Gregory "the Grim Reaper" Scarpa (8 May 1928 – 4 June 1994) was a Colombo crime family captain and veteran hitman. During the 1970s and 1980s, he served as Carmine Persico's chief enforcer and hitman, carrying out up to 120 murders. He had a terrifying and notorious reputation for being a ruthless killer and an highly efficient hitman, and was considered to be one of the most vicious and feared mobsters in New York. Scarpa claimed that he single-handedly murdered well over 100 people. He later became an FBI informant, and he died in prison in Rochester, Minnesota in 1994.
Biography[]
Gregory Scarpa was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York on 8 May 1928 to a family of Italian immigrants from Veneto, and he was raised in the Bensonhurst neighborhood. His brother Salvatore Scarpa introduced him to the Colombo crime family during the 1950s, and he eventually became a caporegime. Following a March 1962 conviction for armed robbery, Scarpa became an FBI informant, and he would work with them for 30 years. Scarpa was hired to find the location of the bodies of three murdered Civil Rights movement workers in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, torturing a Ku Klux Klan member into revealing the location.
Scarpa would become known as "the Grim Reaper", as he was responsible for up to 120 murders during his criminal career. Scarpa had his own brother and his "second son" Joseph DeDomenico murdered, showing his lack of remorse; he was known to smile at victims as he stabbed them in the throat with a knife or strangled them to death with his piano wire. However, he continued to work for the FBI during the 1980s, supplying information on family rivals. In 1986, he fell ill with HIV from a blood transfusion, and this later progressed into AIDS. In 1992, he was shot in the eye during a shootout with two rival Lucchese crime family mobsters who had threatened his son over a drug deal. At the same time, he emerged as Carmine Persico's military commander and his chief enforcer during his war against Victor Orena's rebellious faction. In 1993, he was sentenced to life in a federal prison, and he died in Rochester, Minnesota in 1994.