Henry Hill, Inspiration for ‘Goodfellas’, Dead at 69

Henry Hill, the mobster who turned on his own and was the inspiration for the 1990 Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas (my favorite all-time movie I might add), has died at the age of 69.

Hill’s girlfriend reports that he had been sick for sometime. He passed away in a Los Angeles hospital.  His 69th birthday was Monday (June 11, 2012).

Henry Hill was a member of the Lucchese crime family. At 13 he was already making mob ties and by 16 he was arrested after trying to buy one of his boss’ wives snow tires with a stolen credit card. He never gave up any information on the mob and earned the respect of the crew from that day forward. Ironically, Hill was forced to become an FBI informant or face his crew “offing” him after going against numerous family rules and after bring arrested for narcotics trafficking.

His testimony against the Lucchese mob family led to 50 convictions.

Under the witness protection program in 1980, Hill was relocated to a few different cities including Redmond and Seattle, both in Washington state, Independance, Kentucky and Omaha, Nebraska. After committing numerous crimes in the late 1980s (including a drug arrest in Seattle in 1987), Hill was kicked out of the program.

For the rest of his life he battled drug and alcohol abuse.

Sources say in the past few years Hill repaired many damaged relationships within his family. He leaves behind a wife, Lisa Caserta, and three children with ex-wife Karen Hill.

Below: Ray Liotta in Goodfellas as Henry Hill