The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter

by Linda Scarpa

  Then I asked him a question that kind of shocked him.

  “Do you want to get married?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Yeah, I want to be with you. I’ve realized a lot of things.”

  “Do you understand how much time I have?”

  I told him that I didn’t care. I said that I loved him, and I wanted to be with him. So we planned to get married, but it was going to be a secret. I was afraid of my son’s father finding out, then taking me to court for marrying someone who was in prison for drugs. So I kept it a secret from everyone—not even my mother knew. At first, nobody knew I married Tommy except for his family.

  While he was in Green Haven, I visited him all the time—it was part of my life. If my son was with his father, I was at the prison. Once we got married, we were able to have overnight weekend visits. I only got to have one weekend visit with him, which I completely ruined.

  Back then I was suffering from massive anxiety and panic attacks. So when I went up for that visit to be with him for the weekend, I nearly had a heart attack. We were in a room that was locked from the outside and I couldn’t get out when I wanted. We could go outside, but the guards had to let us out.

  I was freaking out being locked up. If I looked out the window, all I could see was a huge wall surrounding the prison and the guards. Tommy tried to calm me down.

  “Let’s go outside and get some air.”

  “No, I can’t. You don’t understand. I have to leave. I have to get out of here.”

  There was a phone in the room for visitors to use if they wanted to leave. But if you picked up that phone, your visit was over. That was it. I wanted to call to get out.

  “Linda, please.”

  “I have to get out of here.”

  “Just calm down. I’m here with you.”

  “I can’t calm down. I can’t. You don’t understand. I can’t calm down. I have to go.”

  I ended up staying, but it was not a good weekend. I wasn’t able to calm down. I was freaking out the whole weekend. Even though it was just a different atmosphere, which we needed so we could be alone and spend time together, I knew I could never do it again.

  He wanted me to come again on a weekend visit. We were planning it, but I kept making excuses why I couldn’t make it. I was so afraid to go up there. I wanted to spend time with him, but it was too scary for me. I didn’t like the feeling at all.

  Before that weekend, though, we had had so many talks about us having a life together, and having kids. I used to tell him that we were going to have twins—it’s ironic that I did end up having twins, but with someone else—and I was going to name them Tammy and Tommy. He used to laugh and tell me I was crazy. I was convinced that I was going to have these twins with him.

  When Tommy was first sent to Green Haven, he was trying hard to be there for me. He called me as much as he could. One time I was sick and I couldn’t get to the store to get the things I needed. The next thing I knew, one of his friends was at the door with milk and groceries. I couldn’t believe that he was able to accomplish that while he was so far away from me. He took better care of me while he was in prison than some people took care of me on the outside.

  While he was away, Tommy promised that he was going to stay out of trouble, but it was really hard for him. He had a very strong and aggressive personality when he was put in certain positions. Being in jail, you’re put in those positions all the time. I was twenty-something years old and didn’t understand that. I told him to stay out of trouble and go to school.

  He told me he was going to get his GED, and do this and do that; he wouldn’t get in any trouble. When Tommy got in trouble, we couldn’t speak for days or weeks. It would make me so angry that I couldn’t talk to him. The prison would take his phone privileges away.

  I tried to spend time with his family to fill the void. To me, being close to his family was like being close with him. He liked when I was around his family, too. I really didn’t have anybody. I had just lost my father and my brother, and I didn’t have my niece. My mother was living in Long Island at the time, so I was trying to make his family my family. I wanted to be close to them.

  The reason I turned to Tommy after I lost my brother was because a lot of people turned their backs on us. I felt that no matter what happened between Tommy and me, I could always go back to him and he would be there for me. Before anything else he was my friend.

  I was right. Even though Tommy was hurt because we had lost contact for a while, he didn’t turn me away when I went to see him after Joey was killed. The reason I called him “my most trusted friend” was because that’s exactly what he was. I could turn to him, no matter what.

  Tommy also experienced a loss while he was in prison. His mother died while he was away. I was the person who had to tell him. When he called, I told him I had to speak to him and it was very important. I told him to call me when he was alone.

  “I don’t want you around anybody,” I said.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I need to tell you something very important, but I need you to be alone—as best as you can be alone.”

  “Okay, I’m going to call you back.”

  He did a short while later.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Tommy, I’m really sorry, but your mother passed away.”

  He was in shock.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t believe I’m in here.”

  Even though his sister raised him, he loved his mother. He was so upset. I tried to comfort him the best I could over the phone. It was a difficult time that we had to get through. At least he was able to go to his mother’s funeral.

  As time went on, Tommy wasn’t staying out of trouble. He wasn’t doing what he said he was going to do: go to school and get his GED. I wasn’t happy about that, and our relationship started to suffer. Then something happened that totally destroyed our marriage.

  I had a lot of expensive jewelry at my house, but I didn’t think it was safe there. I asked Tommy’s sister to keep it for me for a little while because she had an alarm system. There was a lot of jewelry and I trusted her with it. Why wouldn’t I? I was married to her brother.

  When things started going bad between Tommy and me, I called his sister and asked her for my jewelry. She told me she had already given it back to me. We got into a huge fight because she was lying to me. She had never given anything back to me.

