The Big Heist

by Anthony M. DeStefano

  But the mob infiltration of the airports and the cargo industry didn’t just involve rip-offs of highly valuable items. After months of investigation and several days of the public hearings, the New York State Commission of Investigation, a body set up in the aftermath of the infamous Apalachin meeting of top mobsters in 1957, found that the Mafia had been able to infiltrate the New York airport trucking industry, particularly at JFK. There was also evidence of mounting cargo thefts, despite industry claims to the contrary, and reports of protection rackets and loansharking at the airport.

  In terms of the Mafia, what appeared to be happening at the airport was similar to what New York City had seen in other industries that relied on trucking, notably the garment industry in Manhattan. Mafia figures owned and operated a number of garment trucking companies, and police had numerous reports about the way the truckers had formed a cartel, with the industry carved up among themselves. In addition, gangsters along Seventh Avenue loaned money at usurious rates, influenced the garment unions, and had interests in dress manufacturing companies. Trucking was a key link in the garment production cycle because manufacturers needed to have their products shipped to contracting factories, which produced the finished products, and then taken over the road to retail outlets. Control of trucking often meant control of the price of shipping goods, and, if needed, the mob could hold out the threat of a delay in shipments to exact an advantage over the manufacturers.

  At JFK, state investigators found evidence that the top Teamster union official, Harry Davidoff, had been threatening at least two airlines, Northwest Airlines and National Airlines, not to switch their trucking business to another company. Both airlines, according to testimony before the state commission, had wanted to switch to a newer and more reliable trucking company but were warned off by Davidoff.

  “The gist of the conversation was that if National persisted, National would find it very difficult to handle any of their trucking requirements in the New York area,” Alvin C. Schweizer, an official of an airline industry group, told the commission in testimony. The same call was made by Davidoff to Northwest, said Schweizer. Both airlines decided not to switch, he added.

  Davidoff, said Schweizer, had enormous power as a union official with Teamsters Local 295, a union that would be dogged by allegations of organized crime for years to come. The local was also found to have ties to noted labor racketeer John “Johnny Dio” Dioguardi. However, despite the revelations and allegations against him in the state probe, Davidoff remained a powerful figure in the union for decades and had his own connections to some of those involved in the 1978 Lufthansa heist.

  The Commission of Investigation findings underscored how the mob influence at the airport had extended beyond control of gangs of thieves like that involving Robert Cudak. It was also apparent that the airline cargo industry was downplaying the losses it suffered from cargo theft and hadn’t been able to quell mounting losses. At JFK alone, state police determined that in 1968, a time when Cudak and his associates were stealing tens of millions of dollars of high-value cargo with abandon, there were 128 thefts involving $2 million in cargo reported. This was obviously a low-ball figure, but in the prior year the losses amounted to a measly $877,000, again an outrageously minimal amount given what Cudak later revealed he was stealing from JFK and elsewhere.

  With the nation finally waking up to the Mafia infiltration at the airport, a push began to ramp up cargo security by pushing aside the Port Authority police and replacing them with something seen as more capable of dealing with the mob. For that, Governor Nelson Rockefeller started pressing to have the Waterfront Commission—a bi-state organization set up by New York and New Jersey in 1953—take over policing the cargo and trucking operations at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark airports. The commission had been set up to combat Mafia and racketeering activity on the docks of both states. The mob not only controlled labor unions but also bled stevedores dry with loansharking and gambling. The seamy life on the docks was fodder for director Elia Kazan’s 1954 film On the Waterfront, which was inspired in part by the efforts of a Brooklyn priest to combat the mob, as well as testimony before the commission.

