James Burke (gangster) - Early Life

Early Life

Jimmy Burke was born in New York. His mother, Mary Conway, was from Dublin, Ireland. James' father has never been identified. At age two, his mother placed him in a foster home; he spent most of his early years in a Roman Catholic orphanage run by nuns, and never saw his parents again. He was shuttled around various homes and orphanages, where he suffered abuse, sexual and otherwise, at the hands of various foster fathers and foster brothers. In the summer of 1944, when Burke was age 13, his foster father died in a car crash; he lost control of the car when he turned around to hit Burke, who was riding in the back seat. The deceased man's widow, who was in the car as well but survived, blamed Burke for the accident and beat him regularly until he was taken back into foster care.

He was finally adopted by the Burke family, whose name he took. Jimmy lived with them in a large wooden boarding house located on Rockaway Beach Boulevard and Ocean Promenade in Rockaway, Queens. His time spent there during the beginning of his adolescence was a time of peace and calm. He remained close to the Burke family and visited his adoptive parents each Mother's Day and Christmas and on their birthdays. On a monthly basis, he would send them several thousand dollars in an unmarked envelope as appreciation for their attempt at raising him. It is rumored that he buried a portion of the loot from the 1978 Lufthansa heist, which he orchestrated and helped carry out, on the site of his foster home. It is also believed that only a quarter of the estimated millions in gold, silver, and currency taken in the heist has been recovered.

As he approached his teens, Burke began to get in trouble with the law and spent considerable time in jail. In 1949, at age eighteen, he was sentenced to five years in prison for bank forgery; he had passed counterfeit checks for Dominick Cersani. Burke did not act as an informant for the authorities, which helped him gain favor amongst his Mafia contemporaries. Behind bars, he mixed with a number of Mafioso and other criminals of all nations in the New York area.

Burke was an immense presence: burly, tall, and with a temper to match. He had large, tattooed, muscular arms as result of earlier work as a bricklayer for the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers. His job as a union bricklayer during the New York City construction boom was short-lived, and he gave it up to pursue a life of crime. He was known to be very polite and charming, but was a stone-cold killer. Said Henry Hill, "He was a big guy and knew how to handle himself. He looked like a fighter. He had a broken nose and he had a lot of hands. If there was just the littlest amount of trouble, he'd be all over you in a second. He'd grab a guy's tie and slam his chin into the table before the guy knew he was in a war. ... Jimmy had a reputation for being wild. He'd whack you."

In 1962, when Burke and his future wife, Mickey, decided to get married, Burke discovered that Mickey was being bothered by an old boyfriend, who was calling her on the phone, yelling at her on the street, and circling her house for hours in his car. On Burke and Mickey's wedding day, the police found the ex-boyfriend's remains. He had been carefully cut into over a dozen pieces and tossed all over the inside of his car.