Lufthansa Heist: The $6m robbery that inspired a Hollywood classic
The Louvre heist in October 2025 is a reminder that, even in busy areas, thieves can make off with millions of pounds’ worth of loot. However, you don’t have to look much further back in history for similar examples.
One is the City bonds robbery, which cost the Bank of England more than £290 million back in 1990. This particular incident is the subject of the recent Crime+Investigation docuseries Heist: Robbing the Bank of England.
Now, what about a heist so notorious, it was featured in one of the best crime films of all time? That film would be the Martin Scorsese classic GoodFellas, which dramatised many of the real-life events surrounding the Lufthansa heist of 1978.
The Lufthansa heist occurred at John F Kennedy International Airport in New York City on 11th December 1978. The culprits scarpered with a haul thought to have been worth roughly $6 million. It remains one of the largest cash robberies to have taken place on US soil. It also had a shocking bloody aftermath, as Crime+Investigation explains…
How the original plan was concocted
In late 1978, Louis Werner had a big problem. He had accrued $20,000 of gambling debts – and worse, owed that money to Martin Krugman, a bookmaker friendly with the mob.
Werner had at least one potential saving grace, though – a job at a busy airport where valuable goods often passed through. It all led his co-worker Peter Gruendwald to suggest a nefarious but all-too-tempting scheme…
Werner knew that, once a month, huge wads of cash en route from Germany were temporarily stored in a vault at the airport. This money would be kept overnight, theoretically offering gangsters the opportunity to steal it under cover of darkness. That’s if they were able to bypass the multiple layers of security at the cargo building first…
These weren’t quite as insurmountable as they may initially have seemed. Werner had inside knowledge of the onsite security systems and procedures. He passed this information onto Krugman, who allegedly relayed it to mobster James Burke, an associate of the Lucchese crime family.
How did the Lufthansa heist unfold?
It supposedly didn’t take long for Burke to assemble a crack team tasked with carrying out the robbery. Among the ranks were Tommy DeSimone, Angelo Sepe and Parnell ‘Stacks’ Edwards, not to mention Burke’s son Frank. On Werner’s advice, six bandits – clad in black ski masks – arrived at the airport’s Lufthansa terminal at 3am.
Werner knew that, around this time, most of the workers at ‘building 261’ would be having their lunch break on the third floor. Hence, they would be easy to take hostage, as indeed proved to be the case. Though another employee – Rudi Eirich – was in his office elsewhere in the building, he was soon lured into the cafeteria. There, he joined his co-workers being held at gunpoint.
Not that he would be kept in that lunchroom for too long. As he literally held the keys to the vault, he had an important role to play for the robbers. Hence, someone took him to the vault and coerced him into unlocking the two doors protecting it.
Though the bandits had expected a haul of some $2 million, the vault’s contents turned out to be worth about three times more. This included $5 million in cash along with jewelry of almost $1 million in value. Was there still a chance of the Lufthansa heist going awry at the last minute? As it turned out, yes.
The aftermath of the Lufthansa heist
The robbers were at the Lufthansa terminal for just over an hour before making their getaway with the loot in tow. After the money was unloaded from the black van they had driven to and from the airport, there was just one task left.
That was to have the van destroyed at a junk yard – a job that fell to Edwards. In the event, though, he simply left the van near his girlfriend’s apartment. That’s where police found it – with Edwards’ incriminating fingerprints on it – two days later.
Nonetheless, Werner was the only man involved with the heist ever to be convicted for it. Many others were found dead or missing in the months following the heist. It is now believed that Burke ordered their murders in case they informed the FBI that he had masterminded the heist. Meanwhile, the stolen goods were never recovered.
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