  The Waterfront Commission didn’t push itself to the forefront on the airport cargo issue: Rockefeller’s staff believed it was better suited for the job than the hodge-podge of Port Authority cops and private security. In 1968, the commission did its own investigation and found that the underworld (i.e., Mafia) was encroaching into the growing cargo business at JFK and that things were reaching a “dangerous situation.” But opposition to the Rockefeller plan came from the airline industry and others, including the Queens District Attorney Thomas Mackell, who admitted he took financial support from the International Longshoremen’s Association, the powerful dock union that for years police said had been under the influence of racketeers like Anthony “Tough Tony” Anastasio, a Gambino crime family member and brother of the murdered crime boss Albert Anastasia. Mackell defended the kind of help he got on his campaign from the union, saying “it is not an unusual thing.”

  There was some legitimate concern that while the Waterfront Commission had done a good job in combatting some racketeering activity and labor abuse on the docks, it didn’t have the experience dealing with air cargo. Industry officials believed that putting the commission into the airports would lead to congestion, confusion, and delay in moving cargo. Relatively small numbers of ships enter New York harbor, compared to the thousands of daily aircraft arrivals and departures at JFK and Newark, noted the critics.

  But with cargo losses appearing to grow, support continued to increase for the Waterfront Commission taking an expanded role. Even The New York Times editorialized in favor of the move. By 1971, the legislatures of both New York and New Jersey had enacted measures to turn over cargo security to the commission, which would install its own police force at JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark. Any such expansion of the commission power required a congressional resolution and one was submitted by New York Senator Jacob Javits in early 1971.

  However, political headwinds increased. Criticism rose against the Waterfront Commission itself. Although the commission was credited with ending some mob influence on the docks such as murders, loansharking, and kickbacks, critics said it hadn’t rid the waterfront of all Mafia activity or stopped the cargo pilfering from the docks. Some said the commission really wasn’t equipped to run serious investigations into Mafia associates.

  Nonetheless, Rockefeller continued to push for the plan to have the commission’s policing jurisdiction extended, telling a Senate subcommittee in 1972 that “racketeers have seized control of the air freight industry at these airports by infiltration of unions and the truckmen’s association.” Hogwash, said Leo Seybold the vice president of an air-transport group, who told the subcommittee that “organized crime has not infiltrated employees of the airline industry” and that the air-cargo theft rate at the New York area airports was not rising but declining. Seybold made these claims even though career criminals like Robert Cudak had already revealed the massive thefts of valuable property from the airports.

  By 1973, several airlines such as Eastern and United, had filed lawsuits to block New Jersey legislation aimed at expanding the commission’s powers, saying it was unconstitutional. The airlines lost in court. However, as time went on, the Rockefeller plan to expand the Waterfront Commission’s role in battling airport cargo theft by the Mafia lost support. Despite backing by both New York and New Jersey, the measure couldn’t get key action in Congress. Bickering continued over whether cargo theft was as high as the $10 million estimated by the commission or as low as the $700,000 reported by the airlines.

  For Jimmy Burke and his crew at Robert’s Lounge, whatever the true extent of the losses really didn’t matter since to them it was all found money, which they picked up every day.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “WE WILL GET YOU”

  FOR THE CREW AT ROBERT’S LOUNGE it didn’t really matter who had control over the
air cargo security at JFK—be it the Waterfront Commission, the Port Authority police, or Joe Blow private security. The kind of thievery they routinely practiced allowed them to simply wait for the cargo to leave the airport, without having to venture past security guards. Burke had surrounded himself with a group of toughs and psychopaths who became experts at watching the way truck traffic moved in and around the airport. Like stealthy cats, they pounced and robbed lucrative cargo at the barrel of a gun.

  A truck driver named Toivo Edward Aroksaar found out first-hand what Thomas DeSimone’s way of doing business was like one day in 1973. Aroksaar had worked for several years at JFK, starting as a cargo handler with Lufthansa and then taking a new job at Austrian Airlines as a cargo representative who dealt directly with customers. After Austrian Airlines went out of business, Aroksaar took a job with an air-freight company and after a layoff took a temporary job driving a truck to pick up goods at the airport and then take them to other places in the city.

