n the pre-dawn darkness of December 11, 1978, a stolen black Ford Econoline lingered outside New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Inside, several men waited for a signal, their faces covered in black ski masks.
Finally, at 3:12 AM, the signal came and the van backed up to the deliveries entrance of the Lufthansa Airlines terminal. The masked men got out, each of them armed with a loaded weapon, and entered the terminal.
Sixty-four minutes later they quietly slipped out, loaded the van with $5 million in untraceable cash and another $1 million in jewels, and got away with what was, at the time, the largest sum ever stolen on U.S. soil – and the subject of Martin Scorsese’s 1990 crime classic Goodfellas.
To this day — nearly three decades after the Lufthansa heist was immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas — only one man has ever been imprisoned for the crime.
