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

by Peter Lance

  46. Addendum: Criminal Investigative Division, April 8, 1987, requesting additional authority for payment to Scarpa Sr. It describes broadly the “services” the informant provided in three major investigations identified as “Shooting Star,” “Gambino Family,” and “Starquest.”

  47. Robert M. Stutman and Richard Esposito, Dead on Delivery: Inside the Drug Wars, Straight from the Street (New York: Warner Books, 1992), 17–19.

  48. One of the Colombos who lured Farace to his death was Joseph Scalfani, one of the few members of Greg’s crew he trusted to give blood during his 1986 transfusion. Gregory Scarpa v. Victory Memorial Hospital and Dr. Angelito L. Sebollena, transcript of deposition of Gregory Scarpa, August 12, 1991, 27; Scarpa v. Victory Memorial et al. transcript, May 11, 1992, 16.

  49. FBI teletype from director, FBI, to FBI New York Office, September 25, 1991.

  50. Villano, Brick Agent, 105.

  51. “Jewelry Recovered by FBI for Church,” Associated Press, in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, January 22, 1973.

  52. The People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, October 29, 2007, transcript, 1544–1552; Tom Robbins and Jerry Capeci, “FBI Used Wiseguy to Crack KKK Man,” New York Daily News, June 21, 1994; author’s interviews with Judge W. O. Chet Dillard, October 10, 2011, and June 11, 2004.

  53. W. O. Chet Dillard, Clear Burning: Civil Rights, Civil Wrongs (Jackson, MS: Persimmon Press, 1992); memo to assistant director, FBI, from , January 21, 1966.

  54. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Linda Schiro, October 29, 2007, transcript, 1553; author’s interview with Linda Schiro, November 3, 2007.

  55. Rudy Johnson, “13 Indicted on Stock Theft and Counterfeit Counts,” New York Times, June 8, 1974.

  56. Memo from Newark to Bureau (1) Headquarters, December 19, 1977; letter from Edward A. McDonald, attorney in charge, U.S. Department of Justice Organized Crime Strike Force, EDNY, to Hon. I. Leo Glasser, July 22, 1986.

  57. FBI 302 memo, interview with Judge I. Leo Glasser, conducted by Supervisory Special Agents Timothy B. Kilund and Kevin P. Donovan, August 16, 1994.

  58. Special Agent Chris Favo, sworn affidavit, April 4, 1994.

  59. Al Guarte, “FBI Big Shots Knew Mob Rat Killed His Rivals,” New York Post, March 1, 1977.

  60. Kings County District Attorney Indictment No. 6825/2005, unsealed March 30, 2006.

  61. Ginsberg, “Hit Man for Mob Lost Count of Corpses.”

  62. Hamilton, “Mafia Daughter Says.”

  63. Linda Schiro interview, November 3, 2007.

  64. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Larry Mazza, October 19, 2007.

  65. Hamilton, “My Life as a Colombo Hit Man.”

  66. A list of seventeen homicides committed by Greg Scarpa Sr., or executed at his direction, compiled in the course of my investigation from court files, FBI 302s and 209s, and a series of appellate court decisions, can be found in Chapter 20. Scarpa pled guilty to three murders during the 1991–1993 war, but the evidence suggests that he directly participated in three more, bringing the death toll to twenty-three. See Chapter 27, “The Hit on Nicky Black,” and Chapter 28, “Closing and Reopening ‘34,’” concerning John Minerva and Michael Imbergamo. This investigation also makes a compelling case that Scarpa was involved in the murders of Thomas Ocera in 1989 and Jack Leale, the man identified by the Feds as Ocera’s killer, murdered on November 4, 1991. Lin DeVecchio stated in his 2011 memoir that Scarpa had killed one of the drug dealers who had threatened his son in the December 29, 1992, shootout that also resulted in the death of Patrick Porco, a friend of Scarpa’s son Joey. That would bring the total number of murder victims killed by Greg Scarpa Sr. directly or on his orders from 1980 to 1992 to twenty-six—all during the twelve-year period when former supervisory special agent Lin DeVecchio was Scarpa’s contacting or “control” agent.

  67. Gustin Reichbach, decision and order of dismissal, People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, November 1, 2007. See Appendix H.

