In this bonus episode, Gary Jenkins tells about how the FBI recruited the man known as “The Grim Reaper” or the “Killing machine.” It might surprise some that they recruited Greg Scarpa Sr. before Joe Valachi gave his public testimony. From the time of Scarpa’s earliest arrests by the FBI, he sang like a bird. Additionally, Gary tells about Scarpa Jr. and Senior joining in murdering a mobster girlfriend or “Goomar” named Mari Bari. Colombo boss Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico feared she would reveal his whereabouts when he was on the lam from the FBI.  Scarpa’s people will call this “the murder he is going to hell for.”

Additionally, Gary Jenkins asks for your help with his new and captivating book inspired by his podcast episodes. Big Apple Mafia: Stories From the Five Families delves into New York City’s organized crime scene, beginning with legendary Mafia detective Joe Petrosino and key moments from his remarkable career. As with his first book, Windy City Mafia: Stories From the Chicago Outfit, Gary handpicks some of his favorite stories, crafting a compelling ten-chapter collection. Readers will explore tales of Lt. Petrosino and the Black Hand, Frank Costello—The Gentleman Gangster, the notorious Crazy Joey Gallo, the ruthless Tommy “Karate” Pitera, and Gary’s personal favorite, John Gotti’s Mole, and five more. Written in his signature direct and engaging style, this book is a must-read for true crime enthusiasts.

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Transcript

[0:00] Well, hey, all you wiretappers out there, Gary Jenkins, Kansas City Police Intelligence

[0:04] Unit Detective in the past. I have been at it again. I have written my second book based on my podcast episodes. My second book is called Big Apple Mafia, Stories from the Five Families. Now, I’m going to tell many mob stories from a podcast.

[0:20] Big Apple Mafia is going to be a little bit longer than Windy City Mafia, the Chicago outfit. It’s got 160 pages. So my best stories, I really love a lot of these stories. like the one about Gotti’s mole, the New York City policeman who was feeding him information all the time in that investigation, how they uncovered that guy. And really everything from the overview in the early days, Abe Rellis, the canary that could sing but couldn’t fly, and all those old stories. So this new book is only $2.99 as a Kindle. And remember, the reason I’m doing this is for Amazon to put that book out on other people. When you go to Amazon, then if you’re a mob book reader, then we want this book to be put in front of all those mob book readers, whether they’re podcast listeners or not, of course. And if you want to help me with that, I kind of game the algorithms. It seems to work a little bit. They monitor the purchases or the pages read and the reviews, so give me a review also. So, and this helped out immensely with my Chicago book. So once again, I’m asking you for basically a small $2.99 donation and you’ll get the book in return, the Kindle book, or it’s a little more for the, I can’t remember how much it is for the, for the, uh.

[1:40] Paperback and, and so anyhow, don’t forget to give me a review and as reward for listening to this little sales pitch, here’s a great story about Greg Scarpa senior, AKA the grim reaper, or as I’ve learned, the name he really preferred was a killing machine or just km this guy was a real piece of work man i mean he was a real piece of piece of work he was he played chess while everybody else was playing checkers it seems to me like so listen to my story and don’t forget go to amazon and click on you know search gary jenkins, mafia books and you’ll find my books and buy that 299 kindle book and give me a review on it it’s called uh not windy city mafia one of my it’s called big apple mafia stories from the five families so listen up guys you know he’s got the usual thing as a young thug he ended up doing truck hijackings and the mob guys saw that and that’s where you fence your property if you do a truck hijacking large amounts of property.

[2:42] In 1960, FBI agents arrested him for hijacking. And another one hijacking, when they arrested him, they served a search warrant on his house and they found several cases of liquor taken from a more recent hijacking. Well, it was during that time in August of 1960 that the FBI opened their first informant file on him. And, you know, think about this, this is three years before Valachi does his testimony. He got that three years before Bellacci talks. I mean, Bellacci has come in by now, but this is three years before he actually gives his public testimony and people know about him. Greg Scarpa Sr., who’s going to get into the Profaci, then Colombo family, is talking to the FBI. And they dismiss the charges on the first hijacker. And then they drop him shortly after that because his brother was involved with this and and he won’t talk about his brother which is pretty common you know that’s that’s a bit much to ask of a guy but you know i noticed in the book i was reading about this is a really good book about this uh the greg scarper and his whole life that the charges were never refiled.

