Pope John Paul I died in his bed at the Vatican

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The Pontiff, 33 days into his reign, was about to expose a $100billionVatican Bank fraud. Raimondi was called in to send God's representative on Earth back to his maker. "I was just hoping that I don't burn in hell," says Raimondi, 66, who makes the claim in his memoir, When The Bullet Hits The Bone. "I'm not proud of it, but I had two cousins who were cardinals who wanted the Pope dead, and they called me in. I refused to be the one giving the Pope poison, but I told them how to do it.

"They wanted it to be a humane and respectful death, and wanted me as their witness to God that he didn't suffer." Pope John Paul I, 65, was found dead in bed on September 29, 1978. Raimondi, 6ft 2in and 21st, was enforcer for New York's Colombo crime family. His father was a contract killer, his uncle Mafia legend Lucky Luciano, and he was pals with Florida mobster Meyer Lansky. A killer who survived being shot and stabbed - twice - he was involved in the 1978 Lufthansa air terminal heist in New York that netted $45million in jewellery, cash and bonds, inspiring the movie Goodfellas. But he says nothing prepared him for killing the Pope... and planning to kill his successor, Pope John Paul II. "My cousin Cardinal Paul Marcinkus was head of the Vatican Bank, and flew to New York to tell me that Pope John Paul I had to die, and he needed my help," Raimondi recalls in his bruising Brooklyn accent. "He planned to expose everyone in a fraud run by the bank. For years they'd been taking the Vatican's bonds - Coca-Cola, IBM, Chrysler - and making perfect counterfeits which I'd fenced in America. We'd sold maybe $100billion worth.

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Disgraced Cardinal Paul Marcinkus

"I was asked how to kill the Pope painlessly. I told them slip valium into his tea so he would sleep soundly, then drip cyanide into his mouth. But I didn't even want to be in the room when they killed the Pope, that would buy me a one-way ticket to hell. "Through the bedroom door I watched Marcinkus squeeze cyanide into a dropper, put it to the Pope's lips and squeeze. I stood outside with maybe a dozen other cardinals and priests. People think the Cosa Nostra is dangerous, but some of those Vatican guys are more treacherous than the Mafia." A priest making his regular late-night check on the pontiff raised the alarm. "The Vatican doctor declared he'd died of a heart attack, and that was it." John Paul II also threatened to expose the scandal but swiftly changed his mind. "He came to his senses," says Raimondi. Marcinkus was ultimately ousted from the Vatican Bank and exiled to a parish in Arizona. He was also accused of murdering a Vatican employee's daughter to send a message to his enemies, but died in 2006 taking his secrets to the grave. Raimondi ran illegal casinos, betting parlours and loan shark rings and was central to the heist on New York's JFK airport, at the time the largest robbery in US history.

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