Thomas DeSimone

Thomas DeSimone (May 24, 1950 – disappeared January 14, 1979) was an American criminal associated with New York City's Lucchese crime family who is alleged to have participated in both the Air France robbery and the Lufthansa heist.

Thomas DeSimone was born on May 24, 1950.

DeSimone had two sisters, Dolores and Phyllis, and two brothers, Robert and Anthony.

During the 1960s, Air France was the carrier of American currency that had been exchanged in Southeast Asia.

The airline had contracted to return the money to the U.S. for depositing with American banks.

The money was usually carried in linen bags, each containing $60,000, and the airline shipped up to $1 million a week in this manner.

The money was stored in a cement-block strong room at Air France's cargo terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, with a round-the-clock private security guard.

In 1965, when he was 15 years old, DeSimone was introduced to Paul Vario, a caporegime in the Lucchese family.

Henry Hill, a Vario associate who was in his early 20s at the time, later recounted his first meeting with DeSimone, describing him as "a skinny kid who was wearing a wiseguy suit and a pencil mustache."

DeSimone worked under Vario, Burke, and Hill, among others, becoming involved in truck hijackings, fencing stolen property, extortion, fraud, and murder.

While hijacking, DeSimone would always carry his gun in a brown paper bag.

"Walking down the street, he looked like he was bringing you a sandwich instead of a .38", Hill said.

In 1967, Robert McMahon, an Air France employee, tipped off Burke, Hill, and DeSimone to an incoming delivery of between $400,000 and $700,000 in cash on Friday, April 7.

McMahon said the best time for the actual robbery would be just before midnight when the security guard would be on his meal break.

On the day of the robbery, Hill and DeSimone drove to Kennedy airport with an empty suitcase, the largest Hill could find.

At 11:40 pm, they entered the Air France cargo terminal.

McMahon suggested that they should just walk in, as people often came to the terminal to pick up lost baggage.

DeSimone and Hill entered the unsecured area unchallenged and unlocked the door with a duplicate key.

Using a small flashlight, they found seven of the bags, which they loaded into the suitcase and left; $420,000 was taken.

No alarm was raised, no shots fired, and no one was injured.

The theft was not discovered until the following Monday, when a Wells Fargo truck arrived to pick up the cash to be delivered to the CNEP subsidiary French American Banking Corporation.

He also committed numerous murders, including killing William Bentvena in 1970.

DeSimone was also the brother-in-law of mobster Joseph "The Barber" Spione, who was slain for refusing to help kill DeSimone in the late 1970s, and the ex-son-in-law of Gambino associate Salvatore DeVita.

After his release from prison in 1970, according to the mafia memoir Wiseguy, Henry Hill describes the "welcome home" party for William Bentvena at Robert's Lounge, a nightclub owned by Jimmy Burke: Bentvena jokingly asked DeSimone "if he still shined shoes", which DeSimone perceived as an insult, and leaning over to Hill and Burke intoned, "I'm gonna kill that fuck."

Two weeks later, on June 11, 1970, Bentvena was at The Suite, Hill's nightclub in Queens.

With the club nearly empty, DeSimone pistol-whipped Bentvena, yelling "Shine these fucking shoes!"

before beating him bloody.

After Bentvena was severely beaten and presumed dead, DeSimone, Burke, and Hill placed his body in the trunk of Hill's car, stopping at DeSimone's mother's house for a knife, lime, and a shovel.

Hearing sounds from the trunk, they realized that Bentvena was still alive, so DeSimone and Burke beat him to death with the shovel and a tire iron.

Burke had a friend who owned a dog kennel in Upstate New York, and Bentvena was buried there.

About three months after Bentvena's murder, Burke's friend sold the dog kennel to housing developers, and Burke ordered Hill and DeSimone to exhume Bentvena's corpse and dispose of it elsewhere.

In Wiseguy, Hill said the body was eventually crushed in a compactor at a New Jersey junkyard, which was owned by Clyde Brooks.

However, on the commentary for the film Goodfellas, he states that Bentvena's body was buried in the basement of Robert's Lounge, and that it was only later put in the compactor.

DeSimone's third murder, described by Hill, was of a young man named Michael "Spider" Gianco, who was serving as a bartender at a card game.

Gianco and DeSimone had an argument, after Gianco forgot DeSimone's drink, that resulted in DeSimone pulling out a handgun and shooting him in the thigh.

A week later, when Gianco was again serving drinks and sporting a full leg cast, DeSimone started to goad him about his wounded leg, spurring Gianco to tell DeSimone to "go fuck [himself]".

DeSimone went missing in 1979 and is believed to have been murdered.

Both of his brothers were associates of the Gambino crime family; Anthony was murdered by mobster Thomas Agro in 1979.

Phyllis was James Burke's mistress from the time she was aged 16.

DeSimone's career in the Lucchese family is explored in the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, and inspired the character of Tommy DeVito, portrayed by Joe Pesci, one of the main characters of the 1990 film Goodfellas.