At the intersection of organized crime and pop culture lies the story of Henry Hill. A Brooklyn-born hustler, Hill rose from streetwise errand boy to a Lucchese crime family associate—and eventually, a federal informant, whose testimony placed dozens of mobsters behind bars.
Unlike dozens of others who met another fate after they turned on “la famiglia,” Hill survived for decades, and his extraordinary life became the backbone of the iconic mafia movie Goodfellas. Though Hill died in 2012, he cemented a fraught legacy that includes everything from the romanticized myths that fed the infamous movie to the true cost of loyalty to the Mafia.
Henry Hill’s Introduction to the Mafia
Hill was born on June 11, 1943, in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a neighborhood steeped in mob legend. From a young age, he was captivated by the swagger of the men in suits.
Hill’s Irish-Italian heritage placed him on the periphery of the Italian-American mafia world: He was ineligible to become a “made man” under the mafia’s strict rules because he wasn’t a full-blooded Italian. But that didn’t stop Hill from trying.
By the time Hill turned 11 years old, he was running errands for local mobsters, including Paul Vario, a capo for the Lucchese family, one of the mafia’s “Five Families” who dominated crime across both New York and New Jersey. As Hill delivered messages and performed other tasks, he absorbed the aura of power the men projected. “It’s an intoxicating lifestyle that sucks you in,” he said in an interview decades later. “Then you get too scared, and too in love with the money, to leave,” Hill continued. “All people do is fear you, and that’s intoxicating. It’s a strange lifestyle.”
From Errand Boy to Criminal Operator
By the 1960s, after serving three years in the Army, Hill was firmly embedded within the Lucchese crime family. He’d already committed a string of felonies when he took part in the 1967 robbery of Air France at John F. Kennedy International Airport. The robbers stole about $420,000.
In 1972, a federal jury convicted Hill of extortion following a brawl at a Tampa bar in which Hill and a handful of associates beat a man who owed a $14,500 gambling debt to a mob boss. A judge sentenced Hill to 10 years in prison. He was paroled after six years and began dealing drugs.
But Hill’s biggest score came in 1978 when he played a central role in the infamous Lufthansa heist, orchestrated by his mobster mentor Jimmy Burke. The robbery was the largest of its time, netting nearly $6 million in cash and jewels, equivalent to approximately $29 million today.
The heist, which forms the basis of Goodfellas, became notorious not just for its sweeping scope, but its violent aftermath, including the murders of several of the robbery’s co-conspirators. Though Hill never confessed to killing anyone himself, he said in a 2010 interview: “I was present when people got murdered. I dug a lot of holes.”
Lufthansa Heist Murders: How Paranoia and Greed Led to the Deaths of 6 Mobsters and Associates
The December 11, 1978 Lufthansa heist by the Lucchese crime family, which took place at New York's JFK airport, was the most infamous caper in U.S. history.
The December 11, 1978 Lufthansa heist by the Lucchese crime family, which took place at New York's JFK airport, was the most infamous caper in U.S. history.
Turning into an Informant
Hill’s mafia rise unraveled in 1980 when he was arrested on narcotics-trafficking charges.
Following the Lufthansa robbery, Burke had ordered the killings of his collaborators. Hill was one of last men left alive, and he grew afraid Burke would kill him while he was incarcerated.
Hill accepted an offer to become an FBI informant in exchange for protection. “I was in trouble,” Hill told CBS decades later. “I knew I was a dead man, no matter how you cut it. If I stayed in prison, I was dead. Went out in the street, I was dead.”
His cooperation with law enforcement and testimony led to more than 50 federal convictions, including senior members such as Vario and Burke.
In 1985, Hill’s transformation from gangster to government witness was immortalized in Nicholas Pileggi’s non-fiction book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. Martin Scorsese later adapted the book into the 1990 film Goodfellas, in which Ray Liotta portrayed Hill.
Death of a ‘Goodfella’
Though he entered the U.S. Federal Witness Protection Program in 1980, Hill, who’d taken on the name Martin Todd Lewis, didn’t remain hidden for long. He was expelled from the program in 1984, after blowing his cover amid continued criminal activity. In 1987, Hill received a cocaine-trafficking conviction in Seattle.
Hill spent the rest of his life living openly: He was a frequent guest on Howard Stern’s radio show and Geraldo Rivera’s talk show; he sold autographed mob memorabilia, including shovels and poker chips and even gave advice for a fee, including the “best ways to hide a corpse.”
Hill’s life ended not in gunfire or underground obscurity, but in the quiet mortality of illness, closing the chapter on one of America’s most vivid organized-crime tales, immortalized both on the page and the screen.
The gangster, who had two children with his ex-wife Karen, died on June 12, 2012, just one day after his 69th birthday, of complications related to long-standing heart problems, according to his longtime partner and manager, Lisa Caserta. At the time, Caserta said Hill “went out pretty peacefully, for a goodfella.”
