brag or draw attention. He let DeSimone be the face of the problem, so when the Gambino family came calling, the Luccheses could point to DeSimone alone. Burke killed strategically; DeSimone killed impulsively. Burke was a professional; DeSimone was a psychopath.
Burke was eventually convicted of multiple crimes and died in prison on April 13, 1996, of natural causes at age sixty-four. The mafia never touched him. Henry Hill was half Irish and half Italian, so, like Burke, he could never be made. He was a lower-level associate, a man who did jobs for Paul Vario and Burke.
He was involved in the Bentvena murder, but he was the least involved. DeSimone beat Bentvena; Burke shot him; Hill helped clean up. In the eyes of the Gambino family, Hill was a minor player, not the man who disrespected Bentvena or pulled the trigger, just the man who helped dispose of the body. That distinction saved his life.
Hill also got out before the hammer dropped. In 1980 he was arrested on narcotics charges and faced serious prison time. He chose to become a government informant, testifying against Vario, Burke, and dozens of others. His testimony led to fifty convictions, and he entered the federal witness protection program.
Even before he flipped, though, the Gambino family was not demanding his death. They wanted DeSimone. Hill was a footnote, and footnotes do not get executed. He was eventually expelled from witness protection in 1987 after blowing his cover and continuing to commit crimes.
He spent years living in the open, writing books and giving interviews. The mafia knew where he was and could have killed him at any time. They did not, because killing him would only bring attention. Hill died of heart disease in Los Angeles on June 12, 2012, one day after his sixty-ninth birthday.
Natural causes. The mafia does not kill for revenge. It kills for survival. DeSimone threatened the organization on every level.
He killed a made man, then continued killing recklessly, drawing heat and making enemies across multiple families. By 1979, even Paul Vario, his protector, could not shield him. The Lucchese family had a choice: protect DeSimone and risk war with the Gambinos, or give him up and preserve peace. The decision was easy.
Jimmy Burke was too valuable to sacrifice, and Henry Hill was too insignificant to matter. DeSimone’s execution also sent a message to every associate: you cannot kill a made man, you cannot act without permission, and you cannot put your ego above the organization. The rules are the rules. DeSimone thought his reputation would protect him, that being a killer made him untouchable.
He was wrong. On January 14, 1979, he climbed into that car believing he was about to join the inner circle. Instead he walked into an empty room and was executed by the very people he thought would embrace him.
That is the real story of Goodfellas: not the glamour or the money, but the brutal price of being the one man nobody can control.