Lucas Jackson/Reuters
Reputed mobster Vincent Asaro was sentenced Thursday to eight years in prison for ordering his underlings to torch a car that cut him off in traffic. The 82-year-old, who prosecutors say has led a “literal life of crime” in New York’s Bonanno crime family, called the term a “death sentence.” Asaro has dodged numerous criminal convictions over the years for, among other things, allegedly strangling a man with a dog chain and partaking in the Lufthansa heist in 1978, a robbery immortalized in the film Goodfellas. Asaro was acquitted in that case in 2015. Prosecutors filed new charges this year over the 2012 road-rage incident, however, saying the then-77-year-old tracked down the random driver days after the traffic incident and burned the car “to a crisp.” Asaro pleaded guilty in June and on Thursday apologized for the “stupid thing I did.” “If he had not aged out of a life of crime at the age of 77, I have little hope that he will do so,” Judge Allyne Ross said in announcing the decision.