Paul Vario Biography

Paul Vario was born in New York on July 10th, 1914. He first got involved with the mob during the mid 1920s, quickly developing a reputation as a ruthless leader that would take down anyone betraying him without hesitation. He was involved in a massive variety of crimes, including murder, robbery, illegal gambling, and selling stolen goods. The federal prosecutors that put him in prison said it all by calling him "one of the most violent and dangerous career criminals in the city of New York."

Paul, or "Paulie" as his friends called him, was known for his size. He was about six feet tall and weighed close to 250 pounds over the majority of his life. His appearance resembled that of a sumo wrestler, with jowls hanging below his chin, likening his appearance to that of a ferocious bulldog. He moved slowly through life because he felt that he didn't have to move quick for anyone and figured things would bend to his will, one way or another. His speaking often consisted of short grunt-like responses.

Paulie owned a flower shop at Fulton Avenue in New York as well as a number of other businesses, including an auto junkyard, and bar-restaurant, where he and his cronies liked to hang out. At the bar, men asked Paulie for help and many deals were made, even severe punishments. Paulie lived with his wife Phyllis and three sons: Paul Jr., Peter, and Lenny.

Paulie was considered to be a glutton by many who witnessed his eating habits. He would go out to fancy restaurants and consume entire meals by simply tipping back the bowl or plate and eating everything at once. Despite his eating habits, his cooking skills were well known and his pasta fagiole was renowned by many as the best in New York City.

Paulie was also well known for his paranoia. He was very careful about putting his name on things and making phone calls. He never used private telephones, only public pay phones on the street. Even his boat docked in Sheepshead Bay had no name. He didn't like to speak out loud in public about dealings, instead always whispering.

At the height of Paulie's career, he was raking in $25,000 a day in earnings from his illegal operations. He had a massive network of gambling, bookmakers, loansharks and numbers operators throughout NYC and beyond. Paul Vario was also the "owner" of the Kennedy Airport and conducted all truck hijacking operations there with his underling - James Burke.

Paulie was very good at keeping the other families from going to war with his outfit. He had a diplomatic skill that allowed him to run his businesses without too much trouble and settle differences before they erupted into war. His diplomatic skills also assisted him in union corruption operations where his crew extorted millions of dollars every year from businesses that did not want union strikes to lose them their place in the market. When things got too hot, witnesses disappeared and people with outstanding loans received "encouragement".

In 1972, Paulie was put in prison for three years after the police bugged his headquarters and gathered 54,000 photos in addition to hours and hours of film.

After his release, Paulie was very unhappy to find out that he had been passed over to replace Lucchese as the head of the crime family. Out of prison, he found that a number of his businesses had been ruined and he organized a large drug shipment worth 1.5 million dollars from Colombia. However, an informant tipped off the DEA and the entire load was seized in Queens (30 tons of narcotics), making Paulie very furious.

After the tipoff, Paulie had James Burke organize the famous Lufthansa Heist from the Kennedy Airport, netting over eight million dollars for the crew. Paulie was obviously very happy and returned to business as usual, until his former friend, Henry Hill, eventually testified against him in court, putting Paulie away for life. Paulie was sent to Fort Worth Prison and stayed there until his death in 1988 at the age of 73.

- Various sources

$25,000 a day in the 1950's/1960's - thats a LOT of cash!

Henry Hill ratted out his former mentor but Vario had been banging Karen Hill so he (Vario) didnt deserve any loyalty from Henry.
No honour amongst the mob

Gary, I have heard that Paulie was banging Karen, but never saw a source. Was it in Wiseguys?

So why this biography here? What makes him so special? We can also find this on wikipedia. Just wondering, no offense.

I appreciate DC posting this. Shows that Vario was much bigger than I thought.

Wikipedia but I've also heard people mention it on mob video's on Youtube

Goodfellas made it seem like he was the boss of the Lucchaese's yet I think there were a few guys more powerful? Certainly Corallo was boss at the time. Vario was a captain or was he higher than that?

