James Burke (gangster) - Downfall and Death

Downfall and Death

In 1980, Henry Hill was arrested for drug trafficking. He became an FBI informant to avoid a long prison sentence, and entered the witness protection program. Hill had been drawn into the cocaine business despite Burke's warnings to avoid it. Hill set up a network and soon earned an average of $3,000 per week (8350 in 2012 dollars). Also that year, the Lufthansa supervisor Louis Werner, who supplied all of the inside information about how to rob the Lufthansa cargo terminal and the only person to have actually been prosecuted for the Lufthansa Heist, became an informant after serving just one year of a fifteen year prison sentence, in the hope of getting an early release.

According to Hill, a search warrant for Robert's Lounge was granted by a judge. But by the time the police arrived, Burke had already relocated the bodies he had buried there, such as that of Dominick "Remo" Cersani, an old friend of Burke's who was murdered after trying to sell Burke out.

Partially as a result of the testimony of Hill and Werner, Jimmy Burke was taken into custody on April 1, 1980, on suspicion of a number of crimes. In 1982 he was convicted of fixing Boston College basketball games as part of a point shaving gambling scam in 1978 and was sentenced to two decades in prison. Burke protested "I gave the little bastard (Hill) some bucks to bet on games, that's all!" Authorities believed he had planned and organized the Lufthansa Heist, but they did not have enough evidence to prove it in a court of law.

Although Burke was suspected of committing more than 50 murders, he was only convicted of one: the murder of Richard Eaton, a hustler and confidence man. Burke could have been out of jail before he died if he had disposed of Eaton the same way he disposed of most of his victims. Instead, he beat and strangled Eaton to death and dumped the body, hog-tied and gagged, on the floor of an abandoned tractor trailer in a garbage-strewn lot in Brooklyn. It was winter at the time, and his frozen body wasn't discovered until days later by children playing there. Detectives found a small address book sewn into the lining of Eaton's clothing with the name, address, and telephone number of James Burke listed in the book.

Burke was later charged with the murder of Eaton, based on evidence Henry Hill gave to authorities. At the trial, Hill took the stand and testified against his former friend. Hill testified Eaton had convinced Burke to invest $250,000 in a cocaine deal that promised immense profit. Eaton, however, kept the money for his own use. When, at one point, Hill asked Burke about Eaton's location, observing that he hadn't been around in a while, Hill said Burke replied "Don't worry about him. I whacked the fucking swindler out." Burke also told Hill that this would be a lesson to two other drug purchasers who had not yet paid Burke. Based on the evidence of Burke's name, address, and phone number found in Eaton's coat lining when he was found dead and Hill's testimony, Burke was convicted, and on February 19, 1985, he was given a permanent prison sentence, protesting "the bastard died of hypothermia!" When he was leaving New York on an airplane, he looked down at J.F.K. airport and boasted to an officer, " that was all mine."

There was an attempt by Henry Hill and Eastern District of New York Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Ed McDonald to convict Burke of taking part in the 1970 murder of William 'Billy Batts' DeVino; but Hill was the sole living witness, so the charge was dropped due to a probable inability to convict based on a lack of evidence.

Burke was serving his time in Wende Correctional Facility in Alden, New York, when he developed lung cancer. He died from this disease on April 13, 1996, aged sixty-four years, while being treated at Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, New York Had he lived he would have been eligible for parole in 2004, aged seventy-three years.