Thomas James DeSimone (June 6, 1946 – disappeared January 14, 1979) was an American criminal associated with New York City's Lucchese crime family who is alleged to have participated in both the Air France robbery and the Lufthansa heist.

Henry Hill, a Vario associate who was in his early 20s at the time, later recounted his first meeting with DeSimone, describing him as "a skinny kid who was wearing a wiseguy suit and a pencil mustache.

"[2] DeSimone worked under Vario, Burke and Hill, among others, becoming involved in truck hijackings, fencing stolen property, extortion, fraud and murder.

The money was stored in a cement-block strong room at Air France's cargo terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, with a round-the-clock private security guard.

[3] In 1967, Robert McMahon, an Air France employee, tipped off Burke, Hill, and DeSimone to an incoming delivery of between $400,000 and $700,000 in cash on Friday, April 7.

[2] The theft was not discovered until the following Monday, when a Wells Fargo truck arrived to pick up the cash to be delivered to the CNEP subsidiary French American Banking Corporation.

[4] After his release from prison in 1970, according to the mafia memoir Wiseguy, Henry Hill describes the "welcome home" party for William Bentvena at Robert's Lounge, a nightclub owned by Jimmy Burke: Bentvena jokingly asked DeSimone "if he still shined shoes", which DeSimone perceived as an insult, and leaning over to Hill and Burke intoned, "I'm gonna kill that fuck.

Hearing sounds from the trunk, they realized that Bentvena was still alive, so DeSimone and Burke beat him to death with the shovel and a tire iron.

However, on the commentary for the film Goodfellas, he states that Bentvena's body was buried in the basement of Robert's Lounge, and that it was only later put in the compactor.

DeSimone's third murder[clarification needed], described by Hill, was of a young man named Michael "Spider" Gianco, who was serving as a bartender at a card game.

After a stunned silence, an impressed Burke, having now developed a respect for Gianco for sticking up for himself, gave him some money before jokingly teasing DeSimone, who hadn't said or done anything in retaliation, about "going soft".

DeSimone lost his temper and fatally shot Gianco three times in the chest, angrily demanding of Burke if that was "good enough for [him]".

DeSimone's fourth murder, according to Hill, occurred when he and another associate named Stanley Diamond got carried away after being asked to "rough up" a witness to a robbery.

After a truck heist, a foreman had refused to allow Burke to unload the stolen cargo in his warehouse and vehemently protested because they had no union cards.

[6] Burke decided on DeSimone, McMahon, Angelo Sepe, Louis Cafora, Joe Manri, and Paolo LiCastri as the robbers.

[7] Burke's son Frank would drive one of the back-up vehicles while Parnell "Stacks" Edwards, a musician and career criminal, was given the task of disposing of the getaway van afterwards.

[7] After the heist, Edwards was instructed to drive the vehicle to New Jersey, where it (along with any potential evidence inside) was to be destroyed in a junkyard belonging to Gotti.

Gotti's role as the assassin was repeated in the 2015 book The Lufthansa Heist, co-written by Hill and journalist Daniel Simone,[10] although this account claims that DeSimone's death was instantaneous from three gunshots to the head.