Book summary “Mafia son”: summary

Introduction

You face a world where the boundary between law enforcement and organized crime dissolves completely. When you examine the highest levels of the American Mafia, you discover that federal agents often protect the most violent killers rather than stop them.

A chilling exploration of mob corruption and systemic law enforcement complicity through the dual perspectives of a notorious mafia captain and his imprisoned son.

This book investigates the brutal life of Greg Scarpa Sr. and his son Gregory Jr. You will journey through decades of heists, murders, and federal betrayal inside the Colombo crime family.

• How do federal supermax prisons enforce total sensory deprivation on inmates?
• What methods does a mob captain use to manipulate his own family?
• Why did an FBI handler provide operational cover for ruthless criminals?
• How did internal mob warfare and deadly diseases destroy a criminal empire?

1. Prison Isolation and the Mob Background

Federal supermax prisons enforce total sensory deprivation while legendary mob enforcers operate lucrative criminal empires under the protection of corrupt law enforcement.

ADMAX Florence Conditions

You enter the most secure federal penitentiary in the United States when you cross the gates of ADMAX Florence. Inmates spend twenty-three hours a day in a tiny steel-and-concrete cell. You endure constant surveillance and controlled lighting designed to induce sleep deprivation. Human contact remains heavily restricted to maintain institutional control.

Gregory Scarpa Jr. has lived in a single steel-and-concrete box since 1998. His soundproofed cell measures seven by nine feet. He survives on tasteless meals and brief, highly scrutinized recreation periods in a small steel-mesh cage known as a dog run or kennel. He will remain imprisoned until 2033 at age eighty-four if he survives the isolation.

The Top Echelon Informant Program

J. Edgar Hoover initiated the Top Echelon Informant Program after the Apalachia meeting on November 14, 1957. The bureau enlisted sworn Mafia members as informants to gather high-level organizational intelligence. Handlers routinely overlooked heinous crimes and shielded informants from prosecution in exchange for this cooperation.

Greg Scarpa Sr. began cooperating with the FBI in March 1962 after an armed robbery arrest. He eventually admitted to murdering more than fifty people with the full knowledge of his handlers. Over the years, the bureau paid him $150,000 in total informant fees.

Scarpa operated as a wealthy and ruthless capo and top earner in the Colombo crime family. Born in 1928, he ran a fifty-man crew from the Wimpy Boys Social Club in Bensonhurst. His crew generated millions through varied illicit enterprises including bookmaking, hijacking, loan sharking, and murder. He masked his violent sociopathy behind designer clothes and a friendly smile while always carrying $5,000 in emergency cash.

FBI handlers assigned to elite informants frequently crossed ethical lines. Anthony Nino Villano served as Scarpa's handler during the 1960s and 1970s. Villano broke bureau regulations and accepted financial kickbacks from mob heists. Scarpa would inform Villano where to find a stolen load of goods. Villano then recovered the property to collect a cash payout from the insurance company, keeping the money for himself.

2. The Father-Son Dynamic and Education

Greg Scarpa Sr. manipulated his son's absolute devotion by falsely claiming his mafia involvement was actually undercover work for the federal government. You see how the father weaponized the boy's desire for approval to secure absolute loyalty and silence. When confronted with newspaper articles exposing his criminal status, Scarpa told his adolescent son that he was an undercover hero for the FBI.

During a walk on the beach, Scarpa looked into young Gregory's eyes and compared himself to Eliot Ness. He convinced the boy that his criminal activities and stolen jewels were government-endorsed rewards.

Psychological Manipulation

The Scarpa household enforced a culture of aggressive physical retribution where perceived disrespect was met with extreme violence sanctioned by the father. Greg Scarpa Sr. strictly rejected weakness or apathy. He demanded that his children undergo rigorous physical training and defend family honor through immediate, overwhelming physical force.

When Gregory was beaten by older bar patrons, Scarpa Sr. drove his son back to the club. The father brutalized the man who threw the punches and ordered Gregory to kick the unconscious man in the face.

Mob influence and corrupt medical professionals were utilized to shield family members from military service during the Vietnam War. Despite Gregory's strong desire to enlist in the Army to fight in Vietnam, Greg Scarpa Sr. used his underworld connections and a corrupt Brooklyn physician to fabricate back and knee injuries, securing a draft exemption. Scarpa used a corrupt physician whose name he got from his FBI handler Nino Villano to diagnose Gregory with fictitious physical problems, changing his draft status to 1-Y without an actual medical exam.

