Gregory Scarpa

• 1. The Grim Reaper

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  Gregory Scarpa Sr. sometimes left the numbers 666, the biblical number of the beast, on his victims' pagers. His longtime girlfriend Linda Schiro later recalled the habit. Scarpa was called the Grim Reaper and the Mad Hatter. He was a captain in the Colombo crime family of New York City and a feared hitman. For years he was also an informant for the FBI. How does a professional killer end up sharing dinners with a federal agent? What did the Bureau hand him, and what did it get in return? And why were courtrooms still untangling his secret long after he was gone?

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• 2. Brooklyn Captain

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  The 8th of May 1928 was the day Gregory Scarpa was born in New York City. His parents, Salvatore and Mary, were first-generation immigrants from the village of Lorenzaga, in Motta di Livenza near Treviso, Italy. The family lived in Bensonhurst, a working-class neighborhood of Brooklyn. During the Great Depression, young Gregory helped his father deliver coal around the city. His older brother Salvatore Jr. may have introduced him to the Colombo family, which Gregory reportedly joined in the 1950s.

  Connie Farace became his wife in the 1950s. They had a daughter and three sons, including Gregory Scarpa Jr., who followed his father into the Colombo family and rose to captain. The couple separated in 1973. Scarpa also kept a thirty-year relationship outside the marriage with Linda Schiro, and they had two children.

  Five thousand dollars was the pocket money Scarpa routinely carried, to cover purchases and bribes. He dressed stylishly and had use of an apartment on Manhattan's Sutton Place. He also owned homes in Brooklyn and Staten Island, in Las Vegas, and on Singer Island, Florida. His power, guile and brutality helped him escape prosecution for many years.

  The Wimpy Boys Social Club belonged to Scarpa, who was its proprietor. His crimes ranged across illegal gambling, loansharking, extortion, hijacking, counterfeiting, assault, stock and bond thefts, narcotics and murder. During the 1970s and 1980s he was chief enforcer and veteran hitman for Colombo boss Carmine Persico. Many of the highest-ranking Colombo members of the present day began their careers in Scarpa's crew.

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• 3. Mississippi Allegations

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  In March 1962, Scarpa was arrested for armed robbery. To avoid prosecution, he agreed to work as an undercover informant for the FBI. That began a relationship of twenty-seven years, interrupted by a five-year break between 1975 and 1980.

  The summer of 1964 is when, according to Schiro and other sources, FBI agents in Mississippi recruited him. The agents wanted help finding the missing civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner. They were convinced the three men had been murdered but could not locate the bodies. In this account, the agents hoped Scarpa could extract information from suspects using interrogation techniques that were not available to the Bureau.

  Lawrence Byrd, a television salesman and secret Klansman, was the man Scarpa allegedly targeted. Local agents reportedly gave Scarpa a gun and money to pay for information. Scarpa and an agent allegedly pistol-whipped and kidnapped Byrd from his store in Laurel. They took him to Camp Shelby, a United States Army base. There Scarpa allegedly beat him severely and stuck a gun barrel down his throat. Byrd eventually revealed where the three bodies lay.

  The FBI has never officially confirmed the Scarpa story. Investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell and Illinois high school teacher Barry Bradford offered a different account. They claimed that Mississippi highway patrolman Maynard King passed the grave locations to FBI agent Joseph Sullivan, after getting them from an anonymous third party. That version does not necessarily contradict the claim of Scarpa's involvement.

  January 1966 brought a second alleged trip to Mississippi. This time the case was the murder of Vernon Dahmer, who was killed in a fire set by the Ku Klux Klan. After that trip, Scarpa and the FBI had a sharp disagreement over his reward. The agency dropped him as a confidential informant in 1975.

  The 1988 film Mississippi Burning carries an echo of the story. Screenwriter Chris Gerolmo read about Scarpa's alleged recruitment and created Agent Monk, played by Badja Djola. Monk abducts a Klan-connected mayor and forces a confession by putting a pistol in his mouth.

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• 4. The Handler

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  In 1980, FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio became Scarpa's contact and handler. Scarpa had refused any contact with the Bureau for the previous five years. DeVecchio persuaded him to cooperate again.

  Gregory Jr., Schiro and federal prosecutors later claimed that the two men had numerous illegal dealings. Scarpa allegedly gave DeVecchio cash, jewelry and other gifts, plus information of questionable value on the Colombo family. In return, DeVecchio allegedly shielded Scarpa from arrest. He also allegedly passed along information about Scarpa's factional rivals during the Third Colombo War.

  The sum of $158,000 is what the FBI reportedly paid Scarpa for his services. Mob associates said he joked about his "girlfriend", a female friend in law enforcement who gave him information. For ten years DeVecchio met Scarpa alone, often in an apartment or hotel room provided by the Bureau. He was also a frequent dinner guest at Scarpa's house. On one occasion he accepted a hard-to-find Cabbage Patch doll as a gift. Some fellow agents were disturbed by the closeness and reported their suspicions to superiors.

  In 1985, federal prosecutors indicted Scarpa for running a major credit card scam. After he pleaded guilty, prosecutors asked the court for a sizable fine and a prison sentence. DeVecchio then sent the judge a memo listing Scarpa's purported contributions to the FBI. The sentence was five years of probation, no prison time and a $10,000 fine. Colombo members were so surprised that some began to wonder whether Scarpa was working for the government.

