January 14th, 1979. A house in Queens, New York. Tommy De Simone walked out his front door, climbed into a car with two men he knew, and disappeared forever. He was 28 years old. He thought he was about to become a made man in the Lucesi crime family. Instead, he was driving to his execution. His body was never found.

The mafia doesn’t leave receipts. This wasn’t just another mobster getting whacked. Tommy Dimone was one-third of the crew that killed Billy Bats. The murder that’s burned into your brain if you’ve ever seen Good Fellas. Three men beat that made man to death in 1970. Tommy Desimone, Jimmy Burke, Henry Hill.

But 9 years later, when the bill came due, only Tommy paid with his life. Jimmy Burke died in prison decades later. Henry Hill lived to 69, sold his story, and became famous for ratting. So, here’s the question. Why did the mafia execute Tommy Desimone and let the other two walk? This is the story of how one man’s violence, arrogance, and complete inability to control himself made him the most dangerous liability the Lucesy family had ever seen.

From made man murders to barroom executions to a final fatal trip to a fake ceremony. This is why Tommy had to die and why Jimmy and Henry got to live. But here’s what most people don’t understand. The mafia doesn’t kill for revenge. They kill for survival. And by 1979, keeping Tommy Dimone alive was the most dangerous decision the Lucesy family could make.

You have to understand who Tommy Dimone really was. Not the character Joe Peshy played, the actual man. Born May 24th, 1950 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Tommy grew up in a family already drowning in organized crime. His grandfather was a Los Angeles mob boss. His uncle was a Gambino family member.

Crime wasn’t a choice for Tommy. It was inheritance. By the time he was a teenager, his family had moved to Brooklyn. He was already running with criminals, already violent, already unpredictable. At 15 years old, Tommy was introduced to Paul Vario, a powerful cappo in the Luces crime family.

Vario ran a crew out of Brooklyn that controlled everything from truck hijackings to lone sharking. Tommy became a Vario associate. So did Henry Hill, who was only a few years older. They worked together, they stole together, and eventually they killed together. But Tommy was different from the beginning. Henry Hill later said Tommy’s portrayal in Goodfellows was 90 to 99% accurate, except for one thing.

Joe Peshy was 5’3. Tommy De Simone was over 6t tall and built like a linebacker. He was physically intimidating, and he used that size to terrorize everyone around him. He wasn’t just violent. He was reckless, impulsive, uncontrollable, the kind of guy who’d pull a gun in a crowded room because someone looked at him wrong.

Tommy’s first known murder happened in 1968. He was 17 years old. According to Henry Hill, Tommy shot and killed a random stranger named Howard Goldstein. No motive, no beef, just violence for the sake of violence. That was Tommy. He didn’t need a reason, he needed an excuse. By 1970, Tommy was a full-time earner for the Vario crew.

He was involved in truck hijackings at JFK airport, stealing cargo, fencing stolen goods, making money for Paul Vario and the Lucazi family. But Tommy had a problem. He couldn’t stop killing. And worse, he was killing the wrong people. June 11th, 1970. The Sweet Lounge in Queens, a neighborhood bar where mobsters hung out, drank, played cards, and conducted business.

That night, a Gambino family associate named William Bente walked in. Everyone called him Billy Bats. He was 49 years old, a maid man in the Gambino crime family. He’d just been released from prison after serving 6 years for narcotics trafficking. This was his welcome home party. Billy Bats knew Tommy Dimone. Years earlier, when Tommy was just a kid, he’d worked as a shoe shine boy.

Bats remembered. And that night, in front of everyone, Bats decided to remind him. Go home and get your shine box. Bats said it was an insult, a public humiliation. Bats was a made man. Tommy was just an associate. Bats could say whatever he wanted. Tommy couldn’t do anything about it. Except Tommy didn’t care about the rules.

Henry Hill saw what was happening. He tried to calm Tommy down. He walked him outside. They waited until the bar started to empty. Then around 3:00 in the morning, they went back inside. Tommy walked up to Billy Bats and beat him unconscious with a pistol. Jimmy Burke joined in. They kicked him, stomped him.

