{"id":475,"date":"2015-07-08T12:01:18","date_gmt":"2015-07-08T19:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=475"},"modified":"2017-01-05T22:37:41","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T05:37:41","slug":"read-the-introduction-to-six-six-six-peter-lances-new-harpercollins-book-on-organized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=475","title":{"rendered":"Former NYT reporter Nicholas Gage, the dean of O.C. journalists, calls DEAL WITH THE DEVIL, &#8220;the most penetrating look into the inner workings of the Mafia since &#8216;The Valachi Papers.'&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Former%20NYT%20reporter%20Nicholas%20Gage%2C%20the%20dean%20of%20O.C.%20journalists%2C%20calls%20DEAL%20WITH%20THE%20DEVIL%2C%20%22the%20most%20penetrating%20look%20into%20the%20inner%20workings%20of%20the%20Mafia%20since%20%27The%20Valachi%20Papers.%27%22\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2iOdroh\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-2017\" title=\"Screen shot 2013-05-11 at 2.26.56 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Screen-shot-2013-05-11-at-2.26.56-PM2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"119\" height=\"47\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<a title=\"signed first editions\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?page_id=994\"><strong>ORDER SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0or copies from <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2iOdroh\"><strong>amazon.com\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>INTRODUCTION<\/strong> By Peter Lance<\/p>\n<div>Gregory Scarpa Sr, was a study in complication. A peacock dresser, he carried a wad of $5,000 in cash at all times. He wore a seven-carat pinky ring and a diamond-studded watch. He made millions from drug dealing, hijackings, loan-sharking high-end jewelry scores, bank heists, and stolen securities. He owned homes in Las Vegas, Brooklyn, Florida, and Staten Island, and a co-op apartment on Manhattan\u2019s exclusive Sutton Place. <a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2iOdroh\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-1783\" title=\"New deal cover\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/New-deal-cover-204x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"204\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/New-deal-cover-204x300.png 204w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/New-deal-cover.png 270w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 204px) 100vw, 204px\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>He was the biggest trafficker in stolen credit cards in New York and ran an international auto theft ring. A single bank robbery by his notorious Bypass Gang on the July 4 weekend, 1974, netted $15 million in thirteen duffel bags full of cash and jewels. His sports betting operation made $2.5 million a year. His crew grossed $70,000 weekly in drug sales. But fifteen years after being \u201cmade,\u201d while he was a senior capo in the Colombo crime family, Scarpa Sr. was arrested for \u201cpilfering\u201d coins from a pay phone. He simply couldn\u2019t resist a chance to steal \u2013 in that case, from the phone company.<\/div>\n<p>Five foot ten, two hundred and twenty pounds, Scarpa\u00a0 was described by one of his FBI contacting agents as \u201can ox of a man; like a short piano mover [with a] thick neck and huge biceps.\u201d For more than forty-two years, as capo of the Colombo family or \u201cborgata,\u201d he roamed the streets of Brooklyn like a feudal lord, earning the nicknames \u201cThe Grim Reaper,\u201d \u201cThe Mad Hatter,\u201d \u2018\u201dHannibal Lecter,\u201d and \u201cThe Killing Machine.\u201d He even signed personal letters with the initials \u201cKM.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But Scarpa was also a homebody with three separate families. In 1949\u00a0 he married the former Connie Forrest; they had four children, including Gregory Jr., who started doing crimes for his father at sixteen. Then, while still married to Connie, whom he shipped off to New Jersey, Scarpa moved in with Linda Diana, a gorgeous brunette nineteen years younger, who had been dating wiseguys since her mid-teens. Scarpa had two children with Linda, but in an effort to hide the fact that they were Greg\u2019s, she married a man named Schiro, who believed the kids were his own.<\/p>\n<p>Then, while still married to Forrest and living as Linda\u2019s common-law husband, in 1975 Scarpa ran off to Las Vegas and married Lili Dajani, a former Miss Israel. Years later, Dajani\u2019s lover, a former abortion doctor named Eli Shkolnik, was murdered on Scarpa\u2019s orders. Yet in 1979 Scarpa agreed to let Linda carry on a torrid sexual relationship with Larry Mazza, a handsome eighteen-year-old delivery boy\u2014and later made Mazza his prot\u00e9g\u00e9, schooling him in loan sharking, bank robbery, and homicide.