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• 5. Tainted Blood

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  Victory Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn was where Scarpa had emergency ulcer surgery in 1986. He refused blood from the hospital blood bank and instead received donations from family members and associates. One donor was the mobster Paul Mele, a bodybuilder who used injectable anabolic steroids. Mele had contracted HIV from a dirty needle, and he passed it to Scarpa through the transfusion.

  Mount Sinai Hospital is where surgeons later removed Scarpa's stomach. As his illness progressed to AIDS, he and his relatives told everyone he had cancer. On the 30th of August 1992, a civil court awarded him a $300,000 settlement from his first surgeon and Victory Memorial Hospital for negligence. A court appearance connected to that lawsuit would soon lead to a new arrest.

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• 6. Orena War

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  A power struggle between acting boss Victor Orena and the imprisoned boss Carmine Persico erupted into violence in 1991. Persico's loyalists tried and failed to kill Orena at his Brooklyn home. In retaliation, Orena decided to murder Scarpa, one of Persico's strongest supporters.

  On the 18th of November 1991, Scarpa was driving his own car in Brooklyn. Behind him followed his twenty-two-year-old daughter Linda and his eight-month-old grandson. Two cars stopped Scarpa, and hitmen ran toward his car with guns drawn. He drove away, crashing into anything that got in his way. Several bystanders were injured, but Scarpa and his relatives escaped unharmed.

  Avenue U in Brooklyn became his hunting ground during the seven-month conflict. Scarpa served as Persico's enforcer and, though weakened by illness, constantly cruised the avenue. He looked for Orena supporters in social clubs and bars. He was especially watchful for the Orena loyalist William Cutolo, who had organized the attempted hit on him.

  Over the next few weeks, Scarpa and his associates killed the Genovese mobster Thomas Amato. They also killed the Orena loyalists Rosario Nastasa, Vincent Fusaro and James Malpiso. Scarpa allegedly shot Fusaro while he was hanging Christmas lights on his house.

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• 7. Prison and Death

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  A New York courtroom was where Scarpa appeared in 1992 for his civil suit, and he was arrested there for violating state firearms laws. Soon afterward he was indicted on federal racketeering charges involving three murders.

  On the 29th of December 1992, Scarpa was under house arrest with an electronic monitoring device. Two Lucchese mobsters, Michael DeRosa and Ronald Moran, had threatened his grandson Joey over a drug deal. The elder Scarpa climbed out of bed and drove with Joey to DeRosa's house. There he shot DeRosa, and Moran fired back and hit Scarpa in the eye. Back at his house, Scarpa allegedly poured some Scotch whisky into the wound and assured the authorities everything was fine. Later he went to the hospital. Prosecutors then revoked his house arrest and sent him to jail.

  By 1993 Scarpa was blind in one eye, emaciated and in poor health. On the 6th of May he pleaded guilty to three murders and to conspiracy to murder several others. On the 15th of December he was sentenced to life in federal prison. The sentence was later reduced to ten years because of his poor health. He died of AIDS-related complications on the 4th of June 1994 at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota. His secret role as an informant stayed hidden until the following year.

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• 8. Aftermath

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  Carmine Sessa, a former Colombo consigliere turned government witness, broke the secret during a racketeering and murder trial of seven Orena faction members. He told prosecutors about DeVecchio's corrupt dealings with Scarpa. Prosecutors were forced to reveal that DeVecchio might have leaked confidential information, including details about former Colombo members who had become informants. Nineteen Orena supporters eventually had murder charges thrown out or convictions reversed. Their attorneys argued that DeVecchio's collaboration tainted the evidence. They also argued that if he fed Scarpa information used for killings, those killings were self-defense.

  DeVecchio was forced to retire from the FBI in 1996. On the 30th of March 2006 he was indicted on charges of complicity with Scarpa and other Colombo mobsters in four murders during the 1980s and 1990s. The case rested on the testimony of Schiro. She was soon discredited after Tom Robbins of The Village Voice revealed that she had given an interview a decade earlier to him and Jerry Capeci. In that interview she denied DeVecchio had ever been involved. Robbins said he and Capeci had promised to protect her identity. But the prospect of DeVecchio facing life in prison trumped those promises. On the 1st of November 2007, the judge dismissed all charges at the request of prosecutors.

  Forty years in prison was the sentence handed to Gregory Scarpa Jr. for racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder and other charges. He has been linked to twenty-four murders. He ran a large and profitable marijuana ring in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and he controlled the Bensonhurst market. In January 2016, Judge Edward Korman commuted the sentence by ten years. Scarpa Jr. had given the FBI information about the whereabouts of explosives, which were found hidden at the home of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols. His original sentence was reinstated in mid-2017.

  Sandra Harmon published the 2009 book Mafia Son about the Scarpa family, the FBI and betrayal. Peter Lance followed in 2013 with Deal with the Devil, which draws on thirty years of FBI files. In 2015 Linda Scarpa and Linda Rosencrance released The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter, told from the daughter's perspective. Television also took up the story. In May 2011-60 Minutes gave an eight-minute segment to DeVecchio's ties to Scarpa. Investigation Discovery covered Schiro's story in I Married a Mobster in July 2011. The Biography Channel series Mobsters followed in August 2012. In September 2018, the series Evil Lives Here aired another episode titled "The Grim Reaper".

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