On June 6, 1980, police digging beneath a bar in South Ozone Park, Queens, found something that should not have been there: a human leg bone, then part of a human shoulder. The establishment above was called Robert’s Lounge. To drivers passing along Lefferts Boulevard, it looked like just another neighborhood bar. To the men of Lucchese crime family captain Paul Vario, it was a command post—a place for meetings, planning hijackings, settling bets, and hiring kidnappers.
For Jimmy Burke, the real-life gangster who inspired Robert De Niro’s character Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas, it was home. Henry Hill later described it in darker terms: Burke’s private cemetery. The bones found beneath the bar seemed to make that description chillingly real. But investigators faced a problem: whose bones were they?
By the time police began digging under Robert’s Lounge, Jimmy Burke had accumulated a long list of men who had betrayed him. Some owed him money. Some had taken part in robberies. Some knew about murders.
Some knew about the Lufthansa heist. Many had simply disappeared. Two names in particular became linked to the remains found beneath the bar: Thomas “Tommy” DeSimone and Martin Krugman. Tommy DeSimone helped inspire the character of Tommy DeVito, played by Joe Pesci in Goodfellas.
Marty Krugman was the bookmaker whose connection to Lufthansa employee Louis Werner helped set the airport heist in motion. One was a feared killer; the other helped enable the crime of the century. Both disappeared, and both had ties leading directly to Robert’s Lounge. The bones were only part of the story, because Robert’s Lounge was not just a place where investigators suspected bodies might be hidden.
It was one of the actual centers of the criminal world that Goodfellas turned into cinema. The real men were there: Jimmy Burke, Henry Hill, Paul Vario, Tommy DeSimone, Marty Krugman, hijackers, bookmakers, airport thieves. In 1978, word reached inside that bar about something only a few miles away at John F. Kennedy International Airport: millions of dollars in cash.
The Lufthansa heist. The robbery that would make Jimmy Burke rich and then put nearly everyone around him in danger, because after the money vanished from Kennedy Airport, people connected to the robbery began to vanish too. Long before Goodfellas, there was Paul Vario. He was a powerful captain in the Lucchese crime family, with territory largely centered around Brooklyn and Queens.
He ran a crew involved in gambling, loansharking, truck hijacking, extortion, and robbery. One location made the area especially valuable: Kennedy Airport. To ordinary New Yorkers, JFK was where travelers caught flights. To thieves, it was a warehouse full of cargo: electronics, clothing, food, luxury goods, and cash.
Anything arriving in New York by air ultimately had to be moved somewhere else, and every transfer created an opportunity. A truck could be hijacked. A driver could be bribed. A warehouse employee could provide information.
A shipment could vanish before anyone realized what had happened. Jimmy Burke was one of the best. Burke was Irish-American, which meant he could never become an official member of the Italian-American Mafia, but official membership was not necessary for him to be powerful. He was skilled at making money and, more importantly, skilled at organizing.
Burke understood robberies, hijackings, and which men could be trusted for which job. He earned a reputation for generosity with the criminals who worked for him, which helped explain his nickname: Jimmy the Gent. But the nickname concealed Burke’s other side. Jimmy could be extraordinarily violent.
The same man who might hand someone money after a successful robbery might later decide that person had become dangerous, and when Jimmy decided that, friendship offered little protection. Robert’s Lounge became his base. The bar operated in South Ozone Park, close enough to the airport that airport workers, thieves, and bookmakers moved through the same neighborhood. Burke had an ownership stake in it, as did Vincent Asaro, a Bonanno crime family figure, according to later federal court filings.
The customers reflected the world around them: men drinking, playing cards, discussing bets, talking about trucks, cargo, and who owed money. Sometimes someone walked through the door with information worth far more than anything behind the bar. That is how the Lufthansa heist began. Martin “Marty” Krugman was a bookmaker.
One of his clients was Lufthansa employee Louis Werner. Werner had a gambling problem, and gambling debts create pressure. But Werner possessed something valuable enough to make those debts interesting: information. He knew Lufthansa routinely handled enormous amounts of cash at JFK.
Money arriving from abroad reached the cargo terminal before being transferred into the American banking system. Werner understood the procedures, the security, and when the money arrived. Under the right circumstances, millions of dollars could exist inside a Lufthansa cargo building. Krugman heard the story, the information moved up the chain, and eventually it reached Jimmy Burke.
Now everything changed. Burke had not heard a gambling debtor talking about an airport; he had heard about a major score. Robert’s Lounge became part of the planning environment around Burke and his crew. The inside information gave Burke what professional thieves need most: timing.
