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Vincent Asaro, a career mobster who was found not guilty<\/a> of murder and of helping to organize the staggering $6 million Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy Airport \u2014 one of the biggest cash heists in American history \u2014 only to be sentenced to prison when he was 82 over road-rage revenge, died on Sunday in Queens. He was 86.<\/p>\n His death was confirmed by Gerald McMahon, a lawyer who successfully represented him in the Lufthansa case. No cause was given.<\/p>\n The brazen theft in 1978 of $5 million in cash and $1 million in jewels<\/a> from a vault at a Lufthansa hangar at Kennedy Airport figured prominently in the book \u201cWiseguy\u201d (1985) by Nicholas Pileggi and the Martin Scorsese film \u201cGoodfellas\u201d (1990).<\/p>\n The authorities had suspected the Mafia\u2019s involvement, but the case remained unsolved and the investigation closed until Mr. Asaro was arrested in 2014, linking him and the Bonanno crime family to the robbery.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He was also accused of using a dog chain in 1969 to strangle Paul Katz, the owner of a warehouse where Mr. Asaro and James (Jimmy the Gent) Burke<\/a>, who was suspected of masterminding the Lufthansa theft (and who was portrayed by Robert DeNiro in \u201cGoodfellas\u201d), stored their stolen loot. Mr. Asaro and Mr. Burke had believed that Mr. Katz was an informer after the warehouse was raided by the police.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The indictment implicated Mr. Asaro in a sweeping conspiracy in which he was also accused of robbing FedEx (then Federal Express) of $1.25 million of gold salts, which can be used in medicinal treatments; bullying his way into the pornography business; and seeking, unsuccessfully, to bump off a cousin who had testified about an insurance scam.<\/p>\n Mr. Asaro\u2019s 2015 trial was a sensation.<\/p>\n Though the robbery had taken place more than three decades earlier, it had been immortalized in the book and film, and even for younger New Yorkers it felt like a coda to the \u201cGodfather\u201d era.<\/p>\n Moreover, the key witness against Mr. Asaro was another cousin, Gaspare Valenti, who had been a government informant since 2008 and had secretly recorded Mr. Asaro from 2010 to 2013.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Valenti\u2019s testimony on the stand was a jaw-dropping breach<\/a> of the Mafia\u2019s code of silence.<\/p>\n It also revealed the devolution<\/a> of a ruthless mobster who in his day job could suggest to customers which fences to buy from his store in Ozone Park, Queens, while in his other life he could impatiently advise a younger mob associate who had asked him how best to collect a debt: \u201cStab him today.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Asaro\u2019s acquittal in 2015 was so stunning \u2014 not only to the prosecution, but to Mr. Asaro himself \u2014 that as he left the courthouse and got into a car, he giddily joked, \u201cDon\u2019t let them see the body in the trunk.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ironically, the automobile reference returned to haunt him two years later. He was accused of recruiting a mob associate, who in turn recruited John J. Gotti<\/a>, the grandson of the former Gambino family boss, to torch the car of a motorist who had cut off Mr. Asaro at a traffic light.<\/p>\n The driver was pursued at high speed by Mr. Asaro to no avail. The associate used law enforcement sources to track the license plate, after which Mr. Gotti and two other men located the car in Broad Channel, Queens, doused it with gasoline and set it ablaze. An off-duty police officer parked nearby witnessed the auto-da-fe and pursued the arsonists, but they sped away in a Jaguar.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Surprisingly, after a lifetime of denying culpability in crime, Mr. Asaro not only pleaded guilty<\/a> but also apologized for what he acknowledged was \u201ca stupid thing I did.\u201d<\/p>\n He could have been sentenced to 20 years in prison. The prosecution asked for 15, pointing out that although he had \u201cparticipated in racketeering, murder, robbery, extortion, loan-sharking, gambling and other illegal conduct, he has served less than eight years in jail.\u201d<\/p>\n In December 2017, U.S. District Judge Allyne Ross ordered him to serve eight years<\/a> \u2014 which, at 80, Mr. Asaro described as \u201ca death sentence\u201d \u2014 and to pay $21,276 in restitution to the owner of the car.<\/p>\n \u201cIf he had not aged out of a life of crime at the age of 77,\u201d Judge Ross said, referring to his age during the opening phases of the Lufthansa trial, over which she presided, \u201cI have little hope that he will do so.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Vincent A. Asaro was born on July 10, 1937, in Queens to Joseph and Victoria Asaro, who separated when he was a teenager. His uncle, Michael Zaffarano<\/a>, owned buildings housing adult theaters, distributed pornography and worked as a bodyguard for Joseph Bonanno<\/a>, who ran his eponymous crime family for nearly four decades.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1957, Mr. Asaro married Theresa Myler; they divorced in 2005.<\/p>\n Mr. Asaro\u2019s survivors include his son, Jerome. He was arrested with his father in 2014, pleaded guilty to racketeering and was sentenced to seven and a half years\u2019 imprisonment.<\/p>\n Mr. Asaro racked up numerous charges and convictions over the course of his life. Among them, he was convicted in federal court in 1970 and 1972 for the theft of an interstate shipment and burglary of a post office. In 1998, he was sentenced in state court in New York to four to 12 years in prison for enterprise corruption and criminal possession of stolen property.<\/p>\n Three decades after the notorious Lufthansa heist, the beggarly but still choleric gangster had, according to prosecutors, squandered his $500,000 share of the loot on gambling and depleted whatever he had collected from his unforgiving manner of pursuing delinquent borrowers. He had hocked his jewelry and was seen shopping at a Waldbaum\u2019s supermarket for orzo and lentils.<\/p>\n