​Prosecutors Served Up Their Smoking Gun in the 'Goodfellas' Trial Today

"We never got our right money, what we were supposed to get. We got fucked all around."

Vincent Asaro could be heard in Brooklyn federal court on Thursday mouthing off to his cousin-turned-rat, Gaspare Valenti, about what prosecutors allege to be the two men's role in the 1978 Lufthansa heist at John F. Kennedy airport in New York City. According to the feds, a coterie of mobsters—Asaro and Valenti among them—robbed the airline of $6 million in cash and jewelry, pulling off the largest cash theft in American history at the time.

Referring to the late James "Jimmy the Gent" Burke—the man the feds say spearheaded the heist and who was played by Robert De Niro in Goodfellas—Asaro continues, "That fucking Jimmy kept everything."

On the fourth day of his trial, as 80-year-old Asaro sat silently in the courtroom with his family watching, federal prosecutors offered jurors what is probably their most significant piece of evidence against the washed-up mobster. Out of hours worth of tape, the three-second sentence was key: Valenti, who was wearing a wire for the feds, seemed to have coaxed his cousin into admitting they did the deed.

"What a shame," Valenti says to Asaro earlier in their conversation. "Look what we came down to, eh?"

At this point—in February of 2011—Asaro was struggling to stay afloat financially, but that was the least of his problems. Unbeknownst to him, Valenti had approached the FBI three years before with incriminating information on a wide range of wise guys from his decades as a Bonanno crime family associate. He agreed to wear the recording device and, in exchange, the FBI kept his lights on. Valenti would later plead guilty to racketeering conspiracy without being charged.

But Asaro was deep in debt, with no end in sight. "What are we gonna do?" he repeatedly asks his cousin on the tape. Valenti suggests hijacking trucks filled with cigarette cartons and selling them on the streets, an old-school move if ever there was one. The duo are later heard bringing up aging debts they might hassle people for. (On Wednesday, an audio recording of a shakedown with a mutual cousin, Carmine Muscarella, was played to the court.)

Shortly before Asaro curses out Burke, Valenti instructs Asaro on how to properly ask a case worker for food stamps. "You have to say, 'Listen, I've got nothing in the house to eat,'" he explains.

It's clear the old mobster, who prosecutors say blew his cut from the heist with gambling, was desperate.

"It's life," Asaro says, before cursing Burke for his financial situation. "We did it to ourselves. It's a curse with this fucking gambling."

"We had ours," Valenti responds. "We gambled it. It's sick in the fucking brain. That's what: a sickness!"

In their upcoming cross-examination, the defense would do well to note that Vincent Asaro never actually utters the word "Lufthansa" in this profanity-laced tape. Perhaps he's talking about his life in the Mafia generally, and how it never paid off. Or about another score that Jimmy Burke, Asaro and Valenti were involved in years ago.

But not explicitly referring to the crime makes sense for seasoned mafiosos—in this world, vagaries are essential to avoid detection. You would expect a major crime like Lufthansa to have an unofficial gag order, just like the one Burke is said to have imposed on gaudy purchases after the heist. "Jimmy and Vinny said, 'Don't spend anything,'" Valenti told the court earlier this week. "'Don't catch any heat.'"

If Valenti had asked Asaro, "So what about Lufthansa?" point-blank, it might have aroused suspicion. And Valenti, to his credit, realizes this: When the Lufthansa heist apparently comes up in an earlier tape, he just says, "What about the money from… you know?"

When asked by lead federal prosecutor Nicole Argentieri on Thursday about the biggest crime they ever pulled off together, Valenti had his answer ready: "Lufthansa."

Asaro, who's also charged with the 1969 murder of a suspected snitch (prosecutors say he choked the guy with a dog chain), faces life in prison if convicted.

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