The crew learned when to arrive, where employees would be, how the facility worked, where the money was kept, and how much time they had before authorities reacted. Burke assembled the robbery team. Louis Werner provided the inside knowledge. Other men were assigned specific roles.
On the morning of December 11, 1978, shortly after 3 a. m. , armed men entered the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport. Employees were subdued.
The thieves knew enough about the building to move with purpose. They reached the money, and when they left, they carried about $5 million in cash and nearly $1 million more in jewelry. At the time, it was considered one of the largest cash robberies in American history. No one was killed during the robbery.
The job seemed almost perfect. Then the problems began. The first issue was the getaway vehicle. The crew used a truck that was supposed to disappear immediately after the robbery.
Instead, it was discovered, giving investigators evidence. Then came the problem of the money. A robbery involving millions of dollars creates an obvious problem: everyone wants their share. Burke organized the operation, but multiple people contributed.
The gunmen wanted money. The inside cooperator wanted money. The men who brought the information wanted money. Suddenly everyone around Jimmy knew millions of dollars were somewhere.
One of the loudest men demanding payment was Marty Krugman. That was dangerous. Without Krugman, the Lufthansa information might never have reached Burke. But now that the robbery was over, the value of that contribution had changed.
Krugman knew where the information came from. He knew who organized the robbery. He knew crew members. And he wanted to be paid.
According to accounts surrounding the case, Krugman complained repeatedly about his share. Then, on January 6, 1979, Marty Krugman disappeared. He was never seen again. No confirmed body was ever found, and suspicion immediately fell on Jimmy Burke’s circle.
Years later, when people began talking about the bones under Robert’s Lounge, Krugman’s name inevitably came up. Krugman was not the only missing man linked to the Lounge. Tommy DeSimone was one of the most feared members of Burke’s circle: young, violent, unpredictable, and extremely dangerous. In Goodfellas, Joe Pesci turned that character into Tommy DeVito, but the real Tommy DeSimone was not exactly like the on-screen character.
The film compressed events, changed names, and merged aspects of different people. What remained accurate was the danger around him. Tommy had enemies, dangerous enemies. Among the murders attributed to him was the killing of William “Billy Batts” Bentvena, a made member of the Gambino family.
That created a problem that could not simply fade away: killing a made member without permission is one of the most serious offenses in the Mafia. DeSimone was also blamed for the killing of another Gambino associate, Ronald “Foxy” Jerothe. In the end, people connected to the Gambino family wanted Tommy dead. DeSimone disappeared in January 1979.
Unlike the famous scene in Goodfellas, there is no confirmed moment when Tommy walked into a room expecting to become a made member while the audience watched his death. The real circumstances remain disputed. Henry Hill later offered accounts tying Tommy’s killing to a retaliatory response from the Gambino family. Other accounts differ on who was actually involved and where it happened.
What is certain is simpler: Tommy DeSimone disappeared. His body was never officially found. Again, investigators and Mafia historians had another missing man linked to Jimmy Burke’s world. Then came Robert’s Lounge on June 19, 1980.
Human bones under the cellar. The questions were inevitable. Was one of them Tommy? Was one of them Marty Krugman?
Were there more bodies? Henry Hill later made an extraordinary claim. According to Hill, Jimmy Burke buried more than a dozen people around Robert’s Lounge, including under its bocce courts. Later reports repeated Hill’s description of the place as Burke’s private cemetery.
That claim should be taken for what it is: Henry Hill’s account, not a forensic discovery proving that twelve identified victims were recovered there. The confirmed discovery was more specific: investigators found a human leg bone and part of a human shoulder bone in the cellar. The identities were not conclusively established for the public. That distinction matters because Robert’s Lounge has accumulated decades of Mafia folklore.
Stories grow, numbers increase. One missing gangster becomes five, five becomes fifteen. But Robert’s Lounge does not need folklore to be unsettling. The confirmed history is already exceptional.
This was a real Mafia gathering place. Jimmy Burke ran his business from there. Paul Vario’s crew assembled there. The Lufthansa heist developed through the criminal network centered around it.
Men connected to Burke disappeared. Police literally exhumed human remains from beneath the building. The bar had a history of violence even before the Lufthansa job. One name helps explain why Jimmy Burke’s reputation became so intimidating: Michael “Spider” Gianco.
