Today in History, December 11: How a van full of armed men and millions of dollars inspired Goodfellas

Seven masked men, a black van and millions of dollars missing from an airport hangar in the dead of night — that's what it takes to create a decades-old mafia mystery.

It has been almost 50 years since armed men burst into the Lufthansa cargo terminal at New York's John F Kennedy International Airport on December 11, 1978.

In 90 minutes, they carried out the largest cash robbery in the United States at the time.

Only a fraction of the money stolen has ever been recovered. Only one person has ever been convicted. 

In the decades following those 90 minutes of high-stakes violence, the Lufthansa heist has seen dozens of former mob associates and informants come forward with what they say is the truth.

It has also been linked to a series of murders of alleged witnesses and co-conspirators, killed to conceal what really happened that night, and what happened to the money.

Here is what we know for sure.

'Jimmy the Gent' and a desperate man with a gambling debt

According to a later account written by author Nicholas Pileggi — the same book that would be adapted into the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas — the plot began with a 46-year-old airline worker.

Louis Werner, a Lufthansa cargo supervisor, was in debt to the tune of $US20,000 ($30,113) to bookmaker Martin Krugman — a gambling debt worth almost $US100,000 ($150,567) in modern currency.

Werner allegedly knew the money was coming into the airport via Lufthansa, part of a shipment from the Commerzbank in Frankfurt to New York's Chase Manhattan Bank.

The information was allegedly passed on from Werner, who was "so desperate to get started that he actually had a plan", according to Pileggi.

Finally, it allegedly reached James Burke, an associate of the Lucchese crime family.

Burke, also known as "Jimmy the Gent", would later die in prison while serving a life sentence for an unrelated crime.

He has long been the suspected mastermind behind the entire heist.

According to his childhood friend turned FBI informant Henry Hill, Burke was "one of the city's biggest hijackers".

"He loved to unload the hijacked trucks himself until the sweat was pouring down his face.

"Jimmy got his nickname … because he used to take the driver's licence, just like everybody else, except Jimmy used to stuff a $50 bill into the guy's wallet before taking off.

"I can't tell you how many friends he made out at the airport because of that. People loved him."

Burke allegedly brought in a group of men who would receive a different cut of the money depending on their involvement.

On the Friday before the heist, Lufthansa flew the money in and stored it in one of its high-value cargo storage rooms.

Handcuffs, a black van, and dozens of metal boxes 

At 3:15am, the van rolled up to an unguarded gate at the north end of the cargo terminal, cut the chain, and drove up to the ramp.

An employee approached.

As he did, six armed men — all those inside, except the driver — jumped out and ran at him, overtaking him, overpowering him and continuing towards the building.

The security guard heard the commotion and came running.

The group, unstoppable in that moment, stormed him and took him with them, dragging both men towards the storage room.

Another employee was also caught up in the attack and forced to disconnect the alarm.

At the storage room door — alarm silenced, employees handcuffed and disarmed, and a key produced from one's pocket — the men split up.

Four of them entered the room and began making off with the solid metal boxes containing the money and jewellery.

The rest made their way steadily through the adjoining rooms, finding the other staff members and catching them unawares.

By 4:15am, nine Lufthansa employees were sitting handcuffed in the third-floor cafeteria, and 35 boxes of valuables had been loaded into the back of the van.

The assailants then drove away.

It would be another 15 minutes before one of the employees managed to free himself and alert the authorities.

The hunt for the money and the men had begun.

Bodies allegedly pile up after 'clockwork' heist 

In the end, they had made off with $US5 million ($7.53 million) in cash and nearly $US1 million ($1.51 million) in jewels.

The same cash would be equal to $US24.9 million ($37.49 million) in today's currency.

The operation had gone off "like clockwork", police spokesperson James Connolly told the media at the time.

"It was well-planned, well-organised and well-executed," he said.

"They were so well organised that they had enough handcuffs for all the employees."

A week after the heist, the alleged getaway driver — Parnell "Stacks" Edwards — was found shot dead in his Queens apartment.

Martin Krugman, according to Hill, was dead a few weeks later.

"What Jimmy never knew was that the Feds had been building informants at the airport, many of whom knew that Werner had been planning to hit Lufthansa for months," Hill later wrote in his autobiography.

As the bodies of people allegedly connected with the heist continued to pile up, according to Hill, Burke's behaviour grew "progressively worse".

"I'd known Jimmy for over 20 years, but I had never seen him crazier than he had been since Lufthansa," he told Pileggi.

"Jimmy had gone crazy with the money."

According to various informants and former mob members, at least 10 people involved in the heist were either dead or missing, allegedly on Burke's orders, by the end of 1979.

Louis Werner was arrested that February for his involvement and was later sentenced to 15 years behind bars.

Others were arrested but never convicted.

In 2014, mobster Vincent Asaro — an alleged former capo-regime of the Bonanno crime family — was arrested in connection with the theft.

A year later, he would be acquitted after a three-week trial and two days of jury deliberation, despite prosecutors stating they had spent decades building their case against him.

The 80-year-old could not resist a parting jab as he climbed into his car outside court.

The 'beleaguered, battered, and bruised' Goodfellas 

Nicholas Pileggi's book, Wiseguy, was published just seven years after the Lufthansa heist.

Two years later, that non-fiction account would become the basis for Martin Scorsese's 1990 film Goodfellas, where the crime was a major plot point.

It would go on to be preserved in the National Film Registry by the US Library of Congress as "culturally significant", listed by several institutes as one of the most influential films of its kind.

More movies featuring the heist followed, with The 10 Million Dollar Getaway released in 1991 and The Big Heist, starring Donald Sutherland as Jimmy Burke, in 2001.

In the years that followed, the mafia world, which had allegedly given rise to crimes like the one that took place at Kennedy Airport that night, began to disappear.

Vincent Asaro, the last person officially linked to the crime, died in 2023.

The testimony against him at trial was described by the New York Times as a "jaw-dropping" breach of "Omerta", the Mafia's code of silence.

He had been arrested alongside five other alleged members of the Bonanno crime family.

FBI recordings and 33 witnesses at trial were not enough to prove his involvement in the heist.

Journalist Jerry Capeci said in 2008 the organisation's influence had been diminished across most of New York, but persisted.