[3:52] The book says agents kept dropping by a social club where he frequented and and all the time and they tried to talk to him all the time. And so much that guys started to talk. And he finally, they said he begged the agents, you know, you got to stop this. Guys are starting to talk. Oh, that book, by the way, is Deal with the Devil. There it is. It’s thick too. It’s a big, thick book. Peter Lance. I think it’s really good now. Now there’s another book about him that mentions him a lot by this FBI agent, Len DiVecchio.

[4:23] And DiVecchio was one of his.

[4:26] Two guys that we know that ran him as an informant and i tell you what he i in my opinion from what i’ve read they were playing he was playing those guys all along well he did work for him i mean he did do work but he he was using it to uh to get himself promoted in the mob and and earn more money and and all that and and in 1962 they actually early on they gave him top echelon informant status, which is a pretty big deal. And what they said, there was a Profaci-Gallo war going on at that time, and they said he could furnish information on that. They really wanted to know about that. That other liquor hijacking case was dismissed during that time. In early 1962, there was an FBI report in which an unidentified agent describes Scarpa as a reliable and emotionally stable person, and that he has never furnished any false information. And the subsequent memos that they started writing early on his information was much better and more detailed and more about crimes than anything joe velacci ever talked about joe velacci got in there and talked to old history and and he explained a lot that that they didn’t know you know like the the capos and the bosses and and the families and how they were separate and and how they they They worked together and all those kinds of things. The induction ceremony, Scarpa was reported on current events.

[5:55] Bureau at that time calls him a capital regime. Now, he’s a little bit young for that. I think they wanted to boost him up a little bit and make him look like he’s more important. But they did say, and this turns out to be true, he was really close to the profetiae.

[6:08] Family concierge, Charles LoCicero. They also claimed that Scarpa Sr. Was a bookmaker and a gambler and nothing else, no kind of truck hijackings or murders or loom sharking or anything like that. He was just a bookmaker and a gambler, clean money. And they said that he agreed that he would advance in the Profaci family if they asked him to. So he was like, right there, he tells them, I’ll do this. I mean, I’ll go on in the family and try to get in to a higher position and into more mafia activities, but if you want me to, I mean, just think about this guy. He was good. He was always asking for money to cover old debts, and he wanted a regular stipend. Now, I did learn that they paid him $125 a month, but they often gave him large amounts, like there was $3,000 in one case, and this is 1962-63, and that was for some old debt that he owed, supposedly. But he was constantly asking for money. But he did report on all the inner workings and the plots and the relationships within the Profaci organization. Nothing, not that actionable intelligence yet that you could go set up a surveillance and then catch somebody in the act. And it kind of looked like to me reading that book and they had a bunch of the, what they called air tales or the reports that they were sending about.

[7:31] Scarfa, that he was really dropping information to try to manipulate agents into getting more money and never really putting himself in a position where he’d have to testify or even be exposed at all they wouldn’t have to go act on it and believe me the j edgar hoover was really really happy with this real good inside information uh you know like there’s a mob murderer he’ll come in and say well here’s what i hear nothing you can act on but i heard that this guy did it and this is why you know get that kind of stuff otherwise you’re just sitting on the outside twiddling your thumbs going I don’t know I don’t really know what’s going on and Bureau didn’t like that no law enforcement organization as you go up in ranks they never don’t want you to say that you don’t know they want you to come up with something, So they could then tell their friends or tell their boss that here’s what my

[8:20] guys learned. That’s just how it works. Following those different FBI reports in that book, Deal with the Devil, you can see that he was always thinking ahead and always preparing kind of the way for his own rise as would justify anything that he did in this Profaci and then later Colombo family.

