Joe Manri

For the American jazz musician, see Joe Maneri.

Giuseppe Manriquez-Manri or "Joe Buddha" (December 1, 1932 Long Island City, Queens-May 16, 1979 Flatlands, Brooklyn Mill Basin, Brooklyn) was a suspect in the Lufthansa heist.

Early life

Born in Long Island City, Queens on December 1, 1932 "Giuseppe Manriquez" was born to Spanish immigrants. He is the ancestor of the little-known Spanish conquisitor Andres Manrique, who first sailed to America from Spain in 1528. Giuseppe is related to the Manriques family, the Manricos family, the Malrico family and the Almerique family who all originate from Spain. His mother named him "Giuseppe" for his father in honor of Saint Paul, after the saint. He later legally Anglicized his name to the more Italian sounding name "Giuseppe Manri." His original family's surname is derived from Manresa, a commune in Catalonia, Barcelona,Spain. His parents were poor, poverty-stricken, uneducated blue-collar immigrants from Paredes de Nava in Valladolid, Spain in the province of Palencia, an autonomous region of Castile and Leon, formerly known as Castilla y Leon and Castilla-La Mancha. Long before the Lufthansa heist in 1979, Joe legally changed his surname from "Manriquez" to "Manri" in an attempt to pass his rough-hewn, bronzed Spanish looks as being of Italian descent, but was unsuccessful. He wanted his changed name to sound like Italian-American jazz composer, saxophone and clarinet player Joe Maneri, of who Giuseppe was an avid listener of. His changed last name also is similar to the late Bonnano crime family underboss Frank Mari. It is suggested he wanted to be thought of as a blood relative of the Italian blues musician Joe Maneri. This attempt in hiding his Spanish heritage did not alter the Lucchese crime family's decision. It is also thought that Giuseppe may have had his last name altered to protect his family and relatives from his criminal activities. Joe had a unprepossessing face and battled with obesity since he was a child. He was a large, brawny brute of a man standing at 6'3, with a great deal of strength that weighed close to 250-pounds as an adult which is how he earned the nickname "Buddha". He was a very gruff-natured man. He was never known to have married because of his obesity, but also his constant womanizing and continuous on-and-on bouts with alcoholism. Joseph could never become a full fledged member of the Vario Crew, and therefore became somewhat of a historian in organized crime around New York City, taking it up as a personal interest. This amused many of the fellow Lucchese crime family mobsters. Joe later became estranged from his family and moved to South Ozone Park, Queens. This nickname was acquired from his fleeting physical appearance resembling Gautama Buddha. This was due to having a pronounced Buddha-like paunch stomach. This gave him the physical roly-poly shape of a pear. He suffered from Antisocial personality disorder. Joe was fluent in Spanish which was his native tongue, English along with written and spoken German from dealing with Lufthansa's head offices in Cologne, Germany at the Frankfurt Airport. It is thought that through co-workers in the airport like Robert McMahon and others he was introduced to Jimmy Burke in the 1960's or Martin Krugman.

Employment at the JFK Airport

For an immigrant with limited education, Joe was successful, and found a job at the JFK Airport for Air France as an incoming cargo foreman, where he became friends with fellow foreman Robert McMahon. He was fortunate to work for the second largest airline in Europe, and the world's sixth largest airline, operating services to two hundred destinations in a hundred countries together. As a cargo agent he recieved air freight shipments, supervised their loading and unloading and was responsible for keeping up written records. He also directly handled contracts with air freight forwarders and the customers. McMahon is thought to have been the one who introduced Manriquez to Jimmy Burke.

Friendship with Robert McMahon

In the 1960's he became a close friend of fellow John F. Kennedy Airport Robert McMahon who was employed as the night-shift Air France cargo foreman. Through his work at the airport Manri and Robert McMahon became close inseperable friends. They had many things in common, both used their positions at the airport to commit crimes, and both were constant womanizers. In the 1970's when Robert started to become estranged from his third wife and mother of his children. He was drinking heavily and womanizing constantly. When McMahon fell on hard times Joe allowed him to sublet an tenament apartment in South Ozone Park, Queens with him. On www.crimelibrary.com Manri is wrongfully stated to have been born in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan where in Wiseguy: Life In A Mafia Family, it is stated from Henry Hill he was born in South Ozone Park, Queens. As a young adult with a sketchy educational background but successfully graduated from high school. He worked at the Air France terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport as a night-shift air cargo agent. Because of his criminal association with the Lucchese crime family it protected Manri from being terminated from his position at Air France by threatening Lufthansa with a union strike. Over time Manriquez became a close friend of McMahon, and when McMahon fell on financial troubles with child support, gambling, and alimony payments, the two workers moved in together in an Ozone Park, Queens apartment to split the costs of living. Manriquez was a member of the "Robert's Lounge Crew", an associate of Irish mobster Jimmy Burke.

Involvement in Hijackings & Theft

The Air Cargo Center, where the Lufthansa terminal was housed, leased its vast space out at the time of his employment to twenty-eight different airlines including at the time of his employment Sundrome of National Airlines, Eastern Airlines, American Airlines, Lufthansa, Air France and TWA, including many air express agencies Continental Airlines, Evergreen International Airlines, FedEx Freight, Japan Airlines, Korean Air, United Airlines, customhouse brokerage firms, federal customhouse Port Authority of New York and New Jersey inspection services, and private carting companies. Each of the twenty-eight airlines kept their own valuables in specially guarded security rooms, some of them enclosed by steel, cinder blocks or wire cages. The first accounting of thefts from the Air Cargo Center revealed in 1967, during Manri's employment showed that $2,245,868 in cargo had been stolen during the preceding ten months. This amount though did not include the hundreds of hijackings of airport cargo stolen outside the vicinity of the airport itself, from transport trucks nor did it include thefts in the airport valued less that a $1,000. During the ten-month period in the 1967 survey forty-five major robberies were committed at the Air Cargo Center, including thefts of clothing, palladium ingots, pearls, watches, musical instruments, hydraulic pumps, cigarettes, phonograph records, over the counter pharmaceuticals, wigs and diamonds. All these robberies were suspected to have been performed with information, or through actual assistance from Manri and Robert McMahon.

