GREG SCARPA, LEGENDARY EVIL—Jonathan Dyer

Goodfellow, capo, killer, thief. A man so diabolically evil that he ordered his eldest son to murder his closest associate, and his youngest son to murder his best friend.
When Greg Scarpa was in his early twenties he became a goodfellow in the Profaci family by swearing a blood oath to the Mafia, at the time the country’s largest organized-crime syndicate. And for 25 years he betrayed that oath and the men closest to him by acting as a paid informant for the FBI. He fed America’s premier law enforcement agency a steady stream of self-serving information accusing the men who trusted him with their lives of every crime he was himself committing. During those 25 years of treachery, Scarpa was a one-man crime wave who spent only 30 days behind bars thanks to his status as the FBI’s ultimate Mafia insider. His standing as a prized informant freed him to engage in mayhem and murder knowing he had a virtual license to kill with reckless abandon.
Greg Scarpa, Legendary Evil is a deep dive that provides fresh insight into Scarpa’s malignant personality. Dyer peels back the layers of myth and misdirection to paint as complete and accurate a picture as possible of a man who murdered his enemies and betrayed his friends, of a bigamist who loved only money, of a feared and reviled man whose destructive appetites knew no bounds. GREG SCARPA, LEGENDARY EVIL: The Many Faces of a Mafia Killer—Jonathan Dyer

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
killers in true crime history and the authors that have
written about them. Geesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK. Every
week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,

(00:30):
journalist and author Dan Zufanski.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Good Evening, Good fellow, Capo killer thief, a man so
diabolically evil that he ordered his eldest son to murder
his closest associate and his youngest son to murder his
best friend. When Greg Scarpa was in his early twenties,
he became a good fellow the Prafacci family by swearing

(01:01):
a blood oath to the mafia, at the time, the
country's largest organized crime syndicate, and for twenty five years
he betrayed that oath and the men closest to him.
By acting as a paid informant for the FBI. He
fed America's premier law enforcement agency a steady stream of

(01:21):
self serving information, accusing the men who trusted him with
their lives of every crime he was himself committing. During
those twenty five years of treachery, Scarpa was a one
man crime wave who spent only thirty days behind bars
thanks to his status as the FBI's ultimate mafia insider,

(01:44):
his standing as a prized informant, freedom to engage in
mayhem and murder, knowing he had a virtual license to kill.
Greg SCARPA Legendary Evil is a deep dive that provides
fresh insight into scarp malignant personality. Dyer peels back the
layers of myth and misdirection to paint as complete and

(02:08):
accurate a picture as possible of a man who murdered
his enemies and betrayed his friends, of a bigamist who
loved only money, of a feared and reviled man whose
destructive appetites knew no bounds. The book that we're featuring
this evening is Greg SCARPA Legendary Evil, The Many Faces

(02:30):
of a Mafia Killer, with my special guest author Jonathan Dyer.
Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for
this interview. Jonathan P.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Dyer, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Dan, thank you very much. First off, tell us this
very interesting story, the origins of this book. How you
came to write this book, Greg SCARPA Legendary Evil.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
Sure, my writing partner Joe Pletto, and I were working
on some spec scripts based off of Larry Masa's book
The Life, and as we did that, Craig Scarpa was
obviously a central character, and writing the scripts we got
more and more into factors besides Larry Masa that were

(03:23):
crucial to that story. And at one point Joe suggested
that I write a biography to Craig Scarpen and I
kind of pushed back. I hadn't written anything of book
length nonfiction. I've written, you know, graduate school stuff. I'd
written some blog entries about baseball, but nothing book length
in terms of nonfiction. And Joe kept pushing a little,

(03:46):
pretty pretty gently, but so finally I said, you know,
I'll take a shot at it. I'll give it, give
it a world two plus years of research and writing.
After deciding to go ahead and do that, actually closer
to three years, i'd kind of put the project aside.
I had a conversation with another friend of mine, Pete Fairley,

(04:07):
and Pete was really very kind and persuasive, saying, you
know you should do this, don't give up, keep going,
and gave me a little pep talk really when I
needed it. And so at that point, I was in
contact with Wild Blue Press and they were kind enough

(04:29):
to pick up the book. And that's really how the
book came about.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Let's talk about you call it the beginning lawren Zaga
to Brooklyn. This is Greg scarp of Senior's father's journey
from Northeast Italy, a small town, to America's biggest city.
And you talked about that by nineteen ninety there was
more Italians that lived in New York City than in Italy,

(05:00):
except for the exception of the city of Rome. To
talk about Scarpa's early life, Greg Scarpa's early life, his
father Salvatore tell us about their early life in New York.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Sure, they came right around the time of the First
World War, and there was this huge attime diaspora to
New York, as you point out, and both Scarpus's father
and mother emigrated to New York, and they were both
pretty young, and they were both very poor. They married

(05:35):
in New York and had five children, fourth of which
was Greg Scarpa. He had three older sisters and one
younger brother. And the documents from the Census Bureau from
nineteen thirty nineteen forty really indicate just how poor the
Scarpa family was. They were making virtually no money, just

(05:56):
a little bit here and there. And in fact, Greg
Scarpa told his daughter Linda about going around Pauling Cole
in Brooklyn in New York when he was about eight
years old, to try to make a few bucks with
his dad. And those are the circumstances that Scarpa grew
up and very poor, a member of a meteor moderately

(06:19):
large Italian immigrant family in a largely Italian immigrant neighborhood.
Scarper went to high school, he finished high school, and
at the time that he finished high school, right around
the mid forties, the United States was demobilizing and he
had to compete for employment with literally millions of other

(06:43):
young men coming back from being in the service during
World War Two.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
You say that he joined the Merchant Marines, but right
after that he was being recruited by Charlie Decige los
Ario of the Profacci family, one of the five mafia
families in New York City. A virtual prerequisite from membership, though,
you had to be a Sicilian. Tell us how he

(07:11):
gets to be involved in the Pafacci family despite not
being Sicilian.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, Dan, that was as you point out after a
brief service in the Merchant Marine, which his son Gregory Jr.
Told me about, Scarpa was back in Brooklyn and Tallagero
of Cicero or the Cicero I've heard it Browns both ways. Anyway,
Charlie decide kind of took him under his arm there

(07:38):
in their neighborhood in Brooklyn, and the Profaci family, unlike
the other four families of the New York Mafia, did
not have this requirement that you'd be from Sicily or
be Sicilian in order to join, and that was sort
of a screening, vetting idea that the other families had

