Vincent Asaro

Vincent Asaro
Born	1935 (age 80–81) Ozone Park, Queens, New York
Other names	Vinny
Children	Jerome

Vincent "Vinny" Asaro (born 1935) is a New York City mobster and captain in the Bonanno crime family.^[1]

According to Lucchese crime family associate turned informant Henry Hill, Asaro was a caporegime in the Bonanno crime family who oversaw the family's interests in JFK airport.^[2] Asaro is the nephew of Michael Zaffarano and since the 1970s, has been the capo of a crew in the Queens faction of the Bonanno family. With his father's help, Vinny's son Jerome Asaro also became a captain in the Bonanno family. However, father and son had a falling out in later years and did not speak with each other.^[3]

On January 16, 2014 Asaro was indicted on federal racketeering charges stemming from the 1978 Lufthansa heist.^[4][5] The charges also included the theft of $1.25 million of gold salts, involvement in the pornography industry, and for the ordering of the murder of a cousin who testified in court.^[3]Arrested along with Asaro were his son Jerome, acting boss Thomas DiFiore, acting capo Giacomo Bonventre, and soldier John Ragano.^[6][3]

Controversially, author Daniel Simone, Henry Hill's co-writer of their book, The Lufthansa Heist, published on August 1, 2015 by Lyons Press, claims that Henry Hill asserted to him that "Asaro had no involvement in the famous robbery."^[7] In fact, Asaro does not appear nor is mentioned in Simone's book. Furthermore, in the Author's Notes and Sources page of The Lufthansa Heist, Simone lists numerous law enforcement agents who collaborated with him in the development of the book and, he attests, none of these subjects ever mentioned Asaro in connection with the Lufthansa robbery. More strangely, those investigators had not known about a Gaspar Valenti, the informant who testified against Asaro.^[8] Moreover, in his testimonies Valenti stated that, among an array of crimes he committed with Asaro, he was also one of the gunmen of the Lufthansa caper.

At Asaro's trial, Valenti went on to state that in the course of the robbery, he struck on the head with the butt of his pistol, Kerry Whalen, one of the Lufthansa shipping clerks. Contrarily, Whalen testified that Valenti was not the armed robber who hit him on the scalp. Instead, in 1978 immediately after the robbery, Whalen had positively identified his true assailant from police mug shots. This perpetrator was a reputed criminal by the name of Angelo Sepe.

Unrelated Murder

Asaro was also a suspect in the 1969 death of Paul Katz. Katz owned a warehouse that Asaro and James Burke used to store stolen goods. When law enforcement raided the warehouse, Asaro and Burke immediately suspected Katz of being a government informant. The two men allegedly killed Katz with a dog chain and buried his remains under a vacant house. When the NYPD reopened the Katz case, Asaro and Burke allegedly moved the remains to the house of Burke's daughter and reburied them there. In 2013, a police search uncovered the remains.^[3][6]

On November 12, 2015, Asaro was found not guilty of all charges.^[9]

References

1. Norimitsu Onishi (March 19, 1995). "Your Car, the Sitting Duck". New York Times.
2. Allan May. "The Lufthansa Heist Revisited". Tru TV Crime Library.
3. Goldstein, Joseph. "As Seen in ‘Goodfellas’: Arrest Is Made in ’78 Lufthansa Robbery". New York Times. Retrieved 11 April 2015.
4. Selim Algar; Jamie Schram, Larry Celona, Bruce Golding (2014-01-23). "Mobster charged in 'Goodfellas' JFK Lufthansa heist". New York Post.
5. "Sealed Indictment" (PDF). www.pacermonitor.com. PacerMonitor. Retrieved 21 October 2015.
6. Larry McShane; John Marzulli (2014-01-24). "Feds charge mobster in $6 million Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport that was portrayed in 'Goodfellas'". New York Daily News. Retrieved 2014-01-23.
7. newspaper=New York Post|date=2014-01-25|author=Emily Smith
8. The Lufthansa Heist by Daniel Simone & Henry Hill
9. Mobster, 80, Cleared on All Counts in ‘Goodfellas’ Case