Bat’s skull cracked. Blood pulled on the floor. Henry Hill helped them load the body into the trunk of a car. Bats wasn’t dead yet. They drove to a location in upstate New York near the Connecticut border. When they opened the trunk, Bats was still breathing. Tommy stabbed him repeatedly.

Jimmy Burke shot him four times in the chest. Then they buried him. 6 months later, they dug him up, moved the body, and buried him again in a different location. They thought they’d gotten away with it. They hadn’t. You don’t kill a made man and walk away. Not in the mafia. And Billy Bats wasn’t just any made man. He was connected.

He had friends. And those friends were about to become a problem. Here’s where it gets complicated. The murder of Billy Bats wasn’t just a Lucesy family problem. It was a Gambino family problem. Bats was Gambino. Tommy, Jimmy, and Henry were Lucasi associates under Paul Vario. When you kill a maid man from another family without permission, you’ve just declared war.

The only question was how long it would take for the truth to come out. For Tommy, the Billy Bats murder should have been a wake-up call. He’d crossed the biggest line in the mafia. He should have laid low, kept his head down, stopped drawing attention. Instead, he did the exact opposite.

Later in 1970, just months after killing bats, Tommy was at another bar. A young kid named Michael Gianko was working there. Everyone called him Spider. He was a low-level associate. He fetched drinks. He ran errands. He was nobody. One night, Tommy was drunk, playing cards, and decided to shoot Spider in the foot just for fun.

Spider recovered. He came back to work. A few weeks later, Tommy was at the bar again. Spider made a smart remark. Tommy pulled his gun and shot him three times in the chest. Spider died on the floor. Henry Hill later said that was the moment he realized Tommy was a psychopath. Not because of the murder, because of how unnecessary it was.

Spider wasn’t a threat. He wasn’t a rival. He wasn’t even important. Tommy killed him because he was bored. And that’s what made Tommy so dangerous. He didn’t kill for business. He killed for sport. But Tommy wasn’t done. In 1974, Tommy murdered another Gambino associate named Ronald Foxy Jer. The details are murky.

The motive unclear, but the result was the same. Another body, another Gambino connection, another reason for the Gambino family to want Tommy dead. By the mid 1970s, Tommy Desimone had built a reputation. He was a killer, an earner, but also a liability. He was unpredictable. He drew attention. He made enemies.

And worst of all, he’d killed two Gambino connected men without permission. The Gambino family didn’t forget. They were waiting, watching, building a case for why Tommy had to go. And then in 1978, everything changed. December 11th, JFK airport. Six armed men walked into the Lufanza cargo building and pulled off the biggest cash robbery in American history.

They stole 5,875,000 in cash. Another $875,000 in jewelry, nearly 6 million total, worth approximately 28 million today. The mastermind was Jimmy Burke. The crew included several Lucasi associates. Tommy D. Simone was one of them. The plan was brilliant, the execution flawless. Each man was supposed to get $750,000, except most of them never saw a dime because Jimmy Burke started killing everyone involved.

One by one, the Lufanza crew disappeared. Shot, strangled, dumped in car trunks, buried in vacant lots. Jimmy was cleaning up loose ends, eliminating witnesses, keeping the money for himself. By the summer of 1979, seven people connected to the heist were dead. But Jimmy didn’t kill Tommy. He didn’t have to.

Someone else was already handling it. January 14th, 1979. Tommy Dimona’s wife, Angela, reported him missing. She said she hadn’t seen him in a few weeks. The last time they spoke, he borrowed $60 from her. He said he had to go somewhere important. He never came back. Here’s what really happened.

The Lucesi family told Tommy he was going to be made. Becoming a maid man was the ultimate goal. You took an oath. You became untouchable. You were in for life. Tommy had been waiting for this his entire career. He got in a car with two men he trusted. They told him they were driving to the ceremony. They weren’t.

According to multiple mafia sources, including Henry Hill, Tommy was taken to a house in Queens. He walked into an empty room. He realized immediately what was happening. The room was supposed to be filled with Lucesi family members. Instead, it was a trap. John Goti, a rising star in the Gambino family, was waiting.