(07:58):
that you would really understand what this mafia organization Coosonostra
was all about if you were from Sicily. But again
the Prafacci family was not concerned with that, which is
for Scarpa's you know, you want to call it good
fortune at the time was important for him because he

(08:19):
wasn't Cecilican, so the Cistero tick him under his wing,
and Scarpa by the early nineteen fifties earned his button
as a good fellow, which meant he was actually a member.
At first, he was an associate, as people that are
originally working with other mafia members are but then he
earned his button as a good fellow. In the early

(08:40):
nineteen fifties, you.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Talk about that he was married to Connie Farace or
Connie Forrest as she went by, and soon had a
daughter named Deborah and then later a son named Gregory Junior.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
Greg and Connie met in the late nineteen forties and
got married and they started a family, just like lots
of people did during those baby boom years, and their
four children, one of those was Gregory Junior, and Gregory
Junior and the other members of the Scarpett family eventually

(09:21):
moved to Staten Island. Greig was doing well enough to
tell a Connie pick out a house, anyhouse you like,
and you can fix it up exactly the way you want.
So the family moved out of Brooklyn into Staten Island,
and Gregory talks about those years is being really good
family years. They had a pool, they had lots of

(09:43):
parties at their house. They enjoyed where they were living.
As Gregory was growing up, and at the same time, Craig,
of course, was increasing his profile in the Profacci family
and eventually became a coppo. By the early nineteen sixties
in the profaction family. So there's this dual nature of

(10:03):
Scarpa's life, on the one hand, family man and on
the other hand, mafia family man. And that's proceeding through
the nineteen fifties and into the early nineteen sixties.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
You talk about in the late fifties, the FBI already
had regional offices gathering information on mobsters in their territories
and reporting regularly to Washington. But the FBI, you right,
made little progress during the fifties to understand the structure

(10:37):
and workings of organized crime. You talk about Gregory Scarpa's
criminal career ever evolving, and then an opportunity for the
FBI when they contact Gregory Scarpa and want some information
from what is the what are they offering, and how

(10:59):
do they approach greg Ley Scarpat.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, just backing up a little, You're absolutely right about
the FBI not really having a clear picture of what
was going on with organized crime. A lot of that
had to do with jayger Hoover's own vision that there
was no organized prime in the United States. And once
John Kennedy became president and his brother Bobby Kennedy became
the Attorney General. That changed quickly. John Kennedy, as I

(11:26):
note in the book, during one of his speeches on
the campaign trail in nineteen sixty, noted that there was
organized crime in the United States and it was growing.
A number of initiatives start in the FBI to try
to figure out what this organization, the mafia, is all about,
and so agents were tasked with trying to get informants

(11:49):
within the excuse me, within the mafia to provide them
with information. The FBI in New York, in the New
York Office, was looking for Greig Scar his brother Sal
in connection with a suspected hijacking. They believe Sal was
involved and they couldn't find him. So they knew that
Craig was his brother from some older arrest records that

(12:12):
they had, and they approached Greg and asked them to
help them find Sal, and Craig, apparently very politely in
exchanges that were completely civil, said I'm not going to
help you. I can't do it. And they pushed for
a little while trying to get him to help, and

(12:33):
finally he said, look, fellas, I'm going to get killed
if people see me talking to you, So you've got
to just leave me alone. And it seemed like at
that point that that was it. FBI and Greg Scarpa
were not going to have any relationship. But Scarpa had
a change of heart and he approached the FBI and said, essentially,

(12:55):
what do you want to know?

Speaker 2 (12:57):
It's very interesting that the FBI had an issue a
program almost at the same time called the Top Echelon
Criminal Informant Program or TECHI as its short form designated,
and they wanted and were interested in gaining information. So

(13:17):
in that regard, what's Greg Scarpa rule with the FBI.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
Yeah, that program, as I read the FBI documents, grew
out of what was originally called a top hoodlum program.
The TECI program was a little more sophisticated, and again
the FBI was trying to get out of the darkness
that they existed in with respect to information about the mafia.
And once Greg Scarpa decided that he was going to

(13:48):
cooperate with the FBI, not so much to half his
brother arrested, but to provide the FBI with the information
that they were interested in about bigger picture FBI mafia activity.
Once he decided to go ahead and do that, the

(14:10):
amount of information that he provided very quickly was just enormous.
He provided information about the history of the mafia, the
history of the mafia in the United States. He provided
information about their ceremonies, about their rules and regulations, about
their dues and don'ts I mean. He provided information about

(14:30):
their structure, about their organizational structure, what a papo was,
what a boss was, what the boss of bosses, who
that was. He provided them with a wealth of information
that was, it appears from the documents, was really brand
new to the FBI. They were very excited about this
new contact, Greg Scarpa, who was providing him with them

(14:54):
with all this information. From from Scarpu's point of view,
it seems to me that scarp was after two things,
and one was money, because the FBI was paying him
for this information, and money was really the only thing
that Greg Scarpa really loved in his life. And protection,
protection from incarceration, from being arrested, from being tried, convicted,

(15:19):
and incarcerated. So the two sides really had something that
they specifically wanted and it paid off for both of them.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. What you haven't mentioned is that Gregory Scarpa
said he was a coppo in the Profacci family, meaning
the highest member, the boss in the Pafacci family. There
was some dispute on that claim, wasn't it.

Speaker 3 (15:52):
Sharp is self reporting to the FBI with regard to
the structure the Profacci family, he included himself as a coppo.
And what we find later is that Scarpa, when Joe
Colombo became the boss of the Prafacci family, Carpo was
no longer a coppo. When Prafaci died in nineteen sixty two,

(16:15):
the heads of the other families in New York were
really interested in having some younger leadership in at the
head of what became the Columbo family, and Joe Colombo
was younger for a boss at the time, and as
I recall, in his mid forties. And Joe Colombo had
that same attitude that he was going to try to

(16:37):
inject youthfulness into the coppo structure of the Colombo family.
And so Scarpa fully appoint expected to be appointed a
coppo under Joe Colombo. But it didn't happen. And if
it had happened, at least my reading of the documents
is that it would have been a reappointment since he
had been a coppo and self reported as a coppo

(17:00):
under the Profacci family. What happened instead was, according to
Gregory Junior, greg Senior became part of this very close
circle of Colombo advisors, Colombo friends, just this inner circle
for Joe Colombo. And again according to Gregory, as a

