Deal With the Devil: The FBI's Secret Thirty-Year Relationship With a Mafia Killer

by Peter Lance

  For Scarpa, the Killing Machine—who’d told Larry Mazza he’d stopped counting after fifty hits, half of which had occurred on Lin DeVecchio’s watch—this plea was certainly a bargain. But although his HIV infection had turned into full-blown AIDS, Scarpa’s expression of remorse at the hearing was limited.

  Of all his horrific crimes, including the brutal slaying of Mary Bari, the spur-of-the-moment rubout of Donnie Somma, and the murders of his brother Sal and Joe DeDomenico, which he’d contracted to others, the only homicide Greg Sr. wanted to talk about was the killing of twenty-one-year-old Joseph Randazzo, Joey’s friend who died after Scarpa’s shootout on December 29. Although he may have been criminally negligent in that killing, it was one homicide that “34” didn’t commit.

  Scarpa: I want to thank Your Honor, Mr. Stamboulidis, for the consideration and compassion that has been shown to me from the time of my original arrest. If the good Lord had given me the opportunity to change that particular night where this young boy died who hadn’t even seen the dawn of life, I would certainly look to do it.

  At that point, the judge noted that the parties had agreed to postpone the sentencing. There was a brief discussion of the defense’s expectation that Scarpa would do his time at Rikers Island, the city’s principal jail. Greg’s lawyer, Stephen Kartagener, pointed out that Rikers had “one of the leading AIDS hospitals in the criminal justice system.” He then asked that Scarpa be allowed “a very, very brief courtroom visit [with] his two-year-old grandson.” Without objection from Stamboulidis, Weinstein granted that request and the hearing ended with the judge wishing the emaciated killer “good luck.”

  Physicians had repeatedly insisted that Greg Scarpa Sr. should have been dead years ago, but before the year was out he was back in front of Judge Weinstein asking that he be allowed to die at home. The Mad Hatter was hanging on with a tenacity that the Mad Monk, Rasputin, himself might have envied.

  Before Scarpa’s final sentence was pronounced, however, his status as a TE informant would be the subject of multiple meetings with the Eastern District Feds. His own fate was close to being decided, but his decades-long relationship with the Bureau was in danger of impacting the fate of multiple Colombo war prosecutions.

  Scarpa “Had Nothing Left”

  During the May 6 hearing before Judge Weinstein, Scarpa had presented himself as being at death’s door. On August 27, though, he was healthy enough to call Lin DeVecchio from his Rikers Island AIDS ward and pass on a new series of allegations regarding his old nemesis Wild Bill Cutolo.

  On August 27, 1993, Former telephonically contacted SSA R. LINDLEY DE VECCHIO and provided the following information: Source said WILLIAM CUTOLO is a Capo in the COLOMBO LCN Family who was a strong supporter of VIC ORENA, and continues to be the main force in the ORENA faction. CUTOLO continues to meet at a club on 63rd street and 11th Ave. Brooklyn, New York where he discusses his illegal activities. . . . The source identified the following as being in CUTOLO’s crew:

  FRANK IANNACI . . .

  JOSEPH “Jo Jo” RUSSO

  VINCENT DIMARTINO

  GABE SCIANNA . . .

  VINCENT FUSARO—Deceased

  The source said the above individuals have conducted loansharking activities for CUTOLO, and were sent out as “hit teams” during the height of the COLOMBO War.21

  In his book Lin appears to disparage that report, describing it as “a lot of stale information.” He then denigrates his heretofore trusted source by writing that “Greg Scarpa was well out of the loop at this point.” As if to comment on Senior’s deterioration from AIDS, Lin writes that Greg “had nothing left.”

  Then Lin writes that on September 29, he was “summoned to a meeting at Valerie Caproni’s office.” Caproni was the former AUSA who had supervised Greg Jr.’s 1987 DEA prosecution. Back then, she had crossed swords with the Bureau by dispatching U.S. Marshals to find Junior after he’d become a fugitive. In those days there was no love lost between DeVecchio and Caproni, and later, during Lin’s OPR, she told investigators that she was “displeased with the FBI’s efforts to locate Scarpa Jr.”22

  Caproni, a tough-talking Southerner with a masculine demeanor, had left the EDNY in 1989, but she returned to Brooklyn in 1992 and was put in charge of the Colombo family war prosecutions. She was later appointed chief of the EDNY’s Criminal Division.23 Now the relationship between DeVecchio and his source threatened to derail the war cases if the full truth of their association came out.