Some reports say Goty shot Tommy three times in the head with a silenced pistol. Others say Tommy Agro, another Gambino killer, was also there. Either way, Tommy De Simone was executed. His body was never recovered. The Lucesy family approved the hit. They had to. Tommy had killed Billy Bats. He’d killed Foxy Jerathy.

Both were Gambino connected. The Gambino family demanded justice. And the Lucesy family couldn’t protect Tommy anymore. He’d become too dangerous, too reckless, too much of a liability. So they gave him up. They used the fake making ceremony as bait. And Tommy walked right into it. So here’s the question.

If the mafia killed Tommy for murdering Billy Bats, why didn’t they kill Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill? They were there. They participated. They helped bury the body. Why did they get a pass? Let’s start with Jimmy Burke. James Burke, born July 5th, 1931, nicknamed Jimmy the Gent because he was known for being generous with stolen goods.

He was one of the most feared and respected criminals in New York, a Lucesy family associate under Paul Vario, a master planner, a stone cold killer, and someone the mafia could not afford to lose. Here’s the problem. Jimmy Burke was Irish. His father was Irish American. His mother was Irish American. In the mafia, you had to be 100% Italian to become a made man.

Jimmy could never be made. He could never take the oath. He could never be formally initiated. That meant he existed in a gray area. He was incredibly valuable. But he wasn’t technically part of Laosa Nostra. And that’s why the Gambino family couldn’t demand his death the same way they demanded Tommy’s.

When you kill a made man, you violated the most sacred rule in the mafia. The punishment is death. But Jimmy wasn’t a made man. He couldn’t be. So the rules were different. The Gambinos could have pushed for his execution, but it would have caused a war. And Jimmy was too valuable to the Lucesi family.

He was making them millions. The Lufansza heist alone should have netted the Luces family a massive cut. Killing Jimmy would have cost them their best earner. There’s another reason Jimmy Burke was smart. After the Billy Bats murder, Jimmy laid low. He didn’t brag. He didn’t draw attention. When the heat came, he stepped back.

He let Tommy take the spotlight. He let Tommy be the face of the problem. And when the Gambino family came calling, the Luces family could point to Tommy and say, “He was the one. He pulled the trigger. He started it. Jimmy played it perfectly.” Jimmy Burke was also cautious in ways Tommy never was. Tommy killed impulsively. Jimmy killed strategically.

Tommy made enemies. Jimmy made money. Tommy was a psychopath. Jimmy was a professional. And in the mafia, professionals survive. Psychopaths don’t. Jimmy Burke was eventually convicted of multiple crimes. He died in prison on April 13th, 1996 at Wender Correctional Facility in New York. He was 64 years old.

He spent the last 14 years of his life behind bars, but he died of natural causes. Not a bullet, not a rope. Natural causes. The mafia never touched him. Now, let’s talk about Henry Hill. Born June 11th, 1943. HalfIrish, half Italian. Like Jimmy, Henry could never be a made man. He was an associate, a lower level earner, a guy who did jobs for Paul Vario and Jimmy Burke.

He was involved in the Billy Bats murder. But here’s the key, he was the least involved. Tommy beat Bats. Jimmy shot him. Henry helped clean up. He was there. He participated. But he wasn’t the main actor. In the eyes of the Gambino family, Henry was a minor player. He wasn’t the guy who disrespected bats.

He wasn’t the guy who pulled the trigger. He was just the guy who helped dispose of the body. That distinction saved his life. Henry Hill was also smart enough to get out before the hammer dropped. In 1980, Henry was arrested on narcotics charges. He was facing serious prison time. He made a decision.

He became a government informant. He testified against Paul Vario, Jimmy Burke, and dozens of other mobsters. His testimony led to 50 convictions. He entered the federal witness protection program. He disappeared. The mafia couldn’t touch him. He was under federal protection. But here’s the thing. Even before Henry flipped, the Gambino family wasn’t demanding his death. They wanted Tommy.

