Cold Open

It’s December 11th, 1978, a little after 3 AM, at JFK International Airport.

Lufthansa employee Kerry Whalen is on his way back from a late-night delivery. He drives his car past warehouses for different airlines until he reaches his destination — cargo building 261, where Lufthansa stores its most valuable items.

Kerry is one of just a handful of employees that work the night shift here, making sure that everything runs smoothly.

And it’s been a quiet night so far. But as Kerry approaches the back of the building, he sees something strange.

There’s a black van idling there, with two men sitting in the front seat. Kerry doesn’t recognize the van or the men and sensing something as amiss, he drives toward the unfamiliar vehicle.

As he approaches the van on foot, two men spot him. They jump out of the car, shouting at Kerry to get into the van. Kerry tries to run and call for help, but the strangers are quicker, one of them hits him across the face with a pistol, knocking Kerry to the ground.

Before he can register what’s happening, the men grab Kerry and toss him into the back of their van.

A few moments later, the van door shoots open again, and the men throw in another Lufthansa employee, one who had come outside to investigate all the noise.

But neither Kerry nor his coworker are kept in the van for long. After a few moments, the two strangers drag them out again and toward the cargo building itself. Bewildered and afraid, Kerry and his coworker have no choice but to follow orders.

They’re led upstairs to the third-floor cafeteria. Waiting there are the rest of Kerry’s coworkers, all handcuffed to each other as a group of men in ski masks guard them with guns. Kerry quietly joins the others, keeping his eyes on the armed strangers.

There’s only one person missing from the room — Rudi, the building supervisor, who rarely leaves his office. But the masked men have a plan to capture Rudi, too.

They grabbed one of the senior agents and made him call Rudi. The employee is told to inform his supervisor that he has an important call on the cafeteria phone.

And immediately, footsteps echo down the hall.

As soon as Rudi walks in, one of the masked men shows his gun in Rudi's face. In a gruff voice, he demands that Rudi let them into the high-value safe.

Kerry and his co-workers exchange glances. Now, they know exactly why these men came to the cargo building. They’re here to rob it.

In less than an hour, this group of masked men will make off with millions of dollars in cash and expensive goods. Then, they will vanish into thin air, leaving the FBI scrambling for any scrap of information they can find about one of the greatest heists in American history. The mystery of the robbery will stump law enforcement and captivate true crime fans for decades to come, as authorities struggle to recover the wealth lost during The Lufthansa Heist on December 11th, 1978.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is December 4th, 1991: The Lufthansa Heist.

Act One: The Perfect Crime

It’s the fall of 1978, on the streets of Queens, New York.

Lufthansa Cargo employee Louis Werner is on his way to meet his friend Marty Krugman in hopes of planning a big new business venture. It’s an idea that Louis has been contemplating for a while, and he hopes that it’ll offer a quick fix to his mounting financial issues.

Louis is down on his luck. He’s already $6,000 deep in gambling debt, and he’s running behind on child support payments too. His meager salary at the airport isn’t enough to cover all these costs. So what he really needs is a quick fix to get him back on his feet. He doesn’t care where the money comes from, he just needs it now.

This isn’t the first time Louis has run into money troubles though and in the past, he’s stolen from work to cover the gaps. A few years ago, he lifted over $20,000 in currency from a suitcase traveling to New York. But that didn’t last him long. Now he’s back to square one, desperate for money again and eager to get it by any means necessary.

This time, though, he wants to go big.

As a cargo employee, Louis knows some key details about Lufthansa and its handling of expensive goods. In addition to its commercial service, the airline helps transport currency that has been exchanged by American tourists traveling abroad. Once a month, foreign banks ship millions of dollars in cash back to the U.S. in untraceable bills, where it’s then handed off to American banks. But first, it passes through the Lufthansa cargo building, where it stays in its vault overnight. This safe also holds other expensive items that are being transported back to the States — jewelry, fur coats, and other luxury goods that American travelers want to ship home.

All of these high-value goods are stored in cargo building 261, where Louis works. But the vault is still hard to get to. Only the building supervisor can access it. In order to get inside, he has to use two keys at the same time to unlock the first interior door, which then leads into an anteroom. The first door then has to be re-locked before the supervisor can open a second door, which leads to the vault itself. Failing to re-lock the first door before trying to enter the vault will immediately trip an alarm, sending an alert to the port authority informing them that someone is trying to break in. 

