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Martin Krugman was the next to go if the information from Hill
is accurate. Hill claims Burke wanted him to set Krugman up to be
killed the Tuesday night following the robbery. Hill was to talk
Krugman into going to the Riviera Motel under the guise of meeting
some girls. There DeSimone and Sepe would murder him in the
parking lot. Hill and his wife Karen were close friends of Krugman
and his wife Fran. He was not in favor of the hit and looked for
excuses to keep the annoying bookmaker alive. A few hours before
the planned murder, much to the relief of Hill, Burke turned to
him and said, “Forget about tonight.”
Later that night, while Hill and Krugman were drinking
together, the bookmaker revealed that his “end” of the robbery
was to be $500,000. With this revelation, it suddenly dawned on
Hill, “Now I know why Jimmy wanted to whack Marty. It’s a
matter of half a million bucks. No way Jimmy was going to deny
himself half a million dollars because of Marty Krugman. If Jimmy
killed Marty, Jimmy would get Marty’s half a mill.”
Krugman’s reprieve would be a short one. When Edwards’ body
was found Krugman believed he was killed over a drug deal that had
gone bad. Krugman wouldn’t stop complaining about when was he
going to get his share. Hill recalls Krugman’s death wish:
Marty was bound to be next. He was breaking Jimmy’s balls.
He was breaking my balls. He was crying that he needed his money
to pay the loan sharks. He wanted to know why he had to pay the
interest every week.
“I told him to take it easy. I told him he’d get the
money. But Marty didn’t want to pay the interest. By this time
it was already January, and he was hanging around Robert’s every
day. You couldn’t get rid of the guy. He was getting worse and
worse. He was where he wasn’t supposed to be.
“And by now there was constant surveillance on everybody.
There were cars parked around the clock outside the bar. The feds
were down the block. The heat was getting worse and worse. And
still Marty kept coming around.
Just before Christmas, Burke had given Krugman $50,000. Krugman
told Hill that he had turned over $40,000 of it to Louis Werner
because the Lufthansa supervisor “was busting his chops for his
share.”
There is a bit of confusion in Hill’s recounting of events at
this point. According to Hill, DeSimone met his demise before
Krugman disappeared, thus making it impossible for Tommy to plunge
an ice pick into the back of Krugman’s head as was depicted in Goodfellas.
However, according to Volkman and Cummings and reports in the New
York Times, DeSimone wasn’t reported missing until
mid-January, which is clearly after the January 6 date which Hill
claims is when Fran Krugman called his home because Marty had not
returned home the previous night.
Hill states that right after New Year’s 1979, the “heat”
was so heavy at Robert’s Lounge that “everybody moved to a new
place Vinnie Asaro opened on Rockaway Boulevard.” Hill claims
Krugman bugged him there about the disappearance of DeSimone and
the murder of Edwards wanting to know if they were connected? Hill
calmly states, “And that’s where they whacked him out.”
Following several frantic telephone calls from Fran Krugman,
Hill told her he would look for Marty. In Wiseguy he
relates:
I drove over to Vinnie’s [Asaro] fence company, and I saw
Jimmy’s [Burke’s] car parked outside. I walked in and said
that Fran had just called me. Jimmy was sitting there. Vinnie was
sitting next to him. Jimmy said, ‘He’s gone.’ Just like
that. I looked at him. I shook my head. He said, ‘Go pick up
your wife and go over there. Tell her that he’s probably with a
girlfriend. Give her a story.
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