Chasing Goodfellas

Celebrated mafia prosecutor Edward McDonald provides not only a front-row seat to his exciting takedown of the underworld legends who executed the nation’s largest robbery and exploited big-time college basketball players, but also an inside look into the making of the classic film Goodfellas.America has its share of feared and famous G-men and mob prosecutors, but at the height of the New York Mafia’s reign over New York City and beyond, arguably none was more successful than Edward McDonald. A folk hero in law enforcement circles and scorned within the underworld, Ed has become a well-known television personality. He is perhaps most recognizable for playing himself in the Oscar-winning blockbuster film Goodfellas. Here for the first time, Ed—along with writer Jake Brown—takes readers inside the investigations and trials of front-page courtroom battles, and offers never-before-explored tales of the exploits of famed gangsters like Henry Hill and Jimmy “The Gent” Burke. In his memoir, this iconic lawyer rivets readers with a cinematic roller coaster of a read in a gripping and entertaining storytelling style. Ed faced off against the fiercest mob bosses in history, and the legal victories he achieved in the courtroom quite literally devastated organized crime and public corruption at their peak. Here in the pages of Chasing Goodfellas, he takes readers inside two of those real-life investigations and prosecutions. First, he describes the electrifying details of the Lufthansa heist—the largest robbery in American history and the campaign of murder waged in its wake—and then presents the inside scoop on one of the most famous college sports betting scandals in history with the Boston College point-shaving case. Ed chronicles the exciting investigations that he and his FBI partners carried out step by step, and intimately describes how he successfully conducted the two drama-filled, landmark trials. He follows up with entertaining descriptions of his unlikely appearance as himself in the classic film Goodfellas, and even more unexpected—his three-decade relationship with Henry Hill, the Lufthansa and BC fixer he turned to make those cases.

Edward McDonald headed the Justice Department’s largest and most successful Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn throughout the 1980s. He was responsible for the convictions of the leaders of four of the five Mafia families in New York, over sixty LCN capos and soldiers, more than seventy corrupt labor union officials, and countless others associated with the LCN. He also successfully tried New Jersey senator Harrison Williams and successfully prosecuted five US congressmen. A member of the Screen Actors Guild, he played himself in Goodfellas and appeared in three other films. In private law practice in New York since 1990, he has been praised by the Legal 500, which said, “the ‘excellent Edward McDonald’ lives up to his reputation as ‘one of the best criminal defense attorneys in New York.’” He is a graduate of Boston College and Georgetown Law School and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Mary, a short walk from his three sons and five grandchildren.Jake Brown is an award–winning biographer, has authored more than sixty books in his twenty-five-year career, and is host/creator of TUBI-streamed About the Authors TV.