First Race TV: 'Henry Hill Dead- Goodfellas Mobster Dies At 69'

Source:First Race TV- Goodfella Henry Hill: dead at 69.

"Henry Hill, the low-level mobster turned FBI informant who was the basis of Martin Scorsese's seminal 1990 film "Goodfellas," has died at age 69, reports TMZ.

"He had a heart attack around the 27th of May, and he went into the hospital and it was really touch-and-go for a long time," Lisa Caserta, Hill's long-time girlfriend, told the New York Post. As she told TMZ.
Hill's "heart gave out."

Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943, Hill's early life and rise up the mafia food chain was recalled with great detail in Nicholas Pileggi's 1986 book Wiseguy, an at-times first person account told in Hill's words. He became involved with the mob at age 12 and took his first arrest at age 16. In 1978, at 35, he participated in the Lufthansa heist at Kennedy Airport, the then-most expensive robbery in U.S. history. It earned Hill and his conspirators over $5 million.

After the Luftansa heist and a subsequent drug arrest, Hill became an FBI informant and testified against his former colleagues. He was placed in the Witness Protection Program with his wife, Karen.

"I get to live the rest of my life like a shnook," Hill famously said at the end of Wiseguy.

Pileggi and Scorsese adapted Wiseguy for the screen, and the result was "Goodfellas," one of the most quoted and lauded films of the last 25 years. Ray Liotta played Hill in the film, while Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci (who won an Oscar for his work) and Paul Sorvino co-starred as mobsters.

In the years after the events depicted in "Goodfellas," Hill would battle drug, alcohol and legal problems. He was arrested in Missouri in 2009 for drunken disturbance."

From First Race TV

The phrase living the life has been thrown out a lot the last ten years or so. The hip hop group Black Eye Peas, uses it in one of their songs. But thats the best way to describe former mobster, who never really completely gave up his criminal, career but was no longer an official Italian Gangster after he became an FBI informant and ratted out a lot of his former associates and went into the Federal Witness Protection Program.

But thats exactly how Henry Hill lived his life, the life of an Italian gangster, who basically had just two goals in life: make a lot of money, not really earning any of it legally and what he did make, blew a lot of it. And have a good time. Work hard so to speak if you want calling being a mobster work and play hard and enjoy life as much as possible, after work hours. Enjoying his fruits of his labor so much, that a book was written about him in 1986, which led to the move Goodfellas in 1990. As far as I'm concern the best Italian mob movie of all time because of its accuracy, the great humor that was constant in the movie and of course the great cast: Robert Di Niro, Joe Pesci, Paul Servino, Ray Liotta, Loraine Bracco, and many others.

Henry Hill really did live the crazy life and was very successful at it. Doing one short stretch in prison in the 1970s, for heisting the JFK Airport in New York. Still considered one of the most successful heists in American history. As far as the people actually being able to pull it off, they got caught later but actually managed to obtain what they were searching for and made a lot of money doing it. Henry Hill tried to play himself as a hard-working family man, who worked for a construction union in New York City, with a beautiful wife, which is what he had and a couple of kids.

But Henry actually never set out to be much of a husband or father as far as actually being there for his family. Even though he did provide for them pretty well financially. You know, from the money he made as a mobster, he was a collector as well as hitman, but only whacked bad people who would've killed innocent people or stole from innocent people. Not justifying that, just explaining it.

I'm going to miss Henry Hill from this perspective, because of how interesting he was. To the point that one of my favorite movies of all time, Goodfellas was made based on his life and the work he put into that movie as a consultant, to make that movie as accurate and as entertaining as it was. And how honest he's been about his life, that allowed for the great book and films to be made about him.