Entering the Racket

At age seventeen, Gregory Scarpa Jr. took over stewardship of his father's numbers racket. Greg Sr. used his son as an intermediary to collect and filter information while keeping him personally insulated from higher mob figures like Nino Villano. Gregory cleared substantial weekly income from the numbers operation, most of which he spent on his girlfriend Diane.

Gregory managed the numbers game where his dad cleared about 10000 dollars a week. This allowed Gregory to take out approximately 2000 dollars a week for himself. In 1968, Gregory received a burnt-orange Corvette convertible from his father.

Greg Scarpa Sr.'s 50-person crew operated like a corporate enterprise featuring specialized units for specific crimes. You can observe the rigid division of labor within the organization:

• about 10 men served as pure killers on call;
• loan sharks were seeded with bankrolls to push money onto desperate borrowers;
• specialists stole luxury cars and disabled alarms;
• other crews hijacked commercial tractor trailers loaded with goods.

Scarpa seeded loan sharks with approximately 80000 dollars, requiring them to pay 100 dollars weekly on the principal while collecting high weekly interest rates. Gregory made 1500 to 2000 dollars per hijacked truck unloaded.

3. Underworld Operations and Mississippi

Mob enterprises thrived through specialized criminal units, intricate personal protocols, and clandestine federal operations involving torture.

Mistresses and Mafioso Rules

Mafia rules strictly prohibited made men from divorcing their wives or taking another made man's wife. You can observe how mobsters and their mistresses devised elaborate workarounds to satisfy strict community expectations.

Greg Scarpa could not divorce his wife Connie due to mob protocol. Linda Diana, an ambitious seventeen-year-old clerk typist making 40 dollars a week on Wall Street, wanted a traditional family. She married insurance agent Charlie Schiro on March 25, 1968, but immediately continued her relationship with Scarpa.

Scarpa's crew also engaged in lucrative petty crimes like picking pay phone lock boxes while funding luxurious road trips along the Eastern Seaboard. Using a specially designed lock-picking gadget created by Joe Brewster's buddy, the crew targeted pay phones across multiple states.

• Scarpa, Joe Brewster, and Sonny Squint drove along the Eastern Seaboard from Boston to Baltimore picking phone boxes;
• they stole about 50 dollars in dimes from a single pay phone;
• they enjoyed high-end hotel stays and dinners until the phone company installed more rigorous lock boxes.

High-stakes robberies were executed using clever visual deception and insider information while paying off both family bosses and corrupt law enforcement. When robbing a Manhattan Diamond District store, Scarpa used a large shade with an interior image printed on it to hide the crew from passersby.

Gregory Scarpa Jr. served as a lookout at a corner pay phone during the robbery. Each crew member received a payout of 165000 dollars after fencing the stolen jewels, and paid a 10000 dollars kickback to FBI agent Nino Villano.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Operation

Law enforcement handlers routinely protected high-level informants from prosecution and even accepted bribes due to a corrupt symbiotic relationship. DEA veteran Michael Levine cited 35 years of experience regarding agent-informant corruption. FBI agents frequently fell into emotional or conspiratorial alignment with their informants, shielding them from major criminal charges under the guise of technicalities.

Greg Scarpa Sr. was recruited by federal authorities to travel to Mississippi and use torture to extract information regarding murdered civil rights workers. In the summer of 1964, following the disappearance of three civil rights workers during Freedom Summer, the FBI flew Scarpa to the South as a clandestine operative.

Scarpa posed as a customer to ambush Klansman Byrd at an appliance store, bundled him into a car with an FBI driver, and tortured him in a remote cabin. This brutal interrogation revealed the burial site of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman. Federal agents subsequently arrested 18 men for conspiring to deny civil rights.

4. Violence, Betrayal, and FBI Collusion

As the Scarpa crew engaged in murder and complex scams, FBI handler Lin DeVecchio provided crucial operational cover and protection.

Dr. Scholnick's Execution

Dr. Eliezer Scholnick lost his medical license in 1976 due to incompetence. He sought revenge against Greg Scarpa Sr. for stealing his lover Lili Dajani and threatened to turn to the FBI.

