2. The Lufthansa Raid
Many of our heists have inspired movies, but the biggest movie of all of them has to be Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas”, which took part of its inspiration from the 1978 Lufthansa Raid. The target was a vault at JFK airport, which stored American currency flown back from servicemen in West Germany. The heist was planned by Jimmy Burke, who was associated with the Lucchese crime family, and carried out almost flawlessly by his associates, who walked away with $6 million, three times what Burke was expecting. Then it all went wrong. Parnell “Stacks” Edwards was supposed to dispose of the van used in the robbery but instead left it in a no parking zone, covered with his fingerprints. The FBI knew that Edwards was connected to Burke and started closing in, but Edwards was murdered before he could talk. This set off a spate of murders that saw most of the heist participants killed, along with anyone who could potentially talk to the FBI about it. But justice caught up with Burke eventually and he was convicted of the murder of Richard Eaton in 1985 and died of lung cancer in 1996. The $6 million was never recovered.
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