Infamous “Goodfellas” mobster Henry Hill and his men bound and gagged Estee Lauder while ransacking her townhouse — but Hill was such a charmer, he untied the cosmetics queen and took her out for drinks while his goons stole over $1 million in jewels, a new book claims.
A new Hill tell-all by Daniel Simone, based on interviews with Hill before his 2012 death, describes the 1978 Lauder robbery and how the Brooklyn-born mob turncoat — who inspired the movie “Goodfellas” — managed to charm Lauder while simultaneously robbing her townhouse.
Simone, whose tentatively titled “The Lufthansa Heist” focuses on the 1978 armed robbery at JFK masterminded by Hill and Jimmy “The Gent” Burke, told Page Six: “Henry and his men bound and gagged Estee and her staff and were ransacking her house. Estee was terrified and was convulsing, so Henry felt bad and proposed to take her out for a cup of coffee, saying he’d bring her back when his men had finished.
“But they went to PJ Clarke’s and had a couple of cocktails. Estee began to warm to him and even gave him her personal phone number. As a final request, he asked her not to call the police until half an hour after they left, which she did.”
In the manuscript repped by the Marianne Strong Literary Agency, Simone and Hill go into further detail about the $6 million JFK heist, which is back in the news following the arrest of alleged mobster Vincent Asaro. Prosecutors claim Asaro, 78, was a lookout. He was named along with his son, Jerome, and three others in an indictment alleging murder, robbery, extortion and arson. The Asaros, said to be captains in the Bonanno family, pleaded not guilty.
But Simone — who also interviewed Edward McDonald, the former US Attorney who led the Lufthansa probe — says, “Based on all my research, Asaro was not involved. Hill was not aware that there was anyone left alive that was involved with the heist. The only possibility is that Asaro might have had a crime stake at the airport and may have demanded a tribute [a cut of the deal] from Jimmy Burke.”