(17:21):
result of that, he had more power in the family
than he would have had as a coppo with respect
to his closeness to Joe Colombo. And so we don't
see all of these years that he's operating in the
Columbo family. We don't see greg as a coppo, but
as a good fellow.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
You take us to nineteen sixty two and back to
greg Scarpus's personal life. He began to court a teen
despite being married a team from Brooklyn, Linda Diana, who
was seventeen years old and he was thirty four at
the time. She became eventually his mistress or as they

(18:04):
referred to him as Gumar, and this relationship, as you write,
lasted until his death. They lived together for thirty years
and had two children, and for all intents and purposes,
husband and wife. Tell us a little bit about more
about this relationship while he is married.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Yeah, he never divorced Connie. He he bought a horse
farm for her in Lakewood, New Jersey and moved her
out there. And this was after he had started having
an affair with Linda Diana later Linda Schiro and the
good Fellow ethic, if you want to call it, that

(18:47):
almost required a powerful mafia figure to have a gumar
a mistress, so this was not at all unusual, especially
even though he was married. So that relationship began, as
you point out, in the early nineteen sixties, when Scarpa
was about twice Linda Sharra's age. She was actually a

(19:10):
minor at the time, and Linda Schiro Linda Diana at
the time was already very familiar with the mob. She
lived in Brooklyn. She'd been around gangsters really from a
very young age. Her her grandmother ran numbers for the
mob in Brooklyn, and she dated a mobster for a

(19:37):
while before she had met Greg scarp In fact, she
was dating him while she first became involved with Greg Scarpa.
So she was very familiar with the mob life and
as she said many times quite frankly, when people asked
her if she was afraid of Greg Scarpa if she
was concerned about her own safety. She said, look, I

(19:59):
admired the guys. I was thrilled by it. I wasn't
afraid at all. And that, as you point out, that
relationship with Linda Schirow eventually blossomed into Greg and Linda
getting a place together and then Linda having two children
by Greg Scarpa, a son and a daughter in reverse order.

(20:22):
That the daughter was first and that was Linda Little
Linda as the calder, and then Joy Scarper was a
couple of years later, all the while Scarpa maintained his marriage.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
Very very interesting though, that Linda Diana has a plan,
has a plan with Gregory Scarpa and to use to
duke to fool Charlie Shiro tell us about this plan
to have children, and Charlie Shiro not to be the wiser.

Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah. When Linda, well, for most of her life, I
suppose she considers herself a devout Catholic and she didn't
want to have children out of wedlock, and scarp was
already married, so she didn't feel that she could have
children with him, and her children could be baptized in
the Catholic Church. So what she came up with was

(21:22):
the scheme to get married to this guy, Charlie, and
then still have Scarpa's children, but try to pretend and
deceive Charlie that they were his, and they were married,
the children could be baptized and Linda would have be
able to fulfill those goals of having children by Greg

(21:43):
Scarpa and the children being baptized in the Catholic church.
Charlie eventually caught on, particularly when a caregiver made a
comment about how much Joey looked like Greg Scarpa. Charlie
eventually caught on, and there was a divorce and Linda
and Greg moved in together permanently shortly after that. Just

(22:07):
you know, when Linda first brought this idea, the scheme
to Greg, he thought it was nuts. He just said
that's crazy. But eventually he said, okay, let's go ahead
and do that, and that's exactly what they did.

Speaker 2 (22:23):
You're right that the Joe Prafacci, head of the Prafacci family,
dies in June nineteen sixty two at sixty four years old.
Scarpa tells his handlers that the First Columbo War was
in full swing Pifacci Gallo feud otherwise that we be call.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Right the Gallow brothers, there are three of them. Larry
Gallow was kind of the brains did outfit, and then
Joey was a little more unhinged, and then there was
Albert kid Blast Gallo, and the three Gallo brothers that
had been brought into the Prafacci family during the nineteen
fifties felt that they weren't getting the lucrative assignments, the

(23:06):
lucrative jobs, a lucrative posts that they felt they were
entitled to, and so there was a lot of grumbling
about that. And then the death of joe Prafacci was
an opportunity for a lot of people to try to
to maneuver their way into a more powerful position in
the Columbo family, and that was one of the goals

(23:29):
of the Gallows as well. And at one point Carman
Persico attempted to kill Larry Gallo by strangling him, and
the attempted murder was interrupted. Larry survived, but the bad
blood between Carmen Persico, who became an important member in
the Colombo family and actually the Columbo family in general,

(23:53):
continued passed Profacci's death and into the succession of cential
succession by Joe Columbo as the boss of the family.

Speaker 2 (24:06):
Let's talk about Greg Scarpa as a killer while at
the same time he has various handlers, or at least
he has two handlers. Special agent that will be Lynn
de Vecchio will be a very important figure in this story,
but she is not his first handler. So let's talk
about Greg Scarpa as a killer and while at the

(24:29):
same time, what information is he giving the FBI.

Speaker 3 (24:35):
Yeah, we don't have a lot of hard data on
Scarpa's killings during the nineteen fifties and the early nineteen sixties.
We do have some testimony from Linda Charro about Barpa
killing fairly capriciously a guy he was supposed to be
buying some stamps from, and then Scarpa met him in
a car Linda Hurd gunshots, and then Scarpa came back

(24:59):
with both the money and the stamps or maybe it
was coins. I don't recall off the top of my head, Dan,
But at any rate, because as I point out in
the book, these guys are living in a world of secrecy.
They're not They don't have a bunch of press following
them around we don't have a whole lot of a
clear idea what scarp was up to in terms of murders.

(25:20):
We do know that Linda has said that when they
first met Scarpid said that he had already killed twenty
plus people, And we don't know if that's Scarpa trying
to brag. We don't know if it's absolutely true, and
if it is, we don't know who those victims are.
But eventually, as a result of Scarpa being involved with

(25:43):
the FBI, we get a clearer picture of the murders
that Scarpa was involved in during the sixties, seventies, and
eighties and into the nineties. And in fact, one of
the theories that I have in the book is that
when Scarpa was first dropped by the FBI in nineteen
seventy five, and its first handler was Anthony Veolano, it's

(26:07):
my view that another informant told the FBI that of
a murder that scarp had been involved in in nineteen
sixty four that didn't come to light to the FBI
till nineteen seventy five, and that's why scarp was dropped
by the FBI as an informant. They had told him
during the crisis after Joe Perfacci died, that he was

(26:28):
absolutely not to be involved in murder. He told the
FBI that there was some there was some rumbling that
he was going to be told to kill the potential
successor to Perfaccio, this guy Maglioco. And when he told
the FBI that, all kinds of alarm bells went off,
both in New York and in Washington, and scarp was

(26:49):
told in no uncertain terms he was not to be
involved in murder, not to be involved in killing. That
was a line he wasn't supposed to cross. As we know,
he crossed it many times. And again it's my view
that when the FBI found out in nineteen seventy five
that had been involved, specifically alleged to be involved in
a murder in nineteen sixty four, that that's when they

(27:12):
dropped him the first time. So that's some of the
sort of skeedgy detail we have on Scarpa's career as
a killer up until about nineteen eighty, when we start
getting a lot more.