"Paulie was the boss of everyone in the neighborhood". I think that was hinting towards a role as a capo since he's holding that territory. You're right, it was a bit confusing, but that's one of the reasons I admire Goodfellas. You don't have Henry Hill driving the real don around. They're punks running around looking to get made, and it's not an easy life where there's a justifiable reason to whack everyone out. Good tsuff, Don Cardi. Maybe we could get a biography thread? It would be helpful since sometimes people don't know how to venture past the staple books or the Northeast when researching.

Vario was the top Lucchese man in the East New York/Queens border area

Assuming you have the motivation to cite things besides "Various sources", you ever thought about editing Wikipedia?

Vario was an area boss who had his own fiefdom that`s why hill says 'what the fbi never understood was he was the police department for wiseguys thousands depended on him and he saw a piece of everything'

Now where have I heard... or should I say.... read this before?





Why not post a bio of an infamous mobster, on a gangster board, that has a real life organized crime section?




Now why would I go and edit Wikopedia?


Perhaps if you had the motivation to do some internet research you would find that my listing of various sources is a correct one because a majority of the information found and placed on wikopedia is usually compiled from various sources....... be it from books or other internet sites.

Kindness of your heart?



If you mean you've got a list that's somewhere on the site, sorry I haven't seen it.

If that's not what you mean, I'll acknowledge yes, we do that, we just don't call them that.

Somebody needs to do it. According to Wikipedia, Al D'arco, Jimmy Frattiano, Frank Salemme, and Angelo Lonardo are government witnesses. But each one of them was the first? I guess it changes every day of the week depending on what the editor feels like. And then there was the Charles Herbert Gotti hoax. Wikipedia could be a lost cause at this point.

I tried - my account's got the same name - but I got rather discouraged when no one joined in on John Gotti.

If you go back, say, here, you can see how much I fleshed it out, but now the article's incompletion is even more obvious.

EDIT: The lead section was someone else, but I rewrote pretty much everything else

wikipedia is a crock. anyone can write and edit on there and make up stuff!

Fair enough. We could make a sticky topic of mobster's biography's. But the reason I wondered is that the internet is already full with biography's on mobsters. And there are far more interesting ones than Paul Vario to start writing a biography on.

That's a subjective opinion, Sonny. If you grew up in Brooklyn, like DC, you'd probably find Vario to be a very interesting character. I know that as a Bronx guy, I'm always a bit more interested in reading about other Bronx guys than, say, guys in Philly or Boston. And if there were a mob crew in the Netherlands, you would certainly be more interested in them than in American mobsters .

It's interesting you mention this as I am in fact far more interested in American mobsters than Dutch criminals. Compared with American mafiosi, Dutch criminals are small potatoes and petty thieves.

But I understand you're point.

i find paul vario interesting!

So where does that leave you with Dutch Shultz?

shuliz was a ohe of a kind OC powerhouse he was independent

ONTARIO, I'm not sure, but I THINK Don Cardi's reply was a joke.

i missed that

I'm only interested in Arthur Flegenheimer.

On that front, even though this guy isn't Dutch, there was a German guy named Stefan Hentschel who was internet famous for a time. Supposedly he was a gangster at one time and was a pro boxer. I remember him from the video where he pimpslapped some guy but most of the articles about him are in German. Wonder if you might know something about him?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOutXmdRQNs

Not at all. So called German gangsters are the last thing I'm interested in.

Okay, there's a German wikipedia article on him and I've translated it with Google.

http://translate.google.nl/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fde.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FStefan_Hentschel

Thanks for the translation. The guy was definitely a character. I'm not surprised you're not into German gangsters as I didn't even know they existed before I heard of this guy.

Fuck yea thats a lot of cash...

Paulie should have been Boss he was very powerful a true old school gangster...