<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-27-at-3.57.17-PM1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1603\" title=\"Screen shot 2012-10-27 at 3.57.17 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-27-at-3.57.17-PM1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"222\" height=\"368\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI started out one way and ended up with the devil,\u201d Mazza later said. The ex-grocery worker expressed shock when Scarpa Sr. once suggested to him that they kill the mother of a mob turncoat in order to demonstrate \u201cwhat happens to rats.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, Scarpa, who bragged that he \u201cloved the smell of gunpowder,\u201d had no compunctions about killing women. When he heard that Mary Bari, the beautiful mistress of the family underboss, might talk to authorities, he had her lured to a club, then shot her in the head point blank and dumped her body in a rolled-up canvas two miles away. Later, when the dog of one of his crew members\u2019 wives found a piece of the dead woman\u2019s ear, Scarpa joked about it over dinner. \u201cHe was just a vicious, violent animal,\u201d said Mazza. \u201cUnscrupulous and treacherous . . . just a horrible human being.\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.22.01-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-1589\" title=\"Screen shot 2012-10-23 at 4.22.01 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.22.01-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"185\" height=\"223\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And yet Scarpa\u2019s daughter, \u201cLittle Linda\u201d Schiro, described him as \u201cincredibly loving\u2014the kind of dad who was there for us every night for dinner at five o\u2019clock. Whatever he was on the outside, he was really gentle at home.\u201d Like a true sociopath, Scarpa was apparently capable of shifting at will from brutal murderer to loyal dad. After one bloody rubout, when Mazza and Scarpa shot a rival in the head, they went home to play with Greg\u2019s infant grandson, drink wine, and watch <em>Seinfeld <\/em>on TV.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe could transform himself,\u201d says Little Linda. \u201cHe could go kill someone and five minutes later he\u2019d be home watching <em>Wheel of Fortune<\/em> with my brother and me.\u201d The Grim Reaper ruled 13th Avenue in Bensonhurst with an iron fist. He was responsible for twenty-five separate homicides between 1980 and 1992. With Mazza\u2019s help, Scarpa killed three people in one four-week period. He shot one of his victims with a rifle while he was stringing Christmas lights with his wife. He killed a seventy-eight-year-old member of the Genovese family because the old man happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.<\/p>\n<p>Then, a few weeks later, after FBI and NYPD surveillance had been pulled away from a Mafia social club, he rolled up next to Colombo capo Nicholas Grancio and ordered him shot with a rifle. Grancio\u2019s nose was blown off and one of his teeth was later found in a nearby building; as Mazza pulled the trigger, Scarpa growled, \u201cThis one\u2019s for Carmine,\u201d a declaration of vengeance that could have come from a B-movie. At another point, tipped that Cosmo Catanzano, one of his crew members, might talk to the Feds, Scarpa Sr. ordered his grave dug in advance of the murder, but Catanzano escaped when DEA agents arrested him before the execution could take place. <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.25.10-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-1590\" title=\"Screen shot 2012-10-23 at 4.25.10 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.25.10-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"324\" height=\"293\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.25.10-PM.png 405w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.25.10-PM-300x271.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 324px) 100vw, 324px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe man was the master of the unpredictable and he knew absolutely no bounds of fear,\u201d said Joseph Benfante, one of Scarpa\u2019s former lawyers. \u201cIf he\u2019d lived four hundred years ago, he would have been a pirate.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The brazen Scarpa even gave himself a reason to wear an eye patch.\u00a0 In 1992, after being diagnosed with the HIV virus and given only months to live, he broke house arrest and went after a pair of local drug dealers who had threatened his younger son. In the ensuing gun battle, Scarpa got his right eye shot out, but he walked home and downed a glass of scotch before Larry Mazza was summoned and drove him to the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cScarpa had an action jones,\u201d one former assistant district attorney recalled Another investigator described the killer\u2019s need to stay on the edge: \u201cCapos ain\u2019t supposed to be out on the street hijacking trucks, doing drug deals,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean, that\u2019s why you have a crew. But Greg was there. He always had to walk point.