  June 21, 1973, was actually Aroksaar’s first day as a trucker. It was a sunny first day of summer. It would be a time he would never forget. His destination was Bush Terminal in Brooklyn with a truckload of women’s apparel. Not experienced as a driver, Aroksaar asked for directions from his boss and decided to go north from the airport on the Van Wyck Expressway to the Long Island Expressway where he could then go west to the terminal.

  The drive was uneventful until Aroksaar took the exit ramp onto the expressway at about 1:00 P.M. and noticed a late-model Plymouth station wagon slow down and stop. Aroksaar stopped his truck to avoid a collision and saw two men get out of the stopped car.

  “I thought it was a funny place to let out hitchhikers,” Aroksaar remembered thinking. Then he saw the guns. With no place to go—he couldn’t back up or turn around—Aroksaar stayed still and sat in the truck cab.

  “There was nothing to do, so I stayed in the truck and was hijacked,” said Aroksaar.

  One of the men who approached the truck was DeSimone, who opened the passenger door to the cab and told Aroksaar to do exactly what he was told to do, which was to follow the car. If he didn’t, DeSimone told Aroksaar he would blow his brains out. He was holding a .38-caliber handgun.

  With DeSimone sitting in the passenger seat, Aroksaar followed the Plymouth to the Junction Boulevard exit to a spot on the road near the old Alexander’s Department Store. With the truck stopped, DeSimone told the truck driver to get into the Plymouth and lie face down on the seat. After a ride through the streets of Queens, the Plymouth stopped at a garage and a shirt was put over Aroksaar’s head. He was told to lie down on the back area of the station wagon.

  DeSimone then did something that was a standard tactic of the Robert’s Lounge crime crew. He reached into Aroksaar’s pocket, took out his wallet, and gave him a $50 bill as a payment to buy his silence. Since he had rifled through his victim’s wallet, DeSimone knew the man’s personal information.

  “I’m going to take your name and address, so if you squeal, we will get you,” said DeSimone.

  After terrorizing Aroksaar, DeSimone and his accomplice asked the truck driver if he was hungry and wanted anything to eat. A sandwich was brought to him, and Aroksaar ate it. He had missed his lunch hour a long time ago. It was about 4:00 P.M. that DeSimone finally let Aroksaar crawl out of the Plymouth after it had been driven to the Knapp Street exit on the Belt Parkway.

  “Get out. Don’t turn around. If you do, we’ll kill you,” said DeSimone, who had emphasized the message by putting a gun to the base of Aroksaar’s skull.

  Once freed, Aroksaar got to a telephone and called the NYPD and then his boss.

  When the cops and the FBI, which had a task force dealing with hijacking, questioned Aroksaar they showed him a few photographs of potential suspects. He picked out DeSimone as the hijacker without any trouble.

  DeSimone was known to police because he had been implicated in a number of heists and police had long suspected the crew at Robert’s Lounge of being involved. Hijacking had turned into big business in the city, and Burke’s gang was among the group of usual suspects police and the FBI—which had been targeting the crime—always considered.

  “By 1970 Jimmy owned hijacking at Kennedy Airport,” Henry Hill later remembered. “It was Jimmy who decided what and when shipments and trucks were worth taking. It was Jimmy who picked the crew for each job.”

  Hill occasionally went out on hijackings with DeSimone but usually just helped to fence the loads of stolen property. The strong-arm holdup of Mr. Aroksaar was more of an exception. Usually, truck drivers would give up their shipments by prearrangement. Drivers used to hang out at Robert’s Lounge, and to work off their bar bills or gambling debts would sometimes tip Burke and his crew to upcoming shipments.

  The tactic for a “give up” was simple, recalled Hill. A driver would stop for a cup of coffee and leave the key in the ignition. When he came out he found the truck and the cargo gone. The driver would report the loss and according to Hill it would be labor racketeer and Lucchese family member Johnny Dioguardi who would protect the driver if his boss tried to fire him.

