Henry Hill, inspiration for “Goodfellas,” dead at 69 after a life of excitement fueled by alcoholism.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Henry Hill, who inspired Martin Scorsese’s film “Goodfellas,” dead at age 69 following decades of heavy smoking and years of heart disease. After an arrest in 1980 on charges of drug-trafficking and facing a long prison term or possible execution by his former crime bosses, Hill became a government witness and helped send dozens of former associates to prison. He was expelled from the government’s witness protection program in 1987 after “relentless misbehavior” including drug possession; amazingly, he managed to survive another 25 years outside the program, with many of those he feared either dead or in prison. While claiming to have never murdered anyone, he knew, by his own admission, where a “great many bodies” were buried—literally. He originally wanted to be a priest, but no doubt triggered his lifelong addiction to alcohol and other drugs early on, so that idea “didn’t work out.” Instead, he was seduced by “the flash and dazzle of the neighborhood wiseguys, with their sleek cars, glinting rings and glittering women.” Aside from dealing drugs, he committed arson, numbers running, truck hijackings and loan sharking. Most infamously, he was involved in the 1978 Lufthansa heist at Kennedy International Airport in which $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewels were stolen (up to that time the most lucrative cash robbery ever in the United States), as well as a point-shaving scandal in which basketball players at Boston College were bribed to fix games. Later in life, although easily bored, he found time for ordinary pleasures including, as he often said, never missing an episode of “The Sopranos.”