\u201d And yet, even as he openly disparaged \u201crats,\u201d Scarpa devoted more than three decades off and on to betraying his larger \u201cfamily,\u201d the Colombos.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE SECRET FILES<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 1,153 pages of files uncovered in this investigation reveal that more than two years before celebrated Mafia turncoat Joseph Valachi \u201csang\u201d to the McClellan \u201crackets\u201d committee in an historic series of hearings televised from coast to coast, Scarpa Sr. was already coughing up the family\u2019s most intimate secrets to the FBI.<\/p>\n<p>The detailed multi-page memos called Airtels (later designated as FBI 209 Forms) show that Scarpa Sr., whose code designation was NY3461, met two or three times a month with agents from the FBI\u2019s New York Office. During these secret sessions conducted in hotel rooms, automobiles and Senior\u2019s various homes in Brooklyn, he fed them the kind of inside-the-family dirt that J. Edgar Hoover craved. Every one of those Airtels went straight to the Director himself and as we\u2019ll see, while many of the debriefings contained detailed intelligence on the organizational structure of the Mafia, \u201c34,\u201d as he was known, also gave the Bureau reams of disinformation. <a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.29.39-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-1591\" title=\"Screen shot 2012-10-23 at 4.29.39 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.29.39-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"316\" height=\"383\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A brilliant Machiavellian strategist, Scarpa Sr. not only stayed on the street for forty-two years, avoiding prison after fourteen separate arrests and indictments for his crimes, but he repeatedly \u201cratted out\u201d his competition in the family \u2013 literally eliminating many of the capos above him along with the two family bosses:\u00a0 Joseph Colombo and Carmine Persico. He also succeeded in fomenting a series of internal conflicts or wars that tore the borgata apart.<\/p>\n<p>It was Scarpa whose duplicity paved the way for the notorious assassination attempt on Joseph Colombo at an Italian American Civil Rights League Rally in front of 50,000 people in 1971. It was Scarpa whose back door machinations ignited the second Colombo war between wiseguys loyal to Persico and the violent Gallo brothers in the early 1970\u2019s and it was Scarpa who fueled the battle that led to the infamous rubout of Crazy Joe Gallo in 1972. Most important to the Feds, it was Scarpa who provided the probable cause that led to the Title III wiretaps in the\u00a0 historic Mafia Commission case in the mid 1980\u2019s sending Persico and two other New York bosses to prison for life.<\/p>\n<p>1989, Everett Hatcher, a decorated DEA agent, was gunned down by Scarpa\u2019s nephew Gus Farace, who was a member of Greg\u2019s Wimpy Boy\u2019s crew. That cold-blooded shooting led to the formation of a five-hundred-man FBI\/DEA task force and an international manhunt that lasted more than nine months. New evidence now suggests that it was Scarpa who set up his own nephew\u2019s murder to take the heat off the other New York families.<\/p>\n<p>Scarpa was such a master chess player that he used his position as a Top Echelon informant to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, beyond the millions he made from racketeering. Not only did the FBI pay him $158,000 in fees and bonuses for his services, but his control agent from the mid-1960s to the early \u201970s, Anthony Villano, brokered kickbacks from insurance companies for some of the high-end hijackings Scarpa was executing. Those \u201crewards,\u201d amounting to tens of thousands of dollars, went back to Scarpa for his own thefts of \u201cswag\u201d ranging from liquor to negotiable stocks to gold bullion, jewelry, and uranium.<\/p>\n<p>Scarpa even got a cut of a reward for the return of the Regina Pacis jewels after a gang of junkies stole the coveted items from a Brooklyn church. That led to national headlines for the Bureau after Villano negotiated the recovery.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.33.22-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-1593\" title=\"Screen shot 2012-10-23 at 4.33.22 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.33.22-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"306\" height=\"231\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.33.22-PM.png 378w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.33.22-PM-300x226.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 306px) 100vw, 306px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Killing Machine\u201d also worked for the Government in a series of \u201cblack bag jobs\u201d that he performed off the books. The first was his well known trip to Mississippi in the summer of 1964 when he tortured a Ku Klux Klan member in order to solve the mystery of the MISSBURN case \u2013 locating the bodies of slain civil rights workers Goodman, Schwerner &amp; Chaney when FBI agents assigned to the probe came up empty.