"Known Associate of Jimmy Burke"

Jimmy Burke, who overlooked the Lucchese crime family hijacking operation at John F. Kennedy Airport was a close friend of Joe Manri. The overly paranoid Burke arranged a meeting with Lufthansa freight supervisor Louis Werner at The Airline Diner located at 69-35 Astoria Boulevard in Astoria, Queens to discuss the robbery plans with Manri. This would later be assumed as the reason of Manri's execution following the 1978 Lufthansa heist.

Stolen airline ticket sales

Joe first became involved in the gang through Henry Hill helping steal airline tickets with stolen credit cards in 1967 with Parnell Edwards whose expertise was credit card fraud and fellow JFK employee Robert McMahon. Manri and Henry Hill would purchase thousands' of dollars worth of airline tickets which they would either cash for a full reimbursement or sell them at 50% discounts to willing customers. Frank Sinatra Jr.'s manager Dante Barzotinni, known to mobsters as "Tino Barzie" was one of Manri and Hill's best customers. One time Dante bought $50,000 worth of tickets from them to fly Frank Sinatra Jr. and a group of eight friends accompanying him on a trip around the country. Barzie was eventually indicted and convicted of the purchasing stolen airline tickets in the 1970's, but did not implicate either Manri or Henry Hill.

Grand Theft Auto

In the 1970's Joe started stealing cars. He would hot wire pre-selected small compact fuel efficient cars from the long term parking lots around JFK Airport and in the neighborhoods of Woodmere, New York, Howard Beach, Queens, Woodhaven, Queens, Ozone Park, Queens, Jamaica, Queens, Ridgewood, Queens, Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, Maspeth, Queens, Floral Park, Queens, Elmont, New York and Valley Stream, New York. He would deliver them to Clyde Brooks at the Bargain Auto Junkyard in Starrett City, Brooklyn on Flatlands Avenue. After Joe would leave the car, his mobster accomplices Henry Hill and Edguardo Rigaud would change the license plate and vehicle identification number with a scraped automobile from the yard. The stolen vehicles would then later be shipped from the New York Harbor to Port-au-Prince, Haiti through Edguardo's import-export company in Ozone Park, Queens. Joe would be paid $100 dollars per car on delivery. Joe was never convicted of his part in Henry Hill's chop shops and grand theft auto smuggling ring. Joe was very prosperous in stealing cars and earned good money that way.

Gangland Execution

Manri, if he turned state's evidence, could implicate Jimmy Burke, Tommy DeSimone, and Angelo John Sepe, who were positively identified by Lufthansa employees who witnessed the robbery, and whoever else had orchestrated the Lufthansa heist. It is thought that McMahon was murdered because of his boisterous and natural swagger, which worried Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke. Manri had been sent by Jimmy Burke to check out Louis Werner's plan that Werner had sketched out, huddled outside the Kennedy Airport Diner on the hood of his car. Burke had also placed Manri responsible for leaving $85,000 at the airport motel for Werner, which was his payment. Had Louis Werner chosen to cooperate with the FBI he could have only implicated Manri. On the afternoon of May 16, 1979 in Brooklyn, just over half a year after the robbery, Manri and McMahon were found dead in a 1972 Buick Riviera. Each had received a single gunshot wound to the back of the head from a .45 caliber pistol.

After the Lufthansa Heist

Joe Manri was warned by investigating FBI Supervisor Frank Carbone that he and Robert McMahon were at risk of dangerous repercussions following the Lufthansa heist, but he refused to come in. Frank would later comment about the investigation in retrospect, “We could have saved their lives if only they had come to us. But our efforts to warn them fell on deaf ears – they were either too greedy or too scared. You hate to see people killed. But it’s also a great frustration to us. They were links in the case that are cut off now.

Indiscrpencies with Goodfellas character

In the 1990 Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas Joe Manri is shown as as the airport employee who orchestrates the entire robbery. He is seen delivering the information about the Lufthansa heist to Henry Hill and Jimmy Burke, with Martin Krugman later commenting about Buddha afterwards. When in reality Louis Werner informed Frank Menna, who told his bookmaker Martin Krugman, who then told Henry Hill, whom informed Jimmy Burke about the robbery plan.

In popular culture

• He is portrayed as Joe Budda in the 1990 film Goodfellas by Mike Starr.
• There is a rap artist from the Ukraine named "Freestyle Frenzy-Joe Buddha".

References

• Russo, Gus and Henry Hill. Gangsters and GoodFellas: Wiseguys and Life on the Run. Mainstream Publishing, 2004. ISBN 1840188812
• Volkman, Ernest and John Cummings. The Heist: How a Gang Stole $8,000,000 at Kennedy Airport and Lived to Regret It. New York: Franklin Watts, 1986. ISBN 0531150240
• "HOW THE MAFIA LOOTS JFK AIRPORT MORE THAN $59 BILLION OF FREIGHT and 27 million passengers a year are irresistable pickings for mobsters, who have made it a hotbed of stealing, smuggling and extortion" from Fortune Magazine Roy Rowan and Christopher Knowlton June 22nd 1987
• http://www.geocities.com/americanmafioso_bonanno/caporegime.html

External links

• All About the Lufthansa Heist by Allen May
• Lucchese Crime Family Epic: Decent Into Darkness - Part II by Thomas L. Jones