Narco Wars (2020) s02e05 Episode Script

1
♫ ♫
MAN: Yo, what's going on?
MAN: As you can see
MAN: Me and my crew have this,
we compress it,
we cut it and we distribute
it to other vendors.
MAN: We're breaking it down,
use like baking soda,
cutting it up and everything.
It'll value up to more,
like double or triple,
depends how you cut it.
But you can't (bleep) it up.
MAN: Would you
like to try some?
CAMERAMAN: I'm okay thank you.
MAN 2: Make sure you
cover my face up.
CAMERAMAN: Yep,
I'm not filming ya.
MAN: Okay, okay relax.
Just finish with him so we
can get him out of here.
MAN: Well, I knew the
Mafia were in this game,
but I don't know
if they still are.
Okay, that's it, too much.
You can cut it.
MAN: Yes, that's enough.
REPORTER: Shake this
square world and blast
off for kicksville.
NIXON: America's public enemy
number one is drug abuse.
NANCY: Just say no.
MAN: The Mafia is a major
player in the international
drug underworld.
MAN 2: At the end of the day,
it's all about the dollar,
it's all about the dollar.
REAGAN: American people
want the mob and its associates
brought to justice and
their power broken.
HARRIS: There's now an
understanding that the war on
drugs was an abject failure.
REPORTER: You have to
stop and ask yourself,
how did we get here?
Brought to you by Sailor420
!!! Hope you enjoy the film !!!
(overlapping chatter)
WILLIAMS: Just so we
all agree here,
it's never good
to glorify a mobster but if
you're a fan of the genre,
it's okay to love Goodfellas.
REPORTER 2: Henry Hill is not
nearly as handsome as actor
Ray Liotta who played Hill in
the film Goodfellas.
CREW: We're rolling cameras.
RICK: My name is Rick Leahy.
I was the first FBI Agent
that operated Henry Hill.
I don't think anybody could
have predicted the role
Henry would ultimately play,
and I don't just mean
in the movie Goodfellas.
ED: Henry Hill became this
infamous character, you know,
in organized crime lore.
Henry was one of
those that really made
cooperating a thing.
RICK: Henry sent over
50 people to prison.
(sirens)
KAREN: It's been
40 years since I've,
since I've spoken about this.
You know, I was very young,
just 18, going on 19,
when I met him.
I'm Karen Hill and I was
the wife of Henry Hill.
He did take me to
like the Copacabana.
You know we'd get to
see the shows there.
We met Peggy Lee,
Sammy Davis Jr,
one of my favorites,
the Supremes.
It was like something
from a movie, I think.
He was just happy‐go‐lucky,
and I was raised
a little stricter and
it was like sunshine,
you know, he was like sunshine.
I laughed a lot.
We got married in 1965.
I didn't know who
Paul Vario was.
I really didn't know until
after we were married
and who these people were.
GINA: My dad from the time
I can remember, he never
called me by my first name,
he always called me Princess.
My name is Gina Hill and
I'm Henry Hill's daughter.
My father had a terrible
time paying attention in
school and it's ultimately
what led him to the cab stand.
Uncle Pauly ran
the cab stand and it was
basically the headquarters
for all their operations,
legal and illegal.
Pauly was like a
dad to my father.
GINA: There's five families,
five mafia
families from New York.
Uncle Pauly was a Capo
and the Lucchese family.
My father could not
be a made man because of
he wasn't 100% Sicilian,
but it didn't matter.
Uncle Pauly gave him
basically the key to the city,
as they say in the mob world.
It gave him the respect and
it gave him the protection
that my father would need to
continue criminal
activities going forward.
Everything from gambling,
prostitution, arson,
you name it, they were doing it.
Except drugs.
My Uncle Pauly was very
against drug dealing.
RICK: Mafia rules were
don't get engaged in
narcotics trafficking.
They were very concerned
about somebody being prosecuted
under the narcotics laws and
subsequently turning informant.
RICK: I was in
the Queen's office.
We're very, very
close to Kennedy Airport
and a significant portion
of the air traffic into
Kennedy is freight.
BOB: (over TV)
Billions of dollars' worth of
merchandise from all over the
planet passes through
Kennedy Airport's cargo area.
