Robert's Lounge was a saloon that was owned by Lucchese crime family associate James 'Jimmy the Gent' Burke. Robert's Lounge was located at 114-45 Lefferts Boulevard in South Ozone Park, Queens, near the John F. Kennedy International Airport Air Cargo Center. The saloon was long used as an informal headquarters by Paul Vario, whom the New York Times described as "a capo in the Antonio 'Tony Ducks' Corallo crime family." The robbery of Lufthansa's secure freight storage at the Air Cargo Center on December 11, 1978, had its genesis in the lounge when Lufthansa freight supervisor Louis Werner described for the assembled mob-connected customers how a fortune in valuable freight could be stolen despite Lufthansa's security, described as "impregnable".[1] An estimated $5 million in currency and $875,000 in jewels were stolen in that robbery, at the time described as the "largest cash robbery ever committed on American soil."[2]
According to Lucchese crime family associate Henry Hill, the bar was the burying location for multiple mob victims and Hill said It's Jimmy Burke's private cemetery. In his book A Goodfella's Guide to New York: Your Personal Tour Through the Mob's, Hill wrote of the bar,
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Jimmy buried over a dozen bodies, including Dominick "Reno" Cersani and Michael "Spider" Gianco, under the bocce courts. If you go there today and look down the left side of the building, you'll see piles of dirt. After I went into the program, Jimmy had the feds and media over to witness the courts being dug up. ... [3] |
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Under the club, in the basement, was another graveyard for wiseguys. A human leg bone and a portion of a human shoulder bone were excavated from the basement of the lounge on June 6, 1980. The bones were thought to have been those of two of James Burke's associates, Thomas DeSimone and Martin Krugman, who went missing a short time after the Lufthansa robbery.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Feiden, Doug (2 August 1979), "Heist’s Murderous Aftermath Shakes Mafia", Calgary Herald: 90, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=THRkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=In4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=3916,980766&dq=robert's-lounge&hl=en, retrieved 3 March 2011
- ^ Maitland, Leslie (December 14, 1978). "Airport Cash Loot Was $5 Million; Bandits' Van Is Found in Canarsie". The New York Times (New York): p. A1. http://select.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F20715FD355413728DDDAD0994DA415B888BF1D3. Retrieved 26 August 2009.
- ^ Hill, Henry (2003). A Goodfella's Guide to New York: Your Personal Tour Through the Mob's. Random House. pp. 90. ISBN 0761515380.
- ^ UPI (6 June 1980), "Bones May Be Robbery Clue", Calgary Herald: 96, http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gXNkAAAAIBAJ&sjid=RX4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=6238,7031673&dq=robert's-lounge&hl=en, retrieved 3 March 2011
[edit] Bibliography
- Pileggi, Nicholas (1986). Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671447343.
- Volkman, Ernest; Cummings, John (October 1986). The Heist: How a Gang Stole $8,000,000 at Kennedy Airport and Lived to Regret It. New York: Franklin Watts. ISBN 0531150240.
