December 18th, 1978. A Queens apartment, Parnell Stacks. Edwards had survived the street, the clubs, the prison yards, and the dangerous orbit of Jimmy Burke. But he could not survive one mistake after the Lufthansa robbery. Two men came through the door. One of them was Tommy DeSimone, a man Stacks knew, a man who had laughed with him, worked with him, and moved through the same criminal world for years.
A few seconds later, Stacks was on the floor. The van was gone. The money was gone. And the mob had already decided that one loose end was worth more dead than alive. This wasn’t just another guy from the edge of the crew. Stacks was an aspiring blues guitarist, a street hustler, a credit card fraud man, and according to several later accounts, a one-time bodyguard or crowd man around Muhammad Ali’s boxing circle.
That Ali detail is repeated in crime profiles, but it is not as firmly documented as the Lufthansa facts. And that matters, because Stacks lived in the gap between two American worlds. One world had music, boxing, charisma, and the dream of being somebody. The other world had Roberts Lounge, hijacked trucks, stolen cargo, and men like Jimmy Burke.
This is the story of how Stacks Edwards went from the edges of boxing glamour to the center of one of the most infamous heists in American history. It is the story of a black Ford Econoline van, a crew that stole millions without firing a shot, and a criminal mastermind who decided the safest witness was a dead witness.
But here’s what Goodfellas never really gave you. Stacks wasn’t killed just because he was lazy. He was killed because the Lufthansa heist created a pressure cooker. The van gave investigators their first break. Jimmy Burke saw fear, greed, and betrayal coming from every direction.
And when that kind of man gets scared, friendship means nothing. You have to understand the world Stacks walked into. By the early 1970s, the airport underworld in Queens was a machine. Kennedy Airport was not just a travel hub. It was a river of cargo. Cigarettes, clothing, electronics, liquor, jewelry, cash. Everything moved through warehouses, loading docks, trucks, and night shifts.
If you knew the right worker, if you knew which guard looked away, if you had a driver who could move a truck fast, the airport became a bank with bad doors. Jimmy Burke understood that better than almost anyone. Burke was Irish, not Italian, which meant he could never be a made man in the Mafia. But he had something the made men needed.
He had crews. He had nerve. He had access to thieves, hijackers, bookmakers, drivers, fences, and killers. His base was Robert’s Lounge in South Ozone Park, Queens. It looked like a neighborhood bar. In reality, it was a command post. Deals were made there, scores were planned there, men walked in smiling, and sometimes disappeared after walking out.
Stacks fit into that world because he could move between rooms. He was not a boss. He was not a planner like Burke. He was not a made guy like Paul Vario. But he was useful. In that life, useful was a currency. He knew cars. He knew stolen goods. He knew how to hustle. He had a musician’s charm and a criminal’s flexibility.
Some accounts describe him as a blues guitarist with one foot in music and another sinking into crime. That is how a lot of men get trapped. Not with one dramatic decision, but with a hundred small ones that keep paying just enough to pull them back. The first scheme around Stacks was simple.
Advertisements
Credit card fraud. In the 1970s, stores checked lists slowly, and banks moved slower. The inside connection was often a clerk, a thief, or a mailbox man. The execution was fast. Get the card, buy goods, move them to a fence, sell at a discount. The money looked easy, but the paper trail was always waiting.
Names, receipts, witnesses. One small mistake could become a file. That kind of work brought Stax closer to bigger scores. Hijacking was the real airport game. The opportunity was the cargo truck. The inside connection was a worker who knew what was loaded and when it rolled. The execution was physical.
Block the truck, pull the driver out, move the load to another vehicle, get it to a warehouse. The money came from fences who paid a fraction of retail. The problem was heat. Every hijacking created police reports, insurance pressure, and informants. Burke’s crew lived with that heat, and Stax worked around them long enough to understand the rule.
You didn’t talk. You didn’t flash money. You didn’t panic. But Stax had weaknesses. He liked the street life. He liked women. He liked getting high. That combination was dangerous inside a crew that valued discipline only when someone else had to follow it. By 1978, the Lufthansa score began as an inside tip.
Louis Werner, a Lufthansa cargo worker, knew that large amounts of cash came through the airline’s cargo building at Kennedy Airport. The money was connected to American servicemen and tourists exchanging currency in Germany. It arrived in New York and could sit in the vault before bank pick up. Werner had a gambling debt.
