N.Y. jurors urged to convict accused mobster for 'Goodfellas' heist
By Joseph Ax
NEW YORK (Reuters) - As a group of masked men ransacked an airport cargo building in New York on a December night in 1978, making off with $6 million in cash and jewels, U.S. prosecutors say Vincent Asaro and Jimmy Burke were eagerly waiting in a car a mile away for the biggest score of their lives.
That heist, famously depicted in the movie "Goodfellas," formed the basis for Asaro's arrest in 2014 more than three decades later.
On Friday, prosecutors urged a New York jury to convict Asaro, 80, a reputed member of the Bonanno crime family, for his role in the theft as well as a litany of other offenses from murder to extortion.
"He lived by and personally enforced the Mafia's code: 'Death before dishonor,'" Assistant U.S. Attorney Alicyn Cooley told jurors in Brooklyn federal court at the end of a three-week trial, noting that Asaro has that phrase tattooed on his arm.
Her painstakingly detailed summation lasted six hours, pushing the defense closing argument to Monday.
At trial, defense lawyers have sought to show the government's key witness, Asaro's cousin Gaspare Valenti, lied on the stand when he claimed Asaro participated in the infamous robbery of a Lufthansa Airlines building at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The heist, one of the country's most notorious unsolved crimes until Asaro's arrest, provided a key plot point for "Goodfellas," Martin Scorsese's Academy Award-winning 1990 film.
Asaro was closely associated with Jimmy Burke, long thought to be the mastermind of the heist and the inspiration for Robert DeNiro's character in the mob movie.
Burke, who was never charged in connection with the caper, died in prison while serving time for unrelated crimes. Some other members of the crew were killed off, as seen in "Goodfellas," though jurors were not told of those murders.
Asaro is also accused of numerous other crimes, including loan-sharking, stealing $1.25 million of gold salts from a FedEx Corp truck and arson.
In 1969, prosecutors say, he and Burke strangled a suspected informant to death with a dog chain.
Asaro's cousin, Valenti, was among several former Mafia members who testified at trial after signing deals with prosecutors, giving jurors a firsthand account of the violent life of a Mafioso.
"You've seen the mafia at its darkest and its most sinister," Cooley told the jury. "Even though it’s been delayed for too long, justice is still within reach."
(Reporting by Joseph Ax; Editing by Scott Malone, Lisa Lambert and Andrew Hay)