<\/p>\n<p>After breaking a second civil rights murder in 1966 as an FBI \u201cspecial\u201d asset, Scarpa traveled to Costa Rica in the early 1980s to extradite fugitive Colombo capo Anthony Peraino, the notorious porn king who had made millions from the production of the film <em>Deep Throat<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>In return for his assistance to the Feds, Scarpa collected in spades, using his influence with the FBI to avoid prosecution on three separate indictments by organized crime Strike Forces over the years. Not only did he beat a 1974 indictment for stealing more than $4 million in counterfeit IBM stock, but when Secret Service agents arrested him in 1986 for credit card fraud, on charges that could have led to seven years in prison and a $250,000 fine, the FBI intervened and helped him get his sentence reduced to probation and a $10,000 fine.<\/p>\n<p>By that time, Scarpa had been infected with HIV after a tainted blood transfusion and was given only months to live. At least that\u2019s what the government told the sentencing judge. If he\u2019d gone to prison then, Scarpa would never have been on the street to foment his last great conspiracy: the third Colombo war. But he lived for another six years.<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.38.55-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-1594\" title=\"Screen shot 2012-10-23 at 4.38.55 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Screen-shot-2012-10-23-at-4.38.55-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"201\" height=\"266\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The man who vouched for him during the time was Roy Lindley DeVecchio, known in the Bureau as \u201cMr. Organized Crime\u201d for his purported success putting wiseguys away. After officially reopening Scarpa in 1980 following a five-year hiatus, Lin, as he was known, quickly rose through the Bureau ranks, commanding two organized crime squads. He also taught informant development at the FBI Academy and became supervising case agent on the Mafia Commission case, due in large part to his \u201cmanagement\u201d of Informant 3461 aka \u201c34.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But defense attorneys would later describe Lin\u2019s relationship with Scarpa as an \u201cunholy alliance.\u201d In 1994, the FBI opened an OPR internal affairs investigation after four agents under DeVecchio effectively accused him of leaking key intelligence to the mad dog killer. DeVecchio who refused to take a polygraph test, was nevertheless granted immunity during the probe, making it virtually impossible for the Justice Department to indict him. In 1996, he retired with a full pension. Later, he was granted immunity a second time, but he answered \u201cI don\u2019t recall,\u201d or words to that effect, more than fifty times at a 1997 hearing as defense lawyers tried to peel back the layers on his clandestine dealings with Scarpa.<\/p>\n<p>In March 2006, the Brooklyn district attorney unsealed an indictment charging Lin DeVecchio with four counts of murder stemming from his twelve-year relationship with Gregory Scarpa, Sr. The following year, after an aborted two-week trial, those charges were dismissed. But not before Scarpa\u2019s prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Larry Mazza testified that his homicidal mentor had \u201cstopped counting\u201d after fifty executions. \u201cIt was like growing up with a serial killer,\u201d said his own daughter, \u201cLittle Linda\u201d Schiro.<a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/RLD-older-mug-shot-better-color.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-1599\" title=\"RLD older mug shot better color\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/RLD-older-mug-shot-better-color.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"195\" height=\"316\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/RLD-older-mug-shot-better-color.jpg 217w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/RLD-older-mug-shot-better-color-185x300.jpg 185w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 195px) 100vw, 195px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Scarpa\u2019s most violent period came during that third Colombo war, which he incited. The death toll during that conflict was fourteen, with Scarpa personally responsible for at least six of the hits. And each time he executed a significant rubout Scarpa would punch the satanic digits 6-6-6 into the pager of his consigliere\u00a0 to let him know that the job was done.