The Bonanno family crime boss who inspired Martin Scorsese’s film Goodfellas has won an early release from a Missouri prison over concerns about coronavirus.
Vincent Asaro, 85, was serving an eight year sentence after pleading guilty in 2017 to ordering associates to torch the car of a person who cut him off at a traffic stop.
A federal judge ordered Asaro’s early release this week saying that the mobster – who suffered a stroke last year – said in her ruling that if Asaro were to contract the virus “given his age and current state, it is not unlikely that the consequences would be dire”.
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Asaro was found not guilty in the 2015 trial over the infamous 1978 Lufthansa heist at JFK Airport in New York, where masked robbers made off with more than $5m in cash and $1m in jewellery – depicted in Scorsese’s film.