  68. U.S. v. Michael Sessa, transcript of proceedings before Judge Jack B. Weinstein, September 24, 2001.

  69. Author’s interview with Ellen Resnick, February 21, 2012.

  CHAPTER 1: THE KISS OF DEATH

  1. Emanuel Perlmutter, “Valachi Queried by Senate Panel,” New York Times, September 27, 1963.

  2. Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), 36–38.

  3. Valachi was also known as “Charles Chambano,” “Joseph Siano,” and “Anthony Sorge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Valachi.

  4. Maas, The Valachi Papers, 272–73.

  5. Emanual Perlmutter, “Valachi Accuses Mafia Leader at Senate Inquiry,” New York Times, September 28, 1963.

  6. In The Godfather: Part II (1974), the character of Frank “Frankie Five Angels” Pentangeli appears for the first time as the successor to Corleone family underboss Peter Clemenza. Biography for Frankie Pentangeli (character), http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0000819/bio.

  7. “U.S. Now Asks Ban on Valachi’s Book. Sues After Protests to Bar Memoirs It Had Cleared,” New York Times, May 10, 1966; Maas, The Valachi Papers, 54.

  8. Fred Graham, “Valachi Allowed to Print Memoirs,”New York Times, December 28, 1965.

  9. Roger Greenspun, “The Screen: ‘Valachi Papers’ Arrives; Work Covers 30 Years of Criminal History; Bronson in Lead Role of Mafia Informant,” New York Times, November 4, 1972.

  10. Maas, The Valachi Papers, 38.

  11. Perlmutter, “Valachi Accuses Mafia Leader.”

  12. In Five Families, his history of the American underworld, former New York Times organized crime reporter Selwyn Raab writes, “Valachi was presented through television at hearings before Senator McClellan’s investigations committee as the nation’s first reliable witness on the inner workings of the Mafia.” Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005). See also: “Their Thing,” Time, August 16, 1963; “The Valachi Hippodrome,” editorial, New York Times, October 3, 1963.

  13. Robert F. Kennedy, “Robert F. Kennedy Defines the Menace,” New York Times Magazine, October 13, 1963.

  14. Maas, The Valachi Papers, 59.

  15. Sanford J. Unger, FBI: An Uncensored Look Behind the Walls (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1975), 392.

  16. Ibid.

  17. Ralph Ranalli, Deadly Alliance: The FBI’s Secret Partnership with the Mob (New York: HarperTorch, 2001).

  18. The primary proponent of this theory is author Anthony Summers, who presented hearsay evidence, from a series of questionable sources, that Hoover was seen on two occasions in 1958 and 1959 cross-dressing at the Plaza Hotel in New York and that he’d maintained a sexual relationship for years with his chief aide, Clyde Tolson. Anthony Summers, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: Putnam, 1993). But in his book The Bureau, author Ronald Kessler devotes multiple pages to debunking Summers’s cross-dressing allegations and conceding, with respect to Tolson, that “the fact that Hoover spent most of his leisure time with a man and that they took adoring photos of each other leaves open the question of whether Hoover was a closet homosexual who was either unaware of his orientation or suppressed it.” Ronald Kessler, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 107–12.

  19. Carl Sifakis, The Mafia Encyclopedia (New York: Checkmark Books, 2005), 20.

  20. Neil J. Welch and David W. Marston, Inside Hoover’s FBI: Top Field Chief Reports (New York: Doubleday, 1984).

  21. Ranalli, Deadly Alliance, 47.

  22. Claire Sterling, Octopus: How the Long Reach of the Sicilian Mafia Controls the Global Narcotics Trade (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 56.

  23. Ibid., 82–89.

  24. Ibid., 81.

  25. Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper & Row, 1972). “Luciano’s Plan,” as Sterling called it, was executed and resulted in $1.6 billion in illegal n
arcotics brought into the United States between 1975 and 1984.

  26. The trial lasted seventeen months at a cost of several million dollars. Seventeen of the original thirty-two accused Mafiosi indicted were convicted. The lead assistant U.S. attorney presiding over the case was Louis Freeh, a former FBI agent who would go on to become FBI director in 1993. Shana Alexander, The Pizza Connection: Lawyers, Money, Drugs, Mafia (New York: Weidenfield & Nicolson, 1988); Ralph Blumenthal, Last Days of the Sicilians: At War with the Mafia: The FBI Assault on the Pizza Connection (New York: Times Books, 1988).