That debt became the opening. He passed the information through Martin Krugman, a bookmaker and wig shop owner, who carried it toward Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke. Here is where the scheme becomes classic mafia logistics. The opportunity was not just cash, it was cash sitting in a specific cargo building at a specific time with employees who could be controlled.
The The connection was Werner with knowledge of the vault, schedules, and routines. The execution required armed men, a van, backup cars, a place to switch the loot, and enough intimidation to stop employees from hitting alarms too soon. The money was staggering. Public accounts put the haul at about $5.8 million in cash and jewels.
In 1978, that was not just a score, that was a lifetime of scores landing in one night. The problem was that every man near it would suddenly become both rich and terrified. On December 11th, 1978, around 3:00 in the morning, the crew moved on the Lufthansa cargo terminal at Kennedy Airport.
Six armed men in ski masks arrived in a black Ford Econoline van. They cut through access, controlled employees, forced cooperation, and moved cartons of cash and jewels. The robbery took about 64 minutes. No shots fired. No bodies on the floor. That is part of why the heist became legendary. It was quiet.
It was controlled. It looked professional. But the silence was deceptive. The violence was only delayed. Stacks was not one of the men inside the terminal. His job came after. And in a robbery like this, the after job could be as important as the guns. The van was evidence. It had carried robbers. It could hold fingerprints, fibers, shoe marks, and witness connections.
The plan, according to later accounts, was for Stacks to take that black Ford van and get it destroyed. Some versions place the disposal through a Gotti-connected junkyard or auto wrecking operation. The point was simple. Crush the van. Remove the trail. Let investigators chase shadows. That was the job. Drive it away. Destroy it.
Say nothing. But Stacks did not do it. Instead of making the van disappear, he drove it near his girlfriend’s apartment. Accounts differ in small details, but the core is the same. The van ended up parked illegally near a fire hydrant in Brooklyn. Stacks got high, fell asleep, or simply delayed the job.
Two days later, police spotted the van. The plates came back stolen. The vehicle was impounded. Investigators quickly understood what they had. This was not just an abandoned van. This was the first doorway into the biggest cash robbery in American history at that time. Here’s where it gets interesting.
The van did not have to convict everyone to become deadly. In the mob, evidence is not only about court. Evidence changes behavior. Once the police have a van, everyone asks the same questions. Who touched it? Who drove it? Who left prints? Who can be tied to it? Who will talk first? Burke did not need a judge to tell him the van was a problem.
He knew it instantly. And Stacks knew it, too. Imagine that pressure. One day, you are part connected to millions. The next day, the vehicle you were supposed to erase is in police hands. Your fingerprints may be inside. Your friends know you failed. The police want you. The mob wants silence. You can run to the law, but that makes you a rat.
You can run from the law, but that leaves you exposed to the crew. You can explain yourself to Burke, but men like Burke did not build careers on forgiveness. Jimmy Burke’s paranoia after Lufthansa was not random. It was a business calculation mixed with a violent personality. Every participant expected money. Every participant had a mouth.
Every participant had fear. The more money involved, the more dangerous the mouths became. Burke had already told men not to flash cash, but men did what men do when they suddenly think they are rich. They talked. They bought things. They demanded shares. They got nervous. That is the second scheme after the heist, not robbery, damage control.
The opportunity for Burke was brutal. If dead men cannot testify, then every murder reduces risk. The inside connection was his authority over killers like Tommy DeSimone and Angelo Sepe. The execution was targeted. Find the weak link, remove him, move to the next. The money was protected because shares could be withheld from the dead.
The problem was that each murder created more heat, more rumors, and more ghosts. Stacks became the first message. Tommy DeSimone was the wrong man to send if mercy was possible. He was young, violent, feared, and already surrounded by stories that made even criminals step carefully around him. Angelo Sepe was another dangerous hand.
Together, they went to Stacks. This was not a street argument. This was not a warning. This was an execution order wrapped in a visit from familiar faces. Different accounts describe the final moment with different details. Some say Stacks was eating when they came in.
Some say he was relaxed because he knew them. What matters is the betrayal in the room. These were not strangers kicking in a door. These were men from the same world, the same orbit, the same criminal family of convenience. In that life, friendship existed until it threatened profit. Then it was erased. DeSimone shot Stacks at close range.