[8:40] And the early one he was ratting out is a guy named Charles LoCicero or Charlie the Siege. I never could figure out what that Sidge was supposed to mean. I don’t think, I couldn’t find it in the book if it said that, but anybody knows, let me know. I’m curious. He told them how Los Cicero was really important, but he’s a guy that often got crossways with Profaci.

[9:02] And that way he was always like, you know, Los Cicero is a really important guy, but yet he’s in trouble. Because I think on down the road, we’ll see why. He said Los Cicero was one of the top gangsters in Brooklyn during these years, the early 60s. One story he told about Los Cicero was that he had assisted a gangster named Ralph Whitey Tropiano, who was up in New Haven, Connecticut, and he had some problems with some outlawed gangsters up there that were encroaching on his territory. And I checked on this Whitey Tropiano, the Tropiano in St. Louis, but he was a really valuable mobster, and here’s where he became valuable to the families is, A few years before, there was an old man, older mobster, and it was, I think he maybe even was a boss, Willie Moretti. And he was getting old, and he was going senile from untreated syphilis, and everybody was afraid he was going to talk. And Lo Cicero and a couple other guys, Lo Cicero was the most important one, set him up and killed him on the street. So one way, he starts out really denigrating Lo Cicero and showing that how, you know, Somebody might be angry at him and kill him off, or he might be out. He said he’s really tight, tight-fisted.

[10:19] He’d squeeze a nickel to see the buffalo shit, if you ever heard that expression. He gave one example in which Los Cicero’s son, Michael, was getting married. The old man said, I’ll pay for the wedding, but all the cash envelopes that are going to be given to you at this wedding, it was one of those huge weddings, got to be given to me. And then I might get the money repaid to me for putting on the wedding. Well, he got all that money and he gave his son $500, which was, believe me, he got paid a premium for putting on that wedding from those envelopes that all those gangsters brought in for the lucky young couple. This is 1963 by 66. Scarpa is claiming that Los Cicero is down and out as far as his mob activity is concerned. He rats out Los Cicero’s grandson and his couple of his sons, be this kid’s uncles, about a negotiable stocks ripoff. That used to be a big deal. They had negotiable bonds and stocks that you could steal. And they had ways to get rid of those with crooked stockbrokers. Or you take them and get a big loan in a bank and they hold them for collateral. You get money that way. And so anyhow, it was back then before computers, that was a pretty good way to make a lot of money. And it appeared to me, they never did say exactly, but it looked like Scarpa was going to fence those stocks. And then this Richard Los Cicero.

[11:48] Uh, his, his kind of his mentor, the first man that brought him in the family is murdered 1967 and never could tell what was the happening. These stock certificates, other than it looks like, uh, Scarpa ended up with him because he was supposed to fence them. Um, and it was during some of these years, there’s the agent named Tony Milano was his control and Milano wrote a book called brick agent. And in this Brick Agent book, Volano uses a fake name to identify his top echelon informant, Greg Scarper, throughout that whole book. You might want to get that book, Brick Agent.

[12:25] And I tell you what, Edgar Hoover, during this time, he just loved those reports. I mean, they would, like, tailor those reports with Scarper’s information and send them to Edgar Hoover, and he just loved that. You know, Edgar Hoover always loved knowing the dirt on somebody or knowing what other people didn’t know, as we all do, really. Villano retires in 1975. He stopped giving the FBI any good information, and they put him on the shelf until this Len DiVecchio dug him up and started another long-term relationship with him. And what’s interesting is Scarpa will refuse to meet with any other agents or have any other agents present when he meets with these control agents. And during this unprotected time, he did catch a little bookmaking case. The grandson of Charlie Los Cicero was killed after his uncle’s, Los Cicero’s sons, went to jail for their stolen stock certificate job. And then the old man, Charlie Los Cicero, is murdered. And this really paves the way for Scarpa not only to get in good with the FBI and denigrates the guy and he serves up the son.

[13:39] Michael, because of the wedding night, the old man scammed him, he tried to make it look like Michael did the killing.