<\/p>\n<p>Along with a final murder he committed four days after Christmas in 1992, that brought the number of homicide he\u2019d ordered or executed on Lin DeVecchio\u2019s watch to twenty-five. That figure amounted to half the murders Mazza says Scarpa committed before he quit keeping track. (Mazza later reaffirmed the number in a 2012 interview with the <em>New York Post<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>Those fifty homicides made the Grim Reaper perhaps the most prolific hit man in the history of organized crime, and put him in the ranks of the world\u2019s top serial killers. The fact that most of those deaths occurred while he was being paid as a virtual agent provocateur by the Feds is a testament to the FBI\u2019s willingness to make \u201ca deal with the devil,\u201d as DeVecchio\u2019s trial judge put it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THIRTY DAYS IN FORTY-TWO YEARS <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In more than four decades as a violent gangster, Gregory Scarpa, Sr., served only thirty days in jail\u2014and that was during the years when he was \u201cclosed\u201d as an FBI source. The rest of that time, a series of FBI agents intervened to keep the so-called Mad Hatter on the street. But that wasn\u2019t the most disturbing aspect of Scarpa\u2019s relationship with the government. In light of the 1,150-plus pages of FBI files on Scarpa we\u2019ve accessed, it can be fairly argued that the FBI\u2019s very <em>playbook<\/em> against La Cosa Nostra was defined and shaped by what Scarpa fed them\u2014particularly in the years from 1961 to 1972, when J. Edgar Hoover himself was on the receiving end of 34\u2019s Airtels.<\/p>\n<p>Given the Bureau\u2019s relationship with Scarpa, it\u2019s no surprise that a senior federal judge sentenced one minor Colombo capo convicted in 1992 to multiple life terms for crimes far less repugnant than Scarpa\u2019s.\u201d But Scarpa\u2019s own final sentence, from the same judge, amounted to a legal wrist slap.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2iOdroh\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-10066\" title=\"Screen Shot 2017-01-05 at 9.35.49 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Screen-Shot-2017-01-05-at-9.35.49-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"146\" height=\"255\" \/><\/a>Even as he was being ravaged by the HIV virus\u2014shrinking from 220 pounds to an emaciated 116 toward the end of his life\u2014Scarpa beat the real grim reaper by many years, staying alive to commit multiple homicides as he schemed to take over the family in the phony war he\u2019d engineered. Few figures in the annals of organized crime have operated with such tenacity, deviousness, and reckless disregard for human life.\u00a0 The fact that he served as the FBI\u2019s secret weapon against what Lin DeVecchio calls \u201cthe Mafia enemy,\u201d only underscores the moral ambiguity that runs through this story.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on secret FBI Airtels never before seen outside the Bureau, in the pages ahead we\u2019ll reveal how Gregory Scarpa, Sr., then a young capo for the Profaci crime family, led J. Edgar Hoover himself into the inner sanctum of the underworld\u00a0 Once that alliance began, there seemed to be no turning back for the Bureau. \u201cThey enlisted a hyper-violent killer to stop much less capable murderers,\u201d says defense lawyer Ellen Resnick, whose work helped expose this unholy alliance. \u201cIt was the ultimate ends-justify-the-means relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As you turn the pages of this book, there are two crucial questions to keep in mind: Who was in charge: the special agents like Tony Villano and Lin DeVecchio, who were responsible for \u201ccontrolling\u201d Scarpa, or the killer himself? And who got the most out of this deal with the devil: the FBI or the very \u201cMafia enemy\u201d they sought to defeat ?<\/p>\n<div>\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" \/>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Former%20NYT%20reporter%20Nicholas%20Gage%2C%20the%20dean%20of%20O.C.%20journalists%2C%20calls%20DEAL%20WITH%20THE%20DEVIL%2C%20%22the%20most%20penetrating%20look%20into%20the%20inner%20workings%20of%20the%20Mafia%20since%20%27The%20Valachi%20Papers.%27%22\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>&nbsp; &nbsp; ORDER SIGNED FIRST EDITIONS\u00a0or copies from amazon.com\u00a0 INTRODUCTION By Peter Lance Gregory Scarpa Sr, was a study in complication. A peacock dresser, he carried a wad of $5,000 in cash at all times. He wore a seven-carat pinky ring and a diamond-studded watch. He made millions from drug dealing, hijackings, loan-sharking high-end jewelry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15],"tags":[125,330,467,122,1223,400,151,391,372,383,114,172,432,1211,388,454,387,109,380,110,119,401,395,382,113,386,252,106,444,459,108,393,470,375,390,311,377,373,392,379,249,402,111,115,381,116,374,462,397,399,406,118,105,167,384,385,107,376,126,1219,1220,468,469,121,461,471,398,396,251,250,112,1214,460,1222,463,389,117,394,371,378,120],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":173,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":483,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions\/483"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}