Tommy was the problem. Tommy was the one who killed Billy Bats. Tommy was the one who killed Foxy Gerro. Tommy was the one who couldn’t be controlled. Henry was a footnote. And footnotes don’t get executed. Henry Hill was kicked out of the witness protection program in 1987 after he blew his cover and continued committing crimes.

He spent the next 25 years living in the open. He wrote books. He did interviews. He appeared on talk shows. The mafia knew where he was. They could have killed him any time. They didn’t because Henry Hill wasn’t worth the risk. He’d already talked. Killing him wouldn’t change anything. it would only bring more attention, so they let him live.

Henry Hill died on June 12th, 2012, one day after his 69th birthday. He died of heart disease in a Los Angeles hospital. Natural causes. The mafia never came for him. So, let’s break this down. Why did the mafia kill Tommy Desimone and spare Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill? Because the mafia doesn’t kill everyone involved in a problem.

They kill the biggest liability and Tommy was the biggest liability the Lucesy family had ever seen. Tommy killed Billy Bats, a maid man. That alone was a death sentence. But Tommy didn’t stop there. He killed Spider. He killed Foxy Gerro. He was violent, impulsive, unpredictable. He drew attention from law enforcement.

He made enemies in multiple families. He was a ticking time bomb. And by 1979, even Paul Vario, Tommy’s protector, couldn’t shield him anymore. The Gambino family wanted blood. They wanted justice for Billy Bats and Foxy Gerothi. The Lucesy family had a choice. They could protect Tommy and risk a war with the Gambinos, or they could give him up and maintain peace. The decision was easy.

Tommy had to go. But Jimmy and Henry were different. Jimmy was too valuable. He was a top earner. He was smart. He was controllable. The Lucesy family wasn’t going to sacrifice their best money maker. Henry was too insignificant. He was a low-level associate. He wasn’t worth the effort. And once he became a government witness, killing him would only make things worse.

The mafia is a business. They kill when it’s necessary. They kill to protect the organization. They kill to maintain order. Tommy Desimone threatened all of that. He was chaos in human form and chaos gets eliminated. There’s something else. Tommy’s death sent a message. It told every associate in every family, “You cannot kill a made man.

You cannot act without permission. You cannot put your ego above the organization. If you do, you will die. It doesn’t matter how much money you make. It doesn’t matter how tough you are. The rules are the rules.” Tommy broke them. He paid the price. Jimmy Burke understood that. He played by the rules just enough to stay alive.

He made money. He stayed valuable. He kept his mouth shut. He survived. Henry Hill understood it, too. He knew when to run. He knew when to talk. He traded his loyalty for his life. And it worked. Tommy Dimone never understood. He thought his reputation would protect him.

He thought his connections would save him. He thought being a killer made him untouchable. He was wrong. In the mafia, nobody’s untouchable, especially not the guy who can’t control himself. On January 14th, 1979, Tommy D. Simone climbed into that car thinking he was about to achieve his dream. He was about to become a made man.

He was about to join the inner circle. He was about to become untouchable. Instead, he walked into a room and got executed by the very people he thought would embrace him. The mafia doesn’t forgive. It doesn’t forget, and it doesn’t waste time on second chances. Tommy had 9 years to prove he could be trusted.

He spent those 9 years proving the opposite. He killed recklessly. He made enemies. He drew attention. And when the bill finally came due, there was nobody left to protect him. Not Paul Vario, not the Lucesy family, nobody. Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill survived because they were smarter.

Because they understood the game, because they knew when to step back. Tommy never learned that lesson, and it cost him everything. That’s the real story of Good Fellas. Not the glamour, not the money, not the power. The inevitable, brutal price of being the one guy nobody can control. Tommy thought he was untouchable. He wasn’t.

And on January 14th, 1979, he found out the hard way. If you want to understand the mafia, understand this. They don’t kill for revenge. They kill for survival. Tommy D. Simone had to die. Jimmy Burke and Henry Hill didn’t. That’s not luck. That’s the rules. And in the mafia, the rules always