Frank Menna

Frank D. (Dominick) Menna (July 29, 1922 Brooklyn, New York-November 28, 1995 Riverside, California was an Italian-American low-level criminal and an associate of the Lucchese crime family and a suspect involved in the early stages of the Lufthansa heist. He was a regular street tough who was employed by Martin Krugman to work at his "Just For Men" hair salon in Ridgewood, Queens.

Biography

Little is known about Frank Menna's past except for a few sentences in Nicholas Pileggi's book "Wiseguy: My Life in A Mafia Family". Also in the novel there is no mention of Menna before his participation in the 1978 Lufthansa heist. Frank was not involved in the regular day-to-day criminal activities of Jimmy Burke and was not involved in any of Henry Hill's business affairs at any point in time. He also was not associated with any of Burke's hijacking-robbery crew. Frank's involvement in Lufthansa heist is unique in the sense that he ended up testifying against Hill and Burke but did not actively participate in the robbery itself. The testimony in convicting Burke of his involvement in the heist was unsuccessful. Frank worked as a loan collector and is described by Volkman and Cummings as a numbers-runner, who acted as a go-between for bookmakers or bettors. He was not even a habituate of Robert's Lounge or The Suite. Frank was being educated by Krugman in the ways to be a successful mobster, which Russian born Krugman could never become a full-fledged member of the La Cosa Nostra. He started out working the comptroller and telephone taking bets for Krugman in the back storage room where Krugman operated his sportsbook. In Menna's his day-to-day operation, he would regularly visit Lufthansa cargo supervisor Louis Werner who was a gambling addict.

Working at the salon

Menna was Martin Krugman's one “controller” employed at the salon. Frank was paid five hundred a week for his services. He kept a sheets of bets and personally kept tabs on the bettors, only established neighborhood bettors whom they knew they could trust. He assigned each bettor an identification number and to place a bet, he would call the wire room, state his number, distinguish which controller he wanted to bet with and make his wager. Most of the time bettors would placed a straight wager on a team, but football and basketball had a spread. Krugman, in other words, gave the favorites a point advantage: if he had the Giants down as a five-point favorite, over The Eagles, the Eagles had to win by at least five to pay off. He charged a commission or “vig” of ten cents on the dollar for losing bets. Each week Menna would tell Krugman if they had a “red” or “blue” figure. If it was blue, they were ahead, and Menna would give the earnings to Krugman. If they found themselves a long way ahead, they would stop taking bets to hedge against a possible loss. At the end of the week, Menna would be sent out to settle debts. The operation was small compared to the more larger organized bookmakers, which would employ an average of fifty controllers running bets, On a good week, Krugman and Menna might turn a $12,000 profit.

Role in the Lufthansa Heist

At the "Just For Men" men's hair salon and wig accessories store, he was supposedly employed as a hair dresser from 1970 to 1979. He attended the hair dressing school so Martin Krugman, who taught classes at a local high school could file for tax deductions. Frank was the first individual to hear of the Lufthansa heist plan from Lufthansa freight cargo supervisor Louis Werner who was a customer of Martin Krugman. In 1970, after Jimmy Burke told of plans to extort his thriving bookmaking business and Krugman threatened to go to the District Attorney, Frank Menna was the unfortunate employee who was beaten in the salon, in front of Krugman, by Stanley Diamond and Thomas DeSimone on orders by Jimmy Burke. Frank is lucky to have survived the beating due to DeSimone and Diamond's ruthlessness as sidewalk soldiers for Paul Vario. The beating was shown in the film to involve Martin Krugman and not Menna who is strangled by Jimmy Burke with telephone wire in the presence of Henry Hill.

urviving the aftermath of Lufthansa

After the Lufthansa heist, shortly before his murder, Krugman informed Henry Hill that he planned to give Frank Menna $15,000 out of generosity, which was to come from his $1.5 million that he was to receive from Jimmy Burke for his part. It is unknown if Menna ever received his share before Krugman was murdered on January 6, 1979. Frank later told the FBI after Krugman's death that all he had done was in November 1978 after receiving a threatening phone call from Krugman about falling behind in his loan payments, Louis Werner sat down with Frank and was told of plans for a robbery conjured up by himself and fellow co-worker Peter Gruenwald, Menna in return transmitted Louis Werner's request to Martin Krugman. Krugman in turn was the one who informed Henry Hill, after of which Hill told the plans to Jimmy Burke. Since he was not involved in the robbery itself, was most likely the reason that Jimmy Burke did not have him murdered, unlike fellow cohorts, Robert McMahon, Joe Manri, Parnell Edwards and Paolo LiCastri. He would be one of the four suspects knowledgable of the heist to successfully enter the Witness Protection Program along with Henry Hill, Louis Werner and Peter Gruenwald.

Arrest and conviction

Frank was later implicated for his minor role in the Lufthansa heist at the same time of his already dead boss, Krugman. Now unemployed after Krugman's murder and threatened with a prison sentence the FBI convinced Menna to become State's Evidence where he helped in the successful prosecution of Louis Werner. The sole suspect in the robbery to be charged for the Lufthansa heist. Menna fortunate in surviving the aftermath of the robbery that followed, unlike his employer, Martin Krugman.

Following the Lufthansa heist, Menna became State's Evidence for the District Attorney and FBI and later helped in the case against Hill, as one of the factors that made Hill become an informant and the unsuccessful prosecution of Burke, for which the FBI did not have enough evidence to charge him on, and Lufthansa heist suspect Angelo John Sepe who was already murdered by drug dealers. He was relocated with the assistance of the Witness Protection Program to Riverside, California where he died.

References:

*Pileggi, Nicholas, "Wiseguy: Life In A Mafia Family", Corgi (1987) ISBN 055213094X
*US Social Security Death Index