I couldnt help but stare back and wonder what they must be thinking: New York hood on the run from the Mob.. 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. [2] Early life [ edit] I had a much different childhood than most children, for starters, I and my brother grew up in the Witness Protection Program; however, this blog is about my father, not us. I dont want anything to do with you! she yelled when she saw him. After their first date, the two were inseparable. 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. In April 1981, months before he arrived in Washington and met Anders, Hill had been arrested for getting into a fight with a woman he was thought to have been having an affair with while living in Kentucky. He bragged about having a Kings X a term for being exempt from the rules of a game. He stole, fenced, bootlegged, loan-sharked, and extorted. The guys at the cabstand, they didnt smack me. In 1980 Hill left the life, entered the witness protection program and testified against the mob. Meanwhile, his book with Nick Pileggi, Wiseguy, was published. He torched a few buildings. It was a long ride, five and a half hours, too long to feel comfortable in a car, especially with two dogs dozing in the backseat with my little sister. The real Henry Hill talking to Karen Hill, Karen and Henry Hills children Gregg and Gina Hill, Karen Hills Portrayal in Goodfellas Movie, Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. 'No, that's Henry Hill who's married,' he told a confidante when told he had committed a 'major crime' by taking a second wife. But Hill was still letting himself into Sherrys house at odd hours, one time writing I love you, Sherry Amour, HH on the bathroom mirror in lipstick. Anders told Karen, who decided his second marriage needed to be dissolved immediately. 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. Sign Up. Ted was taken aback by Karen's behavior, and he gave up the attempt to force her. Martin moved into the apartment Sherry was sharing with her roommate and lifelong friend, Samantha, who had a son of her own. Late gangster Henry Hill - who was portrayed by Liotta in Martin Scorcese's hit 1990 movie - was taken into the FBI's witness protection program with his wife Karen and their two children, Gail and Michael, in 1980 after helping to jail members of his infamous mafia gang. Sherry was in the shower, and just like the scene from Psycho, the curtains were viciously pulled back. (Ha!) For as much as Dad might have irritated my grandma, she wasnt one to throw her daughter into the street. 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. When a down-on-his-luck basketball scout finds a potential superstar in Spain, he sets out to prove they both have what it takes to make it in the . Isnt that special?'. As for Nick, the co-writer, he knew of the danger of his involvement with the mobster. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. GREGG: Wed be up all night, I would be, anyway, riding in the front seat to help my mother stay awake. For a while, the four of them were like two pairs in a pod. Theyd come on fast, this stabbing, throbbing pain right behind my eyes that would spread through my whole head. And Hill didn't just bring along his wife and kids; he tried to take two of his mistresses into protection, too. Her roommate ran into him in town. Written with Sean Flynn, the siblings tell their story of life with a mobster father and the realities of being in witness protection. It was magic, Sherry recalled. It always took a little while to get past the guards. Hed been locked up a few times since Id been born, once for seventeen months; my mom took me to visit him in the Nassau County jail when I was about four. 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. Whereas Hill was doing all the wrong things, Karen went into survival mode. In fact, in his 2004 bookGangsters and Goodfellas: The Mob, Witness Protection, and Life on the Run, Hill recounted a conversation he had with a friend about his second marriage - in which he insisted that it didn't count as 'bigamy' because he had tied the knot, not as Henry Hill, but as Martin Lewis. In On the Run we discover that in 1980, after being shuttled from one hotel to another for several months while the Feds got as much information as they could from Hill, the family ended up on the outskirts of Omaha, Neb. The couple had two kids Gregg and Gina. He married his then-girlfriend Dawn, who was a degenerate junkie like Hill. He Was Not Ready For What He Discovered There, Buns in the Oven: Couple Gets Pregnant After 17 Years, The Murder Story of the Wealthiest Woman in Monaco. Jimmy Conway's crew took part in the 1967 Air France robbery and the 1978 Lufthansa heist, both of which reaped lucrative rewards; the latter was the most profitable cash robbery in US history. In time, I would grow to hate those words. Actor: Sinatra Club. Ten years after their wedding Hill called Anders, who has now also changed her name from Sherry to Scarlett. As for Sherry, she went back to the Hill home to take back the horse she had sent for Hills daughter. 