Louis Werner

Louis Werner, also known as "Lou" (born c. 1933, Ridgewood, Queens - died 2007, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma ), was a German-American Lufthansa cargo supervisor for Lufthansa Cargo's Cargo Building 261. He was the initial organizer of what would become the 1978 Lufthansa heist. He is portrayed in television movie "The 10 Million Dollar Getaway" as "Louis Werner" by actor Christopher Murney.

Biography

The son of a butcher who was a frequent visitor of the Gravesend Race Track in Gravesend, Brooklyn and Belmont Park in Elmont, New York, Louis later suffered from the psychological disorder of being a pathological gambling addict. Louis preferred placing his bets to bookmakers when gambling, because at the legal Off-track betting parlors, if he won, he had to pay thm a certain percentage of taxes and fees taken directly from his winnings.

Louis was a pudgy man who was very well liked by his co-workers and friends, who was extremely intelligent and was hard working. Unfortunately due to his gambling addiction Louis lost interest in his mundane airport job very easily and had difficulties handling problematic situations at home and work. He was one of John F. Kennedy Airport's low-paid labor pool of employees who needed little encouragement to toss an expensive looking suitcase or a crate of expensive Japanese television sets onto a passing truck heading off the runway. Special Agent Arthur Stiffel whoe was in charge of U.S. Customs at the airport said, "The people assisting in thefts around here are often just squaring a $2,000 or $3,000 debt to a loanshark".

While talking to friends and co-workers, Louis was very controlling and had Antisocial personality disorder. The disorder caused him to avoid emotional problems and created a distance between him and his estranged ex-wife Beverly Rao (whom he finally divorced in 1987), their four children, and longtime Italian-American mistress-girlfriend Janet Barbieri, a 36-year-old (at the time of the Lufthansa heist) divorced housewife and mother of three from a previously failed marriage. He had a fondness for Italian women. Although Louis had the company of Janet, who devoted herself to the troubled Louis, he suffered from feelings of loneliness, low self-esteem and had anger management issues and extreme anxiety mixed with clinical depression. Louis dealt with his depression and anger management problems by drinking heavily, which led him to alcoholism as an escape from his troubles.

Louis became close acquaintances of Joe Manri, Robert McMahon and Martin Krugman, along with fellow co-worker Peter Gruenwald, a freight handler who also worked for Lufthansa, all who were involved in an office betting pool at the airport and many hijackings. Louis frequented the "Just For Men" Hair Salon owned and managed by Martin Krugman in Ridgewood, Queens. From 1967 to 1978 he became indebted to Martin Krugman for $20,000 in gambling debts on horse races at the Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park, Queens. As his gambling addiction worsened so did his losses and Louis “chased” the losses in a desperate effort to recover the losses because of his extreme competitiveness. His long time bookmaker Martin Krugman would describe Werner to Henry Hill as a, "long shot bettor who spent the last eleven years trying to support an estranged wife, a girlfriend, a loanshark" (Paul Vario's own brother-in-law Angelo McConnach), "four children, and a three-hundred-a-day gambling habit on a $15,000-a-year salary". By August 1978 Martin Krugman had allowed Werner gamble away and become indebted to him in the hope of receiving information on a worthwhile hijacking score at the John F. Kennedy Airport like he had done before, for Martin Krugman in 1976. Louis's tipoff unknowingly would become the notorious 1978 Lufthansa heist.

Growing up in Ridgewood, Queens, Louis had become close friends with Bill Fischetti. Once Louis became free of his debt to Angelo McConnach and Martin Krugman, he agreed to invest a portion of his Lufthansa heist share into Fischetti's taxi cab company. Upon discovering the long-time affair Bill was having with his estranged wife Beverly, Louis backed out of his business arrangement with him and ended the friendship.

As a result of constant financial problems with creditors and banks, Louis was forced to live an almost-transient lifestyle through bankruptcy and foreclosure settling from 1967 to 1978 in apartments located in East New York, Hollis, New York and Richmond Hill, New York.

The 1976 Lufthansa robbery

By October 8, 1976 Louis had fallen into debt with Martin Krugman for $16,000 from gambling at the Aqueduct Racetrack. His Lufthansa co-worker and close friend Peter Gruenwald helped Louis Werner steal $22,000 in German currency from the Lufthansa terminal. On October 9, the following day Louis Werner took the money which was still in a cardboard shipping package to Gruenwald’s home Levittown, New York home to store it. Gruenwald hid the money at a local garbage dump then retrieved it the following morning on October 10th before going to work. After keeping it in his car, during their lunch hour Gruenwald met Werner at a gas station in Canarsie, Brooklyn where they transferred the money into shopping bags. The two men then tore the cardboard box to pieces and drove around town depositing the ripped up portions into various dumpsters and garbage cans on the street. That night Gruenewald buried the money in his home's backyard in a suitcase. A week later Louis Werner got the money and delivered it to his accountant friend Bill Fischetti to launder several foreign exchange banks in Manhattan. This robbery was not solved until Peter testified against Werner at his trial.

