Wikimedia CommonsLucchese crime family capo Paul Vario inspired the character Paulie Cicero in the iconic film Goodfellas.
The streets of Brooklyn held a different kind of allure for Paul Vario. From a young age, trouble seemed to follow him like a stray dog. And when he entered the Lucchese crime family, there was no turning back.
Vario quickly rose within the ranks, thanks in no small part to his imposing size and violent temper. He wasn’t a flashy crew leader, barking orders in expensive suits; he was the muscle, the one who ran a network of illegal gambling, loan-sharking, and fencing stolen goods. He avoided the spotlight and operated from the shadows, but everyone knew who called the shots.
But empires, especially those built on fear, have a way of crumbling. A trusted associate, Henry Hill, flipped when the law finally caught up with him. Hill became an informant, and before long, Vario’s carefully constructed world came crashing down. His reign ended with a whimper, not a bang — a prison cell replacing the backrooms where he held court. And Vario died behind bars, a cautionary tale for others in New York’s underworld.
This is the true story of Paul Vario, the real-life mobster who inspired the character Paulie Cicero in the 1990 crime drama Goodfellas.
Paul Vario’s Early Life And Introduction To New York’s Lucchese Crime Family
In the early 20th century, Brooklyn was a place where opportunities were scarce, and the streets were tough. Paul “Paulie” Vario, born on July 10, 1914, grew up in this harsh reality. Vario understood that to make it in this world, one had to be resourceful, cunning, and unafraid to get their hands dirty.
He started out small, running errands for local gangsters and earning a reputation as a reliable kid who knew when to keep his mouth shut. According to Henry Hill and the author Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote the book Wiseguy about Hill’s life, Vario was sentenced to seven months in juvenile detention for truancy when he was just 11 years old.
Public DomainHenry Hill, a Lucchese crime family associate who worked closely with Paul Vario for years.
But juvenile detention didn’t deter Vario from a life of crime. He remained in contact with numerous gangsters and mobsters and eventually became closely associated with New York’s Lucchese crime family in particular.
Vario’s dark side came out often. According to Anthony M. DeStefano’s The Big Heist, in 1937, Vario was identified by a 16-year-old girl as one of a group of men who sexually assaulted her. Then in his early 20s, Vario was found guilty of rape and sentenced to 10 to 20 years in Sing Sing prison. He was paroled twice, but was sent back both times for violating parole.
But each time Vario was released from prison, the Lucchese family was waiting for him with open arms. And Vario was found to be so effective at getting the job done, he became a made man — and a capo.
Paul Vario’s Temperamental Time As A Capo
Though Goodfellas portrays Paulie Cicero as a calm, strategic mob boss, his real-life counterpart Paul Vario had a hair-trigger temper.
One revealing story, recounted in Wiseguy, involved Vario and his wife Phyllis, who went out for dinner one night at Don Pepe’s Vesuvio. Vario was visibly frustrated that the maître d’ kept seating other people before him. He began complaining loudly about the long wait, and although he and his wife were eventually seated, the maître d’ was clearly annoyed with him.
“When Paulie ordered some wine, the maître d’ came to pour and, maybe by accident, spilled it all over Phyllis,” Henry Hill recalled. “By now Paulie’s coming out of his skin. But when the maître d’ pulled out a dirty rag and started putting his hands all over Phyllis’ dress, Paulie turned over the table, and he started to slap the guy around. Paulie only managed to get one or two swings at the guy before he ran into the kitchen. When Paulie told him to come out, a half dozen waiters with heavy pans and knives blocked the kitchen door.”
After that, Vario quickly plotted his revenge.
Later that night, when the restaurant was closing up, Vario sent some of his men — including Hill — to beat the restaurant staff members with baseball bats and pipes. And none of the men hesitated. As Hill put it: “It was so easy. Lump them up. Whack them out. Nobody ever thought, Why? What for?”
