Hill would be a ' no show' and put on a building contractor's construction payroll, guaranteeing him a weekly salary of $190 (equivalent to $1,830 in 2021). The following year, Vario's younger brother, Vito 'Tuddy' Vario, and Vario's son, Lenny Vario, presented Hill with a highly sought-after union card in the bricklayers' local. He wasn't like anyone else I had ever met.' The 13-year-old Hill served drinks and sandwiches at a card game and was dazzled by Burke's openhanded tipping: 'He was sawbucking me to death. He first met the notorious hijacker and Lucchese family associate James 'Jimmy the Gent' Burke in 1956. In his early teens, Hill began running errands for patrons of Vario's storefront shoeshine, pizzeria, and cabstand. In 1955, when he was 11 years old, Hill wandered into the cabstand looking for a part-time after-school job. Hill was dyslexic and performed poorly at school.įrom an early age, Hill admired the local mobsters who socialized at a dispatch cabstand across the street from his home, including Paul Vario, a caporegime in the Lucchese crime family.

The working-class family, consisting of Henry and his seven other siblings, grew up in Brownsville, a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn. Hill claimed in the book Wiseguy that his father emigrated to the United States from Ireland at the age of twelve, after the death of Hill's grandfather. was born on June 11, 1943, in the Manhattan borough of New York City to Henry Hill Sr., an Irish-American electrician and the son of a coal miner, and Carmela Costa, an Italian immigrant of Sicilian descent. Hill's life story was documented in the true crime book Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family by Nicholas Pileggi, which was subsequently adapted by Martin Scorsese into the critically acclaimed 1990 film Goodfellas, in which Hill was portrayed by Ray Liotta. He subsequently entered the Witness Protection Program, but was removed from the program in 1987. Hill testified against his former Mafia associates, resulting in 50 convictions, including those of caporegime (captain) Paul Vario and fellow associate James Burke on multiple charges. (J– June 12, 2012) was an American mobster who was associated with the Lucchese crime family of New York City from 1955 until 1980, when he was arrested on narcotics charges and became an FBI informant. Attempted methamphetamine possession (2005)

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