Sherry stared at her in disbelief this must be a mistake. Charlie Lankston For Dailymail.com, said, "You know, I hope that's not a red flag, but there's something kind of creepy about him. Wed leave at eleven oclock, sometimes even later, and drive west into Pennsylvania. The real-life mafia turncoat who was immortalized by late actor Ray Liotta in his breakout role in Goodfellas was a bigamist who repeatedly cheated on his wife while in witness protection, before leaving her and their children to wed a Mormon hairdresser he had known for just seven weeks. The real Henry Hill talking to Karen Hill. The born and bred New Yorkers were now hosting impromptu polo matches in their fields. Im not sure exactly what my mother told me hed been convicted of, but I know it wasnt the truth. You can imagine the look on Hills face when he came home to see both his wives talking at the kitchen table. The guards made her take everything out and then they searched the bag with a baton and a miniature flashlight. 2022 History by Day all rights reserved, This Man Dug a Hole in His Backyard. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Usually, though, we were in our beat-up Oldsmobile Toronado, the car we got after my father accidentally dropped a lit cigarette in the front seat of our 1969 Chrysler Newport, causing it to go up in flames. Most of the time the two versions are totally different. Sherry and her roommate were seated at a table in the Mexican restaurant. The comments below have not been moderated, By That was my mom, trying to make something very big sound very small. The couple had two kids Gregg and Gina. Hill died at a hospital in Los Angeles in June 2012 having suffered a heart attack brought on by years of smoking, a habit he blamed on his nerves. The kid from Brooklyn turned wise guy turned rat, Henry Hill started out running errands for the Lucchese family of mobsters at the age of 11. Of course, I dont actually remember a lot of that, and I didnt know most of those stories until years later. After he and Karen divorced, Karen went off the grid. Henry Hill continued to be the same reprobate he always had been. Karen got officially separated from Henry in 1989, and she filed for divorce in 1990, which got finalized in the year 2002. The next morning, Karen noticed he wasnt home. Hed say, Whaddya want, Princess? and Id say, Barbies swimming pool! or something like that, and the next day or the day after, hed bring it home. As a result, the state took away their son. Over the next couple of years, they moved six times out to Kew Gardens, back in with my grandparents, out to Forest Hills, back to Valley Stream. That, and Hills personal involvement in a drug ring, meant the feds were on to him. To make it worse, the son, Michael, was busing tables at El Toreador, where he saw his dad with his drinking buddies. It's cable reimagined No. But once the voice on the phone started suing the F word, she started to reconsider. Karen is believed to be alive and running her own business today. Over the years, he would fly to New York to testify against Paul Vario and Jimmy Burke, his old accomplices. How could she have been so blind? Hes a married man! Gram would scream. All he said was that he was writing about his life back in New York. I wanted to visit my dad right away. Im sure she never used the word prison, and it wouldnt have mattered because I was only six years old and wouldnt have known what prison was. Written with Sean Flynn, the siblings tell their story of life with a mobster father and the realities of being in witness protection. The state of Florida indicted them first for kidnapping and attempted murder. Read an excerpt. [2] Early life [ edit] He kept his assumed name Scott, finished college, and then law school. Hill was sent to prison. The authors were Gregg Hill and Gina Hill, described as "Son and Daughter of 'Wiseguy' Henry Hill". The seasoned gangster was still an anxious man. Their design and construction work history include an array of governmental, institutional, commercial, and private-sector projects. By then, he and Karen had divorced, and he was now married to a woman named Kelly in California. Second son of John Aldersey (c They would hang around the house, drinking and writing. Funnily enough, in a way that fit his lack of concern, his latest identity combined the names of his favorite comics: Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Wed tell people we were Girl Scouts and ask for cookies. I had a few fancy birthday parties after that one clowns, magicians, ponies, the whole thing. Still, under the creepiness there was something magnetic about Sherrys new beau. He violently pushed her out of his car and drove away. Then the prison would rise up through the windshield, climbing above the trees like a fortress in the woods. According to Henry and Karen's daughter, Gina, in the book On the Run: A Mafia Childhood (via Today), Karen witnessed Henry's dangerous side after an incident with her neighbor. He started groping her in the front seat and my mom told him to stop but he didnt so she slapped him. The pain was so bad Id get nauseous, couldnt keep anything down, not even aspirin. She then dragged him out of the bed by the crotch and beat him with a telephone. 