The Lufthansa Heist
Behind the Six-Million-Dollar Cash Haul That Shook the World
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4.1 • 27 Ratings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The inside story—from the organizer himself--of the largest unrecovered cash haul in history. This full account brings readers behind the heist memorialized in Goodfellas, a crime that has baffled law enforcement for decades. From Henry Hill himself, The Lufthansa Heist is the last book he worked on before his 2012 death.
On December 11, 1978, a daring armed robbery rocked Kennedy Airport, resulting in the largest unrecovered cash haul in world history, totaling six million dollars. The perpetrators were never apprehended and thirteen people connected to the crime were murdered in homicides that, like the crime itself, remain unsolved to this day. The burglary has fascinated the public for years, dominating headlines around the globe due to the story’s unending ravel of mysteries that baffled the authorities.One of the organizers of the sensational burglary, Henry Hill, who passed away in 2012, in collaboration with Daniel Simone, has penned an unprecedented “tell-all” about the robbery with never-before-unveiled details, particulars only known to an insider.
In 2013, this infamous criminal act again flared up in the national news when five reputed gangsters were charged in connection to the robbery. This latest twist lends the project an extraordinary sense of timing, and the legal proceedings of the newly arrested suspects will unfold over the next year, continuing to keep the Lufthansa topic in the news.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers who place a premium on truth in their true crime may be disappointed by this account of a legendary 1978 theft from JFK Airport; a preface states that the book's narrative is based in part on "informed judgment," and that the authors recreated scenes and dialogue "with literary technique combined or imagined." Coauthor and former mobster-turned FBI informant Hill, who partook in the heist provides a first-person account of his involvement; the problem is he was absent for the actual execution of the robbery, and thus any contribution he makes to the account of that episode must be second-hand. The authors go too far with including implausible details that suggest fabrication and add nothing to the inherent drama of the story. Purple prose ("due to her overcharged sexual urges, moments of hot flashes often emblazoned the voluptuous Lina") and sloppiness (sharks are described as "man-eating mammals") don't help matters. It's also unsettling to read in the afterword that the identification of the man responsible for murdering one of the Lufthansa robbers in the text was only theoretical. Given Hill's colorful life, much better conveyed in the book Wiseguy (1985), written in collaboration with Nicholas Pileggi, the decision to gild the lily here again and again is baffling and disappointing.