RICK: If you were
someone who was inclined
to be a truck hijacker,
you had literally
just wandered into
the enchanted forest.
Well, Jimmy Burke was very
big in truck hijackings.
GINA: I really
loved Uncle Jimmy.
I loved him so much.
KAREN: He was a
smiling Irishman.
He loved the song, Danny Boy.
That's what we'd put
on and he loved it.
GINA: Every one of
my dad's friends had
a great side to them,
just like my dad.
ED: Jimmy Burke, Henry Hill,
were part of that crew.
And that crew generates
money, illicitly.
RICK: These guys
had their fingers pretty
deeply into the airport.
They had been dealing with
truck hijackings for years.
RICK: And then they'd
kick up the chain a
certain percentage to the Capo,
Paul Vario, and
that's how it works.
GINA: Things start looking
up and my dad was able to
own the restaurant‐bar and
we lived in a luxury
apartment building in Queens.
And it was in that
same luxury apartment that my
mother told me that daddy has
to go away for a while.
KAREN: He went into
Lewisburg not on drugs.
He didn't even think about
that, mainly because Pauly
didn't want him to do it,
so he thought that
that was a closed door.
GINA: Everybody's on their
own when the breadwinner
goes away, so to speak.
As far as any help from
my father's associate,
an occasional handout
from Uncle Pauly.
No consistent
help financially.
GINA: My father realized
how much money he could make
dealing heroin through his
associate that he
met in Lewisburg.
When he came home,
the risk versus the reward,
I guess he saw it as worth
it at that point in time.
ED: Pauly Vario didn't
want drugs in his crew.
And Henry now was always
in a drug induced stupor.
Jimmy Burke
became very nervous.
RICK: Jimmy Burke was not a
man to be pushed particularly.
After getting the
green light to conduct
the Lufthansa robbery.
REPORTER: The biggest robbery
in our country's history and
it happened right
here in New York.
ANTHONY:
Federal agents are calling
it the largest cash robbery
in the nation's history.
ED: That day,
December 11th, 1978,
a regular day for me.
I report to the office but
as soon as I got there,
we were being dispatched to the
Lufthansa cargo building
and that's when we started
to realize that there was an
extensive robbery,
the Lufthansa Robbery.
REPORTER:
Six‐million‐dollar robbery.
A band of robbers,
six and perhaps seven
men wearing ski masks,
drove around to
the loading dock.
The robbers pistol‐whipped
one guard and handcuffed
nine others before escaping
in a black van.
They took 30
shipments of gold,
pearls, jewelry and checks.
RICK: This was a big one.
We knew who had done it.
What we couldn't
do was prove it.
REPORTER: So far, the
Lufthansa Robbery seems like
the almost perfect crime,
except there could be
one important weak link.
RICK: The van that was
used was turned over
to Stacks Edwards.
Stacks' job was to
take that van to a facility
in New Jersey where
it would be crushed.
Stacks that evening
came up with another plan;
see a girlfriend,
celebrate the success of
the robbery and he parked
in a no‐parking zone.
REPORTER: Police have
recovered the getaway van.
A Brooklyn traffic cop
on routine patrol spotted
it abandoned on a street
in East Flatbush.
RICK: Within the matter of
about 48 hours, Stacks took
about four or five bullets
into the back of his head,
and they found his
body the next morning.
That was the first one.
GINA: I didn't hear any
conversation about Stacks,
other than he disappeared,
no one's heard from Stacks.
ED: We were FBI Agents
and there is no other
way to investigate this
but to interview people.
But every time we'd
go out to interview someone,
they would get murdered
or hit within days.
REPORTER: Today,
another man turned up dead
in the trunk of a car,
the sixth victim in
less than a week.
Police found the bodies of
two known hoods down a quiet
street corner in Brooklyn.
There's a lot of speculation
they may have been killed
because they knew too much
about that big Lufthansa
Robbery at Kennedy Airport.
RICK: A large number of
the players that we knew
were involved in it,
ended up very dead.
So there weren't anybody that
we could turn as a source.
ED: They would appear in
some gruesome locations and
manner in which they died.
REPORTER: Nassau County
businesswoman has been missing
for the past four days.
