'Goodfellas' trial: Vincent Asaro cleared over crime that inspired Martin Scorsese's Mafia classic

An 80-year-old reputed mob boss has been found not guilty of an alleged role in a brazen 1978 airport heist that inspired the Mafia movie Goodfellas.

The arrest of Vincent Asaro, who is considered the head of New York's Bonanno crime family, last year sought to end one of America's most notorious unsolved crimes.

Prosecutors had accused Asaro of waiting in a decoy car while a group of masked men robbed a Lufthansa Airlines cargo building at John F. Kennedy International Airport of $6 million (£4 million) in cash and jewels.

Asaro had also been accused of strangling a suspected informant to death with a dog chain in 1969 along with several other crimes.

But Asaro was cleared of murder, extortion and other crimes by a jury in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

Several former members of the Bonanno family testifed for the government, including the former mob boss Joseph Massino.

Asaro's defence lawyer Diane Ferrone successfully argued the government's case was based entirely on witnesses who were lying to avoid lengthy prison terms for their own crimes.

The airport heist was described as "truly the score of all scores" by Assistant US Attorney Lindsay Gerdes during the trial.

Martin Scorsese's 1990 Mafia classic centred on the crime and saw Robert De Niro play a character based on gangster Jimmy Burke, who is long believed to have masterminded the robbery.

Most of the other suspected participants in the heist disappeared, died or were killed.