1978 Lufthansa heist

Planning the heist

Louis had methodically worked out the details of the robbery, including the number of men needed to pull off the robbery, the best time for the heist, how to bypass the elaborate security and alarm system, and where the hold-up men should park during the robbery. He told Frank Menna of his robbery plan, who informed his bookmaker Martin Krugman, who then informed his friend Henry Hill of the planned robbery several months after Hill's release from Fort Lee on the extortion conviction. Henry Hill told Jimmy Burke of the plan, and he approved. Burke then sent Joe Manri to look over the plan at the the Airline Diner (now the Jackson Hole Diner) located at 69-35 Astoria Boulevard in Astoria, Queens with Werner on the hood of his car to see the exact plan layout for the Lufthansa heist. The plan was approved and Joe Manri was later sent to pay Werner for his well orchestrated plan. Louis even told Manri where suspect Parnell Edwards should park his car, so as not to arouse suspicion from airport security. Following the Lufthansa heist, Werner and Peter Gruenwald were named as likely suspects by their fellow workers at JFK Airport including night-shift Air France cargo foreman Robert McMahon who was a suspected "stick up" man for the Lufthansa heist.

talling the Chase delivery

On Friday, December 8, 1978, the shipment of money arrived at the Lufthansa cargo terminal from the Commerzbank of Frankfurt, Germany to be forwarded to Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City.

Chase Manhattan received the delivery of $2.0 million, but an additional $3.0 million which was supposed to be delivered later by Brinks armored car never arrived. The Brinks armored car driver gave the pick-up paperwork to Leonard Andersson, who processed the papers and then gave them to Werner (his supervisor) so they could clear customs and be brought out for delivery.

However, due to a money delivery missing the week before - totalling $2,000 in untraceable currency which was from the same shipment - Lufthansa's executive managers had decided that two supervisors had to be present when delivering shipments from the Valuables room. Louis told the Brinks guards that the approval of a third Lufthansa manager or supervisor was needed before he could release the money shipment. Although one of the guards argued that this was not the procedure, Werner disappeared for an 90 minutes while pretending to be looking for another supervisor or manager. The Brinks’ security guards were then ordered by their dispatch office not to wait any longer and to continue to other airline terminals without having picked up the money delivery from Lufthansa.

For his part in the robbery, Werner allegedly had his gambling debts with bookmaker Martin Krugman cleared, although later Krugman was murdered, and received $80,000 for organizing the robbery. It was Werner who called Robert's Lounge on the morning of the robbery to tell Jimmy Burke that the money delivery had arrived.

The Aftermath

On February 18, 1979, Werner was becoming paranoid about the ongoing Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) investigation into the Lufthansa heist and attempted to change his scheduled vacation leave with the senior Lufthansa cargo supervisor Leonard Andersson. With his share of the Lufthansa profits, and his debt now paid off to Martin Krugman, Werner purchased a brand-new 1979 customized camper-van. He told the FBI that he had won the money during a winning streak at the race track. In a vain and desperate attempt to have the vacation days, Werner offered to give Andersson an oil painting of racing horses, but Andersson was scheduled to leave for Hawaii three days later and could not help him in his attempt to flee. Two days later, Werner was arrested after leaving a ten pin bowling tournament meet in Long Island.

Trial and Conviction

Werner's bail was set at $1 million. FBI Agent Edward McDonald could not get Werner to roll over on Peter Gruenwald or any other suspects, and on March 2, 1979 he was indicted for his role in the Lufthansa heist. At his trial, he pleaded not guilty.

The government witnesses testifying at Werner's trial included Peter Gruenwald, Bill Fischetti, Frank Menna and Werner’s girlfriend-mistress, Janet Barbieri. Werner's defense was that it was Peter who masterminded the plan and recruited the gunmen. Werner, according to Gruenewald, promised to give his one-time partner in crime $65,000 to keep his mouth shut and $50,000 more if he were to lose his job. When it came time for Barbieri's testimony, she was still in love with Werner and feigned illness in order to avoid testifying. After two days of claiming “that problems with her heart made it dangerous to her health for her to take the witness stand,” the judge ordered Barbieri arrested. She then claimed that Werner had never told her that he organized the Lufthansa heist. The prosecution finished its case on May 14, 1979. No witnesses were called to testify on behalf of Louis Werner.

On May 16, 1979, Werner was found guilty of three of the six federal criminal counts against him, which included helping to plan and carry out the 1978 Lufthansa heist robbery and the theft of $22,000 in 1976 which he orchestrated with Peter Gruenwald. He was imprisoned at the Metropolitan Correction Center in Manhattan.

creen portrayals

In the 1990 Martin Scorsese film "Goodfellas", neither Werner nor Peter Gruenwald's characters were included. Scorsese instead had Lufthansa heist suspect Joe Manri as the airport employee who orchestrates the entire robbery, who was seen delivering the information about the Lufthansa heist to Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke. Also, Robert McMahon's screen portrayal was limited to a brief introduction when introducing the Lufthansa heist robbery team. Their exclusion might have been because they were still alive at the time of production (Louis died in 2007, and the whereabouts and happenings of Peter Gruenwald were still unknown as of 2007).

Werner was portrayed in the television movie "The 10 Million Dollar Getaway" by actor Christopher Murney.

Related incidents

After Louis was brought to trial for his role in the Lufthansa heist, his sister Mrs. Jane Werner-Raico, and two men, were arrested for insurance fraud involving a stolen automobile. The information leading to the insurance fraud investigation was said by the FBI to be supplied by "a source who had also supplied information on the Lufthansa robbery", later revealed to be Gambino crime family mob associate Wilfred Johnson who was involved in grand theft auto.

References

* "Wiseguy: Life In A Mafia Family" by Nicholas Pileggi
* "Deadly Alliance: The FBI's Secret Partnership With the Mob" by Ralph Ranalli
* "HOW THE MAFIA LOOTS JFK AIRPORT MORE THAN $59 BILLION OF FREIGHT and 27 million passengers a year are irresistible pickings for mobsters, who have made it a hotbed of stealing, smuggling and extortion", "Fortune Magazine", Roy Rowan and Christopher Knowlton, June 22 1987
* http://www.nongambler.com/faq.htm#6
* http://www.addictionrecov.org/addicgam.htm