Anyone who has seen Goodfellas remembers Spider, the young man serving drinks. Tommy humiliates him, Spider eventually talks back, Tommy shoots him, the other men stare in shock. The film made that moment unforgettable. There was a real Michael Gianco.
Henry Hill later claimed that after Gianco was killed, his body was buried around Robert’s Lounge. Again, Hill’s account is the source for much of the burial story, and the exact location should not be confused with confirmed forensic evidence. But that distinction makes Robert’s Lounge more interesting, because the place sits on the border between documented crime and underworld memory. Some things were proven by investigators, some were described by witnesses years later, and some disappeared with the men who knew the answers.
Jimmy Burke understood the value of people disappearing. The Lufthansa heist sharpened that instinct. After the robbery, Burke faced a huge problem. Police did not know exactly who committed the robbery, but they knew where to look.
Investigators understood the world of airport cargo hijacking. They knew the crews working around Kennedy Airport. They knew Jimmy Burke, Henry Hill, and Paul Vario. The more people who knew the details of Lufthansa, the greater the chance someone would talk.
Burke began looking at his partners differently. A man who was useful before the robbery might become dangerous after it. A man who wants his share might become dangerous. A man who suddenly buys expensive cars might become dangerous.
A man arrested on another charge might become dangerous. One by one, people connected to the world of Lufthansa began turning up dead or disappearing. The film captures that paranoia in one of its most memorable scenes: bodies appearing while “Layla” plays. A truck, a car, a meat refrigerator.
The message is clear: Jimmy is cleaning up after the robbery. The real history is more complicated than the montage. Not every death around Burke can be proven to have happened because of Lufthansa alone. Some victims had other disputes.
Some stories rely heavily on Henry Hill’s later recollections. But there was undeniably violence surrounding Burke’s criminal organization after the robbery, and the Lufthansa money was never recovered. Years later, another man revealed how angry people still were about that. Vincent Asaro was a Bonanno family figure with long-standing ties to Burke.
Federal prosecutors eventually charged him with involvement in the Lufthansa heist. A cooperating witness secretly recorded a conversation with Asaro in 2011. More than 30 years after the robbery, Asaro was still complaining about the money. According to court filings, Asaro said they never got what they were supposed to get, and that Jimmy Burke had kept everything.
More than three decades later, the money was still part of the conversation. That reveals what Lufthansa did to the men involved: before the robbery, they had a shared opportunity; after it, they had competing claims on millions of dollars, and Jimmy controlled the money. Another murder linked to Burke shows why stories about bodies under the bar were taken seriously. Paul Katz was connected to Burke and Asaro and had access to a warehouse used for stolen goods.
Then police raided the warehouse. Burke and Asaro began to believe Katz might be an informant. According to federal court filings, Katz was killed in 1969. A later cooperating witness said Burke strangled him with a dog chain, and his body was hidden under concrete at a property in Queens.
Years later, Burke allegedly worried investigators might find the remains and ordered them moved. For decades, Katz remained missing. Then, in 2013, FBI agents arrived at a house in Queens that Burke once occupied. They brought sledgehammers, shovels, and forensic teams.
They dug and found human remains. DNA testing identified them as Paul Katz. That discovery did something important for the legend surrounding Jimmy Burke. For years, people had heard stories about Jimmy burying people.
Henry Hill talked about bodies. Robert’s Lounge had already produced human bones. But now, more than 30 years later, investigators recovered and identified another man whose disappearance was directly linked to Burke’s criminal circle. The past was literally still underground.
The Katz discovery helped reopen another story everyone thought was closed: Lufthansa. In January 2014, federal prosecutors announced charges against Vincent Asaro and others. Asaro was accused of participating in the 1978 airport robbery. He was also charged in connection with Katz’s murder.
The case brought Robert’s Lounge back into public focus, because Asaro and Burke were apparently business partners in the bar. Suddenly, the place where people had disappeared decades earlier was connected again to a federal indictment. The government was using witnesses and recordings to reconstruct conversations from a criminal world that existed before many of the investigators on the case were born. Asaro ultimately went to trial on the Lufthansa charges.
In 2015, a jury acquitted him on those charges. That outcome matters. The government accused him, presented its evidence, and the jury found him not guilty. His alleged involvement should not be treated as a criminal conviction.
But the trial revealed extraordinary details about the network around Robert’s Lounge: how Burke dealt with Bonanno figures and Lucchese partners, how airport crimes crossed family lines when enough money was available, how old relationships lasted for decades, and how a neighborhood bar could become a meeting point for people from completely different criminal organizations. That is what made Robert’s Lounge so useful. It was not a grand Mafia headquarters. There were no marble floors, no boss’s big office, no sign outside announcing organized crime.