Speaker 2 (27:27):
Let's not go into the various accounts of what Scarpug
provided to the FBI regarding three very important historic events
that occurred in Mississippi. Can you tell us about his involvement.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yeah, There's been a lot of speculation over the years,
and scarp has sort of fueled some of that speculation
by making a few things up. But there were three
cases of that were very large in the civil rights movement,
and the first was the murder of Medgar Evers. The
second was the murder of the three civil rights workers

(28:04):
who are trying to bridge Straffan Americans to vote, and
the fourth was the murder of Vernon Dahmer in nineteen
sixty six. And my review of the documents, the FBI documents,
the available testimony that I saw, has led me to
conclude that Scarpa had no involvement in the Medgar Evers case. However,

(28:26):
I think it's likely. I don't think it's a slam done,
but I think it's likely based upon the statements that
people have made over the years and the consistency of
those statements, that Scarpa played a role in helping the
FBI locate the bodies of the three civil rights workers
that were murdered down in Mississippi. And part of that

(28:50):
is that, or part of my conclusion is derived from
the information that is in the FBI documents, and also,
as I said, the sort of the consistent testimony of
particularly Linda Sharrow over the years about that involvement. So
I think it's likely he was involved in that. And Dan.

(29:13):
The incredible thing there is that the FBI and the
Department of Justice and the Johnson administration were under an
enormous amount of pressure to find these guys. They were
down there, they were working. It was the height of
the civil rights era, and there was an enormous amount
of tension and pressure. And the FBI was finding that

(29:33):
their own strategies for finding these bodies or maybe even
hopefully finding the guys alive, wasn't working and they needed
outside help. And I think that the available evidence leads
to a reasonable conclusion that scarp was likely to have
helped them. And on the third matter, the Vernon Dahmer matter,

(29:53):
I think the evidence is even more solid, but I
still think it's like it's more probably than not that
Scarpa helped them solve that murder too. Vernon Dahmer was
an NAACP officer in Mississippi, very active in trying to
register African Americans. He was an African American himself trying

(30:14):
to register African Americans to vote. He had a store,
he had a registration booth in that store, and eventually
his house was attacked and burned, and during the burning
of his house, these guys essentially laid siege upon him,
Dahmer fought back. He fired back, but was eventually overcome

(30:34):
by smoking inhalation and died shortly after that. The prosecution
of one of the people that was involved in that
is well documented in the state court records in Mississippi,
including a twenty two page confession. And it's my conclusion

(30:55):
that that confession came about as a result of pressure
that's Scarpa placed upon that individual that we would probably
today called enhance interrogation. And the confession itself stood up
the documents indicating that there was payment to an informant,
that informant would be killed if his identity were known.

(31:17):
All of the and some other matters as well, but
all those together led me to conclude that Scarpa was
more probably than not involved and resolving the Vernon Dalmer
death murder.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. There's also a very interesting case that became
personal for Great Scarpa and really helped them the Regina
Passes Crown Jewels case. Let's talk about something that contributed
to his downfall was the phony IBM stock certificates scheme.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Yeah, that was, you know, the game that couldn't shoot straight,
couldn't counterfeit straight. They came up with this cockamade scheme
to falsify some stock certificates, and then they were going
to sell the stock certificates at at an extreme discount,
about ten percent, and whoever bought them could probably use

(32:23):
them in any way they could, And part of the
scheme was, well, maybe we can use these as collateral
for property, collateral for a loan, and then of course
the lending institution is going to be stuck with some
phony paper and they'll have the money. So anyway, they
went on this attempt to falsify these documents, and they

(32:45):
had an enormous amount of difficulty trying to find somebody
that could forge the documents. They had a tough time
among themselves deciding who was going to pay for the
forged documents, who was going to pay for the printing,
who was going to pay the forger. Scarpa typically was
unwilling to dish out money to try to pay the forgers.

(33:09):
Scarpa did not like hatting out money, frankly like taking
it in, and Joe Brewster was involved in this as well.
Eventually they got rid of the phony certificate somebody bought them.
They made their way down to Philadelphia, and a bunch
of guys that were involved in trying to peddle them

(33:31):
down there got caught and prosecuted. That that got back
to the Newark office of the FBI, and they went
after the guys that were in Brooklyn that were involved
in this, and over a period of a couple of
years their arrests. Scarpa, one of his responses to his

(33:51):
own arrests was to threaten to tell in open court
what he knew about the FBI and how it was
using informants and what the FBI's on methods were. He
apologized it was an error that he made there by
making that threat. They eventually got a grand jury to

(34:13):
return some indictments against these guys, and the upshot of
it was that, for reasons unknown at least reasons unknown
to me and not clear in the documents, that the
charges were eventually dismissed against scarp and Brewster and really
two years after the fact, and so that never went
any further. Although some guys did either plead guilty or

(34:37):
were found guilty, particularly the guys down at Philadelphia and
went to prison for being involved in the scheme, and
scarp it not so much.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
And that elicited some rumors that there was something amiss,
didn't it.

Speaker 3 (34:53):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, the people within Scarpa's orbit
certainly knew that he had been arrested and he and
Bruce had both been arrested for this, and that there
were legal proceedings that were going on. Then it just
kind of disappears. And really as early as the nineteen

(35:14):
seventy two, Carlo Gambino had suspicions about Scarpa being an
informant for the FBI, and he told his crew his
guys stay away from Scarpay has a big mouth. You know.
One of the amazing things about this story is that
there are all these clues all the way along, and
people tended to ignore them. They just thought, now, it's

(35:35):
not possible. He can't be doing this. He's the FBI
can't be using this guy. He's just too much of
a mafia killer for the FBI to be involved with.
Scarpa would never do that, etcetera, etcetera, and is one
of his closest lieutenants for years. Larry Maza in retrospects
that he could see the signs, but at the time
he ignored them. And I think that was generally true

(35:57):
among people that were in scarpa orbit. Not everybody, but mostly.