Detectives searching for
the woman suspect foul play.
ED: Her name was
Theresa Ferrara.
She wasn't physically
involved in the crime,
but she happened to
have been told about some
of the details of the
Lufthansa Robbery.
ED: Her legs, her arms,
her head, her breasts were cut
off and she was recovered in the
Hudson River
somewhere in New York,
and we were able
to identify her through an
appendix scar that she had.
GINA: Marty Krugman
was the big one.
I overheard my mom and my
dad fighting terribly over
what happened to Marty.
I'm listening to this
like around the corner,
you know, eavesdropping.
All I heard was,
"Karen, I don't (bleep) know,
he's probably cut up into
a million pieces by now."
KAREN: He begged for
Marty Krugman's life.
He said, "Jimmy, what is he
gonna do? He was harmless."
ED: Anybody who had
any information about
the robbery was killed
by Jimmy Burke.
Marty brought the scheme
to rob Lufthansa to Henry.
Henry of course brings
it to Jimmy Burke who
actually commits it.
Henry was the linchpin.
RICK: Henry was a
very valuable witness.
So our concern was somebody
was gonna get to him and
there would go our prime
witness in a case that we're
having a very difficult time
finding prime witnesses,
'cause we were pulling
too many of them out of
the trunks of their cars.
GINA: The reality of his
friends disappearing and
doing recreational drugs,
it all came together
like a perfect storm.
It was clearly frying
his brain and affecting
his decision making.
KAREN: He made his
connections out of state.
I saw cocaine and some heroin,
pills, people coming in
and out, and I'd say to him,
"what are you doing?"
GINA: It was just
a hot mess, as they say,
and I don't think he could
see his way out of it.
ROBERT: All kinds of narcotics
come through Kennedy Airport.
Seizures have been
primarily coke and heroin
for a number of years now.
ROBERT: We try to stay one
step ahead of the smugglers
and we do a pretty good of it.
So, if you're thinking
about coming to Kennedy
Airport with narcotics,
you'd better be well prepared.
ROBERT: How long do you think
you're gonna be here sir?
MAN: Only two weeks.
ROBERT: Any food?
MAN: No, no, no.
ROBERT: And what's this?
We're gonna open it
up and hopefully for
you it's just fruit.
Does that look like
fruit salad to you?
This is the can that
we started to open
out at the exam table.
This is a positive
test for cocaine.
It's about five kilos.
We're looking at a retail
value probably over $500,00
by the time it's all
chopped up and sold.
GEORGE: Long Island has
always tried to avoid the
problems of New York City.
It's very suburban,
lots of trees, parks.
When I first started
in the narcotics squad,
the drug use really
started to increase.
REPORTER: Narcotics of
all kinds may be coming
in through Long Island.
JERRY: There was a
local level drug dealer,
that he didn't
drive a fancy car,
he didn't live in a fancy home,
so he was pretty much
under the radar so to speak.
GEORGE: Unbeknownst to us,
the FBI was running
a case on him and so
the FBI didn't know
we were running one,
we didn't know the
FBI was running one.
GEORGE: That's as
good as I can do it.
JERRY: We used
every resource we had;
electronic surveillance,
aerial surveillance
with helicopters,
static surveillance.
DETECTIVE: (over speaker)
Detective Aylward, shield numbe
469, conversation between
Karen Hill and Henry Hill.
KAREN: (over phone) Hello.
HENRY: (over phone) Yeah.
KAREN: (over phone) Hi, hold on
KAREN: You know a
neighbor, he said,
"I saw people going through
your garbage and then
they took bags of it away."
GINA: And I went to
him and I said,
"daddy, there's guys filming
the house, guys in suits."
He just looked
at me and he says,
"yeah I know and they're
also listening to the phones."
KAREN: If I go to make
a phone call, you know,
they're just talking
to one another.
KAREN: I said,
"excuse me I'd like
to make a phone call."
And I heard click,
and of course I put the
phone down and I picked it up,
there was a dial tone.
JERRY: They had arrest
warrants and they also had
search warrants for his
residence and his,
you know, stash house.
And it was time to shut it
down and make the arrests.
GEORGE: I was assigned with
my fellow detective Richie Hip,
to sit on Henry's house,
and we're all set
up and Richie leans
over to me and says,
"that's Henry,
coming out of the house.