FBI agent Lin DeVecchio supplied Scarpa with the doctor's address, photo, and daily routine. Joe Brewster engaged Dr. Scholnick in conversation in his apartment building lobby while Gregory Scarpa Jr. walked up behind him and shot him in the back of the head, pumping a second bullet into his skull to be sure.

The DeVecchio Shield

Top law enforcement officials frequently crossed ethical lines, accepting cash and gifts from mobsters in exchange for protection, inside information, and operational cover. Debbie Scarpa witnessed her father hand a thick stack of neatly aligned cash held by a rubber band to Agent DeVecchio in their living room on Avenue J.

R. Lindley DeVecchio managed top echelon informant Greg Scarpa Sr., receiving permission to activate Scarpa's file in 1980, earning a promotion to squad supervisor in 1983, and taking charge of the entire Colombo crime family squad in 1988.

The U.S. Secret Service caught Scarpa in a sting involving 300 blank counterfeit credit cards sold by an undercover officer in July 1986. The prosecution pushed for a maximum sentence, but Lin DeVecchio submitted a memo detailing Scarpa's informant contributions to Judge Leo Glasser.

This intervention resulted in Scarpa receiving only a $10,000 fine and five years probation instead of prison time.

5. Aids, Colombo War, and Internal Conflict

Suffering from bleeding ulcers caused by chronic aspirin use for back pain, Greg Scarpa Sr. required emergency surgery and blood transfusions. Linda recruited crew members to donate blood to avoid tainted hospital supplies, including a bodybuilder named Paul Mele who was secretly dying of AIDS from shared steroid needles.

Greg Scarpa Sr. contracted HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion during ulcer surgery, a virus allegedly carried by a steroid-using crew member.

Paul Mele, a 29-year-old crew member and bodybuilder who regularly shared needles for anabolic steroids, donated blood for Scarpa and later died of AIDS-related pneumonia. Scarpa weighed 230 pounds before his hospitalization, dropped to 150 pounds after exiting the hospital, and was finally discharged from Mt. Sinai Hospital on October 21, 1986.

Faced with an upcoming federal narcotics indictment led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Valerie Caproni, Greg Sr. convinced his son to take his place on the indictment list. DeVecchio manipulated the federal case by steering prosecutors away from the informant father and framing Gregory Jr. as the head of the operation.

To protect Greg Scarpa Sr. from a federal drug indictment while he was dying of AIDS, Lin DeVecchio and Greg Sr. conspired to have Gregory Jr. take the blame.

Greg Scarpa Sr. showed his son a handwritten list of indicted crew members where Gregory Jr.'s name replaced his own, while Linda Schiro noted that Scarpa had placed a gun behind the couch and talked of suicide out of guilt. Gregory spent 11 months hiding out on the lam in Pennsylvania while receiving $2,000 in weekly cash deliveries sent to him.

The AIDS Diagnosis

Greg Scarpa Sr. contracted the AIDS virus from a hospital blood transfusion, a devastating outcome he referred to as the one bullet he could not duck. Unaware of perfected blood screening tests for the AIDS virus at the time, Scarpa accepted tainted blood during medical treatment, leading to his eventual severe decline, dementia, and death.

Scarpa sued Victory Memorial Hospital for negligence and malpractice, ultimately accepting a cash settlement of $350,000 picked up in canvas bags by Linda and Larry Mazza, down from his original $1.5 million sued amount.

The Colombo Family War

When aging boss Thomas DiBella stepped down and Carmine Persico was imprisoned for life, Victor Orena challenged Persico's attempt to anoint his son Alphonse. This divided the crime family into Orena loyalists and Persico loyalists, with Greg Scarpa Sr. becoming a principal violent enforcer for the Persico faction.

Greg Scarpa Sr. angrily rebuffed Victor Orena's request for support at a funeral by telling him to go fuck himself, and a half-dozen masked men later riddled Little Linda's car with bullets outside the Scarpa home.

Despite guidelines requiring agents to close informants involved in serious acts of violence, DeVecchio leaked addresses of rivals, provided a radio scanner with private frequencies to monitor surveillance, and successfully pushed to reinstate Scarpa as an informant after a brief closure, enabling him to operate with a de facto license to kill.

When Agent Chris Favo reported that a loan shark named Carmine Imbriale had been arrested and was talking about Greg Sr. shooting someone, DeVecchio promptly called Scarpa to tip him off about the custody.

