In this episode of Gangland Wire, retired Kansas City Intelligence Unit detective Gary Jenkins dives deep into the life of James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke. Prompted by listener Paul Blackwood of Edinburgh, Gary explores Burke’s world beyond the headlines of the Lufthansa heist.

From his turbulent childhood in foster homes and orphanages to his rise as a feared and respected mobster in the Lucchese family, Burke’s story is one of violence, loyalty, and paranoia. Gary traces Burke’s early years of crime, his ties with Henry Hill and Paul Vario, and the meticulous planning of the Lufthansa heist that netted millions—and left a trail of blood in its aftermath.

The episode also covers Burke’s role in gambling and drug rackets, his eventual downfall in the Boston College point-shaving scandal, and his complicated legacy in mob history. Was Jimmy the Gent a loyal operator, or a ruthless killer who trusted no one? Tune in for a gripping exploration of one of organized crime’s most enigmatic figures.

Subscribe to Gangland Wire wherever you get your podcasts, and join us each week as we uncover the stories buried beneath the headlines—and the bodies.

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0:06 Introduction to Jimmy Burke

1:12 The Rise of Jimmy the Gent

6:19 Jimmy’s Early Life and Influences

10:25 Family Ties and Notorious Names

14:41 Criminal Ventures Begin

17:51 The Notorious Lufthansa Heist

23:57 The Boston College Scandal

30:49 Conclusion and Legacy

[0:00 ] I had a listener named Paul Blackwood from Edinburgh, Scotland,

[0:04 ] email me with some great compliments about the show. So thank you, Paul. Hope you’re listening to this.  I will try to remember to send you an email just before I release this one. However, Paul suggested that I do a story that focuses more specifically on Jimmy Burke, also known as Jimmy the Gent. And I looked around, and I agreed with Paul. Burke is mentioned on many podcasts because we all want to discuss the famous Lufthansa. I want to talk about Henry Hill, some of the other mob people in the Lucchese family, but it seems like I wasn’t really finding a show that was just focused on Burke. So, James, Jimmy the Gent, Burke and where he came from and where he went.

[0:43 ] Oh, and don’t forget to hit me up on Venmo, buy me a cup of coffee once in a while, or maybe go donate on the podcast. I appreciate it. It helps pay the bills and keep me going. Now, Burke may be one of the most famous mob associates of all times, I would say. Oh, there’s some in Chicago. They had a lot of associates in Chicago. But because of, of course, Henry Hill and Robert De Niro playing him,

[1:07 ] why, he probably would be the most famous mob guy who is not a made man. If Henry Hill had not gone into witness protection, if Henry Hill had not done that book with Nicholas Pelleggi, Wise Guys, or if the famous filmmaker Martin Scorsese hadn’t taken Wise Guys and Pellegi’s book and got Pellegi to help write a script and titled it Goodfellas. And when Robert De Niro took the part of Jimmy the Gent, his place in history was assured, I’ll tell you that, especially in mob history. In my humble opinion, this book and film were arguably the best depictions of day-to-day mob life ever that I’ve ever seen. I thought it was amazing. He did a heck of a job at the casino.

[1:55 ] And to see the egos of these guys, once they turn, are just amazing. When Lefty Rosenthal heard Robert De Niro was going to play him, he told Pelleggio, oh yeah, I’ll work with you, I’ll work on this. And I’m not sure what brought Henry Hill around, but I got a feeling it was probably the same thing. He found out Ray Liotta was going to play his part in a movie. Really, when these guys like Pelleggio start writing a book about this, They got the huge budget and they pay these guys, you know, no telling how much money, six figures and up. Heck, they paid Frank Galatis $5,000. Just sit down and talk to them the first time for 30, 40 minutes. So when you actually start telling a person’s life story and on the big screen and in the book, why it’s worth a lot of money, it’s life changing money. I got a feeling. Now, the screenwriters in the film Goodfellas changed the name of Jimmy Burke to Jimmy Conway. there was some kickback from the family and they were wanting a piece of the action so they just changed the name.

[2:54 ] Now, some people have claimed that, of course, this movie came out while Burke was still alive. He was in the penitentiary, and they said that he was so happy to have Robert De Niro play him that he phoned De Niro from the prison to give him a few pointers. And De Niro is pretty well known for this. He reaches out to these guys and meets them and spends a lot of time with them trying to get a feel for their character and what it would be like to be them for a while. Nicholas Pelleggi, they say, denies this, that De Niro and Burke have never spoken. But he said there were men around the set who knew Burke, and Henry Hill would have been one of them, and knew him really well and gave De Niro pointers. I kind of like the story that De Niro got a hold of Burke in a penitentiary and talked to him.

[3:40 ] Burke was played by Donald Sutherland in another film called The Big Heist. See, everybody wants to talk about Lufthansa. I don’t know how many books there’s been written on that, several. It was a heck of a robbery. We’ll get into that a little bit later. But let’s take a look to see where Jimmy Burke came from. He was born in the Bronx, New York, so he never strayed too far from his birthplace. Like a guy, like if I’d have stayed up in Plattsburgh, Missouri, I’d have never got out of Clinton County. He was the illegitimate son to a woman named Jane Conway, who was a prostitute. He was actually an immigrant from Dublin, Ireland, so he was a real Irishman. He was the son of an immigrant directly from Ireland. The name of his father was never known. You know, the mother may not even known who the father was. At the age of two, the social services in New York City took little Jimmy Conway and put him in the first of many homes and also be in some orphan homes or whatever they, I don’t know if they call them orphan homes anymore. They call them group living situations more than likely. But a large part of his early years was spent in an orphan home ran by the Roman Catholic Church, ran by nuns. They’d say that after she gave him up at age two, he never saw her again.

[4:50 ] Now, as with many of these throwaway kids, he was in a lot of different places, the institutions, but a lot of different foster homes. You know, these people take in kids, and some of them are good, some of them aren’t so good. They’re just doing it for the money, and some of them take them in for sexual reasons. And so he would suffer physical and sexual abuse in some of these different places. He had a pivotal event that really shaped his life at age 13. He got in an argument with a foster father while driving in a car that the man turned around to smack Burke in the back seat. And we’ve all been there, you know, don’t make me reach back there and whack you. When this guy did this, he crashed the car and he died. The deceased man’s widow blamed Burke and gave him regular beatings until he was actually taken back into social services and placed with another family. The next one, sometime after that, I don’t know if it was the one directly after that, but sometime after that, a family named Burke, which is where he ended up with this name, Burke, took him in as a foster child. And they had a, he would say later that it was a clean, comfortable and safe environment. And he loved those people. He lived out his teenage years on Rockaway Beach, close to Ocean Promenade. You guys that live in New York City and know that, you’ll know exactly where that is. And he never really strayed too far from there either, kind of across the bay just a little bit. He said Burke would never forget their kindness, and for the rest of his life, he would visit these foster parents on special occasions. And when he started making some money, he started leaving large amounts of cash

[6:16 ] and unmarked envelopes for them periodically.

[6:19 ] The Burke family had adopted him, so he took the family name and kept it. Some say that he buried