I've read on this website that at one point Big Paulie served as "underboss". Is there any truth to this?

http://z7.invisionfree.com/americangangland1/ar/

He would go out to fancy restaurants and consume entire meals by simply tipping back the bowl or plate and eating everything at once.

would he really do this in a fancy restaurant? or is someone down the line having a laugh?

I thought it was consigliere, hence "diplomatic skill", it seems to fit the description from the OP.

Ya i heard he was underboss too under gribbs, but once corallo took over a new administration was put into place and he was bumped back down to captain. But im not 100% about that.

He was a very powerful capo but I've never heard this, perhaps he was "acting UB" for a short while.



Vario was the Lucchese "owner" of JFK, they ran it together with Gambinos in a sort of partnership. I forget who ran the Gambino end of the action, but I remember reading that John Gotti got a cut of the Lufthansa heist because JFK was ran jointly between the families, makes sense since JFK isn't too far from Ozone Park.

I totally agree with that opinion, being european myself. I have always found American OC and the LCN history within it mythical and far more interesting than anything we have had in this part of the world, including the Italian mob organizations. With that said Im not a fanboy, just find it very, very interesting and always has.

Gold, I don´t know how old you are. But do you remember "The Gangster Chronicles" aired over here in the early 1980s? That show sparked my interest in the American Mafia.

Hairy: Im 37, so I was still in my diapers when they aired that show

My grandpa emigrated from Småland and allegedly had a restaurant and a speakeasy in Seattle during prohibition. Among his remainings were a pair of brass knuckles, that kinda got me interested in the era of prohibition. And from there the step to LCN isnt that far. My grandpa was not a gangster, but a tough guy. Died before I met him. Sorry for OT.

Great thread!

This was briefly discussed on another thread here....did Paulie really give up Tommy DeSimone over the Billy Batts murder because he tried to rape Karen Hill?

I read somewhere that Paulie knew that this would have caused a lot of internal problems with his crew. And since Paulie was dating Karen for a while, he might have felt protective over her. It seems that Paulie appeased the Gambinos, while keeping Jimmy and Henry out of harm's way.

I believe this version because it helps explain why Tommy got clipped over Batts, but Jimmy and Henry were given a pass....even though they participated. In the Jimmy Burke biography (Mobsters), I believe that he took over Batts' loansharking business while he was in the can. And after Batts got released from prison, he wanted it back, while Jimmy wanted to keep it.

I believe the story about tommy trying to rape karen and thats why paulie served him up to the gambinos was only from henry hills book. I dont think its ever been confirmed so "take it with a grain of salt."

Yes, Henry was prone to exaggeration. However, I'm curious as to why Tommy was whacked, while Henry and Jimmy were given a pass?

I've never heard a reason given. But Henry was put on notice about drugs by Paulie, maybe it was just a matter of time. Jimmy was probably going to kill him anyway over the Lufthansa heist like he did everyone else.

Jimmy pulled in a ton of money, so maybe Paul was willing to overlook it in his case. Paul died in prison and never said a word, so we can only guess at his motives. Maybe he was just a sentimental bastard about those two.

Doubt it. Jimmy already finished his killing spree. Hill was arrested almost a year after the last killing.

Did Paul have som connections with Murder inc,being that he was from that neighbourhood and had his HQ there before moving to Pine st and Pitkin ave?Accross the street from Henry Hill.In 1955

Don't hear much about Rugsy. He's mentioned a few times in Mob Boss.

Ive also heard another reason Tommy Desimone was killed because he killed Ronald " foxy " Jerothe.. Foxy was a protege of Gotti.. Gotti along with the whole Bergin Crew were devastated when he got killed. That was prob one of many reasons that fuckin maniac got killed

Does anyone know the exact address where Hill grew up?

This was Tommys gift to Carlo when their kids or whoever it was got married wasn't it?

start a new thread, someone will probably know...

Yes,pine st just of Pitkin ave..East New york,Brooklyn..The green house right accross the street from the cab stand

Thanks! I see it. Really interesting stuff. I can imagine that street being filled with wiseguys and the whole Bronx tale feeling.