6. The Death of the Grim Reaper

Ravaged by late-stage AIDS sores and dementia, Greg Scarpa Sr. was sentenced to ten years in prison and housed in a federal hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. Weighing only fifty-six pounds, he signed a deathbed affidavit that absolved Alphonse Persico of instigating the Colombo War.

Greg Scarpa Sr. died in federal custody after signing a deathbed affidavit, while his son gathered vital counter-terrorism intelligence in prison.

Linda Schiro attended his sixty-sixth birthday party at the prison hospital, where he cried and apologized to her before dying on June 4, 1994. Following his death, Allie Persico refused to pay Linda residual shylocking payments, prompting her to start a sexual relationship with Lin DeVecchio and become an FBI informant herself.

Whistle-blowing agents Chris Favo and Jeffrey Tomlinson formally reported DeVecchio's misconduct. Prosecutors delayed the investigation, and defense attorneys used leaked evidence to secure acquittals for multiple Colombo defendants before DeVecchio retired after thirty-three years of service.

Counter-Terrorism Disclosures

Street-level drug dealing and minor mob disputes frequently ended in fatal violence. Joey Schiro was shot twice in the back of the head by Vinny Rizzuto after a dispute over a minor pot theft, while his friend Jay managed to escape and flag down police. Rizzuto spent three years on the run before capture and received a twenty-four-year prison sentence.

Upon learning that her son Joey was dead, Linda Schiro swallowed twenty-five remaining Ativan pills and emergency paramedics had to break down her door with an axe. This breakdown occurred after thirty years of accepting mob violence, fundamentally altering her perspective.

While housed next to World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef at MCC in Manhattan, imprisoned mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. used his informant skills to win Yousef's confidence and gather vital intelligence. Gregory Scarpa Jr. used a miniature spy camera provided by the FBI to photograph coded notes and bomb recipes passed between prison cells by Ramzi Yousef.

Federal prosecutors and the FBI dismissed warnings about Al-Qaeda's plans to use planes as flying bombs. AUSAs Patrick Fitzgerald and Michael J. Garcia laughed at Yousef's plot, failing to fathom that American planes might one day crash into the World Trade Center with full loads of jet fuel.

Supermax Incarceration

The federal correctional complex in Florence, Colorado, spans six hundred acres and houses inmates in ADMAX. Gregory Scarpa Jr. was locked down in a tiny tomb-like cell for twenty-three hours a day, receiving recreation in a steel cage for only one hour. Judge Reena Raggi handed down an additional forty-year consecutive prison sentence to Gregory Scarpa Jr.

You navigate the strict progression rules of the facility:

• Progress through Level I by spending the first year in a cell for twenty-three hours daily with no privileges.
• Advance to Level II to gain television access determined by corrections officers while wearing handcuffs, belly chains, and leg shackles when leaving the cell.
• Attain Level III to traverse the fifty-foot walk to the shower, exercise room, or telephone without an escort, maintaining compliance to avoid reverting to Level I.

7. The DeVecchio Trial and Government Cover-Up

Independent forensic researchers uncovered extensive evidence implicating retired FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio in systemic corruption and mob murders. Dr. Stephen P. Dresch and Angela Clemente spent six years investigating the deep-rooted alliance between Greg Scarpa Sr. and his FBI handler Lindley DeVecchio, documenting how DeVecchio leaked addresses, withdrew surveillance, and helped the mob execute rivals.

Retired FBI agent Lin DeVecchio faced murder charges while federal authorities suppressed accurate terrorism intelligence and punished whistleblowers.

Dr. Stephen P. Dresch and Angela Clemente interviewed hundreds of individuals and concluded that the intelligence supplied by Gregory Scarpa Jr. was the single most significant pre-9/11 Al-Qaeda intelligence in U.S. history.

Locating Oklahoma City Explosives

Gregory Scarpa Jr. used prison plumbing pipes to communicate with Terry Nichols at ADMAX and located hidden explosives from the Oklahoma City bombing. By blowing excess water out of sink and shower drains, inmates in D Unit spoke through dry pipes. Scarpa manipulated Nichols by posing as a wealthy Mafia kingpin and offering cash and fake cooperation documents to find the hidden stash.

Terry Nichols revealed the explosives were buried under a crawl space at a house in Herington, Kansas, and the Topeka bomb squad eventually recovered them after a tip from forensic analyst Angela Clemente.