  27. Thomas Repetto, American Mafia: A History of Its Rise to Power (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2004); “Apalachin Meeting,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apalachin_Meeting.

  28. Sterling, Octopus, 82–96.

  29. “Apalachin Meeting,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apalachin_Meeting.

  30. Selwyn Raab, “Joe Bonanno Dies; Mafia Leader, 97, Who Built Empire,” New York Times, May 12, 2002.

  31. Ranalli, Deadly Alliance, 49.

  32. Anthony Villano with Gerald Astor, Brick Agent: Inside the Mafia for the FBI (New York: Quadrangle, 1977), 44.

  33. Ranalli, Deadly Alliance, 70.

  34. Raab, Five Families, 136.

  35. Ibid., 50.

  36. William E. Roemer, Man Against the Mob: The Inside Story of How the FBI Cracked the Chicago Mob by the Agent Who Led the Attack (New York: Ballantine, 1989), 69.

  37. On Celano’s Custom Tailors at 620 North Michigan in Chicago: Roemer, Man Against the Mob. On the members of Congress: Kessler, The Bureau, 103.

  38. “Investigations: Bobby’s High Life,” Time, November 8, 1963.

  39. Thomas Repetto, Bringing Down the Mob: The War Against the American Mafia (New York: Holt, 2007), 90.

  40. Unger, FBI, 397.

  41. Ibid.

  42. House Committee on Government Reform, Everything Secret Degenerates: The FBI’s Use of Murderers as Informants, 3rd Report, HR Rep. No. 108-414 at 454 (2004).

  43. Ranalli, Deadly Alliance, 58.

  44. The primary agent, an alternate, and their supervisor. U.S. v. Victor M. Orena et al., testimony of Special Agent Howard Leadbetter II, May 18, 1995, 1313.

  45. Ronald J. Ostrow and Robert L. Jackson, “Agents Could Face Charges in Presser Inquiry,” Los Angeles Times, August 22, 1985.

  46. Nicholas Pileggi, Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).

  47. Jane Ann Morrison, “‘Lefty’ Rosenthal Was an FBI Snitch,” Las Vegas Review Journal, October 30, 2008.

  48. Plain Dealer staff, “Car Bomb Kills Danny Greene,” Plain Dealer, October 7, 1977.

  49. Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob (New York: HarperPaperbacks, 2001).

  50. “FBI Helped Bulger Evade Detection, Ex-Cop Says,” CBS News, June 24, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/06/24/earlyshow/main20073987.shtml.

  51. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, November 21, 1961.

  CHAPTER 2: A TRUE MACHIAVELLI

  1. Ronald Kessler, The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002), 106.

  2. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 533.

  3. John A. Goldsmith, “Valachi Says Gang Menaces Society,” United Press International, October 3, 1963.

  4. Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 135–38.

  5. National Geographic Channel, Inside the Mafia: What Mafia?, May 26, 2009, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhXRa0g_has&feature=related.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Thomas L. Jones, “The Dying of the Light: The Joseph Valachi Story,” TruTV.com, http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/mob_bosses/valachi//index_1.html.

  8. Raab, Five Families, 137.

  9. Peter Maas, The Valachi Papers (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), 123–28.

  10. Ibid., 43.

  11. Raab, Five Families, 137.

  12. Memo by liaison, December 4, 1967. Subject: Gregory Scarpa, FBI #584217A.

  13. On April 3, 1961. See Appendix C, a list of Scarpa Sr.’s twenty arrests.

  14. Memo, June 27, 1966 memorandum from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, July 6, 1967.

  15. One of the most famous scenes in The Godfather (novel and film) was inspired by an incident during the war in which Profaci gunmen killed Gallo loyalist Joseph “Joe Jelly” Gioiello and tossed his clothing, filled with fish, in front of a restaurant frequented by the Gallo brothers. The message, immortalized by Mario Puzo, was that he “sleeps with the fishes.” Raab, Five Families, 194.

  16. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, March 28, 1963.