Speaker 2 (36:04):
Let's talk about some characters and some extraordinary events that
happen regarding Greg Scarpa. Let's talk about Larry Masa and
how Larry Masa comes to be in Grave Scarpa's orbit.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, that's an incredible story all in itself. And Scarpa's mistress,
after having a couple of children, approached scarp and said, Hey,
there's a young man that I'm interested in. He works
at a local grocery store that I shop there, and
I want to take them to bed. Without being too

(36:44):
exact in terms of the conversation between scarp and Linda
on that issue, scarp eventually said, yeah, whatever makes you happy.
To Linda, So Larry Massa was the grocery clerk she
was talking about, and she eventually fairly quickly seduced Masa.
Maza had no idea who she was, no idea who

(37:05):
her putative husband was or the man she was living
with was, and eventually found out and greg Scarpa brought
him into his orbit. Larry was kind of casting about,
looking for something to do. He was probably going to be,
or at least his plan was to become a fireman
like his father had been. But there were some proceedings

(37:29):
in New York that put a temporary halt on the
hiring of firemen based upon the allegation that they were biased.
The test for firemen were biased against women. Larry put
that dream on hold. During that whole period, he was
getting deeper and deeper with Linda, having this affair that

(37:51):
Scarpa was completely aware of, and then Scarpa offered him
a job, a legitimate job at first, and then eventually
Maza became part of Scarper's crew, doing the kinds of
things that the members of the Wimpy Boys, which is
what that crew was called after the club that they

(38:12):
hung out in, doing all those things that those guys
were doing, and it became a key and very close
member of Scarpus crew.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Let's talk about Gregory Scarpa Junior and his introduction to
the life.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
Yeah, Gregory. You know, he grew up like a lot
of kids, idolizing his dad, and his dad did things
with Gregory to, you know, try to do the father
son sorts of things. Taught him some things about sports,
tried to make sure that he stayed in school. Was
very insistent on attendance at school. But Gregory got into

(38:54):
a fight with when he was in high school, got
in a fight with another classmate and he came home
and he had a big lump on his forehead and
his father was asking him about it, and greg said,
Gregory Junior said, it's no big deal, dad, it was
a fair fight. He got a good lick in. They
exchanged some words and eventually Greig the father told greg Junior,

(39:17):
you go back to school tomorrow and if you don't
put that kid in the hospital, don't bother coming home.
And that happened. Of course, greg Junior got expelled. And
this was a kid who was he was a tough kid,
good with his hands. He was a golden glove boxer,
and at that point there weren't a whole lot of

(39:38):
choices for him. And eventually he was brought within his
father's orbit. In terms of the Colombo family, Gregory Senior
introduced him to Joe Colombo. Eventually greg Junior became a
member of the crew and a member himself, a good fellow.
Then eventually Coppo. I think that the inflection point, the

(40:01):
most important moment, was that moment when his father told him,
don't come home if you don't put that kid in
the hospital. Because at that point and he hoped for
a non post and ustra life probably disappeared for Gregory.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yes, let's explain the Columbo family hierarchy in terms of
Carmine Persico and his son Ali Boy.

Speaker 3 (40:32):
What is the situation you may recall Joe Colombo was
there was an attempted assassination on Joe Colombo. He lived
for another seven years, but he's incapacitated. So there was
a vacuum at the top of the Columbo family leadership.
Carmine Persico was approved as the essentially the street boss

(40:54):
while Joe Columbo was still alive, and Carmine, a longtime
member of the Colombo family, became the boss. And Carmine
was in and out of prison, particularly in the early
nineteen eighties, and even though he was in prison, he
retained his title as the boss of the family, and

(41:17):
that was very difficult. It's difficult to run something from
a distance. But the Persco was interested in maintaining that
position because the financial benefits of being the boss all
they flow upward in the mafia, and whoever's at the top,
that's where the money ends up, or a good deal

(41:37):
of the money ends up. He had a brother, Alley Boy,
and also a son, Little Alley Boy, who was named
after his brother, who were also prominent members of still
called the Columbo family, and so far as I know,
it still referred to as the Columbo family. It didn't
become the Persico family when Carmine took over the reins,

(42:01):
but they facilitated and assisted his running of the family
from prison. That fact that Carmen was running the family
from prison really contributed a lot to the violence of
the late nineteen eighties early nineteen nineties that was known
as the Third Columbo War.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
It's interesting that he gives his FBI handler and by
nineteen eighty it's a person named Lynn de Vecchio, and
he's giving information not only on the opposing faction or
Tana and his men, but also he's giving information regarding
crimes and including murder attributed to Carmine Persico, doesn't he.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Yeah, Lyndavecchio was a special agent for the FBI and
he approached scarp in nineteen eighty looking to reopen Scarpa
as a teci top echelon criminal informant. And Lynn was
as I said, he was a special agent, and he

(43:09):
was a guy who was interested in furthering his own career,
and so he saw Scarpa as an informant as a
possibility of doing that. While Lynn Devekia was getting information
from Scarpa, Scarpa was giving him information about Carmine Persico
and attributing at least eight murders to either Persco's orders

(43:33):
or Persco's personally being involved in it. The bizarre thing
is that, as you've picked up on when the family
split into two different factions, the back vic Ana on
the one hand, and then the faction that back Carmine Persico,
the leader of the so called Persco faction was Greg Scarpa,

(43:56):
or the most important person in that faction was Greg
scar and they were referred to as the Persco Loyalists.
But it's not even a stretch to say that a
guy that's telling the FBI that this guy committed eight
murders is not loyal to that guy. He was loyal
to Greg Scarpa, and during that entire period he had

(44:18):
no qualms about telling the FBI about potential violations of
the law of PERSCO and others within the Columbo family
were involved in. And you know, Dan just backing up
a little. When I told you that Joe Colombo had
Scarpa as one of his confidants, one of his closest members.

(44:39):
Scarpa is the one who provided the information that made
Joe Colombo Junior and Joe Columbo Seniors arrest possible. Having
Greg Scarpa close to you in any sort of capacity
was a dangerous proposition, and it certainly was for Carma
and PERSCO in terms of his freedom.

