How a crime-fighting Brooklyn prosecutor landed a…
It was the position of his lifetime.
In the late Nineteen Eighties, New York prosecutor Edward McDonald was an casual advisor on “Goodfellas.” He told director Martin Scorsese’s group about his work, in real life, with mobster Henry Hill — the protagonist in the movie who is performed by Ray Liotta — and helped them get all the main points just proper.
McDonald was even set to be a character in the movie, and industry rumors urged Brian Dennehy would possibly play him. But McDonald quipped to Scorsese’s assistant, “What about me? I would be great!”
Per week later, he discovered himself having a screen check in the Warner Bros. places of work on 51st Street in Manhattan, in entrance of Scorsese himself.
The pair obtained on famously and McDonald left in a daze.
Film director Martin Scorcese and Edward McDonald are seen on the “Goodfellas” film set in July 1989.
When he obtained back to his workplace an hour later, there was a cellphone call from the film’s screenwriter, Nick Pileggi. “Marty loved it,” he told McDonald. “You got the part!”
Within weeks, McDonald met with Liotta and Robert De Niro.
McDonald, now 79, recounts his unlikely casting and his work prosecuting crime, in his new e-book “Chasing Goodfellas: Lufthansa, Henry Hill, Point Shaving, and Making Movies” (Post Hill Press, Oct. 13).
As the pinnacle of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn during the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s, McDonald led advanced federal investigations into the Mafia, corruption and racketeering. He secured the convictions of 5 corrupt US congressmen and over 70 corrupt labor officers and efficiently prosecuted over 60 La Cosa Nostra members and the leaders of a number of Mafia households in New York. He also met Henry Hill.
In his new memoir, McDonald writes of how he was solid in ‘Goodfellas,’ after he consulted on the movie.
A prison since he was a child, Hill’s rap sheet was long, including jail sentences for petit larceny, bookmaking, loan-sharking, assault and extortion. Then there have been the other crimes for which he had yet to prosecuted, including theft, bribery, truck hijackings, firearms possession and gross sales, burying a physique and trafficking in heroin, cocaine and capsules.
With so many expenses hanging over him, Hill had nowhere left to flip, but quite than prosecute him, McDonald satisfied him to be a cooperating witness, finally molding him into a key authorities informant across a vary of circumstances.
“Because of his affable nature and the extensive contacts he made, there were always people who would clue Henry in to promising opportunities,” writes McDonald.
McDonald performed himself in ‘Goodfellas’ and appeared in scenes with stars Lorraine Braco and Ray Liotta, who portrayed Karen and Henry Hill.
Hill’s testimony proved invaluable, particularly in securing convictions on the Lufthansa heist. On Dec. 11,1978, six armed males raided a Lufthansa Airlines cargo facility at John F. Kennedy airport and stole $5 million in money and around $875,000 in jewellery (around $30 million in complete today), making it the largest theft in US historical past at the time.
The heist was masterminded by Jimmy “The Gent” Burke, an affiliate of the Lucchese crime household — who occurred to have been a mentor to Hill — along with an insider, Lufthansa worker Louis Werner.
Working with Hill, McDonald not only secured a conviction for the Lufthansa heist but also unearthed more criminality, including Burke and Hill’s 1978 scheme to corrupt Boston College basketball gamers by paying them to rig video games.
In real life, McDonald labored carefully with Hill (pictured with spouse Karen), a mobster who grew to become a useful informant.
Burke and Hill had co-opted a number of gamers in the BC group, paying them not to throw video games but to manipulate the margin by which their group gained or misplaced video games, with large underground bets being made accordingly. “[Hill] explained that it was point-shaving. The kids did not have to lose,” McDonald writes. “They would get paid for games in which BC was favored, if they succeeded in keeping that margin of victory below what the oddsmakers had set as their ‘betting line’ or ‘point spread’ by which BC was favored to win.”
Ultimately, Hill’s testimony helped McDonald secure some 50 convictions across a selection of circumstances. In flip, McDonald ensured that Hill, his spouse and his two kids entered the Witness Protection Program. As for himself, the lawyer was never that nervous about his own security.
“I was never seriously concerned about violence or threats from the mob,” he said. “I believed that the bosses had despatched out the message that any hurt or threats to prosecutors would consequence in far an excessive amount of heat and no one ought to ever be so silly.
Robert De Niro and Ray Liotta in a scene from ‘Goodfellas.’ ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
“Perhaps we were naïve or wishfully thinking.”
When “Goodfellas” was launched in September 1990, it met with important and industrial acclaim, receiving six Oscar nominations and profitable one, Best Supporting Actor, for Joe Pesci’s portrayal of psychotic mobster Tommy DeVito.
McDonald’s efficiency was also singled out. “People are going to remember you for this movie!” screenwriter Pileggi told him. “Plus, you’re the only actor who doesn’t curse — a lot.”
In the e-book, McDonald writes of how working with Hill not only resulted in a film position but also gave means to a decades-long friendship.
Hill and McDonald grew close. Hill died at age 69 in Los Angeles in 2012. Corbis via Getty Images
“There was something about Henry that made him likeable. He was charming, self-deprecating, and funny,” he writes. “We could never forget how despicable and sometimes infuriating he could be, but he was often fun to be around.”
Hill died from smoking-related coronary heart points at West Hills Hospital in West Hills, Los Angeles, on June 11, 2012, the day after his 69th birthday.
“It was amazing he lived so long,” McDonald said. But, “as Henry said in ‘Goodfellas,’ ‘it was a glorious time.’ ”
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