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‘Goodfellas’ mobster gets cleared

An ageing mobster who for decades adhered to the Mafia’s strict code of silence has been acquitted of charges he helped plan a legendary 1978 Lufthansa heist retold in the hit film Goodfellas.

A federal jury reached the surprising verdict on Thursday at a Brooklyn racketeering trial where it heard testimony that portrayed 80-year-old Vincent Asaro as a throwback to an era when New York’s five organised crime families comprised a secret society that committed brazen crimes and settled scores with bloodshed.

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Asaro jumped up, pumped his fist and clapped after the verdict. When he walked out of the courthouse, he threw his hands up in the air and hollered: “Free!”

“I was shocked, I was really shocked,” Asaro said outside.

He said he would head home to have a good meal with his family.

“Right now I’ve been eating bologna sandwiches,” he said.

It was a stunning defeat for the federal government in a courthouse where prosecutors over the years have won convictions of major mob figures like Gambino family head John Gotti and Genovese crime boss Vincent “chin” Gigante.

The US attorney’s office declined to comment after the verdict.

Asaro, whose father and grandfather were members of the secretive Bonanno crime family, “was born into that life and he fully embraced it,” Assistant US Attorney Alicyn Cooley said in closing arguments.

His devotion to the Bonannos “was as permanent as the ‘death before dishonour’ tattoo on his arm,” she added.

The defence accused prosecutors of relying on shady paid co-operators, including Asaro’s cousin Gaspare Valenti. They argued that the witnesses had incentive to frame Asaro to escape lengthy prison terms of their own.

At trial, prosecutors described how Asaro rose through the ranks and developed an “unbreakable bond” with the more notorious James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, the late Lucchese crime family associate who orchestrated the holdup at the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport.

Taking the witness stand last month, Valenti testified that Asaro and Burke killed a suspected informant with a dog chain in 1969 before ordering Valenti to help bury the body.

Valenti also testified that Asaro drafted him for the Lufthansa heist.

When he learned about the mountain of $US100 bills and jewels taken from a Lufthansa vault, Asaro was “very happy, really euphoric,” Valenti testified. “We thought there was going to be $2 million in cash and there was $6 million.”

In the aftermath, Asaro survived a bloodbath portrayed in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Goodfellas, with Robert De Niro’s character going ballistic over fellow mobsters’ purchases of flashy cars and furs and, fearing they would attract law enforcement attention, having them whacked.

– AAP

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