Speaker 2 (44:59):
That Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Let's talk about I guess the most shocking murders attributed
to Greg Scarpa, and it's also these murders are demonstrative
of Scarpa's unique murderous character. Let's talk about Mary Barry,

(45:22):
her connection to Scarpa and the reason for her murder.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
Yeah, that's such a tragic story. It's just awful. She
was involved with Ellie Boys, Scarpa's brother, Ellie Boy Persico,
and very similar to the story between Scarpa and Linda.
Ali Boy was about twice Mary's age when they met.
She was his mistress for a number of years. Ali
Boy ended up being the subject of prosecution. Was supposed

(45:51):
to show up in court one day and that they
just a flipped ended up. He was He went up
to Connecticut where apparently the mafia had this sort of
underground railroad to protect members that were on the run,
on the lamb, however you want to style it. Mary
was in a tight spot after that because she had

(46:15):
hoped that the family would take care of her and
continue to support her. At the same time, their rumors
started floating around that Mary was talking to the FBI,
that she was talking to local law enforcement, that she
was doing this, she was doing that, and the assumption
was that she was going to tell the FBI where
Ali Boy Persco was. And the fact is that Ali

(46:38):
Boy's family didn't even know where he was, and Mary
certainly didn't know where he was. But this was during
the time when Scarpa's handler was Lynda Vecchio, and Scarpa
got the job of killing Mary, and Scarpa, in my view,

(47:00):
was anxious to make sure that she was no longer
alive because she was being used as an informant by
the FBI. There's a bit that I found from a
US Marshall who approached the FBI saying they wanted to
talk to Mary about the possibility of finding Alley Boy,

(47:23):
and the FBI's response was, we have a special relationship
with Mary and we would rather not talk to her.
I'm not sure exactly how Scarpa found that out. Wow,
but I think the bit about they were worried that
and Scarpa was worried about Mary telling them where Ali
Boy was, to me is just complete nonsense. I mean,

(47:47):
Scarpa was telling the FBI that Ali Boy's brother was
committing all these murders. I don't think that Scarpa had
any particular loyalty towards Alley Boy that were compel him
to say, like, well, we've got to get rid of Mary.
Mary was lured to a club owned by Carma and Sessa,

(48:09):
and under the guise of saying they were going to
offer her a job, and she needed a job, and
when she got to the club, Gregory Junior eventually Tackler
held her down while Gregor killed her. Just absolutely awful,
so awful that even some of the mafia guys said,

(48:30):
we're going to hell for this. Yeah, you know, Greg
Senior at one point said, they give me these jobs
because they know I have the stomach for it. That
admission is just it's remarkable to be able to say
that I have the stomach for killing this young, completely
innocent girl.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
One more testament to Greg Scarpa's murderous intentions is someone
he considered like a son, Joe Brewster. Briefly tell us
about Joe Brewster.

Speaker 3 (49:06):
Yeah, Joe and Greg went way back in the Profacci family.
They've been friends for a long time. Joe was really charismatic,
good looking guy who was not only a cold blood
killer himself, but also a very skilled thief, very skilled
at these bank burglaries that were mitting enormous amounts of money.

(49:30):
Joe in the mid nineteen eighties was, in my view,
was cutting Scarpa out of some of these jobs that
he was doing. He wasn't giving Scarpa cut of the jobs,
and Scarpa just for him that was pretty unforgivable. The
stories were that Joe had his girlfriend who was born

(49:53):
again Christian, Joe couldn't kill anymore, he wanted to get
out of the life. And I think there's probably some
truth to Joe having some doubts about what he was
doing with his life. But this idea that he was
killed because he couldn't really act like a mafia guy

(50:14):
anymore because of this born again Christian girlfriend, I think
are overstated. I think it's much more likely that Scarpa
and other members of the mafia families decided that Joe
had to go because he was acting on his own
and he wasn't cutting in the right guys on the
proceeds of these bank burglaries. So Scarpa asked for permission

(50:42):
to kill him. And you need permission from like a
higher up in the mafia to kill somebody else on
the team, so to speak. He got that permission. His son,
Greg Junior, is actually the guy who pulled the trigger
and killed Joe, who is in the backseat of his
car at the time. Again, this was a guy that

(51:05):
for years scarp had talked about. He's like a son
to me. They clearly had been very close best friends.
He was the best man at Greg Scarpa Junior's wedding.
In my view, because of those money issues, Greg Scarpa
decided that's it. I'm not dealing with Joe anymore. And

(51:26):
the way that Scarpa defaulted to the resolve of problem
was with violence and often murder.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
Let's explain. Have you explained the manipulation that you talk
about throughout that Scarpa has, the manipulation that he does
with Lynn Delvecchio. What exactly is the nature of that manipulation.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Yeah, I think at the core of it is de
Vecchio's own wish to have a success for career at
the FBI. You know, he's a guy who wants to
be a big shot, and you know, there's nothing wrong
with that, wanting to really advance in your own career.
And I think Scarpa was smart enough. And this is

(52:15):
the one of the unusual things, not unusual, but a
little bit surprising that Scarpa, who barely had a high
school education, was able to manipulate building full of people
that had college educations and a lot of experience when
ne Vecchio was an experienced special agent by the time
he and Greg Scarpa hooked up together. But I think

(52:37):
de Vecchio was somewhat fascinated with the mafia world, fascinated
by Greg Scarpy. He says quite frankly that he considered
Greg Scarpa to be his friend. And so I think
there was a line that got blurred for de Vecchio
in terms of that relationship, and I think Scarpa took
full advantage of it. And I also think that that

(52:58):
manipulations started really early on, back in the early sixties.
And we see in the FBI documents time and again
Will scarp It is testing things, saying what the FBI
will do. For instance, when he first started working for them,
he said, you know, I've got about three thousand dollars
in debts and I'm thinking of getting out of the life.

(53:19):
But if I had somehow I could pay off these
this three thousand bucks, then I could really continue and
give you guys everything you want. And this idea that
Greg scarp at the age of thirty four thirty five,
which is going to retire from the mafia and go
do something else. Whatever that something else was, it was
just preposterous. But the FBI didn't know that. They didn't

(53:43):
know anything about how the mafia worked, and they ponied
up the money. Scarpa did this time and again in
his career, and the manipulation included a heating of information
and misinformation or even not thorough information to his handlers,

(54:04):
both Anthony Vallano and Lynda Vecchio, and I think that
the impulse of the special agents to want to believe
what scarp was telling them and use that for their
own advancement purposes set them up for being way too
credulous about whatever scarp was saying. And Dan we see

(54:27):
this time and again in the FBI documents that scarp
is considered to be reliable. His information is considered to
be singular, so they're not getting it from any other source,
and that he is emotionally stable. Just bizarre in retrospect,
but we do see that in the FBI files, and

(54:49):
I think that that's part of that is is explained
by the desire of members of the FBI to have
this really high prized informant providing them with information that
leads them to other things, other arrests, other convictions, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (55:16):
Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
these messages. Now, let's fast forward a little bit or
quite a bit to the diagnosis of Greg Scarpa as
having a deadly illness, How that occurs, what is the

(55:36):
illness that gets him into the hospital in the first place,
And then tell us about the ongoing information about the
Third Columbo War. What exactly information is Greg Scarpa feeding
del Vecchio while at the same time he's on the
most prestigious hit team along with Larry Maza and and

(56:00):
a person named del Masto. Tell us about that.