  Valerie Caproni

  (United Press International)

  By the early fall, despite Lin’s suggestion in his book that Scarpa Sr. had pretty much shot his load as a source, Greg Sr.’s attorney Stephen Kartagener made an audacious offer. He actually approached the EDNY and “proffered his client’s cooperation in return for being released from prison.”24

  The September 29 meeting in Caproni’s office was attended by Kartagener, Scarpa, DeVecchio, Chris Favo, and George Stamboulidis. Curiously, also in attendance was Special Agent James Brennan from the Lucchese Squad.

  Calling “Gaspipe” the Source

  At first glance, the attendance of an agent whose work didn’t involve Colombo issues seemed unusual, since Greg Sr.’s secret status as a Top Echelon source was to be the principal topic of conversation. But as the meeting progressed, the reason for Brennan’s presence became clear.

  Lin later wrote that at the meeting, Scarpa Sr. appeared “emaciated. His skin was gray and he wore an eye patch.”25 After Greg made what DeVecchio called a “pitch” to cooperate, Lin reportedly left the meeting while Scarpa, his lawyer, and Brennan stayed behind.26 As Caproni later told FBI investigators during DeVecchio’s OPR investigation, she then asked Scarpa if he had a law enforcement source. But Greg reportedly denied it, insisting that “he received his law enforcement information from . . . ‘Gaspipe’ Casso,” the Lucchese underboss, who’d been captured in January.27

  That revelation seemed to clear DeVecchio as the source of the leaks.

  In his book, Lin treats this Casso disclosure as his ultimate vindication. He writes that he never knew what happened in that meeting after he left until years later, when he was defending his reputation during the OPR. After reading Caproni’s account, DeVecchio writes, “I did some long slow breathing to calm down. Then I put Caproni’s OPR interview down, went to my garage, got out my motorcycle, and went for a long hard ride.”28 He goes on to contend that, since Casso had later confessed to FBI agents Rudolph and Brennan that he’d received intelligence over the years from disgraced detectives Lou Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, and since Casso and Scarpa had shared members of each other’s Bypass crews, it only made sense that intel from the Mafia Cops had found its way to “34” through Gaspipe.29

  But in a subsequent 302, Caproni admitted that after Casso began cooperating he “told the interviewing FBI agents that he never provided any information to Scarpa Sr.”30 And, as we’ll soon see, in the FBI’s interviews with Gaspipe at La Tuna federal prison in the spring of 1994, Casso not only denied leaking intel to Scarpa, he actually accused DeVecchio of being one of the two “crooked agents” he’d received intelligence from over the years.31

  It’s worth noting that the idea of Casso as Scarpa’s source could not have come as a surprise to the Feds. It’s only logical that one of the participants at that meeting in Caproni’s office must have had some advance warning that Gaspipe’s name would come up; otherwise, why, out of the hundreds of agents in the FBI’s NYO, would Jim Brennan—a Lucchese Squad agent, who later went on to debrief Casso at La Tuna—be asked to attend? And there’s another question: Why would Scarpa, who’d been supplying the FBI with detailed information—truthful or not—off and on for thirty-two years, suddenly expect to get out of jail in return for “cooperating”?

  In an e-mail exchange with me, Brennan, who retired from the FBI, said, “Caproni invited me to the 9/29/93 meeting because I was involved in the ongoing investigation of law enforcement leaks. In that meeting, Sc
arpa said he never received information from DeVecchio or any other FBI agent. Scarpa added that he did not know the identity of anyone in law enforcement allegedly providing information to Casso.”32

  Given all that the Feds had to lose from any further connection to Scarpa, Valerie Caproni passed on his offer to cooperate. But it’s crucial to note that by now, as she supervised the seventy-five war prosecutions, Caproni’s attitude toward Lin DeVecchio shifted from her critical stance back in 1987.

