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Last Updated: Saturday, 29 March 2008, 00:07 GMT

Mafia king on the straight and narrow

By Heather Alexander
BBC News, New York

Hill can now revisit old stomping grounds without fear of retribution


Henry Hill's story
GoodFellas was the definitive mafia film - and it is the story of one man, Henry Hill, one of the only survivors of a ruthless gang of robbers and killers.

Hill walked the streets of New York as a king - an associate of the Lucchese crime family. He stole big, he spent big and took vast quantities of drugs.

Then he got caught and spent 30 years in the witness protection programme, telling the police all they needed to know to put his mafia bosses behind bars.

"I couldn't walk around this neighbourhood ten years ago," he says standing, smoking outside Junior's diner in Long Island City. "There'd be bullets flying all over the place."

His morning started with fried calamari washed down with a glass of wine and a shot of whiskey. But it was not the Dutch courage that meant he dared to visit his old haunting grounds on this murky spring day.

"I'm old enough to die, just as long as they do it quickly," he says, pointing to his forehead.

If you can't love two people at once, there's something wrong with you


Hill is a very different looking man from the one shown on the big screen. He is short, grey-haired, with lines on his face.


Goodfellas