But Louis knows all of this, and he’s also aware that December is the busiest time of the year for the airline. So the perfect moment to rob the high-value vault. Louis has already estimated the number of men needed for a job like this. He thinks it's around half a dozen, enough for a few guys to take care of business inside while two others wait in the getaway car.

The problem is Louis doesn’t really know anyone in the criminal underworld. But luckily, he has a friend who does.

Marty Krugman is “officially” a wig salesman, but Louis knows that he’s connected the members of the Lucchese crime family. So, Louis tells Marty about his plan for a robbery, in the hopes that the news could be passed on to the right people.

Excited about the prospect of making some serious money, Marty sets up a meeting with one of the top members of the Lucchese family: Joe “Buddha” Manri. Doing this means basically handing over the master plan for a heist that could afford the Lucchese family millions of dollars. There’s not much stopping someone like Joe Buddha from taking this information, killing Marty, and handling the job himself with the family.

But whether it’s out of a desire to keep Marty around, or to have further access to Louis’s insider information, Joe Buddha cooperates with the plan, rather than co-opting it. He sends the information up the chain of command to the de facto leader of the crew, Jimmy “The Gent” Burke.

Jimmy is a high-ranking in the world of organized crime. Decades later, he’ll be immortalized by Robert DeNiro in the movie Goodfellas. But right now Jimmy is only concerned about the plan to rob the Lufthansa cargo building, which he finds thrilling.

With the holiday season approaching, Jimmy and his men will have to work quickly. But luckily, Jimmy “The Gent” Burke has his own store of wise guys to choose from. And they coupled with Louis Werner’s insider information, will spell success for everyone.

Act Two: The Plan

It’s November 27th, 1978, only a few weeks before the heist.

In Queens, Jimmy “The Gent” Burke sets up a meeting with the most trusted members of his crew. He wants only the best for this job. After all, if things go well at the Lufthansa cargo building, Jimmy and his men could walk away with millions.

So, Jimmy appoints one of his top made guys to lead the heist — Tommy “Two Guns” DeSimone, so named because he never goes anywhere without two pistols on him. Tommy is not someone to mess with. And in the future, he’ll be portrayed by Joe Pesci in Goodfellas as a short fuse who’s quick to violence, unafraid to kill anyone for the smallest sleight. But according to people who knew the real Tommy that performance will pale in comparison to the real thing.

Rumors have long swirled around him. Tommy’s hit list is so long, it’s difficult to keep track of the exact number of people he’s offed. It’s speculated that Tommy even killed his own brother over a disagreement about some stolen jewelry. But neither the killing, nor the rumors, bother Tommy. Quite the opposite — he openly jokes about it. According to one story, Tommy was once manning the grill at a cookout at his house, and decided to toss a few hot dogs over his fence to the vacant lot where he allegedly buried some of his victims. He figured the dead needed to eat, too.

But though it’s clear that Tommy is a wildcard, in Jimmy’s mind he’s the perfect person for the heist. By this point, Tommy has established himself as a go-to guy when it comes to running jobs out of JFK Airport. The entire Lucchese family has been using the airport as a target for years, hijacking cargo trucks and taking whatever was onboard. This new Lufthansa job is bigger than what they’ve done in the past, but they still know the territory.

What’s better, Louis Werner has given Jimmy’s crew a treasure trove of information — maps, a list of employees, the name of the supervisor who has keys to the vault…everything. And with the help of this information, Jimmy and his crew come up with a plan.

First Tommy and his men will arrive at the cargo building at exactly 3 AM, which coincides with the meal break for the night shift employees. This will make it easy to wrangle everyone into the cafeteria on the third floor.

The only potential problem is Rudi Eirich, the building supervisor. He’s the one person who will have keys to the vault, and he’ll have to be the one who handles the delicate business of unlocking and relocking the doors so that the alarm doesn’t go off. But Rudi won’t be in the cafeteria at 3 AM, according to Louis, he rarely ever leaves his office during the night shift.

That makes trapping and coercing Rudi extra tricky. They can’t just storm his office because Rudi has a panic button under his desk. If he presses it, the port authority will be alerted that the cargo building needs immediate assistance. So to ensure a backup doesn’t arrive, Jimmy’s men will need to find a way to lure Rudi out of his office.

