Accused mobster goes on trial for 'Goodfellas' heist

Alleged mobster Vincent Asaro escorted by FBI agents last year.

An alleged top member of New York's Bonanno crime family is on trial for what federal prosecutors say was his role in the renowned 1978 Lufthansa Airlines heist that inspired the mob movie Goodfellas.

Vincent Asaro, 80, is accused of being one of several armed men that stole $6 million (£3.8 million) in cash and jewelry in December 1978 from a Lufthansa Airlines cargo building at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

It was "truly the score of all scores", Assistant US Attorney Lindsay Gerdes told a federal jury, whose identities are sealed for security reasons, in a Brooklyn court.

But defence lawyer Diane Ferrone said the government's case is based entirely on witnesses who are lying to avoid lengthy prison terms for their own crimes.

The heist, featured in Martin Scorsese's 1990 film, was one of the USA's most infamous unsolved crimes until last year, when prosecutors arrested Asaro and accused him of a litany of Mafia-related offences.

Among other crimes, Asaro is accused of strangling a suspected informant to death with a dog chain in 1969.

Prosecutors say Asaro followed his grandfather and father into the "family business" in the 1970s.

Most of the other suspected participants in the heist disappeared, died or were killed, although jurors will not hear about the string of murders, also featured in Goodfellas, that followed the theft.

Martin Scorsese's film, starring Ray Liotta and Robert De Niro, featured the Lufthansa heist and the subsequent murders associated with the crime. Credit: KPA / DPA/Press Association Images

Several former members of the Bonanno family are expected to testify for the government including the former mob boss Joseph Massino.

Massino's second-in-command, Sal Vitale, was the first witness and told jurors the family's command structure and rules.

The 'don'ts', he said, included meeting federal agents, sleeping with another member's wife and killing someone without permission.

The 'do's' were very simple: "Just do what you're told," Vitale said.

He described a meeting soon after the Lufthansa heist, when Asaro handed Massino a case full of gold chains.

"Joe said, 'This is from the Lufthansa score'" Vitale testified.