Goodfellas has a high body count, even if not all deaths happen on screen or are relevant characters, and among those many deaths is that of Stacks Edwards – and here’s how he was killed in the movie and real life. Although Martin Scorsese has explored various genres in his career as a filmmaker – from black comedy in After Hours and The King of Comedy to sports drama with Raging Bull – he continues to be best known for his gangster movies. Out of that specific genre, the one that is still regarded as his best is Goodfellas, released in 1990 and based on the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi.
Goodfellas tells the story of mob associate Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), from his days running errands for Paul Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and his crew to his full involvement with the Lucchese crime family a couple of years later. During his time in the mob, Henry became acquainted with various big names, as were Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and Jimmy “The Gent” Conway (Robert De Niro), and got involved in various crimes. Although he wasn’t directly involved in it, Goodfellas covers the infamous Lufthansa heist, which had a huge impact on Henry’s circle as many of those involved ended up being killed, including Parnell “Stacks” Edwards (Samuel L. Jackson).
In Goodfellas, the whole plan for the Lufthansa heist was crafted by Jimmy Conway, with Tommy involved in it and Henry as an outsider, guiding the audience from his perspective. The plan was quite elaborate, and as such Jimmy needed a carefully picked crew that would carry on with their respective tasks as they were told, and there was no room for mistakes as, of course, the point was to not get caught. Jimmy’s crew for the heist was formed by various gangsters, with a man known as “Stacks” tasked with getting rid of the van, and the money each participant was set to receive depended on their role in the robbery. However, Jimmy became paranoid about those involved ratting on him or doing something that could get them all arrested, so he got many of them killed, starting with Stacks, who was the source of Jimmy’s distrust.
Almost everything went according to Jimmy’s plan, but there was a huge mistake: Stacks failed to get rid of the van. Stacks was, as described by Henry in Goodfellas, a guy who hung around the lounge and played the guitar and got along quite well with everyone. The plan was for him to drive the van to New Jersey where it was to be destroyed in a junkyard that belonged to John Gotti, but instead, he left it in front of a fire hydrant at his girlfriend’s apartment. The police found it two days after the heist and lifted fingerprints from it, so Jimmy and crew had to get rid of him. In Goodfellas, Jimmy ordered Stacks to be killed in order to cut any loose ends, and Tommy was the one who shot him. In real life, Stacks was also murdered but it was under the orders of Paul Vario (Cicero in the movie), who sent Tommy to get the job done.
Stacks was a minor role for Samuel L. Jackson, who was still making his way through the film industry at the time, having appeared in minor roles in movies like Coming to America and The Exorcist III, and even though he didn’t appear for long in Goodfellas, it was a memorable character. It’s hard to say if Jimmy would have still killed many members of the crew if Stacks had gotten rid of the van as planned, but it’s undeniable that his recklessness was the trigger of a series of murders.