  At this point, in 1993, the Scarpa-DeVecchio scandal was threatening to undermine many of her war cases. So keeping Lin in the fold was an important strategic move for Caproni. That may explain why, in a second major debriefing by OPR investigators in September 1994, Caproni seemed to go out of her way to note that “SSA DeVecchio did not try to apply any pressure to convince her or her assistants to enter into an agreement with Scarpa Sr. for his cooperation.”33

  The War Continues

  Meanwhile, if anyone in the FBI’s New York Office thought locking Greg Scarpa away in a prison ward on Rikers Island would end the Colombo war, they were mistaken. On the night of October 20, 1993, three weeks after Scarpa’s offer of cooperation, Joe Scopo, the former Orena underboss who himself had been targeted with Vic back in June 1991, was shot to death by a team of hooded gunmen as he left his house in Queens.

  Scopo was the son of Ralph Scopo Sr., the former head of the so-called concrete club who had been convicted in the Mafia Commission case as a result of Title III wiretaps for which “34” supplied the probable cause. The elder Scopo had died in prison the previous March; now the Persico faction added another name to the list of war deaths.34

  Joe Scopo had been returning home with his nephew and future son-in-law when the masked assassins fired with a MAC-10 and a .380 semiautomatic pistol. Still in his car when they started shooting, Scopo bolted and ran, but he was hit twice in the abdomen and chest. His nephew was struck in the arm. A total of twenty-three shell casings were recovered following the fusillade. With Scopo’s death, the war officially came to an end.

  In varying media accounts, the number of deaths attributed to this third conflict in the Colombo family ranged from ten35 to fifteen.36 By November 1992, testifying as an expert witness at Vic Orena Sr.’s trial, Lin DeVecchio put the number of war deaths at ten, including Hank Smurra, Gaetano Amato, Sam Nastasi, Vincent Fusaro, Matteo Speranza, Nicholas Grancio, John Minerva, Michael Imbergamo, Larry Lampasi, and Vincent Giangiobbe.

  At that time, DeVecchio also testified that another “fourteen individuals had been shot,” including the wounding of Colombo associate Steven Mancusi on February 7, 1992.37 But on October 7 a second attempt was made on Mancusi, just as with “Joe Waverly” Cacace—and unlike Waverly, who survived Scarpa’s second fusillade, Mancusi was murdered by unknown assailants, making him the eleventh victim in the war.38 Joe Scopo’s rubout in 1993 rounded out the official toll to a dozen murders—in half of which, as we’ve demonstrated, Greg Scarpa Sr. played a part.

  Moreover, if one accepts the premise that “34” not only engineered the final Colombo conflict but preceded it with his “plan B” attempt to frame Vic Orena for the Tommy Ocera murder, then it’s fair to include Ocera’s homicide in November 198939 and Jack Leale’s killing in November 1991,40 bringing the death toll to fourteen.

  Slipping in and out of Reality

  On December 15, 1993, Greg Scarpa made one final pitch for a deal. Once again he was the Machiavellian strategist, hoping to parlay his medical condition into another excuse for avoiding jail time. Now, just months after he’d tried to trade his release for “cooperation,” with his lawyer arguing that he still had valuable intel to offer the Feds, Scarpa sent Kartagener to insist that his client was suffering from “AIDS related dementia.” As Scarpa stood beside him before Judge Weinstein’s bench, Kartagener argued that Greg “was . . . slipping in and out of reality.”41

  Alleging that Scarpa was “getting into delusional states” as a result of “the drug therapy that he was undergoing,” the attorney asked Weinstein to consider keeping Scarpa “in a medical environment until he may become ready for sentencing, which may never occur.”42

  But the judge responded, “Mr. Scarpa appears to me to be understanding exactly what I’m saying,” and Scarpa quickly agreed, saying, “Yes, your honor.”43

  “Any prison sentence that’s imposed here in this case, I submit is, of course, the equivalent of a death sentence,” said Kartagener, “even if it’s a year long.” He went on to argue that a presentence report had indicated that Scarpa’s “diseased body” would “warrant downward departure,” or a shorter sentence. “That might sound ironic, when I make an argument like that on behalf of Greg Scarpa,” the lawyer continued. “Mr. Scarpa’s reputation precedes him into this courtroom.”44

  At that point, perhaps Kartagener should have stopped talking. But he went on to remind Weinstein that an EDNY judge had “showed . . . great humanity [and] allowed [Scarpa] to go home with an ankle bracelet once, and then he walked out the door and got shot in the eye.”45

  Renouncing the Mafia

  Then, in a display of audacity befitting the legal representative of the most audacious mobster alive, Kartagener proceeded to ask Weinstein “to consider the possibility of allowing this defendant to go home with whatever security devices might be appropriate, to die at home.”