Speaker 3 (56:04):
Yeah, Greg Scarpa was a lifelong smoker and a scotch drinker.
I mean, he wasn't an alcoholic, but he liked having
scotch with his dinners. And he'd also have been popping
asphen due to some back problems that he'd have. In
nineteen eighty six, his stomach essentially just started bleeding. In

(56:25):
a layman's terms, it kind of exploded and he was
in very serious condition. He needed surgery right away, three
different surgeries, and as part of that surgery he needed
blood transfusions too. Scarpa, this is the kind of the
height of the aide scares, or we're called dan. There
was a lot of misinformation about what was going on.

(56:45):
People weren't really sure what was going on in hospitals,
and Scarpa didn't trust the blood supply at the hospital
that he was being where he was being operated on,
So he told his crew to come down and they
would get tested to see if any of them were
a match, and a few of them were in One
of them was not only a match, but was unknown

(57:08):
to everyone he was HIV positive. He was a weightlifter
who was using steroids and injecting himself with steroids, and
that's probably how he got HIV became HIV positive. That
blood gets transferred, transfused into Scarpa during these one of
these operations, and as a result Scarpa he gets the

(57:31):
stomach matter fixed, most of his stomach is removed, but
now he's HIV positive again. This is nineteen eighty six,
and he lives for another eight years, which is way
beyond what anybody thought he would live at the time.
I mean, there was no real treatment for aids at
the time. There is certainly a reasonable argument that during

(57:53):
the Third Columba War from about nineteen ninety two through
the end of nineteen ninety three, Scarpa, who was by
then experiencing full blown AIDS, had this attitude of I've
already got this death sentence, there's nothing to stop me,
there are no rails anymore, and so I'm just going
to do whatever I want. And certainly some of his

(58:16):
activities during the Third Club of War back up that conclusion.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
Well, tell us about this vengeful and murderous campaign he
goes on despite this, He's going to die.

Speaker 3 (58:31):
These two factions that I talked about earlier that were
trying to fill the void of the leadership caused by
Carmin Persco's imprisonment, and he was Carmin Persco at this
point was going to die in prison. He wasn't going
to get out right. Pick Arena, who was a coppo
in the family, had been appointed acting boss, and Arena

(58:55):
wanted to become the boss, not just acting boss. And
you know, he was trying to feather his own nest,
and that didn't sit well with a lot of members
who were considered themselves Carmine Perscal loyalists. Didn't set well
with Scarpa because it meant that the best hits, the

(59:15):
best money, the best gigs would be going to Arena
and the people that were close to Arena in Queens,
which is where Arena was based. A lot of guys
in Queens were getting their buttons, were getting made into
good fellows. Not so many in Brooklyn. There was this
tension and they tried to resolve it through a number

(59:36):
of different meetings. There was no resolution, there was and
what happened was a shooting war on the streets of
Brooklyn where Scarpa and two very close confederates, Larry Mas
and Jimmy Delmasto, were hunting the streets of Brooklyn for

(59:56):
members that were loyal to vic Arena. And there were
some just gruesome murders that were involved in as a
result of that, and three of the murders that happened
during that period, of the murders that eventually Scarpa confessed
to in federal court.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Eventually Great Scarpa goes to jail, he's arrested. He goes
to jail and has to deal with this illness. How
does the state deal with this illness?

Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
Yeah, Well he got sort of a break on that
one because the plea bargain was that he was going
to admit to these three murders and that he was
going to get a life sentence but the judge decided
to give him a ten year sentence instead because Scarpa
was pretty far in to full blown AIDS by then,
and the judge knew that if he gave him a
life sentence, Scarper would not be eligible for special medical care,

(01:00:52):
so he gave him a ten year sentence instead, which
really blew a lot of people away. They were very
bitter about it. Here's a guy I've been committing murder
for years and years and years, finally had been at
only three of those murders and he gets a ten
year sentence. Well, it was going to be a life
sentence anyway, because he wasn't going to live much longer.
During this period where scarp is supposed to be, first

(01:01:14):
he's in state court, that he's in federal court. He's
being incarcerated in a state institution of Rikers Island, and
then eventually he's going to be transferred to a federal institution.
He's getting treatment for the fact that, and it's really
palliative treatment, trying to make his life a little more
comfortable while he's in these various states of incarceration. Eventually

(01:01:40):
he's transferred to a federal hospital in Rochester Minnesota, and
a Scarpet, even in the last months of his life,
is hoping that he can go home and die at home,
and that request is routinely denied by some judges who

(01:02:03):
just they pretty much had enough of Greg Scarpet. So
he died in a prison hospital in June of nineteen
ninety four from complications from AIDS.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
You write that Linda Siro Linda Diana former stayed with
him right to the very end, cared for him when
he was at home, stayed with him to the very end. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Absolutely. In fact, she not just stayed with him at home,
but also cared for him when he was in these
various either when various prisons, jails, these various caregiving institutions
that he was going to live out his sentence, and
so she was absolutely loyal to him right to the

(01:02:51):
very end. And she had as thorough a perspective about
who Scarpe was as anybody. And one of the things
that's interesting about that is that Scarpa was asked once
again if he could die at home while he was
in Rochester, Minnesota, and he was down to about eighty

(01:03:11):
pounds or so very very frail that he was in
bed all the time, and there was a hearing on
that request, and somebody at the hearing I think it
was a probation officer or or no, maybe he's a prosecutor.
Excuse me. Prosecutor asked the medical professional who was testimony,
and he said, does this bigger finger still work? And

(01:03:33):
the answer was yes. And so they denied his request
to die at home. And at first Linda's response was
this is ridiculous. He's living in bed, he's completely incapacitated.
And then she said she thought for a minute and thought,
you know, but they're right. If Craig went home, he

(01:03:54):
just might kill someone. And so right to the end
she was loyal to him, and right to the end,
Scarpa had the capacity, in her view, to commit murder.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
What of de Vecchio and the FBI, What was their
talk of the Vecchio knowing that Scarpa was murdering and
still petitioned for him to be reopened as a informant.

