Vincent Asaro (born 1935) is an American mobster and former captain in the Bonanno crime family. Mob career Vincent Asaro was born in 1935 in Ozone Park, Queens. In 1953, his father Joseph Asaro and mother Victoria separated. His father was the brother-in-law to Michael Zaffarano. Asaro followed his father Joseph and uncle Michael Zaffarano into the Mafia. In August 1977, Asaro was inducted into the Bonanno crime family, alongside Peter Monteleone and Gerard "Jerry" Chilli. In 1979, after the murder of Bonanno boss Carmine Galante, Asaro became a capo of a Queens crew in the Bonanno family. In February 1980, his uncle Michael Zaffarano died. According to Lucchese crime family associate turned informant Henry Hill, Asaro was a caporegime in the Bonanno crime family, who oversaw the family's interests in JFK airport. Asaro would help his son Jerome Asaro become a member of the Bonanno family and taking over his crew. However, Asaro and son had a falling out in later years and did not speak with each other. Lufthansa heist accusations On January 23, 2014, Asaro was arrested by the FBI and indicted on federal racketeering charges stemming from the 1978 Lufthansa heist. The charges also included the theft of $1.25 million of gold salts, involvement in the pornography industry, and for the ordering of the murder of a cousin who testified in court. Arrested along with Asaro were his son Jerome, acting boss Thomas DiFiore, acting capo Giacomo Bonventre, and soldier John Ragano. Controversially, author Daniel Simone, Henry Hill's co-writer of their book, The Lufthansa Heist, published on August 1, 2015 by Lyons Press, claims that Henry Hill asserted to him that "Asaro had no involvement in the famous robbery." In fact, Asaro does not appear nor is mentioned in Simone's book. Furthermore, in the Author's Notes and Sources page of The Lufthansa Heist, Simone lists numerous law enforcement agents who collaborated with him in the development of the book and, he attests, none of these subjects ever mentioned Asaro in connection with the Lufthansa robbery. More strangely, those investigators had not known about a Gaspar Valenti, the informant who testified against Asaro, his cousin. In November 2015, Asaro was found not guilty of all charges related to the Lufthansa heist. Paul Katz murder suspect Asaro was also a suspect in the 1969 death of Paul Katz. Katz owned a warehouse that Asaro and James Burke used