[13:47] So this guy is a piece of work. It was common knowledge during this time that 1964, the FBI sent Greg Scarper Sr. To Philadelphia, Mississippi on a civil rights case. If you remember the three civil rights workers, two white and one black down in Philadelphia were murdered by the Klan and they buried their bodies in a pond dam that was under construction and burnt their car. And from the Mississippi Burning movie, that’s pretty much true. He kidnapped the Klan leader, threatens to cut his balls off until a guy reveals where the bodies are. And that’s all they really ain’t told him. We just want to know where the bodies are. And then a couple of years later, it’d be 1966.

[14:29] They send him back down. He did such a good job there sending back down to jackson mississippi there’s some clan guys had had attacked a man named brennan dahmer’s home one night when he had done he had been providing a place for voter registration at his home so they attacked this guy’s home and started shooting into it his family ran out the back door and end up and and he was trying to hold him off so his family could get away and they fire bombed it and he ended up killing this bernard dahmer and so he used he was brought back down there they pointed out the clan later who they thought was probably at least there that night forced him to confess and that’s how we know you know all this had happened i don’t know exactly what happened but this guy was he was brutal he was vicious and he would do anything to get ahead and like i said he was playing chess while everybody else was doing checkers so here’s a one one more little kind of more modern story joe clumbo was shot in 1971 you You know, remember Alphonse Alleyboy Persico was really on the rise during that time.

[15:34] And he’s going to end up taking over the Profaci family. And now, Allie Boy was quite a dandy. He looked and lived like a movie producer, a record executive or something. He had a white Rolls Royce, and he dressed in $1,000 white suits. So he was quite the dandy. So after he rises to boss the Colombo family, one day, it’s 1984, Allie Boy sees a beautiful Italian

[15:57] girl standing on a Brooklyn street corner. And he stops and flirts. And she’s hip to the game. She’s not going to just fall for any, you know, line of bull, but she kind of likes this guy.

[16:09] And he ends up getting a date with her, finds out she’s a former Miss New Jersey. Her name is Mary Mary, M-A-R-I-B-A-R-I. They go on a whirlwind relationship. She becomes his Gomar. She fell madly in love with him, really. And she’s never going to leave his wife. And he took her on trips out of town to Las Vegas, typical places, Las Vegas, Hawaii, and Florida. And bought her furs, of course, and expensive jewelry. He had a pet name for her, was Peach, and she got a tattoo of a peach on her butt. And he took her everywhere. I mean, it was like, you know, this was just Alley Boy’s girlfriend. This was Alley Boy’s girl. Greg Carpenter, in this time, he is managing Persico’s money on the street, collecting the big, giving out beatings whenever it’s necessary, doing the loan sharking things, the heavy work. And the feds are closing in on Alley Boy, and there’s a warrant’s been issued, and he learned about it, and he went on the lam.

[16:58] He did not want to go to the penitentiary. Some of his other underlings went to Mary’s home and demanded all the expensive jewelry that he’d given her back, which is pretty cold, man. And she didn’t have a job. She’s just been living this kept woman kind of life for the last couple of years. And, you know, they get worried about her. They hear some things about her. Allie Boy hears that she’s dating somebody and it’s somebody in law enforcement. And he’s hiding out up in Connecticut and she knows where he is. And so he’s definitely afraid that she’s going to give him up. One evening, September, she got all dolled up. Because a guy named Carmine Sessa, who had a club that was in Bay Ridge. I don’t remember the name of it. Occasions, I think, was the name of it. It was in Bay Ridge. And he’d offer this bartending job, and he sends a guy. He said, okay, I’ll send somebody for you. Come on over and check it out, see what you got to do here, and see if you want to work here. Some guy named Tony Muscles, they called him, just one of the young little hangers-on mob guys. So he picks her up, brings her in, and when she gets there, She walks in, she sees Greg Scarpa Jr. And Sr., as well as several other men there. And we know this because Greg Jr.

