NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — Two years after he was sensationally acquitted of murder and the 1978 Lufthansa heist, New York mobster Vincent Asaro finally got his comeuppance Thursday, sentenced to eight years for arson.
Asaro, 82 — a capo from the Bonanno organized crime family — now faces the possibility of spending the rest of his life behind bars for ordering an arson attack on a car in 2012.
In June, Asaro, whose lawyers say is in extremely poor health, pleaded guilty to ordering the road rage fire in retaliation for a Queens driver who had cut him off in traffic five years earlier.
The namesake grandson of late New York mobster John Gotti also pleaded guilty to the arson.
Judge Allyne Ross sentenced Asaro in a Brooklyn federal court to eight years behind bars and ordered him to pay $21,276 damages for the car.
“Today’s sentence holds Asaro accountable not only for using his power as a member of organized crime to address a perceived slight by another motorist but for a lifetime of violent criminal activity,” said acting US Attorney Bridget Rohde in Brooklyn.
Prosecutors were dealt a stunning blow when a Brooklyn jury in November 2015 acquitted Asaro of involvement in an infamous heist at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport — immortalized in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 Oscar-winning movie “Goodfellas,” which does not depict Asaro specifically.
On trial for murder, violence and extortion from the late 1960s until 2013, Asaro was found not guilty on all counts, including the grizzly strangulation of a suspected informant with a dog chain, who was then buried under a basement floor.
Asaro’s lawyers said prosecutors lacked evidence.
The Lufthansa heist — the biggest on US soil — saw armed mobsters steal $5 million in cash and nearly $1 million in jewels from a Lufthansa Airlines vault at John F. Kennedy airport on December 11, 1978.
The value of the booty today is estimated at around $20 million.
© Agence France-Presse