'The electricity during those months was just absolutely volatile, just screaming,' Kellum toldPearl and Nichols. When I was older, my mom told me that that was part of what attracted her to my dad the glitz, the way he could get them a front-row table at the Empire Club or the Copacabana, the way he seemed to know everyone and everyone knew him. In an interview with CBS News in 2009, Gregg, whose face was disguised, recalled that there was a breaking point where he couldn't take it any more. The private detective had been hired by a New York law firm to look into Henry Hill, who was rumored to be in Washington. The events of their lives were portrayed in various novels and the 1990 film Goodfellas. The real Henry Hill talking to Karen Hill. Find your friends on Facebook. or. In the end he died at a hospital . I had a few fancy birthday parties after that one clowns, magicians, ponies, the whole thing. She stormed out of the house as her daughter called out to her, Mom, what are you doing?. 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. Before he could properly get kicked out of Sherrys house, he passed out. Wed tell people we were Girl Scouts and ask for cookies. - The Mob: The Addict Who Took Down the Mafia (2021) . The movie Goodfellas told the story of Henry Hill the gangster who famously broke the mafia code of silence. Sherry was a hopeless romantic. He went out every night dressed in sharp suits and stayed out until dawn if he came home at all, and he always had money to throw around, twenty for the doorman, fifty for the waiter. For the third time in a year and a half, the Hills were moved again. 2022 History by Day all rights reserved, This Man Dug a Hole in His Backyard. None of them ever did, but my father did his best to rip it off. There was also another reason for why she didnt want to cut the cord Yes, she was pregnant. She knew she had to get out of Redmond her life there was poisoned. But she had her own anger to unleash. Sherry accepted his apology. She had met her true love. Conway spent 1972-1978 in prison for beating up a gambler in Tampa, Florida, and Hill was held at a separate .
Gram was always tough on Dad. Henry Hill. She knew that she will go places and can lead an extravagant life if she married him. LOS ANGELES - Henry Hill spent much of his life as a "goodfella," believing his last moment would come with a bullet to the back of his head. His first arrest came when he was 16 years old and he carried out the Lufthansa raid after serving a six-year prison sentence in the Seventies. That night, they packed their bags and hit the road in Sherrys car with her 13-year-old son from a previous marriage. Dad had a union card, and the bricklayers supposedly paid him $135 a week, but he didnt even pretend to work a normal job. On the Run: A Mafia Childhood is the authors' account of their childhood as the son and daughter of Henry Hill, the infamous mobster and informant whose story was the basis of Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi and the movie Goodfellas by Martin Scorsese.. But when he drank, he was a loudmouth, which was how Karen heard about the pregnancy. And like all gangsters, he acted like he owned the world. For example, there is a scene where a neighbor named Ted tried to force himself on Karen when she was dating Henry. They poked through everything with their batons, and they glared at us, like we were the criminals instead of the men inside. My head hurt so bad I didnt care how I looked to anyone driving by. Yet again, he was saved by the government. While Henry . He kept his assumed name Scott, finished college, and then law school. 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 . After her marriage with Henry Hill she had two children, Gregg Hill and Gina Hill. He wrote about the heist in a detailed form and from his point of view. Isnt that special?. "One of the most painful things I ever did was leave my mother and my sister. Whenever she drove, it was like she was being chased, speeding down back streets and constantly checking her mirrors. The seasoned gangster was still an anxious man. Lisa, of Italian-American descent, shared a Malibu home with Hill (who was portrayed . Henry Hill, Jr. (June 11, 1943 - June 12, 2012) was a New York City mobster. While Tony wasnt a member of any crime family, he refused to turn states evidence on any of