[18:11] Later on tells about this. Greg Sr. never talked about it, of course, because, you know, this was something that he didn’t tell anybody about at the time. The FBI, no matter how lenient they were, they could not approve of this if the organization knew it. However, if the agent knew it and he kept his mouth shut, which is totally bad, totally wrong, you just don’t do that kind of stuff. But what Greg Jr.

[18:38] Said, and I think somebody else turned eventually and testified to this or told about it. Greg Jr. walked up and greeted her, and she thought, oh, this is all good. All my friends here, all the Persico family, and I never did become Persico family, I don’t think. But all his underlings were there. So she moved in, you know, to get the kiss on the cheek. He grabs her and pulls her down, push her down on the ground. And Greg Scarpen has a gun and he pulls it and pumps a bunch of bullets under her body. And, you know, they take her body out and just unceremoniously dispose of it under an elevated train. So it’s found pretty quick. Now, there’s another person that tells this story. Linda Shuro, who is Greg Sr.’s longtime girlfriend. Him tommy dades i believe is a new york city detective he gives some information that he’s learned about this lindy vecchio anyhow they put a the feds put a case on this fbi agent lindy vecchio and he testified or she testified lindy shiro testified in court against de vecchio.

[19:42] That one day de vecchio came over to their house and told scarpa senior that hey man you got a problem with this mary berry and you know gives the the nod and he knows what he knows what that means uh de vecchio of course will deny that vehemently in an interesting twist of events de vecchio writes a book and in the very beginning he tells about mary berry and the murder of mary berry and he he fictionalizes and he talks about like he knew what she was thinking and feeling and when she went into there and, who all was involved and but it’s all fiction because he you know he can’t cop to that because this was you know when he was he was running the guy and you know he couldn’t have known about at the time let alone told him that she he had a problem with mary barry you know the the cops she had told her relative where she was going the night before she was killed to this club when it was going to this club the club cops show up the next day and and they really don’t uh Sessa, his name is Sessa, he kind of stonewalls them, and they leave, and then later that day, he cleans the club from floor to ceiling. Gangsters will be telling stories about this murder, kind of talking out of school. What happened is say, you know, they’ll probably go to hell for that one.

[21:09] Greg Sr., I mean, he’s talking about it, he’s bragging to people about how one of his shots blew her ear off, and he thought that was kind of funny. Greg Jr. Verified all this, and he also verified that his father told him that his FBI

[21:22] friend, who he called Dee, told him that Mary was going to be a problem. So there’s like two people said that Mary told, said DeBecchio told him Mary was going to be a problem. During Scarfa’s trial, Scarfa Senior’s trial, Linda Shero got trapped in a lie, and it made it, and so her testimony was pretty well, you know, kaput after that. and DeBecchio gets a not guilty. Another person that testified in that trial was Scarpa Underling Larry Mazza, who’s out here, around here now, doing podcasts and stuff, I believe. And he testifies that Scarpa told him these same details about the murder. You know, what’s interesting, that same year, the FBI agents found Alley Boy hiding up in West Hartford, Connecticut. Now, she may have told him where to look and they just hadn’t gotten around to look at it. I don’t know. I know I couldn’t find anything else about who this man was that she was dating if he was law enforcement or not. That’s a little story about Greg Scarpa Sr., the killing machine. I always call him the, what is it, they call him the Grim Reaper. But I think he liked, what I read, he liked the KM or the killing machine.

[22:30] I’ve got other stories I’ll probably go through and do some more stories. It’s so interesting. I wanted to look a little more into this relationship with Dubecchio. It’s just one that captured my attention right off the bat, and i wanted to do this podcast for you guys to try to sell my book uh big alpha mafia stories from the five families and and you know just for 2.99 it’ll be a great help for the podcast and you’ll get the book so thanks a lot guys i really appreciate y’all tuning in don’t forget to like and share and give me your uh make some comments at the bottom ask me questions or something i think i brought up something i asked about in here if you know any more about this if i got anything wrong way let me know in the comments keep coming back thanks guys.