Thomas Desimone was born in 1950 to a father addicted to gambling. His grandfather and his uncle were mafia bosses and his two brothers became gangsters as he did. When he was 15 years old, he started working for Paul Vario, a capo in the Lucchese family, and had his own crew of mobsters.
DeSimone’s criminal activities were dealing and fencing stolen property, hijacking, extortion, and murders. His first murder was in 1968, he killed a stranger named Howard Goldstein. His second murder was in 1970 at a Jimmy Burke nightclub. Tommy killed a gangster called William Bentvena who asked him for fun if he was still shining shoes. The third Tom’s murder was a Butler called Gianco because he forgot his drink. The fourth and the fifth murder victims were two mobsters called Gersani and Jerothe.
DeSimone’s biggest robberies were The Air France robbery and the Lufthansa heist. In 60s Air France was sending money to the US. Thomas DeSimone, James Burke, and Hill Conway wanted to find a good time to steal them. In 1967 an Air France employee inform them that an amount of 400-700 thousand dollars would be sent to John F. Kennedy International Airport and also he gave them information about what time should they make the robbery. On the day of the robbery Hill and DeSimone follow the instruction that the employee gave them and managed to steal seven bags with 420.000 dollars in with no-one understanding.
Eleven years later, in 1978, Thomas committed his second major robbery, but now with much more money. He with other gangsters stole 5.000.000 in cash and 875.000 dollars in jewelry from the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy airport. After the heist one of the involved called Edward had to dispose of the getaway van but he didn’t and he put the van out of his girlfriend’s house, so the police find it. Vario ordered DeSimone to kill him so he with an associate shot him five times.
Since 1979 DeSimone has been missing. It is believed that he got killed by the Gambino Family as revenge for the Williams Bentvena death but that is not sure because he had many mafia enemies. His life is shown in the movie Goodfellas that I had already done an article for.