  17. Letter from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. June 27, 1966. This letter was written during a period when Scarpa’s initial contacting agents had been transferred and he was withdrawing his cooperation.

  18. Ibid.

  19. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, July 6, 1967.

  20. Letter from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, June 27, 1966.

  21. Memo by liaison, December 4, 1967.

  22. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, November 21, 1961.

  23. Addendum: Criminal Investigative Division, April 8, 1987, memorializing an April 3, 1987, teletype requesting payment for “captioned source” for supplying “extremely singular information which led to 17 Title III intercepts and 50 reauthorizations forming the basis for the prosecution of the Colombo family.” U.S. v. Carmine Persico, No. 84 Cr.809 (JFK), opinion of Judge John F. Keenan denying motions to dismiss, http://www.ipsn.org/court_cases/us_v_persico_1986-09-25.htm.

  24. Lou Diamond, in an interview with Fredric Dannen, “The G-Man and the Hit Man,” New Yorker, December 16, 1996.

  25. Memo, FBI New York Office, October 3, 1966.

  26. Letter from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, June 27, 1966.

  27. Memo from J. H. Gale, assistant director, FBI, to Cartha DeLoach, deputy director, FBI, August 4, 1967.

  28. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, June 18, 1962, 11 pages.

  29. R. Lindley DeVecchio and Charles Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing: The Shocking Frame-up of a Mafia Crime Fighter (New York: Berkley, 2011), 108: “Although never a capo, Scarpa had his own very special status. He later confided in me that he would never agree to be a capo because it would draw too much attention to himself. He remained a soldier under capo Anthony ‘Scappi’ Scarpati, although their relationship was a mere formality. Scarpa always did his own thing.”

  30. The title of Fredric Dannen’s seminal piece on the Scarpa-DeVecchio scandal in the New Yorker, December 16, 1996.

  31. U.S. v. Michael Sessa, testimony of R. Lindley DeVecchio, November 2, 1992.

  CHAPTER 3: HITTING THE BOSS

  1. Memo from director, FBI, to New York authorizing payment of $3,000 to informant, June 26, 1962.

  2. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, June 6, 1963.

  3. Emmanuel Perlmutter, “Valachi Accuses Mafia Leader at Senate Inquiry,” New York Times, September 28, 1963.

  4. Author’s interview with DEA Special Agent Michael Levine (ret.), October 8, 2011.

  5. Michael T. Kaufman, “Profacis’ Roots Deep in Brooklyn,” Ne
w York Times, August 18, 1964.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Joseph A. Gambardello, “Colombo Family Has Bloody Past,” Newsday, December 17, 1991.

  8. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, June 25, 1962.

  9. Selwyn Raab, “Even to the 5 Families, the Fighting Colombos Have Been Black Sheep,” New York Times, December 10, 1991.

  10. Kaufman, “Profacis’ Roots Deep in Brooklyn.”

  11. Selwyn Raab, Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2005), 322–23.

  12. Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder, Murder, Inc.: The Story of the Syndicate Killing Machine (New York: Tenacity Media Books, 2012), 20. See link to the Foreword of a new edition of the book published in 2012: http://peterlance.com/wordpress/?p=450.

  13. Meyer Berger, “Anastasia Slain in a Hotel Here; Led Murder, Inc.”New York Times, October 26, 1957.

  14. Raab, Five Families, 328.

  15. Tom Folsom, The Mad Ones: Crazy Joe Gallo and the Revolution at the Edge of the Underworld (New York: Weinstein Books, 2008), 35.

  16. David J. Krajicek, “Frankie Abbatemarco Is the Opening Casualty in the Profaci Family Civil War,” New York Daily News, September 19, 2010.

  17. Nicholas Gage, “Key Mafia Figure Tells of ‘Wars’ and Gallo-Colombo Peace Talks,” New York Times, July 7, 1975.

  18. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, March 20, 1962, 7.

  19. Nicholas Gage, “Grudge Against Gallo Date to ‘War’ with Profaci,” New York Times, April 8, 1972.

  20. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, March 20, 1962, 6–8.

  21. Gage, “Grudge Against Gallo.”

  22. Ibid.

  23. FBI letterhead memo (LHM) re: Gregory Scarpa, May 1, 1962, 2.