The Lufthansa Heist was a daring robbery at New York’s JFK Airport on December 11, 1978, where gangsters stole about $5.8 million in cash and jewels from a Lufthansa cargo vault, making it the biggest cash theft in U.S. history at the time.https://www.britannica.com/event/Lufthansa-heisthttps://christiandevotionals.substack.com/p/december-11-the-great-lufthansa-heist-real-life-goodfellas-rob-jfk-airport
It all started with inside information. A Lufthansa worker named Louis Werner owed money to his bookmaker, Marty Krugman, from gambling debts. Werner tipped Krugman about a huge shipment of unmarked cash from West Germany sitting in the airline’s vault at JFK, along with jewels waiting for bank pickup.https://www.app.tankersinternational.com/8799313/the-true-story-behind-the-movie/https://www.britannica.com/event/Lufthansa-heist Krugman passed the tip to Henry Hill, a mob associate, who brought it to Jimmy Burke, the mastermind behind the job. Burke ran Robert’s Lounge, a Queens bar that served as a hangout for his crew tied to the Lucchese crime family.https://www.britannica.com/event/Lufthansa-heist
Burke planned everything carefully using Werner’s details, like vault maps, shift times, and employee info. He picked a tight group of six trusted men, including Tommy DeSimone, known for his hot temper.https://www.britannica.com/event/Lufthansa-heisthttps://christiandevotionals.substack.com/p/december-11-the-great-lufthansa-heist-real-life-goodfellas-rob-jfk-airport Around 3 a.m., well before dawn, they drove up in a black Ford Econoline van, with Burke’s son and another guy following in a Buick.https://www.app.tankersinternational.com/8799313/the-true-story-behind-the-movie/
Wearing ski masks and armed, the robbers burst into the cargo building. They rounded up about ten early-shift workers, handcuffed them in the lunchroom, and forced a supervisor to open the vault without tripping the alarm. The vault had two doors; the first needed relocking before the second could open safely.https://www.britannica.com/event/Lufthansa-heisthttps://www.britannica.com/topic/December-11-Lufthansa-Heist They grabbed 72 boxes of cash, each weighing 15 pounds, plus jewels, totaling $5.8 million—worth around $28 million today.https://www.app.tankersinternational.com/8799313/the-true-story-behind-the-movie/https://www.britannica.com/topic/December-11-Lufthansa-Heist The whole job took just over an hour, and they were out by 4:30 a.m.https://www.app.tankersinternational.com/8799313/the-true-story-behind-the-movie/
Escape seemed smooth at first, but mistakes piled up. Driver Parnell “Stacks” Edwards was supposed to torch the van in a New Jersey junkyard. Instead, he parked it near his girlfriend’s place, right by a fire hydrant. Cops towed it, found fingerprints, and linked it to the crew.https://christiandevotionals.substack.com/p/december-11-the-great-lufthansa-heist-real-life-goodfellas-rob-jfk-airporthttps://www.britannica.com/topic/December-11-Lufthansa-Heist One worker even recognized a robber’s voice but stayed quiet out of fear.https://christiandevotionals.substack.com/p/de