Take him down."
GINA: The next thing I knew,
I saw all these lights,
and strange men are
ordering my mother around.
From that moment, that was
the beginning of the end.
GEORGE: We put the cuffs
on him and we all headed
back to narcotics.
He's really being
defiant, he's saying,
"you got nothing on me,"
and he's being a real wise guy.
And I walked over to the
evidence box and inside
there was a big sifter,
they used it to cut the drugs,
and I took that sifter out
and I walked over to him and I
bopped him on the top
of the head with it and
the powder came all over
his head and shoulders and says,
"now we got plenty on you."
And all of a sudde, his
whole complexion changed,
he just said, "you got me."
Later on that evening,
the FBI came to Police
Headquarters to interview
Henry without our knowledge.
RICK: I was in bed
when the phone rang.
It's the middle of the night.
We gotta drive over to the
Hempstead County Prison,
Henry's been arrested.
I was like, "whoa."
So we headed over
to the Hempstead County
lockup and there was
Henry, bouncing all over
the wall and ceilings.
He's going a mile a minute,
he's speaking so quickly,
I'm trying to take notes,
it was like trying to
get a drink of water
from a fire hose,
and all he kept screaming,
and he would
literally scream it,
"Burke is going
to blanking kill me.
Burke is gonna kill me."
Henry knew he was
a dead man walking.
He was headed
for a dirt nap.
He was desperate to get out.
REPORTER: Organized criminals
punished treason by death.
The witnesses who do testify
against them know they
are marked for execution.
For them, the
Federal Government
has a unique program.
ED: We had to keep Henry
safe and also his family safe,
because he was a
target of Jimmy Burke.
GINA: My father said,
"Princess, if it
meant getting to me,
he would have stuffed
you and your brother
into a refrigerator."
KAREN: And that was it.
I went on the program.
RIVERA: They can't
hurt you, because once
you testify against them,
you're going to become
invisible, disappear,
go underground.
KAREN: Turning over birth
certificates, driver's license,
being told I don't exist,
broke my heart.
ED: Within days, two days,
Henry, he had already signed
his cooperation agreement,
to fully cooperate
on all matters.
MCDONALD: We were having
Henry come to my office every
day and we were debriefing him
about the Lufthansa Robbery.
I'm Edward McDonald,
I was the attorney in
charge of the Federal
Organized Crime Strike Force
in Brooklyn.
And, of course Henry said,
"well yeah, of course Jimmy
was involved in the whole thing,
he planned the whole robbery
and Vario knew all about it."
"Alright, well what
corroboration do
you have for that Henry?"
"Well, I don't have any
corroboration for that."
Because Burke had cleverly
gone out and executed
many of the people who
made him vulnerable.
I figured out pretty quickly
that we were not gonna
be able to make a case on
Burke for the Lufthansa robbery.
MCDONALD: His memory,
off the top of his head,
wasn't so good.
He had a significant narcotics
problem by the time we began
to deal with him in mid‐1980.
He started using coke and
he was doing Quaaludes.
ED: You could tell when
he was on something.
This guy couldn't
concentrate on a topic.
He knows enough to
go down a road but
doesn't know the details.
I asked him,
"Henry, what were you
doing with Jimmy Burke and
Paul Vario to put
food on your table,
in other words, what crimes
were you committing?"
And he said, "oh nah,
I wasn't committing any crimes,
I was just fixing
some basketball games."
And I said,
"you were doing what?"
He said, "I was fixing games."
And I said, "Henry, that's
against the law, alright."
We brought him into
McDonald's office and
we sat in front of him,
I says, "Henry, tell
Ed what you told me."
MCDONALD: And Henry looked
at me and said, "oh yeah,
in them days we was
fixing college basketball
games up in Boston."
I said, "you were fixing
college basketball games?
What team?"
I said, "could it have been BC,
could it have
been Boston College?"
ED: A light lights up in
Henry's head and says,
"yeah, yeah, it
was Boston College."
MCDONALD: And I said,
"alright, the joke is over."
And Henry says,
"what are you
talking about, what joke?"
I said, "I went
to Boston College,
I played basketball
in the Freshman team there
when I was in college."