Some accounts say five times. He was dead before he could explain his way out of anything. The van had made him a liability. The Lufthansa money made liabilities intolerable. But that’s not the crazy part. Killing Stacks did not solve the problem. It only proved what Burke was willing to do. After Stacks, the blood trail widened.
Martin Krugman, the man who helped carry the Lufthansa tip into Burke’s world, wanted his cut. He complained. he pushed. He made himself impossible to ignore. In a normal business, a partner demanding payment is a dispute. In Burke’s business, it was a threat. Krugman disappeared. His body was never found.
Then there were Louis and Joanna Cifora. Louis, known as Roast Beef, was tied to the heist and the laundering side. He was told to keep quiet and not draw attention. Instead, he reportedly bought a pink Cadillac for his wife. You have to understand how reckless that looked.
Federal agents are circling the biggest robbery in the country. The crew is supposed to stay invisible. And here comes a loud car, a rolling confession in custom paint. The Ciforas vanished. Their bodies were never recovered. Richard Eaton became another example of how the Lufthansa money poisoned everything around it.
Eaton was tied to Burke through deals and scams. He became involved in a drug-related fraud and money dispute. His body was later found in a meat truck. Burke was eventually convicted in the Eaton murder, not the Lufthansa robbery. That is the strange irony of Jimmy Burke. The heist made him infamous, but other crimes helped put him away.
The third scheme was laundering. The opportunity was obvious. Millions in stolen cash cannot just walk into a bank. The inside connection was a network of parking lots, clubs, fences, bookmakers, and trusted associates. The execution was gradual. Spend carefully. Move cash through businesses. Pay debts. Buy goods. Hide shares.
The money had to be cleaned without creating bright red flags. The problem was human nature. Men who steal millions rarely behave like monks. They brag. They spend. They panic. They demand. They disappear. Stacks was dead before most of that unraveling became public, but his death set the tone.
The crew learned that Burke would not negotiate with fear. He would shoot it. That created silence, but not peace. Because when everyone sees the first man killed, everyone else understands they might be next. Law enforcement had a different problem. They knew the heist was too big for ordinary thieves.
They knew the airport rackets. They knew Burke’s world. They had the van. They had names. But knowing and proving are different things. Witnesses were scared. Participants were dying. The stolen cash was gone. The one man who was eventually convicted in connection with the heist was Louis Werner, the inside man. Burke was not convicted for Lufthansa.
Vario was not convicted for Lufthansa. The legend grew partly because the central players seemed to beat the case even while the bodies stacked up around them. That is why Stax matters. He is often remembered as a punchline because of Goodfellas. The guy who failed to get rid of the van. The guy sleeping when he should have been working.
But real history is colder than a movie scene. Stax was a human being with a name, a mother, a life before that apartment, and a reputation that was more complicated than one mistake. He had music in his story. He had boxing circles in some accounts. He had street intelligence.
He also had addiction and bad judgment. All of those things can be true at the same time. And the mafia exploited every weakness. Burke’s world did not forgive because forgiveness had no profit. If Stax had destroyed the van, maybe he still would have died. That is the uncomfortable possibility. After Lufthansa, Burke allegedly removed people not only for mistakes, but for greed, fear, noise, and convenience.
Stax may have been first because he made the easiest case against himself. But the pattern suggests something bigger. The heist money created a purge. By the early 1980s, the legal pressure finally reached key figures through other cases. Henry Hill became a government witness after his own drug problems, and fear of Burke’s wrath pushed him toward cooperation.
His testimony helped bring cases connected to other crimes, including the Boston College point-shaving scandal. Jimmy Burke went to prison, and later received more time for the Richard Eaton murder. He died in prison in 1996. Paul Vario also died behind bars. Tommy DeSimone did not live long, either.
He disappeared in 1979. The underworld has its own way of closing accounts. The Lufthansa money was never fully recovered. Think about that. Millions stolen, bodies left behind, families destroyed, decades of investigation. Movies, books, documentaries, trials, indictments, and still the cash mostly vanished into the bloodstream of organized crime.
That is the seductive lie of the perfect score. For one night, the crew beat the system. For the rest of their lives, they were hunted by the consequences.
