Inside the Mafia, Gregory Scarpa Sr. could have served as a role model for ambitious gangsters. His underworld persona was that of a steadfastly loyal capo, or captain, in the Colombo crime family who for three decades ran rackets in New York City that enriched himself and his mob partners.
A flashy dresser who often carried $5,000 in cash, he at one point had homes on Sutton Place, in Las Vegas, in Brooklyn and on Staten Island. Guile and ruthlessness earned him the underworld nicknames of “Hannibal” for his tactics and the “grim reaper” for his violence.
His mobster reputation also rested on his remarkable ability over four decades to evade prison despite numerous indictments on federal and state charges.
Last year, Scarpa’s luck with the law ended, and he pleaded guilty to three murders and racketeering charges. Before his conviction, he had contracted the AIDS virus from a blood transfusion, and in June, at age 66, he died in a prison hospital.
Now, through disclosures arising from recent court proceedings, another portrait has emerged of Scarpa: Almost to the end of his life, he was a mole for the FBI, betraying Mafia secrets and his own boss for at least 20 years.
“The man was the master of the unpredictable and knew absolutely no bounds of fear,” said Joseph Benfanti, an attorney for Scarpa. “He abided by no moral codes; he made his own rules.”
The exposure of Scarpa’s double life has cast a rare spotlight on the FBI’s shadowy dealings with a major mob informer who committed murders and other violent crimes while presumably providing the bureau with invaluable intelligence about organized crime activities.
The disclosures have also raised questions about whether the FBI funneled confidential information to Scarpa and immunized him from a prison sentence for decades.
And his unmasking has provided defense lawyers with an arsenal of legal ammunition in efforts to obtain new trials or acquittals for about 20 men who are accused of being Colombo family leaders and soldiers.
The lawyers say that Scarpa, acting essentially on behalf of the FBI, duped their clients into committing crimes.
Another mystery that has surfaced since Scarpa’s death is his purported role in helping the FBI solve the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers in Mississippi. In the last years of his life, Scarpa said that at the behest of the FBI, he terrorized a Ku Klux Klan member to disclose where the bodies had been buried, said lawyers and law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
