16. Hill returned to crime while in WITSEC
According to Henry Hill, he left Witness Protection of his own volition. Henry implied in writings and interviews that he had tired of the restrictions on his activities. In truth, several criminal charges hastened his removal from WITSEC by the authorities, though his wife and children remained in the program. Henry returned to selling drugs and other relatively small-time crimes in several jurisdictions. Gregg Hill eventually graduated from college, earned a law degree, and entered into a career practicing law. At least that is what he claimed in On the Run. Gina likewise avoided the life practiced by her father. Both siblings continued to live lives of low profiles, even after their father’s life became prominent following the release of Goodfellas in 1990. Henry enjoyed his new found notoriety and profited from it shamelessly.
In his writings, interviews, and appearances, Henry Hill never expressed remorse for his crimes. Nor did he apologize for the lives his activities disrupted. Instead, he frequently mentioned that he had never “whacked” anyone as if that exonerated him for his career. The lives he helped ruin through drugs, gambling, extortion, robberies, insurance fraud, arson, and his many other criminal activities were of no consequence to him. Instead, he retold his tales over and over, with the accounts frequently inconsistent with previous recounting, always in a manner that stressed his own superiority over his victims. Nor did he seem to recognize the harm he had done to his family, to Karen and his children. The story of the Hills is an account of being raised in a Mafia family and in fleeing from one. The many inconsistencies in the retellings do not alter the considerable dangers inherent in the tales.