Henry Hill | Teen Ink

Henry Hill

November 17, 2014
By AramB BRONZE, Glendale, California
AramB BRONZE, Glendale, California
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Ever since Henry Hill was young he wanted to be a gangster. When he was 13 he got a job at the near by cabstand. At the start Henrys parents were happy. Henrys mom was an Italian and his father was an hard-working Irish man. Henrys parents were happy that henry got a job until they found out who he was working for and that he had been ditching school. Henry was working for Paul Vario an Italian mobster. Henrys father didn't want him to work there anymore but as years continued Henry started slowly evolving into the mob life trying to get as much money as he can by stealing or blowing up cars or just taking hits for Vario. In the Italian tradition family is the most important thing so Vario would host parties every Sunday and invite a lot of people. Henry would also attended these parties as a youngster and help out to give drinks and do other errands. At one of the parties a man named Jimmy Burke showed up and he would tip everyone $20 dollars and he would tip the bartender $100 just to keep the ice cubes cold. Henry knew thats what he wanted to do.

I first got interested in the life of Henry Hill when I first saw the movie The Goodfellas. The movie portrays the life of Henry Hill but what got me really interested was the way he did things he had robbed a airport of $250 Million dollars without using a gun or any type of weapon. After I did some research I watched a couple of interviews and biographies and then I bought the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pilleigi. The movie showed a the mobsters as having a  lot of success and I thought that there was no downside for them and they lived in this world without problems. But, of course that was not true when I was reading the book Wiseguys I had found out when the mobsters got caught they had lived a tough life especially Henry. The feds had offered Henry a shortening of his sentence if he gave u all the stories of the mafia and they had also offers him witness protection for him and his family because he knew that if he told on the mob they were going kill him and his family.

While Henry was in prison he broke a very important mafia rule which was too not sell or use drugs. He had met a friend in prison my the name of Paul Mazzei who happened to have a illegal heroin and marjuana business. He had tried his hardest to keep it away from the boss Paul. After awhile he told his friend Jimmy Burke and Burke had told him what he was doing was wrong but he promised that he wouldn't tell Paul. Henry was happy he was making a lot of money and Paul hadn't found out yet. But at one of Pauls parties he pulled Henry to the side and told him that he knew what was going on that he knew that Henry had been selling drugs at that moment Henrys heart sunk he knew for sure he was going to get killed. But Henry got very lucky since Paul had known him for so long (ever since he was a little kid he had gave Henry a second chance and he told him to come clean. As weeks went by Henry stopped selling drugs but after awhile Henry saw that he was running out of money so he started selling drugs again but very low-key and not in large quantities. But what he didn't know was that the feds had been tracking him for a while and one day when he was picking up drugs he got caught red-handed. He had token the witness protection program the feds had offered him and he had told the feds every thing about the mafia life. the had put him somewhere in Nebraska. But sadly Henry suffered from alcoholism. Years had went by and they found out that most if not all the mafia members were dead and in 2005 Henry was released. He bought a home in Hollywood and lived with his wife but in 2012 he had died of heart disease but luckily he had lived to tell his story.



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.