Roy DeMeo and his crew were responsible for some of the most brazen and brutal crimes in New York City’s history. Their audacity culminated in the 1978 Lufthansa heist, a robbery of over $5 million in cash from Kennedy Airport, which remains one of the largest cash robberies in American history. The heist, however, also became the catalyst for a series of brutal murders as the crew devolved into a spiral of paranoia and greed, eliminating anyone they believed might talk or cut them out of their share. The heist itself was a masterpiece of criminal planning.
Insiders had provided the crew with detailed information about the shipment, which consisted of seven bags of untraceable currency packed in linen bags. The plan involved a car stolen to order, a getaway van, and precise timing to coincide with the night shift’s handover. Henry Hill, a key associate, coordinated a makeshift crew that included the volatile Tommy DeSimone. With a duplicate key and the element of surprise, DeSimone and another associate, Angelo Sepe, waltzed into the Air France cargo terminal as casually as if they were picking up luggage, while other crew members held the airport guards at gunpoint outside.
The group made off with the cash, but the victory was short-lived as the fallout would soon turn deadly. In the aftermath, DeSimone’s violent nature reached a horrifying peak. When a foreman named Peter Vario, who managed an airport loading dock, refused to let non-union DeSimone’s men unload stolen cargo, he sealed his fate. DeSimone, along with DeSimone and Angelo’s cousin, went to the foreman’s home in rural New Jersey to intimidate him, but the situation escalated into a savage beating that turned fatal.
The victim was beaten to death and his body was disposed of, an act that showcased the crew’s absolute ruthlessness and their disdain for any perceived slight. After the Lufthansa heist, the paranoia within the crew became self-destructive. When one of the participants, Tommy DeSimone, became a liability, the decision was made to eliminate him. In January 1979, DeSimone was lured to an unknown location under the guise of a promotion within the Gambino crime family.
He was never seen alive again. Conflicting accounts from informants and surviving mobsters suggest he was tortured and killed, with some claiming it was a prolonged, agonizing death while others say it was a quick execution. The exact details remain a mystery, and his body has never been found. The memory of the Lufthaansa heist continues to haunt law enforcement and fuel public fascination.
While the cash was never recovered, the cost of the crime was tallied in blood, as the crew systematically murdered every participant they saw as a risk. The story has become a cautionary tale of the mob’s internal brutality, where loyalty is fleeting and betrayal is punished without hesitation. The legacy of DeSimone and his crew lives on as a dark chapter in organized crime, marked by calculated violence and a complete disregard for human life.