Thomas DeSimone

Two theories about DeSimone's alleged murder and murderer(s) exist from mob "insiders". According to mob informant Joseph "Joe Dogs" Iannuzzi, Thomas Agro said in 1985 that he had murdered Thomas DeSimone. Agro also claimed to have murdered DeSimone's brother Anthony after he turned informant. Agro also suggested murdering the eldest and last remaining brother, Robert. According to Ianuzzi, Agro would often laughingly refer to killing the third DeSimone brother, stating: "Maybe it's time to go for the DeSimone trifecta!" Another account, told by Hill in Gangsters and Goodfellas, states that John Gotti himself was the assassin, although in the presence of Thomas Agro. On May 17, 2007, on the Howard Stern Show, Hill reaffirmed that Gotti had killed DeSimone. He also added that the death "took a long time," as Bentvena had been a personal friend of Gotti's, and he wanted DeSimone to suffer before he died. Gotti's role as the assassin was repeated in the 2015 book The Lufthansa Heist, cowritten by Hill and journalist Daniel Simone, although this account claims that DeSimone's death was instantaneous from three gunshots to the head. According to Sal Polisi, DeSimone was killed by Thomas Agro (in the presence of John Gotti), and that Agro slowly tortured him to death.

In 1994, Hill, in his book Gangsters and Goodfellas, gave an expanded story of the events leading up to DeSimone's death, which was in part due to Tommy trying to rape Hill's wife, Karen.

DeSimone inspired the character Tommy DeVito, one of the main characters of the 1990 film Goodfellas, played by Joe Pesci in an Oscar-winning performance.

DeSimone was portrayed by Joe Pesci in the 1990 movie Goodfellas, renamed Tommy DeVito. Pesci won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this depiction.

It has been theorized DeSimone is buried in a suspected "Mafia graveyard" on the Brooklyn-Queens border near John F. Kennedy International Airport, where the body of Al Indelicato was found in 1981, and the bodies of Philip Giaccone and Dominick Trinchera were recovered by police in 2004.

Tommy DeSimone had two sisters, Dolores and Phyllis, and two brothers, Robert and Anthony. Both of his brothers were associates of the Gambino crime family; Anthony was murdered by mobster Thomas Agro in 1979. Phyllis was James Burke's mistress from the time she turned 16. DeSimone was also the brother-in-law of mobster Joseph "The Barber" Spion, who was slain for refusing to help kill DeSimone in the late 1970s, and the ex-son-in-law of Gambino associate Salvatore DeVita.

On January 14, 1979, DeSimone's wife, Angela, reported him missing. She said she had last seen DeSimone a few weeks earlier when he borrowed $60 from her. It is believed that DeSimone was murdered as revenge for the two unsanctioned murders of John Gotti's men, William "Billy Batts" Bentvena and Foxy Jerothe.

When Hill became an FBI informant in 1980, he told authorities that DeSimone had been murdered by the Gambino crime family. Despite the oft-given date of death of January 14, 1979, the exact date of DeSimone's murder is uncertain. Hill claimed that in "the week after Christmas," he and Burke had gone down to Florida to straighten out a drug deal gone bad. DeSimone had remained behind in New York, because he believed he was going to be made. Sometime in late December 1978 or early January 1979, DeSimone was contacted and told that he was going to be "made." Peter Vario (Paul Vario's son) and Bruno Facciolo took him to an unknown location, where he was murdered. Hill also indicated in both the book Wiseguy and the DVD commentary to Goodfellas that DeSimone had already been killed when Martin Krugman disappeared on January 6, 1979.

The Lufthansa heist was a robbery at Kennedy airport on December 11, 1978, in which an estimated $5.875 million (equivalent to $23 million in 2019) was stolen from the German airline Lufthansa, with $5 million in cash and $875,000 in jewelry, making it the largest cash robbery committed on American soil at the time. Burke decided on DeSimone, McMahon, Angelo Sepe, Louis Cafora, Joe Manri, and Paolo LiCastri as the robbers. Burke's son Frank would drive one of the back-up vehicles and Parnell "Stacks" Edwards' job was to dispose of the van afterwards.

On December 18, 1974, DeSimone killed Ronald "Foxy" Jerothe, a protégé of then-Gambino associate John Gotti. DeSimone had dated Jerothe's sister and had beaten her up, prompting Jerothe to threaten to kill him. When DeSimone heard about the threat, he went to Jerothe's apartment and killed him.

After William "Billy Batts" Bentvena was released from prison in 1970, in the book Wiseguy, Henry Hill said that they threw a "welcome home" party for Bentvena at Robert's Lounge, which was owned by Jimmy Burke. Hill stated that Bentvena saw Tommy DeSimone and jokingly asked him if he still shined shoes and DeSimone perceived it as an insult. DeSimone leaned over to Hill and Burke and said "I'm gonna kill that motherfucker." Two weeks later, on June 11, 1970, Bentvena was at The Suite, a nightclub owned by Hill in Jamaica, Queens. Late in the night, with the bar club nearly empty, DeSimone pistol-whipped Bentvena. Hill said that before DeSimone started to beat Bentvena, DeSimone yelled, "Shine these fucking shoes!"

In 1965, when he was 15 years old, DeSimone was introduced to Paul Vario, a caporegime in the Lucchese family. Henry Hill, a Vario associate who was in his early 20s at the time, later recounted his first meeting with DeSimone, describing him as "a skinny kid who was wearing a wiseguy suit and a pencil mustache." DeSimone worked under Vario, Burke, and Hill, among others, becoming involved in truck hijackings, dealing and fencing of stolen property, extortion, fraud and murder. While hijacking, DeSimone would always carry his gun in a brown paper bag. "Walking down the street, he looked like he was bringing you a sandwich instead of a .38." Hill said.

During the 1960s, Air France was the carrier of American currency that had been exchanged in Southeast Asia. The airline had contracted to return the money to the U.S for depositing with American banks. The money was usually carried in linen bags, each containing US$60,000, and Air France shipped up to $1 million a week in this manner. The money was stored in a cement-block strong room at the Air France cargo terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, with a round-the-clock private security guard. In 1967, Robert McMahon, an Air France employee, tipped off Burke, Hill, and DeSimone to an incoming delivery of between $400,000 and $700,000 in cash on Friday, April 7. McMahon said the best time for the actual robbery would be just before midnight, when the security guard would be on his meal break.

Thomas Anthony "Tommy" DeSimone (May 24, 1950 – disappeared January 14, 1979) was an American mobster associated with New York City's Lucchese crime family who is alleged to have participated in both the Air France robbery and the Lufthansa heist. He committed numerous murders, including of made man William Bentvena in 1970, and in 1979 went missing, presumably murdered himself.

DeSimone's father owned a printing shop, which he lost due to a compulsive gambling addiction. Both his paternal grandfather, Rosario DeSimone, and uncle, Frank DeSimone, were bosses of the Los Angeles crime family. Rosario became the boss of the Los Angeles family after Vito Di Giorgio was killed in Chicago in 1922. Frank was a criminal attorney turned mobster; "Uncle Frank", as he was known, replaced the deceased Jack Dragna in 1956, and became the second DeSimone family member to assume control of the Los Angeles family.