'He kind of slinked in and didn't make good eye contact when I was introduced,' she told Pearl and Nichols. However, we are getting this story from two people closest to Henry Hill: his son and his daughter, so we know it must be the awful truth. He was back off the wagon drinking, drugging risking his cover while his family did everything they could to lay low. It helped that a bona fide journalist named Nick Pileggi whom he introduced as his co-writer would come by often. Marty was the fun and spontaneous one, and they just wanted to go along for the ride. My mother always brought a big bag jammed with all kinds of stuff. Everyone in Redmond just figured it was a joke, of course. "One of the most painful things I ever did was leave my mother and my sister. But that only pushed my father closer to the men at the cabstand. Gina flew to Florida, and although Justin was already in a foster home, Gina was able to obtain custody. As Sherry started cutting Janets curly blond hair, the two chatted you know, a typical salon conversation. Sherrys next move was breaking the bad news to her mother, who adored her son-in-law, and to her son, Kris, who was heartbroken. It helps, but is not necessary, to have read Wiseguy (I haven't) or seen Goodfellas (I have, multiple times). Henry Hill died in 2012 of natural causes. And then my mom told me he was going away. The scar on my mothers face never completely healed. I married her under the name Scott, Hill told Karen. Janet Christensen had been watching Sherry for weeks and actually felt bad for the woman so much so that she almost broke protocol and spilled the beans to her in the salon. For the third time in a year and a half, the Hills were moved again. There was a doorman at each of the three different sections of the complex and a big circular driveway out front, and we had a small terrace that overlooked the park. Sherry went with Janet to see Goodfellas in theaters when it came out. Fortunately for her, it's tricky to find out exactly what she's up to these days. But there would always be at least one nice old lady whod say, Oh, how cute, and give us cookies and milk. - Episode dated 11 January 2005 (2005) . Henry Hill, Jr. (June 11, 1943 - June 12, 2012) was a New York City mobster. His greatest success, the heist that made him a minor legend in the New York underworld, was burglarizing an Air France strong room at Kennedy Airport in 1967 and walking out with $480,000. See Photos. Dont you ever f***ing come back here! she screamed. In 1955, Hill began to warm up to Paul Vario by running some errands for the mafioso at Vario's meat stores,. Ever since the family came out of the Witness Protection Program due to various criminal activities performed by Henry while still in the program, Karen has not appeared in public much. Nick was around so often that he struck up a romance with Samantha, the roommate. Henry took care of it. Or when my dad and his friend Tommy DeSimone would back a truck up to the garage and unload boxes of microwaves or knit shirts or toaster ovens. Excerpted from "On The Run: A Mafia Childhood." Youre too good for me, he told her one night, drunk. His name was John Ciaccio, and he owed a gambling debt to a friend of my father, a guy who ran one of the unions at Kennedy Airport. They beat the state case, and now the feds are going after him, she said. Hill was sent to prison again and his book Wiseguys was released, while Anders lost their baby. I began this blog to simply tell part of my father's story through my eyes. The events of their lives were portrayed in various novels and the 1990 film Goodfellas. If I had a headache, the drive was even more unbearable. Easy money wasnt the only thing that wet his whistle. At least, at first. And so, Hill was released on probation. It was an incident which made the bond she shared with Henry stronger. Childhood," a joint memoir published in 2004, his son Gregg (who was 13 when the family went underground) and his daughter, Gina (who was 11), recounted their . I came back, and I had a second chance, he told her. 220, and maybe a little precocious. Those who knew her well say that shes surrounded by nature, which makes her happy. By the time they made close friends and felt comfortable enough to spill the beans, their friends disappeared from their lives too spooked to keep up the friendships. As for what he told his buddies at the bar, his cover was classic: he worked for the CIA. And she did it with style, too, riding her horses in heels and white clothes. It was titled, On The Run: A Mafia Childhood. Sherry wasnt going to sign anything without an attorney. Her roommate ran into him in town. We are the children of one of the most notorious mobsters turned FBI informants, Henry Hill. Hill, who died in LA in 2012, was taken into witness protection with his wife Karen and their two children, Gina and Gregg, in 1980, after helping the FBI to arrest several of his fellow gangsters. There was a reported two-million-dollar contract on his head and word was getting out that Hill was living in the Midwest. The book covers both the remembrances of the Hill children prior to their entry into WITSEC and their subsequent . According to his son, it was his fathers decision to get them out of Nebraska. It began to snow and soon enough, all of his stuff was buried under the white. They had a son named Justin, but in 1997, Hill and Dawn, now living in California, became totally out of control with their drug use. Gina also got married and started her own family. The private detective had been hired by a New York law firm to look into Henry Hill, who was rumored to be in Washington. Of particular interest to Janet, was Sherrys recent marriage to Martin. With nothing much that they could do, Sherry and Samantha put him in a room to sleep it off. I don't think it lasted more than a month, and it brought about an ugly breakup. But the family were still taken out of the witness protection program 'based upon continued arrests and breaches of security'. This is one of the menus in my father's restaurant. 'The electricity during those months was just absolutely volatile, just screaming,' Kellum toldPearl and Nichols. I was already used to my dad being away. Wed 13 Jun 2012 11.51 EDT 50 Henry Hill has died - of natural causes. Watch a rare interview with one of the most famous wiseguys of all time Henry Hill,ofGoodfellas fame. And here comes my second wife, he bragged when she walked up to him. Hill was the hustler not her. She was born in New York and raised in the Five Towns area of . In 1980 Hill left the life, entered the witness protection program and testified against the mob. Her children released a book in 2004, titled 'On the Run: A Mafia Childhood', which was about their own experience with the Mafia. Conway and Henry Hill during the 1960s. Born on June 11, 1943, in the tough Brownsville area of New York, Hill was the fifth of seven children and the first son to his Sicilian mother Carmella and his father, also called Henry. 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