Speaker 3 (01:04:26):
Yeah, that happened during the Third Columba War and towards
the end and when scarp was about to be arrested
and incarcerated and Linda Vecchio, when scarp was closed, Lindevechio
petitioned for him to be reopened, and the FBI did
reopen him briefly as an informant. De Vecchio in his

(01:04:49):
own book said in My Heart of Hearts, I knew
that scarp was still doing hits. And he doesn't really
put a time frame on that in terms of when
he knew that. But there in the documents there are
a lot of questions arise. For example, when Scarpa the
day after Joe Brewster was killed on Scarpa's orders, he

(01:05:10):
reports that de Vecchio that Joe Brewster was killed, and
he uses the passive voice, or at least that's how
it comes out in the notes on the debriefing in
the FBI documents, and there's there's nothing in that particular
debriefing of de Vecchio saying, well, well, Greg, who killed
him and why was he killed? And and there are

(01:05:33):
plenty of times when Scarpa was very specific about so
and so was killed, this guy killed him, that guy
killed him, and we see that time and again in
the documents. But with the Brewster killing, we don't see that.
And either he said it and it never got recorded,
or de Vecchio was not interested in knowing who it
was that killed Joe Brewster because they had an inkling

(01:05:55):
of who that might be. Now in de vechio defense,
he later was charged with providing Scarpa with information that
led to some murders, and that was tried in state court.
And in the middle of the trial, when Linda Sharrow

(01:06:16):
was about to started to testify, a reporter that had
interviewed Linda a number of years earlier let the court
know that what she was saying on the stand was
completely different from what she had said earlier, and at
that point the prosecution felt that their case had fallen apart.

(01:06:42):
They moved to dismiss the case, and the case was dismissed,
and as a matter of law, that meant that Linda
Vecchio could not be charged with and tried for any
of that, and in fact it acts as what's called
race judicata. The thing has been adjudicated. Linda Ki can
rightly say that that matter came before court. The result

(01:07:04):
of that was that essentially, I'm not guilty. So there
were certainly rumblings, and enough rumblings that the Brooklyn District
Attorney decided to bring a criminal case, But that criminal
case did not result in a conviction of agent of Akio.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Very very interesting. In the end, tell us the fate
of Greg Scarpa Junior and also some of the people
you spoke to for this book that were involved with
the family, Linda and Lil Linda, tell us about that.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
Yeah, Greig Scarpa Junior got out of prison a few
years back on a compassionate release. He spent thirty three
years in federal prison. Four of them were in solitary,
and while he was in federal prism, he washed his
hands of the family. He talked about his own regret
and I think it's I think it's legiti. I think

(01:08:00):
your heart felt what he said about regretting the pain
that he caused, regretting having been in that life. I
didn't want anything to do with the family. His father
essentially cut him off while he was in prison and
told other people don't talk to Greg Greg Jr. He's
been out for a while. I talked to him on

(01:08:22):
the phone. I also sent him some questions to answer
Greg's story. To a certain extent, it was told by
Sandra Harmon in her book. Although Greg said that the
book is sensational and not accurate, and I tried to
figure out where the inaccuracies were, and I detail all

(01:08:44):
of that in the end notes of the book and
sometimes in the text too. So Greg is out, he's living.
My understanding is he's living with his sister. He's also
done some interviews online about his life and his life
as a a member of the Columbo crime family. Larry
mass I mentioned earlier, was someone that whose life story

(01:09:09):
in terms of spec scripts Joe Pluto and I had
been working on. Larry did his ten years in prison
and he got out. He's a successful businessman, and he
also has sat for a number of interviews. People are
very interested about his life in the mafia, what that
was about, and Larry very candid about it about about

(01:09:32):
his life. And Larry and I had some conversations, and
I have not talked to Linda Chyrol. Little Linda, her daughter,
that's my understanding, was involved in a movie that's been
made by Mark Wahlberg, starring as Craig Scarpa in a

(01:09:54):
dramatic rendition of Scarpa's involvement on the Vernon Dahmer case
by in nineteen sixty six. And my understanding is that
little Linda has been involved in that process and maybe
advising on the film. But I haven't talked to them, Dan.
Most of the research I did was tracking down documents

(01:10:17):
speak online, tracking down court documents, tracking down of course,
the FBI documents, not just the scarpet documents, but also
the periscope documents and the Mississippi burning documents. Lots and
lots of documents, newspaper articles, interviews, books, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
Yeah, I just wanted to comment. It seems like I'm
a big fan of the Sopranos, and of course I've
watched all the famous mob movies, but especially the Sopranos
I saw many of It seemed like these same stories
woven into the Sopranos storylines in many episodes.

Speaker 3 (01:10:57):
Yeah, I think that to a certain extent, these stories
are fairly generic with respect to the mafia and the
way they operate, and so on a certain level, it's
almost like, you know, you can pull one name out
and put another name in, and it's likely that they
were doing the same sorts of things. For people that

(01:11:19):
study them mafia know a lot about the Mafia. It
wouldn't be any surprise that, Okay, these guys in Buffalo
were involved in bone sharking, gambling, numbers, hijacking, burglary is extortion,
because that's what these guys do. They do it in
New York, they do it in Kansas City, they do
it in Buffalo, they do it wherever they are. And

(01:11:43):
so I think that there's a certain identity that can
be seen throughout these various stories, even the fictionalized ones,
as you indicate it, like the Sopranos, that would ring
true to anybody that knew about how the mafia operates.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
I want to thank you for coming on and talking
about your truly extraordinary Greg scarpa legendary evil, the many
faces of a mafia killer. For those people that want
to find out more about this book, do you have
a website or do any social media?

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):
Yeah, I have a website Jonathan dyerauthor dot com. People
can contact me on there and I will respond to them,
and it has a lot of information about this book
and the other books I've written. There's obviously an Amazon
listing that has a fair amount of information. I'm on
some social media. I'm on Blue Sky, on Instagram, I'm

(01:12:40):
on book bub, I'm on I'm not on Facebook or Twitter.
I was on Twitter a number of years ago, but
it seemed like everybody on there was really angry about something. Yeah,
so I got off Twitter, but yeah, I'm on a
smattering of social media and I have a website. Publisher.
While getting pressed, can also take any sorts of inquiries

(01:13:05):
that people might have about about the book about me
and for this to.

Speaker 2 (01:13:09):
Me, Thank you very much, Jonathan P. Dyer for Greg
scarpa legendary evil, the many faces of a mafia killer.
Thank you so much for this interview, and you have
a great evening, and good night.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
Same to you, Dan, and thanks very much for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
Thank you, good night,