  Burke had honed the tactic of taking a driver’s license and other identification from an uncooperative driver to create fear that he would be tracked down if he cooperated with the cops. He would also, Hill recalled, slip the driver $50—just as DeSimone had done with Aroksaar—to help buy his silence.

  “There was never one driver who made it to court to testify against him,” said Hill. “There were quite a few dead ones who tried.”

  Well, not quite.

  Although he was forced to take the $50 the day he was hijacked, Aroksaar immediately decided that he wanted to help police and the FBI make a case against DeSimone. The trucker not only identified DeSimone from a photograph but took the witness stand in January 1975 to testify for the federal government in the case against him in the 1973 hijacking.

  Defending DeSimone was Michael Coiro, a flamboyant Queens attorney who loved the gangsters he represented and at this point had secretly crossed the line in illegally helping mobsters as a true associate of organized crime. Coiro’s dark deeds wouldn’t be disclosed for a few years in the future. But before DeSimone’s trial was supposed to start, the attorney already showed a cavalier attitude toward the court.

  Brooklyn federal judge John Bartels had set November 25, 1974, as a trial date for DeSimone. But with the judge and federal prosecutor in court, potential jurors waiting and with a half dozen witnesses ready—not to mention DeSimone—Coiro was a no-show. It seems that the brash attorney had another trial going in Queens state court and couldn’t be bothered to show up. Bartels was fuming and called Coiro on the carpet, telling him a lot of money had been wasted in getting things ready. The judge slapped Coiro with a fine, which the attorney appealed to no avail.

  In court, the prosecutor told the jury that there was no question DeSimone had hijacked the truck and that trucker Aroksaar had identified him to the police and FBI. DeSimone also made a very clear threat to the driver, said the prosecutor: “I know your address now. I know who you are. If you identify me, you and your family are going to be dead.”

  Coiro’s defense was rather weak. The attorney told the jury that maybe Aroksaar, after being questioned on-and-off by cops for ten months, wanted to “see things a certain way.” He suggested that Aroksaar had been coached on how to testify. Aroksaar was the government’s main witness against DeSimone and gave straightforward testimony, identifying to the jury DeSimone as the armed hijacker and referring to him numerous times in his testimony.

  The jury convicted DeSimone and on April 11, 1975, Bartels sentenced him to a total of ten years in prison. He would spend his time at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, a place familiar to many of the Robert’s Lounge crew.

  Although DeSimone was out of action, the crew at Robert’s Lounge didn’t seem to miss any opportunities. Henry Hill had earlier taken an interest in a bar on Queens Boulevard known as The Suite aft
er its original owner, who was a compulsive gambler, invited him in as a silent partner. The establishment was right across the street from the Queens Criminal Court Building on Queens Boulevard, a public facility that Burke and his crew seemed to be able to avoid because of secret connections they allegedly had in the local prosecutor’s office. As Hill remembered it, the place was seen by Paul Vario as a good spot to have as a clean club where no crimes were planned or committed. To keep it that way, Vario ordered all the gangsters and associates in his crew to stay away from The Suite so it wouldn’t draw suspicion.

  But over time, The Suite became a meeting place for many in the Vario-Burke orbit, including Vario himself. Before he went to prison, DeSimone made the place one of his stops, as did a mob associate out of Brooklyn named Angelo Sepe and a peculiar wig salesman from the neighborhood named Marty Krugman. This trio would later come together in crucial ways for the Lufthansa heist. But that was still years away.

  While Hill had been making money with all sorts of crooked deals—hijacking, gambling, credit-card scams with Parnell “Stacks” Edwards and other hustles—Burke remained the top dog of the group. One incident involving a load of stolen furs showed just how much Burke could control things. The truck driver who was supposed to take the $250,000 shipment of furs from Newark Airport to Manhattan’s fur district, drove instead to a warehouse in lower Manhattan where a group of mob associates took the load out of the truck. The driver then was taken to a location in Yonkers where he falsely reported that his truck had been hijacked by several armed men, a typical “give up” heist which was another time-tested method of the Robert’s Lounge group.