Paolo LiCastri
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[edit] Early life and career
Paolo LiCastri was a Sicily-born gangster. After arriving to the U.S. he became an associate with the Gambino family. In exchange for the Gambino Crime Family’s blessing involving the Lufthansa Heist, Jimmy Burke was to turn over $200,000 or 10% of the estimated $2.0 million. An additional clause was that the Burke gang would be supplemented with Gambino Family member Paolo LiCastri, who served as an “enforcer of the mob’s interest.” He was brought in by Carmine Galante and Carlo Gambino, who were collaborating on setting Paolo and other "zips" in pizza-parlor businesses in the East and Midwest and leaving them there until the bosses needed him to do something. He was being used as a heroin courier and hitman. The heroin smuggling operation would later be exposed in The Pizza Connection Case.
[edit] Afterwards
After a murder conviction in 1975 he was deported, but during the fall of that year he was smuggled back in. Henry Hill said he was an illegal Sicilian shooter who use to say he was in the air conditioning business because he put holes in people.
[edit] Death
Paolo was a suspect in the Lufthansa heist. On June 13th 1979 his bullet-riddled shirtless and shoeless corpse was discovered on a smoldering trash heap in a deserted Brooklyn lot.
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