Hugh Carey, drug dealer?
The Lufthansa Heist
Behind the Six-Million-Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World
There are a million tales surrounding the Lufthansa heist, the $6 million robbery at JFK in 1978 that spawned the movie “Goodfellas.”
But perhaps the strangest — revealed this week in the new book “The Lufthansa Heist” — concerns the big fish authorities thought they could land because of the investigation: Gov. Hugh Carey. The book is written by Daniel Simone and Henry Hill, who was involved in the crime (and played in the film by Ray Liotta). Hill was arrested on drug charges shortly after the heist, and feds soon convinced him to cooperate in exchange for a plea deal.
Hill thought they wanted his boss Jimmy Burke, an associate of the Lucchese crime family, in connection with the Lufthansa robbery.
But the investigation initially went in a different direction. Hill’s phone was tapped, and Detective Dan Stahl heard him mention “the big Irishman up in Albany” on numerous occasions in relation to drug dealing.
“Stahl remembered that back in 1974 New York Governor Hugh Carey’s campaign ads had promoted him as ‘the big Irishman.’ . . . It suddenly clicked in the detective’s mind,” the authors write.
Stahl brought the recording to his colleague Bill Florio, who said, “If this is true, short of the president of the United States, we have the biggest fish we could ever hook and prosecute. . . . I can just see the headlines all over America: New York State Governor Hugh Carey Nabbed in a Heroin Ring. Unbelievable!” It was, indeed, unbelievable. When Hill was taken to East Hampton for debriefing, he casually mentioned how the Big Irishman referred to Jimmy Burke.
Florio was livid. “You’re saying Governor Carey had no complicity in your narcotics distribution?”
“I don’t even know the man,” Hill responded, “and I didn’t even vote for him.”
Florio tried to rescind the plea deal on the spot, but the prosecutor overruled him. Eventually, authorities got their man — it just wasn’t the man who was governor from 19631974. Hill’s testimony helped put away Burke and a number of other associates for various crimes, while Hill and his family entered the witness protection program.