Vario lived all his life in
New York City and was believed to be involved in
loansharking and union racketeering. He and his brothers were involved in a number of legitimate businesses, including a flower shop, restaurant and cabstand, from which he would conduct business most of the time. Tuddy ran the cabstand and Presto Pizzeria. The Vario family's earnings from various rackets and businesses were estimated to be $25,000 a week.
Vario never used a phone because he always believed it was too easy for someone else to overhear his conversations. Instead he would meet with his soldiers or other intermediaries who would talk to the people Vario needed to communicate with. Another show of his paranoia was when Lenny Vario met a girl, named Veralynn, it was at the same double date that
Henry Hill met his soon to be girlfriend, Linda. According to Hill, Paul insisted that the two women were FBI and was nervous and eager to leave when introduced to them. He was married with three sons, all of whom became involved in their father's dealings in one way or another.
Nicknamed "Paulie", he stood six feet tall and weighed 250 pounds, but his narrow bone structure gave the appearance that he weighed even more than that. Former associates likened him to a
sumo wrestler. A popular legend holds that Vario would often eat without a fork, instead holding the plate up to his face and shoving his mouth over the food.
In the early 1970s Paul was a Membership Director for mob boss
Joe Colombo's Italian- American Anti- Defamation League. However he rescinded his membership and withdraw all support when it became apparent that the relentless accusations Colombo was making against the
FBI and U.S. government about racism and anti- Italian discrimination were attracting attention, which could easily divert from Colombo and his supporters' politics and into their criminal behaviour.
Vario was an extremely wealthy man. He once showed Henry Hill a vault containing one million dollars in cash.
Amongst Vario's associates were
Jimmy Burke and
Henry Hill. Vario owned a cab stand across the street from the apartment where Hill grew up, and took Hill under his wing when the boy was twelve or thirteen, having him run errands and act as a valet. As the years went by, Vario initiated Hill into criminal life, telling all of his associates that Hill was his nephew. It was while on a double date with one of Vario's sons that Hill met his wife, Karen. Karen later became a courier for Henry Hill, running messages to Paul Vario, with whom she had an affair. When Burke's protege
Tommy DeSimone attempted to rape
Karen Hill, Vario held a sit-down with members of the
Gambino family and revealed to them that DeSimone was responsible for the murders of two of their members, prompting them to murder DeSimone. Vario was imprisoned in 1984, largely because of the testimony of Henry Hill.
Vario was known to be brutal and ruthless, despite his portrayal as brooding and gentle in
Goodfellas. Hill saw a show of this violence first hand. He watched, aged twelve or thirteen, as Vario drove up to a barmaid's apartment, took a baseball bat from the trunk of his car and severely assaulted her for telling his wife that the two were having an affair. The barmaid's collar bone was broken.
He died in prison, in
Tarrant County, Texas on
November 22, 1988, aged seventy-four. His body is buried at St. John's Cemetery,
Middle Village, Queens, New York.