It was local, ordinary, and close to the airport—exactly the type of place where criminals could blend into neighborhood life. Anyone could walk in for a drink. Another man could come to place a bet. A truck hijacker could stop by.
An airport employee could pass along information. A prominent gangster could sit at the table, and no one driving by would understand that a multi-million-dollar robbery could be planned inside. Then there was the cellar. That changed how the entire building is remembered.
Once investigators found human bones beneath Robert’s Lounge, every story about the place became darker. Every missing partner became a possibility. Every story Henry Hill told about Jimmy Burke became connected to a physical place. You could point to an address: 114-45 Lefferts Boulevard.
Not a movie studio, not Martin Scorsese’s version of a Queens neighborhood. The real address. That is why calling Robert’s Lounge the real Goodfellas bar makes sense only with one important caveat. Goodfellas was not filmed as a literal reconstruction of every event that happened inside Robert’s Lounge.
Character names were changed. Locations were changed. Events were compressed. But the criminal world the film portrayed came directly from men who inhabited places like this.
Jimmy Conway was based on Jimmy Burke. Henry Hill was Henry Hill. Paul Cicero was based on Paul Vario. Tommy DeVito was based primarily on Tommy DeSimone.
The Lufthansa heist was real. Robert’s Lounge belonged to that reality. The film gave audiences a polished version of a Mafia gathering place. The actual place possessed something the film could not fully replicate: a cellar where police found human remains.
There was also a strange end to the story. Robert’s Lounge did not remain frozen in time. Jimmy Burke went to prison. Paul Vario went to prison.
Henry Hill became a government witness. Tommy DeSimone disappeared. Marty Krugman disappeared. The Lufthansa crew fell apart.
Eventually, Robert’s Lounge stopped being Robert’s Lounge. For a period after Lufthansa drew enormous attention, the location reportedly changed its name to the South Side Inn. Then the neighborhood changed over time. Today, historical sources for the site indicate the former Robert’s Lounge address is simply an ordinary commercial space, recently associated with a Caribbean restaurant.
That transformation is almost hard to process. Imagine walking into a restaurant without knowing the history beneath your feet. About 50 years ago, Jimmy Burke’s crew gathered at that address. Information about airport shipments passed through that criminal network.
Men connected to one of the largest robberies in American history sat there. Some of them later disappeared. Then police arrived with digging equipment and found human bones beneath the place. But the mystery was never fully resolved.
We still cannot say with certainty whose bones those were, found in 1980, based on public records. Was it Tommy DeSimone, Marty Krugman, or someone else entirely? If Henry Hill was right that Burke buried multiple victims around Robert’s Lounge, how many were actually there? Without identification of the remains, those questions remain unanswered.
That uncertainty is stronger than pretending every Mafia legend has been solved, because Robert’s Lounge represents exactly how Jimmy Burke operated. He lived in the gap between what everyone suspected and what prosecutors could prove. People disappeared. Perhaps everyone around the crew understood what had likely happened, but understanding is not evidence.
Missing bodies meant no autopsy, no crime scene, no ballistic evidence, no weapon tied to a victim, no easy trial. Burke understood that long before modern forensic science made recovering old remains more useful. For years, the plan worked. Jimmy Burke was never convicted of the Lufthansa heist.
He was never tried for many of the murders attributed to him. He eventually went to prison on other charges and died behind bars in 1996. But the ground around him kept talking after he was gone. First Robert’s Lounge.
Then, decades later, Paul Katz beneath a property in Queens. Bones where there should have been concrete and dirt. Physical reminders that behind the stories Henry Hill told and behind the characters Hollywood turned into entertainment, there were real people who disappeared. That is the part of Robert’s Lounge that Goodfellas could not fully show.
The film ends. The credits roll. Jimmy Conway becomes one of Robert De Niro’s most famous roles, Tommy becomes one of Joe Pesci’s most famous roles, and the Lufthansa heist becomes one of the greatest scenes in gangster cinema. But at 114-45 Lefferts Boulevard, there was no soundtrack, no script, no cut to the next scene.
There was Jimmy Burke. There was the crew. There was Lufthansa. There were men who vanished.
And on June 6, 1980, investigators went beneath Robert’s Lounge and pulled human remains from the ground. The bar that helped inspire the world of Goodfellas was hiding something Hollywood did not need to invent.