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While all this was going on, a third suspect in the theft, Thomas DeSimone, 32, was reported missing by his wife. DeSimone has a record of cargo thefts and had just served time for a truck hijacking. The FBI believes he was murdered in a dispute among the thieves over distribution of the Lufthansa loot. New York police are not so sure he is dead. Also thought to be a victim of the gang's dissension was Steven Edwards, 31, an ex-convict whose bullet-riddled body was found in his New York apartment.
While police doubted press reports that two other gangsters had been killed in the feuding, they agree that all the thieves and witnesses are in great danger. The reason: the successors of the deceased Tommy Lucchese, who led a New York Mafia family, are believed to have planned the crime and to be holding most of the loot. The FBI theory is that Joseph DiPalermo, a capo in the Lucchese group, supervised the plot and the disposition of the money and jewels. The authorities believe that the mob got the cooperation of Lufthansa employees on the inside by the time-honored method of inducing them to gamble, pressuring them to pay up, loaning them money at exorbitant rates and, finally, pointing out that they could cancel their debts by helping out with the heist.
The Lufthansa conspiracy included not only six stickup men but three airline employees and one "coach," who directed rehearsals for the operation. The ten were to receive fees ranging from $10,000 to Werner's $300,000. The rest of the loot apparently went to DiPalermo and another Lucchese capo, Paul Vario, one of the regulars at the old Roberts Lounge, who supervises rackets at Kennedy Airport for the mob. By now, the FBI suspects the money probably has been effectively dispersed through a maze of Mafia business channels.
But if the hunted thieves are quarreling, so too are their pursuers. New York police are angry at the FBI for making arrests before more evidence could be pinned down. They think, for one thing, that the coach who took on Lufthansa's Red Baron was James ("Jimmy the Gent") Burke. The former operator of Roberts Lounge, Burke is a crony of Vario's. Shortly before the Lufthansa robbery, Burke was paroled from prison where he was serving time for a previous cargo caper. So far he has refused to answer questions about the Lufthansa heist. Burke has not endeared himself to reform penologists who urge that convicts be placed in the community to help them readjust to life beyond the walls. He was in a New York "halfway house" for just that purpose when the missing Tommy DeSimone was in the same well-meant program. Police believe the two ex-cons seized that happy coincidence to plot the nation's biggest armed robbery.