New York Daily News/Newspapers.comA 1972 newspaper headline about Paul Vario’s arrest for tampering with a witness. Though he operated largely from the shadows, Vario spent much of his life in and out of prison for various crimes, including rape, tax evasion, and burglary.
Vario acted as a sort of mentor to guys like Henry Hill. He showed up-and-coming mobsters and mob associates the ropes, instructed them to run his errands, and kept them under his control. He was tough, and people were afraid to make him angry. That kind of relationship built trust — albeit a trust based on fear — but not a trust that went both ways.
When Henry Hill went to prison on extortion charges, Vario repaid all those years of loyalty by having an affair with Hill’s wife, Karen Friedman Hill. While that was going on, another Lucchese crime family associate, Tommy DeSimone, attempted to rape Karen. This assault, along with several other incidents (including DeSimone’s unauthorized murder of a made man), led to DeSimone being killed. It’s widely believed that Vario was the one who revealed DeSimone’s many wrongdoings to the mobsters who executed him.
On the Run: A Mafia ChildhoodHenry Hill and his wife Karen Friedman Hill, who Paul Vario had an affair with.
All the while, Vario was running several underworld operations and a few legitimate businesses (he often described himself as a “florist” since one business was a flower shop). He used bribes and manipulation to keep authorities out of his crew’s way, but became increasingly concerned about his operation falling apart. This was especially true after the Lufthansa heist of 1978 — which involved mob associates stealing nearly $6 million in cash and jewels from the Lufthansa terminal at the JFK Airport in New York City.
Though Vario wasn’t directly involved in this robbery — the mastermind of this operation was the gangster Jimmy Burke — many of Vario’s associates were. Henry Hill’s involvement was minimal compared to Burke’s, but he was well informed about the robbery and what the mobsters had planned.
And when an associate involved in the heist, Parnell “Stacks” Edwards, foolishly left behind a getaway car — and his fingerprints — in a no-parking zone, Vario and Burke both became increasingly paranoid that authorities would figure out who had planned the robbery. Because of this, Edwards and many other associates involved in the crime were killed.
But Hill was still alive — and he was about to turn informant.
Henry Hill’s Testimony Landed Paul Vario In Prison For The Rest Of His Life
Public Domain/Warner Bros. PicturesThe real-life Paul Vario (left) and Paul Sorvino, the actor who portrayed a fictionalized version of him — Paulie Cicero — in Goodfellas. While the real Paul Vario had a violent temper, Paulie Cicero was portrayed as calm and strategic.
Henry Hill’s arrest in 1980 on drug-trafficking charges marked the beginning of the end for the “real-life Goodfellas.” Burke and Vario had tried to tie up loose ends, but taking out Hill was lower on their priority list. Still, authorities had secretly recorded them discussing the possibility of “whacking” Hill — and played the conversation for Hill while he was in custody.
Understanding that his loyalty to the mob no longer meant anything to Vario or Burke, Hill implicated both of them — and a number of other mobsters — in a variety of crimes. Hill later entered the Witness Protection Program, and Vario and Burke went to prison (though strangely, Burke was never charged with any crimes related to the Lufthansa heist). In 1984, Vario was found guilty of defrauding the government, and the following year, he was convicted of extorting payoffs from air-freight companies at JFK Airport.
Wikimedia CommonsJFK Airport in the 1970s, around the time of the Lufthansa heist.
Behind bars, Vario’s health soon declined. The harsh realities of prison life, combined with his advancing age, took a toll on his well-being. Despite the efforts of his lawyers to secure early release on medical grounds, Vario remained incarcerated. His attempts to appeal his conviction or reduce his sentence were unsuccessful, as the weight of the evidence against him and his long history of criminal activity left little room for leniency.
Then, on May 3, 1988, Paul Vario died in prison from respiratory arrest resulting from chronic obstructive lung disease at the age of 73. Just a couple of years later, he was used as inspiration for the Goodfellas character Paulie Cicero, cementing his infamous legacy in pop culture history.