Henry Hill, the Brooklyn-born Lucchese mobster whose experiences were immortalized in the film Goodfellas, has died at age 69. His girlfriend and manager Lis Caserta told The Post and TMZ that he died at a hospital in Los Angeles. Caserta said to the Post, "He had a heart attack around the 27th of May, and he went into the hospital and it was really touch-and-go for a long time," noting that "[he] had been suffering from bad circulation due to smoking."
Hill joined infamous Lucchese capo Paul Vario's gang and his colorful life was detailed in Nicholas Pileggi's "Wise Guy: Life in a Mafia Family," which Pileggi later adapted for Martin Scorsese's film, Goodfellas. From the 1986 Times review of the book:
In 1955 an 11-year-old of Irish-Sicilian parentage walked across the street from where he lived in Brooklyn into a dingy, mob-run cab company looking for after-school work. His energy, intelligence and what seems to have been a general likableness quickly started him on his way to becoming the kind of tough thief New Yorkers euphemistically call a ''wise guy.'' Henry Hill had both driving ambition and a talent for staying alive. He eventually became one of a group who, in his words, ''walked in a room and the place stopped. Everyone knew who we were, and we were treated like movie stars with muscle.''
Mr. Hill's version of the American dream is told in Wise Guy by Nicholas Pileggi, a contributing editor of New York magazine, who has covered crime and politics for many years. He is working here with rich material and fascinating characters. For example, Mr. Hill's cohorts over the years included people like James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke, whose children were named, with both homage and hope, Jessie James Burke and Frank James Burke, and who, while in a Bureau of Prisons halfway house, masterminded ''the largest successful cash robbery in American history,'' a $6 million haul from Lufthansa German Airlines at Kennedy Airport. And Mr. Pileggi includes a matter-of-fact description of wise guys spending $500 a week to serve their sentences in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary like gentlemen; it makes one more aware of how corrupt our prison system is than any newspaper story could...
Mr. Hill's story goes nonstop. We learn that the energy level and entrepreneurial drive required to be a successful wise guy is staggering. Organized crime may be the last bastion of the American work ethic.
Even though Scorsese's film was brutally violent, it also romanticized the mob:
Hill once said of James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke, "If you ever offered Jimmy a billion dollars, he'd turn you down and then try to figure out how to steal it from you."
Hill eventually became a government informant, after being nailed for drugs, and joined witness protection, which he left in 1987. By leaving the mob, he lost access to the easy money. He said in 2010, "The money. The money was ------- unbelievable. We never robbed nothing small or that was not a major score. The government said a couple of hundred million dollars went through my hands. But I just blew it on slow horses, women, drugs and rock n' roll. We partied five, six nights a week and I was making $15,000 to $40,000 a week. That was just my end. But I was a degenerate gambler. I could lose $40,000 in a week."
As for his cohorts, like Jimmy The Gent and Tommy DeSimone (played by Joe Pesci in the film), "The whole ------- crew were homicidal maniacs. Just about every guy was a cold blooded ------ murderer. It was tough for me. I showed up with them when I had to but I was walking between rain drops. Every day I was scared."
Caserta told the Post that Hill "struggled with alcoholism" and made mended fences with family but "I don’t think he ever got over his demons. He would talk about how bad he felt about doing the things that he did." In recent years, he was arrested for meth and coke possession, as well as public intoxication.
