Henry Hill, who has died of heart failure aged 69, was the mob informer whose story was told in a bestselling book, Wiseguy (1986), and Martin Scorsese's film Goodfellas (1990). From the early days of organised crime, before the advent of witness-protection programmes, informers could expect to meet the same fate as Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, who "fell" from a Coney Island hotel window in 1941. Even Joe Valachi – who in 1963 made public the inner workings of what he called "our thing", the Cosa Nostra – ended his days in prison. In contrast, Hill not only survived being kicked out of witness protection, but also avoided a return to jail himself and in the wake of Scorsese's film went on to thrive, appearing on TV shows, lending himself to many documentaries and even selling his own brand of spaghetti sauce.
Hill was born in Brooklyn, New York, to an Irish father and Italian mother. As a boy, he idolised the gangsters who hung out at a coffee shop across the street from his apartment. He began running errands for Paul Vario, a capo, or underboss, for the Luccheses, one of the New York mafia's "five families".
Hill was first arrested at 16, but kept silent to protect Vario's son, and after a beating was released by the police, who could not believe that an Irish kid was tied up with Italian mobsters. His silence was noted by another non-Italian member of the Vario crew, Jimmy Burke, who would become Hill's mentor. But they remained outsiders; neither could ever become a "made man" in the Lucchese family.
Hill hustled through three years in the US Army, returning to mob life in New York, where he met his wife, Karen, and in 1967 took part in the robbery of $420,000 in cash from Air France at John F Kennedy airport. In 1970, he was involved in the murder of William Devino, known as Billy Batts, whose loansharking business Burke had taken over while Batts was in prison. His murder, at Burke's restaurant, and the disposal of his body, forms the centrepiece of Goodfellas.
In 1972 Hill and Burke were convicted of extortion. Sentenced to 10 years in a federal prison, Hill found himself reunited with Vario in what amounted to a mobster resort wing of Lewisburg penitentary. While there, he set himself up as a drug dealer and also conducted a bookmaking business. Among his clients was the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Hugh Addonizio.
Hill was released early for good behaviour but in 1978, along with Burke, he orchestrated a $5m robbery from Lufthansa, again at Kennedy airport – the largest cash haul in American history. Police soon traced the operation to Burke, who began killing his associates to cover his tracks. Hill, by now deeply into drug use himself, grew increasingly paranoid that he too would become one of Burke's victims. The Scorsese film plays brilliantly with the idea of the mob as a family while relishing the betrayals, violence and self-interest that undermine that image.
The drug business proved to be Hill's downfall, and he was arrested for trafficking in 1980. Although the police played him wiretapped conversations in which Burke discussed the possibility of having him killed, Hill refused to co-operate. But once he was out on bail, Burke tried to arrange a meeting which Hill knew meant his execution. He was rearrested and finally agreed to talk.
As a result of Hill's testimony, Burke and Vario were sentenced to long prison terms, and some 50 mobsters were convicted. He and his wife were given new identities and moved around various cities, but Hill chafed under the straight life, as he admitted in a series of interviews with the reporter Nicholas Pileggi, who wrote Wiseguy.
Hill and his wife divorced in 1989, and in 1990 were expelled from the witness protection programme just as Ray Liotta's portrayal of him in Goodfellas made him a minor celebrity, with appearances on reality TV and in crime documentaries (including Channel 4's The Real Goodfella in 2006). But this also increased his fears of being found and executed by the mob. He tried to make it as a chef, but was arrested again for drug use. He entered rehab twice and in 2007 he opened a restaurant, Wiseguys, in West Haven, Connecticut, famous in the 1940s as a mob resort.
Latterly, Hill lived in Malibu. He was inducted into both the Museum of the American Gangster in New York and the Mob Museum in Las Vegas. He is survived by his partner and manager, Lisa Caserta, and two sons.