Ex-Goodfella Aims for a Cyberspace Hit

Twenty-one years after his disappearance into the Witness Protection Program, angry Mafiosi can finally get hold of their one-time tormentor, Henry Hill.

Just shoot him an e-mail.

Hill, the infamous informant whose mob life was chronicled in the classic Martin Scorsese film “GoodFellas,” has launched his own Web site--an unsettling mixture of comedy, commentary and collectibles.

“Hey, it’s starting to pay the rent,” Hill says from his cell phone, plugging his latest legitimate endeavor (www.goodfellahenry.com).

Reaching Hill via the Internet is easy; reaching him live is trickier. A call is placed to a third party, who transfers the call to another party, who then connects the original caller to Hill.

Self-preservation clearly trumps self-promotion. And even though Hill joined the feds in the waning days of the Carter administration, he’s still acutely aware of overexposure.

“I think I might be out there a little too much,” Hill acknowledges. “But it’s been 21 years. I’m careful. I don’t want to put myself in harm’s way, you know?”

Which led him to the relative safety and anonymity of the Internet, where Hill is a neophyte. The ex-gangster says he bought his first computer only about a year ago.

“You want to enter my site?” guests at his Web site are asked. “Then leave your piece at the door.”

Once you’re logged on, Hill offers a personal cyber-tour of his old haunts, including the infamous mob hangout Robert’s Lounge (a dozen bodies were buried beneath its bocce court) and his childhood home in Brooklyn. Interactive maps are available with a click.

In the Mobstershop, he offers autographed memorabilia--a signed “GoodFellas” movie poster (“Get yours before I get whacked!”) goes for $39.95. An autographed copy of “Wiseguy,” Nicholas Pileggi’s book about Hill, goes for $29.95.

He also answers e-mails that ask questions about mob life: “Ninety-nine percent are positive. Some are inquisitive. I answer most of them honestly.”

Mingling the Luccheses with Letterman, Hill draws on his days in “The Life” to offer several glib Top 10 lists. From his tongue-in-cheek Top 10 mob hits:

“No. 7: BROOKLYN FOGGER: Plastic bag over the head.”

“No. 3: YANKEE CLIPPER: Baseball-batting the person to death, while taunting.”

Or the 10 best ways to hide a corpse:

“No. 9: WASTE MANAGEMENT: Just toss the body in a dumpster.”

“No. 2: CONEY ISLAND FOOTLONG: Make sure you have an in at the local meat-processing plant . . . and stop eating franks.”

The tips come with a disclaimer: “Do not take this guide literally”--advice Hill could have used years ago.

Hill, who says he never committed a murder, calls the entries representative of most mobsters’ black humor.

“That life, with all the sickness and strategy, you’ve gotta have a little humor--real dark comedy, I guess,” Hill says. “You’ve gotta throw a little bit of that in.”

Much of what Hill did while running with New York’s Lucchese crime family, however, was quite serious.

He was involved in two headliner crimes: the 1978 Lufthansa heist that netted $5.8 million, and the Boston College point-shaving scandal a year later. And he had fingers in everything from hijacking to extortion to drug dealing. He once took on three football players--successfully--with a tire iron outside a Manhattan club called the Rat Fink Room.

The ex-mobster now wants to be a mogul: In addition to the Web site, he’s working on a collection of mob meals called “Cooking on the Run,” a reality television show titled “True Stories of the Mob,” and some movie scripts.

“There’s also a half-hour comedy, and Howard Stern is interested in producing it,” Hill says. Stern, who frequently invites Hill on his nationally syndicated radio program, confirmed during a recent broadcast that one of Hill’s ideas intrigued him.

Why--as evidenced by HBO’s recent success with “The Sopranos”--are mob stories so irresistible to Americans?

“People vicariously get a thrill,” Hill theorizes. “They’d like to live that way. . . . But they don’t know the life. They see the power, the money. They don’t see the misery, the time in jail.”

Hill, now 57, describes himself as “a lucky one.”

“A lot of the others are dead or doing 100 years,” he says. “I don’t live like I used to. My lifestyle has changed dramatically.”

Among the dead are Paul Vario, the head of Hill’s old Brooklyn crew, and James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, the reputed Lufthansa mastermind. Both died in prison--Vario in 1988, Burke in 1996. Hill’s testimony put both behind bars.

Another dozen cohorts, most involved in the Lufthansa heist, were murdered as the wiseguys argued over their respective cuts of the lucrative robbery.

Hill has survived, although he hasn’t exactly stayed out of trouble since becoming a cooperating witness on May 27, 1980. His rap sheet was almost as long after he flipped as it was when he ran with Vario and company.

His most recent arrest came in May 1997, for a parole violation; he was released two years earlier after doing time for assaulting his girlfriend. A decade earlier, he was convicted of dealing drugs.

He was tossed from the Witness Protection Program in 1987. While still in it, he was convicted of burglary, assault and three DWIs--eventually winding up doing a 60-day jail term.

These days, the one-time wiseguy is a bit wiser, with a couple of years of sobriety under his belt.

“I put the cork in the jug, stayed away from the drugs,” he says, “and my life has turned around.”

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www.goodfellahenry.com