A pensioner accused of taking part in an airport heist that was immortalised in Martin Scorsese’s movie Goodfellas has gone on trial.
Vincent Asaro, 80, a reputed member of the notorious Bonanno crime family, also faces charges including murder and racketeering.
Prosecutors in a federal court in Brooklyn allege that his time as a mob boss spanned 45 years from the late 1960s to 2013. He has pleaded not guilty.
Most famously they claim that he took part in the biggest heist on US soil, the famed 1978 Lufthansa robbery at JFK International Airport that netted about $5 million in cash and nearly $1 million in jewels.
In custody since his arrest in January 2014, the man who had triple bypass surgery the previous year could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted by a jury in federal court in Brooklyn.
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The value of the booty today is estimated at around $20 million. Mr Ansaro is the first, and probably last, alleged member of the mafia to be prosecuted over the heist.
Denying the charges on behalf of his client Gerald McMahon, a lawyer for the accused, said: “Innocence. Pure, actual innocence. He didn’t do it, had nothing to do with it.
“Pretty much all the people that did it got murdered ... So, the fact that my client didn’t get murdered would suggest that he didn’t have anything to do with it, so I’ll start right there.”
Mr Asaro was arrested after a former number two in the Bonanno crime family turned informant and named him as a hothead with a nasty temper who handed over a case stuffed with jewellery after the holdup.
Salvatore Vitale, who has spent more than a decade testifying against his fellow criminals, claimed that the mob boss, Joseph Massino, collected a case stuffed full of jewellery from Mr Asaro after the heist.
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Massino, who is also Vitale’s brother-in-law, gave him a solitary necklace from the loot.
“He was always a big spender, he gave me a chain as a gift,” said Vitale.
Vitale, 68, was convicted in 2010 to time already served over 11 murders, and is now out of jail in a witness protection programme.
The trial spotlights the secretive workings of the Italian mafia, revenge murders, racketeering, robbery, extortion, arson, illegal gambling, loansharking and assault.
Prosecutors said Mr Asaro strangled Paul Katz, a suspected informant, with a dog chain in 1969. His body parts were discovered in a New York basement in 2013.
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His lawyers say there is a lack of evidence against their client and that the government’s star witness wore a wire for five years.
“If Vincent Asaro is truly the dangerous, violent, murdering individual depicted by the government, why did it take so long to arrest him?” asked Diane Ferrone, a defence lawyer.
Vitale said that Mr Asaro rose through the ranks to become a captain in command of “soldiers” — a middling level of seniority — and described him as “hostile” and as a man who yelled and screamed.
Mr Asaro was arrested by the FBI in January 2014 in a series of raids that also netted his middle-aged son Jerome and three other suspects.
The accused man was not depicted in Scorsese’s Oscar-winning 1990 movie Goodfellas.