How a crime-fighting Brooklyn prosecutor landed a key role in Goodfellas

It was the role of his lifetime.In the late 1980s, New York prosecutor Edward McDonald was an informal advisor on “Goodfellas.” He told director Martin Scorsese’s team about his work, in real life, with mobster Henry Hill — the protagonist in the film who is played by Ray Liotta — and helped them get all the details just right.McDonald was even set to be a character in the film, and industry rumors suggested Brian Dennehy might play him.

But McDonald quipped to Scorsese’s assistant, “What about me? I would be great!”A week later, he found himself having a screen test in the Warner Bros.offices on 51st Street in Manhattan, in front of Scorsese himself.

 The pair got on famously and McDonald left in a daze.When he got back to his office an hour later, there was a phone call from the movie’s screenwriter, Nick Pileggi.“Marty loved it,” he told McDonald.  “You got the part!”Within weeks, McDonald met with Liotta and Robert De Niro.McDonald, now 79, recounts his unlikely casting and his work prosecuting crime, in his new book “Chasing Goodfellas: Lufthansa, Henry Hill, Point Shaving, and Making Movies” (Post Hill Press, Oct.

13).As the head of the Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force in Brooklyn during the 1970s and ’80s, McDonald led complex federal investigations into the Mafia, corruption and racketeering.He secured the convictions of five corrupt US congressmen and over 70 corrupt labor officials and successfully prosecuted over 60 La Cosa Nostra members and the leaders of several Mafia families in New York. He also met Henry Hill.A criminal since he was a kid, Hill’s rap sheet was long, including jail sentences for petit larceny, bookmaking, loan-sharking, assault and extortion.

Then there were the other crimes for which he had yet to prosecuted, including robbery, bribery, truck hijackings, firearms possession and sales, burying a body and trafficking in heroin, cocaine and pills.With so many charges hanging ...