‘Goodfellas’ mobster gets 8 years for arson, says he’ll die in prison
It didn’t matter that he was acquitted in the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist, the murder of a believed government informant or at base, the decades of organized crime in the Bonanno crime family. The hobbling 82-year-old Vincent Asaro was sentenced to eight years in prison at Brooklyn’s federal court on Thursday for car arson, a term he called his “death sentence.”
Asaro hoped his criminal history wouldn’t come back to haunt him as his attorney, Elizabeth Macedonio urged Judge Allyne Ross to solely consider the arson Asaro pleaded guilty to in June.
But prosecutors submitted detailed accounts of Asaro’s life of crime, focusing on the murder of Paul Katz and the $6 million Kennedy Airport heist immortalized in the film, “Goodfellas,” for consideration of their proposed 15-year sentence.