his friends and associates, even when staring jail time square in the face. He still wore his expensive suits and shiny loafers, but he had nowhere to go except to the store for milk. On the way home in a blinding snowstorm, the wheels slipped on a curve and threw the Duster into a spin, bouncing one side off the guardrail, then whipping around so the other side smashed it too. Some of the other thefts were easier: Theyd just walk into a garage and steal the truck, or theyd buy off the driver so hed leave his keys in the cab when he stopped for coffee. We got hit pretty hard, and we all got hurt pretty badly Gina was thrown through the windshield, and I was pinned under the dashboard. Wed bring pillows and blankets with us, which made me self-conscious when we pulled into a truck stop or the Perkins House of Pancakes because if anyone saw us they might think we were homeless. She also didnt know that anyone who became close to him was a walking target. Later on, my father used to brag that hed bought off the guards so that my mother could smuggle things in, but it didnt seem like it at the time. 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. Despite the obvious cons of being married to a con, she still loved him and had false hope that it would work out. But Hill, aka Marty, was bored, reckless, and started hustling more and more. One day, Hill announced that the four of them were going on an impromptu trip to Canada immediately. She was notorious mobster Henry Hill's girlfriend - the dude from Goodfellas who passed away at age 69 yesterday. She and Hill eventually parted ways, last living together in Rockville Centre. He started betting on Kentucky horses. Her children released a book in 2004, titled 'On the Run: A Mafia Childhood', which was about their own experience with the Mafia. Unfortunately, Hill later discovered the only reason the girl married Hill was because she thought he had money. As Sherry started cutting Janets curly blond hair, the two chatted you know, a typical salon conversation. Sherry rode the white, bony horse bareback into the night, crying the whole way. He had a few cover stories under his belt, about how he worked for the government (not so far from the truth). She knew nothing about who Martin Lewis really was about his double life, his wife and two teenage kids. Nick was around so often that he struck up a romance with Samantha, the roommate. He was given a bulletproof vest to wear whenever he was with Hill, but he never wore it. There stood Karen, furious as can be, and she started beating Sherry with the same phone. I have work. It was his smile that damn smile that always worked on her. With Janets help, Sherry sued Hill for compensation of the money he siphoned off from her when they were married. Ever since, Id suffered migraines, maybe once a week or so. Their design and construction work history include an array of governmental, institutional, commercial, and private-sector projects. Then we went up a set of wide stone steps into the building, where we got in line with everyone else who had a father or a brother or a son locked up in Lewisburg. The man who Anders knew as the charming and charismatic Martin was in fact a married mafia informant with a large target on his back, who had a wife and two children living just a few miles from where he and his second spouse met. Seven weeks after that fateful night in the Mexican restaurant, Hill/Marty just came out with it. Janet and two other female detectives at the agency were dubbed Charlies Angels. 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. He ran numbers and sold bootlegged cigarettes out of his car. And again, Sherry escaped. By then, he and Karen had divorced, and he was now married to a woman named Kelly in California. Maybe it was because we were so young, but my mother always told us that my father wasnt a real criminal. Sherry may have been nave, but she was no aggressor. Henry Hill died in 2012 of natural causes. He was busy, after all, writing a book under contract for Simon & Schuster. Karen got officially separated from Henry in 1989, and she filed for divorce in 1990, which got finalized in the year 2002. One time, his dad even pulled a gun on a cook. His fights with Sherry (Im not your maid or your mommy!) were followed by make-up sex. I feel so guilty at my life. One day, he even showed up to El Toreador in a T-shirt with the words Witness Protection Program on it. She once told me a story about how, after theyd been dating for a couple of months, this boy from her neighborhood, Ted, someone shed known her whole life, took her for a ride in his Corvette one afternoon and made a pass at her. Unlike his father, Gregg adored and took special care of his children. My