  “That’s impossible,” Weinstein shot back.

  He then asked Scarpa if he wanted to add anything.

  As if he hadn’t been listening, Scarpa responded, “I expect to go home.”46

  “You’re not going home. You’re going to prison,” the judge said. “You understand that?”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  “If you want to say anything in amelioration of your crimes—”

  “No, your honor. There’s nothing more for me to say.” And then, alluding to his years as a TE informant, Scarpa added, “I tried to help, your honor. I’m sure you’re aware of that.”

  “Yes,” replied Weinstein.

  “But it just didn’t work out.”

  “I understand that, but I want a statement from you on the record, that as far as you’re concerned, you’ve cut off all ties to organized crime, and that you will do nothing in prison, or if you should leave prison, in connection with organized crime or any other criminal conspiracy. Is that clear?”47

  It was like asking Hannibal Lecter to promise he’d never kill again. But Scarpa responded, “Yes, your honor . . . I thought there was a possibility of me going home.”

  “No. It’s not possible,” said the judge. “But I want you to renounce and abjure any connection you may have had with organized crime.”

  “I do renounce it, your honor.”

  The transcript doesn’t record the expressions on the faces of the parties present, but one can only imagine them trading looks of bewilderment. Asking Gregory Scarpa to renounce his ties to the Mafia was like asking a great white shark to stop eating. But that’s what happened.

  Moments later, Valerie Caproni rightfully said, “I think Mr. Scarpa will say to you at this point whatever he thinks you want to hear, if he thinks it will get him out of jail. He desperately wants to go home.”48

  “I don’t agree with that,” Weinstein replied. He turned to face Scarpa. “Are you misleading me?”

  “No, your honor,” said Scarpa.

  “I don’t have that impression,” replied the judge.

  Gregory Scarpa was a sociopathic killer. Perhaps a psychopath. His protégé Larry Mazza later described him as “unscrupulous and treacherous.”49 Lin DeVecchio’s own lawyer called him “deceitful,” “a master liar.”50 Now, here was Jack B. Weinstein, the former chief judge of the Eastern District, a tough-talking New Yorker who had presided over dozens of organized crime trials—and he appeared to be buying Scarpa’s story of newfound redemption.

  At that stage in the hearing, Valerie Caproni called for an off-the-record discussion in the judge’s chambers. When the pa
rties emerged, Caproni hinted at what had been discussed: not just Scarpa’s years as an informant but his deception.

  “It was the abuse of trust of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that I thought should be called to your honor’s attention,” she said.

  But then, mindful of Lin DeVecchio’s role in the still-pending war prosecutions, she seemed to contradict herself.

  “In all fairness to Mr. Scarpa, he has been quite an asset to the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the years.”

  Then, in another flip backward, she added, “It doesn’t mitigate the fact that he was a killer during the war.”51

  Finally, after all of this, Weinstein was ready to pronounce sentence.

  Noting Scarpa’s role in the murders of Fusaro, Grancio, and Lampasi, he stated that the sentencing guidelines “call[ed] for a prison term of life.”52

  Then he added, “This defendant has terminal AIDS because of a blood transfusion and has had one eye shot out. He suffers punishment far beyond what this court can mete out. Despite the defendant’s dreadful murderous conduct, and that of his gang, he is a person, a human being. While he has done acts worse than those of a wild animal we would forfeit part of our God-given humanity were we to ignore his status as a fellow human being. If he were sentenced to life he would have to go to a maximum security institution where he probably would have been denied what would be essential to his medical and other treatment during this terminal period. Ten years rather than life will permit a sentence with a more comfortable prison. The Court will recommend the defendant be imprisoned near the Metropolitan New York area so he can be visited by his family.” The final sentence: “Ten years in prison. Five years of supervised release. A fine of $250,000, payable as Probation directs, and a special assessment of $100. Good luck.”53

  It was an act of mercy by a sitting federal judge for a Mafia killer who had been merciless over the years with dozens of his own victims. Scarpa then thanked Weinstein and Kartagener praised the judge for his “great humanity.”