Robert De Niro’s Jimmy “the Gent” Conway, who was much more dangerous than Goodfellas made him look. Martin Scorsese is one of the most respected filmmakers in the industry, and while he has explored different genres in his career, he’s still best known for his gangster films, with the 1990 movie Goodfellas regarded as his best.
Based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, Goodfellas chronicles the life of mob associate Henry got involved in drug dealing, but after Henry became an FBI informant, his testimonies sent Jimmy (and Paul) to prison.
When Henry began working for Paul and his crew he met Jimmy, for whom he served as a fence, helping him out in various activities, most notably the distribution of untaxed cigarettes, for which Henry got arrested. As he never said a word about who he worked for, he earned Jimmy’s full trust, and they continued working together for years. Goodfellas established that Jimmy Conway wasn’t a man you should mess with, but it didn’t fully show how dangerous and violent he actually was, focusing instead on giving that image to the character of Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci). An often mentioned incident in the real-life Jimmy’s history is that time when, just before he got married, he discovered his fiancée’s ex-boyfriend had been stalking her, and on their wedding day, the police found the ex-boyfriend’s body, cut into more than a dozen pieces, in his car. In the 2003 memoir A Goodfellas Guide to New York, Henry shared that Jimmy had the bodies of his targets buried locally, scattering them underneath houses, bocce ball courts, and his own bar.
Because of his Irish descent, Jimmy, as well as Henry, couldn’t become a “Lufthansa heist. As shown in Goodfellas, the Lufthansa heist was planned by Jimmy (though he was never officially charged due to lack of evidence, even after Henry’s testimony), and was carried out by several associates, including Tommy DeSimone. To ensure that the heist went according to plan and that they wouldn’t be caught, Jimmy had some strict rules, and he wasn’t going to hesitate on killing anyone who got in the way. Following the heist, many of those involved were murdered either under the orders of Jimmy or by his hand, the first one being Parnell “Stacks” Edwards, who failed to get rid of the van used in the heist.
Jimmy was also involved in the murder of Billy Batts and the Boston College basketball point-shaving scandal in 1978-1979, this last one not shown in Goodfellas. Henry’s testimonies sent Paul and Jimmy to jail, and while Jimmy was serving a 12-year sentence for the Boston scandal, he was charged with the murder of drug dealer Richard Eaton. Following Henry’s testimonies, he was sentenced to a further 20 years in prison. Jimmy Burke ed away in 1996 of cancer, eight years before he would have become eligible for parole. Goodfellas toned down Jimmy Burke, but it’s somewhat understandable as the movie is, first and foremost, Henry Hill’s story, and with another very violent character like Tommy DeSimone also around, it was for the best that some of Burke’s actions and behaviors were left out.