And he says, "oh (bleep),"
he says,
"you've gotta be kidding me."
So then I said,
"well what about Jimmy,
was Jimmy involved."
He said, "I didn't do
anything without Jimmy,
I had to clear everything
with Jimmy Burke."
(cheering)
REPORTER: Trouble
at Boston College.
The Federal Organized Crime
Strike Force is investigating
accusations that some members
of that team accepted
money from gamblers to
alter the outcome of games.
GINA: I wasn't in
love with Omaha, but I
didn't hate it either.
MCDONALD: Henry and
his family get moved
to Nebraska, you know,
Henry told me about
what the experience was,
it was they were
fishes out of water and
he was having a
tough time fitting in,
and at the same time
he was also coming back
constantly to be debriefed
by us and by the agents.
KAREN: A neighbor said to me,
"what does your husband do?
You know because he's
not there, you know,
so he doesn't have
a job like locally."
I said, "he works
for the government."
GINA: When my father went
back to New York to testify,
Jimmy said to my father,
pointing right at him,
"I bet that (bleep)
is in the Midwest.
I know that (bleep)
is in the Midwest."
MCDONALD: Henry was going to
bars in Omaha and getting drunk.
Once he got drunk,
he would start
telling people he was a
big‐time gangster from
New York and that he might
even say he was in the
witness protection program,
involved in all
these big cases.
GINA: My mother said,
"Uncle Jimmy and Uncle
Pauly know where we are."
And we were whisked away like
the next day, the next morning.
GINA:
I fell in love with Kentucky
immediately, immediately.
I knew enough to know
that that was horse country,
plus Dukes of Hazard
was one of my favorite
television programs at the time.
My dad had these big
trials coming up, you know,
you've gotta hold up
your end of the bargain.
This is it now.
REPORTER: Prosecutors first
learned of the point cheating
scheme from Henry Hill,
an informant with a
long criminal record.
REPORTER 2: A New York grand
jury will be hearing Hill's
story in the coming weeks.
ED: The courtroom was packed.
It was a major event.
And Henry, he dreaded
sitting before Jimmy Burke
and testifying against him.
Absolutely dreaded it.
MCDONALD:
Let's put it this way,
he was a terrible witness.
ED: He was awful, particularly
after the first day.
He would automatically
go into this thug
impression, you know,
and that's not what we wanted.
MCDONALD: Burke's lawyer was
Mike Quero who had represented
Henry about eight years earlier.
He knew Mike Quero for years.
He'd yell at him and
Quero would yell back, and
he'd be fighting with him.
ED: We almost killed him
because he was just so bad,
he just came off
so bad as a witness.
MCDONALD: Our challenge was to
corroborate what Henry said.
Well, we got the
telephone numbers of all
the significant players and
we got their telephone records.
We had an hour or two or
three before significant
Boston College games,
a flurry of phone calls.
ED: And all these
phone calls were either
going from Jimmy Burke's home
out to members of
this conspiracy,
or phone calls going in.
Henry, he was the connection
between the basketball players
and the organized crime.
MCDONALD: There was
no way that Jimmy Burke
could distance himself
from Henry Hill.
They had to say that
Henry was over at the house
and Henry was the one who was
making the phone calls.
Well, the jury's saying,
"well what's he doing
hanging around Jimmy Burke's
house using his phone?"
ED: And in the end, that's
the only piece of evidence
besides Henry's testimony that
convicted Jimmy Burke
on Boston College,
and for which he got
20 years imprisonment for that.
So, we didn't get him
on Lufthansa, but we got
him on Boston College.
BILL: The man suspected
of masterminding the $5.8
million Lufthansa Robbery
is behind bars tonight.
James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke.
MCDONALD: Jimmy Burke was an
incredibly powerful organized
crime figure in New York in
the late 1970s and that was
a significant moment for us.
ED: So Henry, he
became a very infamous
cooperator for the FBI.
Agents who had their own
cases would rotate in and out
to ask Henry specific questions.
Everybody wanted to
get a hold of him because
he had been involved in
organized crime all his life.
RICK: Henry could be
the tip of the screwdriver
used to pry the lid off all
of these events all over
the United States.