Federal authorities repeatedly dismissed and covered up accurate terrorism intelligence provided by Gregory Scarpa Jr. out of fear of agency embarrassment. Despite providing verified intelligence regarding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing, the FBI and U.S. Attorney's offices refused to negotiate or validate Scarpa to protect their own reputations and career records.

FBI agents gave Scarpa two intentionally flawed polygraph tests, claimed he failed both, and told him to let the unrecovered explosives stay hidden for another ten years.

The Prosecution of Lin DeVecchio

Retired FBI agent Lin DeVecchio was arrested and indicted for four Mafia-related murders committed during his relationship with Greg Scarpa Sr. Kings County DA Charles Hynes charged DeVecchio with corruption and complicity in the murders of Mary Bari, Joseph DeDomenico, Patrick Porco, and Larry Lampasi, demonstrating that Scarpa had controlled the handler-informant relationship.

DeVecchio allegedly alerted Greg Scarpa Sr. that Mary Bari was talking to federal law enforcement, prompting Scarpa and his son to murder her in a Brooklyn social club.

Forensic analyst Angela Clemente was nearly killed in a violent ambush in Brooklyn after pushing for investigations into corrupt FBI agents and Mafia murders. Lured to an early morning meeting under the guise of receiving an investigative tip regarding DeVecchio, Clemente was beaten on the right side of her body and choked until her assailant believed she was dead.

Clemente was found half in and half out of her car door near Caesar's Bay strip mall in Bensonhurst after calling a journalist beforehand and leaving instructions to alert prosecutors if she did not return.

Gregory Scarpa Jr. was finally transferred out of Florence ADMAX to the Metropolitan Correction Center in New York to assist prosecutors with the DeVecchio trial. Escorted by representatives from the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, Scarpa experienced commercial air travel and outside society for the first time in nearly two decades before facing harsh isolation conditions at MCC.

During transit, federal marshals and DA investigators treated Gregory with unexpected respect, providing a jacket in the freezing weather and flying him in a private section of a commercial airplane.

The Brooklyn District Attorney's office used gourmet food and family visits as incentives to induce cooperation and testimony from Gregory Scarpa Jr. During his interviews regarding his father and Lin DeVecchio, Gregory was treated to lavish breakfasts and Italian lunches while being granted an emotional reunion with his mother, son, and brother.

Gregory met with his mother Connie, his brother Frankie, and Frankie's fiancée A.J., gorging on bagels, smoked salmon, pastries, and veal while discussing his past crimes.

10 Key Ideas

1. The Top Echelon Informant Program enlisted sworn Mafia members like Greg Scarpa Sr. as informants while handlers routinely overlooked heinous crimes and shielded them from prosecution.
2. Greg Scarpa Sr. manipulated his son Gregory Jr.'s absolute devotion by falsely claiming his violent mafia involvement was actually undercover work for the federal government.
3. Mafiacrew enterprises thrived through specialized criminal units, intricate personal protocols, and clandestine federal operations involving torture such as Greg Scarpa Sr.'s extraction of information in Mississippi.
4. FBI handler Lin DeVecchio provided crucial operational cover, leaked addresses of rivals, and protected Greg Scarpa Sr. from prosecution through memo submissions and tips.
5. Greg Scarpa Sr. contracted HIV through a contaminated blood transfusion during ulcer surgery from a steroid-using crew member who later died of AIDS.
6. To protect Greg Scarpa Sr. from a federal drug indictment while he was dying of AIDS, Lin DeVecchio and Greg Sr. conspired to have Gregory Jr. take the blame.
7. Despite guidelines requiring agents to close informants involved in serious violence, DeVecchio successfully pushed to reinstate Scarpa as an informant during the Colombo family war, enabling him to operate with a de facto license to kill.
8. While housed next to World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef at MCC in Manhattan, imprisoned mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. used an FBI-provided miniature spy camera to gather vital intelligence that federal prosecutors and the FBI dismissed.
9. Imprisoned at ADMAX Florence, Gregory Scarpa Jr. used prison plumbing pipes to communicate with Terry Nichols and located hidden explosives from the Oklahoma City bombing, but federal authorities repeatedly dismissed and covered up this accurate intelligence.
10. Retired FBI agent Lin DeVecchio faced murder charges brought by Kings County DA Charles Hynes for corruption and complicity in mafia-related murders after independent forensic researchers uncovered extensive evidence of his alliance with Greg Scarpa Sr.