Once they figure that out, the robbers will have it easy. With Rudi captured, all the men need to do is make their way to the vault, grab whatever’s inside, load it into the van, and leave with the loot.

Afterwards, there's just a few more things that need to be taken care of to make sure there are no loose ends. Crucially, the getaway van will need to be destroyed. That job falls to the driver, Parnell Edwards, who agrees to take the van to a trash compactor right away.

And then there's the issue of how the money and jewels will be divided up among the men. No one knows exactly how much money will be stored in the vault, though they assume it’ll be somewhere in the millions. With a number that high, the heist plays on the minds of each of the six men on Jimmy’s team for days. Because if this works, they’ll make out as kings. If it goes wrong, the repercussions could be disastrous.

Fortunately for Jimmy’s team, the heist will go very, very well. Practically perfect. But in the aftermath of the robbery, things will start to go awry. And in the end, many people involved in the crime won’t make it out alive.

Act Three: The Job

It’s December 11th, 1978, at exactly 3 AM, outside cargo building 261 at JFK International Airport.

Jimmy Burke’s crew arrives and immediately gets to work. While four men don ski masks and head inside, two others drive around the back, where they wait in the getaway van.

Meanwhile, the robbers head to the cafeteria, bursting through the door with guns drawn. Everyone in the room is stunned by the sudden presence of armed masked men, and in a matter of minutes, the criminals have handcuffed the building’s small group of employees, leaving them helpless on the floor.

A small hitch arises when the men in the van discover two employees outside, but they easily nab the workers and bring them to the cafeteria too. Now with all the employees confined, it’s just a matter of getting Rudi Eirich, the supervisor, out of his office.

Tommy DeSimone quickly comes up with a plan. He grabs one of the building’s senior agents. Tommy has him call Rudi and tell him there’s someone on the cafeteria phone who’s asking for the supervisor. This ruse works and Rudi soon arrives and is immediately accosted by the robbers. Facing down the barrel of a gun, he agrees to open the vault, revealing even more money than Jimmy’s men had envisioned.

In total, there are fifty boxes of cash and jewelry and the robbers take all of it, haul it to the van, and then speed away. In a little over an hour, the men escape with $5.8 million, over $25 million today.

So the heist goes perfectly. But the aftermath is another story.

First, Parnell Edwards, the driver, forgets to get rid of the van. Instead of taking it to the dump to be crushed, he leaves it parked on the street for days illegally. Eventually, the New York Police Department find it, and it doesn’t take long for authorities to suspect that this vehicle was involved in the high-profile airport robbery.

Sensing a lead, the FBI step in, and they dust the van for fingerprints. Sure enough, Parnell Edwards, known associate of the Lucchese crime family, comes up as a match. This is a huge break in the case — the authorities were already beginning to suspect the Lucchese family for the heist, considering their years of activity at JFK, but this almost confirms it.

Still when the police arrive at Parnell’s house to arrest him, they’re met with a shock. Parnell is dead, having been shot through the head.

And the more the FBI closes in on the Lucchese family, the more people die. Police discover Joe “Buddha” Manri dead in his car, also killed with a gunshot to the head. Martin Krugman disappears, and is presumed dead. Even Tommy DeSimone vanishes, and it’s not hard for anyone to assume that he was murdered, too. In total, 12 known associates of the Lucchese crime family are killed or disappeared right after the heist.

In the end, only one person is ever convicted in relation to the robbery — Louis Werner, the employee who had the idea for the crime in the first place.

As decades pass, it will be widely assumed that Jimmy Burke, Tommy DeSimone, and other high-ranking members of the Lucchese family were responsible for the Lufthansa heist, but none of them will actually be convicted for it. As for the money itself, it’ll never be found. Whatever happened to it will remain a mystery as authorities fail to recover the spoils stolen in The Lufthansa Heist on December 11th, 1978.

Outro

Next on History Daily. December 12th, 1939. The Battle of Tolvajärvi breaks out, bringing Finland its first major victory against the Soviet Union in the Winter War.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Katrina Zemrak.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Georgia Hampton.

Executive Producers are Alexandra Currie-Buckner for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.