RICK: Henry was probably doing
this for four or five years,
testifying in trials.
REPORTER: Henry Hill
broke the code of honor
to burn many a mobster.
HENRY: You live inside
a code all your life and
then you break that code,
you make that decision,
you know, for self‐survival.
GINA: He basically said,
you know, it was him or them.
You know, you have
to save yourself.
MCDONALD: Paul Vario
was an extremely,
extremely powerful
member of the family,
the Lucchese Family.
He was probably the biggest
earner in the family.
This is the focus of our
attention, ultimately,
to get to Paul Vario.
KAREN:
Redmond, Redmond Washington,
was beautiful.
We had a house, when
you looked at it from the
front it looked like a ranch.
I was happy, for a moment.
GINA: There was always
the idea danger could
still be looming,
if you got too comfortable
or too trusting in the fact
that we were totally safe.
My father said,
"Princess, you don't see them,
I know they're there, you know,
Uncle Pauly and
the Vario crew."
KAREN: It was terrible.
I didn't know what to do.
I didn't want to get killed.
I didn't want my children hurt.
But he wasn't
giving up the drugs.
All Ed McDonald wanted
was Henry and what
he needed from him,
and we were just excess
baggage, that's how I felt.
MCDONALD: I remember his wife
calling me and saying,
"is there something you
can do, he's out of control."
I said, "look, I mean I
feel for you but there's
not much I can do.
We're not social workers,
we're prosecutors."
This is a significant case.
We could potentially
get Paul Vario.
RICK: Nobody would have ever
put a wire on Henry and said,
"hey, why don't you stop by
and strike up a conversation
with Paul Vario."
Henry would have left that
meeting in four separate boxes.
Henry became a
very credible witness,
but his value
was of a historical nature.
GINA: My father had
such a sense of loyalty
to Uncle Pauly and my
Uncle Pauly really
valued that from my dad.
He really felt that dad
was like a trusted son.
ED: He had falsified records
for Henry Hill to be given
a job so he can get parole.
He had no job, the records
were false, but Vario
produced all of that.
He was indicted for
what we call "1001",
which is lying to the FBI.
It was a simple prosecution.
Henry testified in that case.
Paul Vario, he
received five years.
KAREN: He was guilt ridden.
He was guilt
ridden about Pauly.
20 years of being the people
that were part of our lives.
I don't think he could
live with himself.
GINA: It hurt my
father to have to do
that to Pauly, it did.
And I think it had a lot
to do with his falling deeper
down that rabbit hole of drug
addiction and alcoholism.
Yes, I do.
I never said, "dad,
you're using heroin,"
but my own
father is in the driveway
passed out with track marks
in his arms and I said,
"I don't care who kills you,
'cause you're dead to me."
And of course I didn't
mean that but I was so
angry with him.
KAREN: You know I truly
believe that he surfaced
because he didn't care
if he lived or died.
HENRY: Howard,
I am so miserable.
STERN: Really?
HENRY: Yeah.
STERN: There's no
joy in your life?
HENRY: No joy in my life.
STERN: Listen to me.
HENRY: Do you want to
know something Howard?
STERN: You're in
a lot of pain.
HENRY: I'm a scumbag.
I want to get high
constantly, okay.
JERRY: He wasn't swathe,
he wasn't cunning,
he wasn't even a good
drug dealer, you know.
But the whole fiasco of
Henry Hill going down and
flipping it was historic,
that had never
happened before.
MCDONALD:
Many Mafia guys, significant
Mafia guys began to turn,
and it became a lot easier
for prosecutors to bring
significant prosecutions
against Mafia figures.
RICK: Guys like Henry deciding
to give up everything he knows
to save his life
and he ended up putting
50 people in jail to do it.
HENRY: Being part of that life,
being part of the Mafia was
the worst thing I ever did.
I wasn't a good father,
you know, a good husband.
I anaesthetized myself
with alcohol, with drugs,
constantly, you know,
to live with myself.
WILLIAMS: After a troubled life,
Henry Hill is dead
at the age of 69.
GINA: As his daughter,
I am just so grateful he
died of natural causes.
I mean how many people get
to do that in his situation?
Not too many.
Captioned by
Cotter Media Group.