dad owned a restaurant called The Suite, and he must have been doing pretty well because we could afford to live in a place like the Fairview. It was only a matter of time until Hill landed in prison. It was during his relationship with Anders that Hill began working on his book Wiseguys - whichwould inspire the 1990 Martin Scorsese crime classic Goodfellas in which he was played by Liotta alongside Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci. Gina Hill. The Hills werent given a choice of where to live, so they ended up in Omaha, Nebraska. Excerpted from "On The Run: A Mafia Childhood." It was titled, On The Run: A Mafia Childhood. Its just temporary, she said. Then he went back to Karen and handed over the gun to her and told her to hide it. She wanted to meet, and Sherry agreed. No one asked why it was so urgent for him to leave the country. Just like with the witness program, Hill assumed hed get away with it. Now that Sherry was no longer the target of her investigation, Janet started to sympathize with her and even became her friend. Disorder in the household turned into utter mayhem. There were twenty-two hundred men inside, some of the worst criminals in the federal system. Lured by power and money, Hill gradually became more entrenched with the family and while his half-Sicilian genes his father was Irish meant he could never be a fully-fledged member of the family, he was able to be an associate. This is Henry Hill. She told the voice on the phone, No you arent. In 1980, Hill became an FBI informant, and his testimony helped secure 50 Conviction (s), including those of mob capo (captain) Paul Vario and James . Although he had converted to Judaism for Karen, he was a born Catholic. But then federal prosecutors indicted them for extortion, which they could do because my father had crossed state lines. But by this point Anders was pregnant and flatly refused. Vivian had always been protective of Sherry, who had a knack for choosing the wrong men. It began to snow and soon enough, all of his stuff was buried under the white. Gina Hill. Hes a married man! Gram would scream. Nobody said anything to him, Gregg wrote. 'Isaid, "You know, I hope that's not a red flag, but there's something kind of creepy about him."'. Sherry came with a small handgun in her purse, just in case, and asked her friend to call the police if she didnt hear from her by 2 p.m. At the diner, seeing a table of uniformed cops offered her some relief. Their dad was Henry Hill - immortalised in the book Wiseguy and the Martin Scorsese film. - Episode dated 11 January 2005 (2005) . After their divorce, he remarried and had another child. Most girls would have been terrified at a similar situation if they had to find their man covered in blood and holding a gun. Associated Press. He and his family were put under witness protection. Every time Hill was busted by local authorities, he and his family had to relocate so as to keep them off the mafia radar, and within the first year of their time in the program, the Hills had moved from Omaha, Nebraska, to Independence, Kentucky, then to the sleepy town of Redmond, Washington. Gregg ultimately became a successful attorney. Just a temporary situation. My mom used that expression for everything bad that happened. Suddenly, a man who never knew life outside of the mob, was walking the streets as one of us. In 2006, at the encouragement of Liotta, Hill entered rehabilitation to combat his drug addiction problems. Janet and a few members of her team used disguises when necessary; they staked out Sherrys home, salon, and the places she ate and shopped at. Sherry asked the woman, Do you know Martin Lewis? She replied, Yeah, hes my husband.. Today, Karen and her two children, Gina and Gregg continue to use an alias to protect their identity. According to his son, it was his fathers decision to get them out of Nebraska. I don't think it lasted more than a month, and it brought about an ugly breakup. 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. In another jaw-on-the-floor moment, Hill drank himself dumb as he watched his wives have a hell of a night on the dance floor. They were moved to Independence, Kentucky, and were given new identities. He even bragged about his double life to his friends. 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. They eloped not long after my dad beat up Ted, and moved in with my grandparents. Still, under the creepiness there was something magnetic about Sherrys new beau. In the fall of 1981, Hill walked into El Toreador, his favorite spot where he found both of his vices in one package. We moved a lot when I was little. As a result, the state took away their son. 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