  But there was nothing I could do. I went to the cops, but they told me I didn’t have any proof. Then I told Tommy the whole story. I was shocked at how he reacted.

  “She would never do that.”

  “Tommy, don’t tell me she wouldn’t do that—she did it. Please, just tell her to give me my stuff,” I told him, although I wasn’t quite sure what she had done with it.

  That caused such a problem for him and me. After all, she was the person who was taking care of him while he was in jail. She was the one who sent him money. She was the one who sent him clothes. She was the one who sent him food. I didn’t have any money to send him anything. He couldn’t fight with her or he’d have nothing.

  Tommy was put in a bad position. I was his wife, and she was his sister who raised him and was still taking care of him. He didn’t know what to do. He was in jail, so there really wasn’t much he could do. I was yelling and screaming at him that his sister stole from me. He just kept saying she wouldn’t do that to me.

  Finally I decided I couldn’t be part of that family any longer. I could never forgive my sister-in-law for what she did. Tommy and I just faded. We broke up. It was just over and I filed for divorce.

  I really loved Tommy. He always reminded me so much of my father and brother. It was his personality, his strength. He was a protector. He knew how to love me. He was the only man who truly loved me. And that’s what makes it so sad.

  All these years I went from one bad relationship to another, even though I had someone who really loved me, and I really loved him.
I should have waited for him. It would have been hard, but I could have done it. By the time he got out, I was basically still on my own. But there was no going back—he had met someone else, gotten married and had a kid.

  Shortly after Tommy got out of prison in 2008, he flipped. He was arrested for a murder he had committed with his uncle, Thomas Gioeli, seventeen years earlier. He didn’t want to go back to prison. He became an informant for the federal government and basically “brought down the Mob.”

  I didn’t even know that he had turned at first. I did know that he never wanted to go back to prison. Before he went to jail on the drug charges, he told me he had something big hanging over his head. However, he never told me what that was. At that time I told him he should flip and go into witness protection. I wanted to go with him and then we could have had a life away from everything.

  Before he went to jail, he told me he would never rat. I told him whatever it was that he did was going to come back to haunt him. I said the feds were going to wait until he did his fourteen years on the drug charges. Then, when he was ready to walk out that door, they were going to nail him. But he didn’t want to hear it. Well, guess what? That’s exactly what they did. Tommy really didn’t have any choice but to flip. After doing fourteen years, I’d flip, too.

  When I found out that Tommy got out of jail, I wanted to see him. I didn’t know he had a girlfriend. I didn’t know he was an informant for the feds. I didn’t know much of anything about him, but I wanted to see him. I thought that he would contact me, but he didn’t. (It was probably because he was under surveillance—he hadn’t testified for the feds yet—and also because he had a girlfriend.)

  Because I didn’t know any of that, I used to drive by his sister’s house, hoping I would see him. I hated his sister, so I couldn’t just go to the front door and ring the bell. Still, I wanted to see him.

  One day when I drove by, he was outside getting an ice cream from the ice-cream truck. I pulled up and called out, “Tommy.” His hair wasn’t brown anymore; it was completely gray. When he saw me, he turned white. I knew he was nervous. It was pretty awkward. I asked him how he was and I told him I had been dying to see him. He wasn’t himself, though.

  Then a woman started screaming out of the window, asking him who I was.

  “Is that your girlfriend?” I asked.

  He just smirked.

  “Okay, I just wanted to see you.”

  “It was nice to see you,” he said.

  “You too.”

  Later I reached out to him on Facebook. I said I was happy to see that he was happy because he deserved it. He never responded.

  CHAPTER 18

  NOBODY WON THIS THING

  Lin DeVecchio was one of the few FBI agents ever charged with murder. His crime: leaking information to my father about the whereabouts of mobsters from a rival Colombo faction—mobsters my father was trying to kill. The case was dismissed when Lin’s attorney discredited a key witness—my mother—during the trial. But she was telling the truth about how Lin helped my father. I know because I was there.

  On March 30, 2006, Lin was indicted for taking bribes from my father in exchange for giving him information that helped him murder Joseph “Joe Brewster” DeDomenico, Lorenzo “Larry” Lampasi and Nicholas “Nicky Black” Grancio—as well as Mary Bari. Lin pleaded not guilty.

  On November 1, 2007—in the middle of the trial—the lead prosecutor, Mike Vecchione, dropped the charges because he said his star witness against Lin—my mother—didn’t tell the truth in court.

  During the trial reporters Tom Robbins and Jerry Capeci came forward with tapes of interviews that they had done with my mother years earlier. They were planning to write a book with her, and they indicated that she told them different accounts of certain events than she was giving at Lin’s trial.

  I maintain she was telling the truth at Lin’s trial, and everybody knew she was telling the truth. The prosecutors all knew about those tapes because my mother told them. My mother can explain everything that happened

  I told them I was heavily medicated and I was still protecting Lin at that time. I told them that these tapes I did were out there. I said, “I did numerous interviews with different writers to do a book, and I told different stories.” But they said they didn’t care. When the FBI guys came to my house to ask me about Lin, I lied to them, too, saying Lin didn’t help Greg.

  Then a friend of mine from the FBI, a really nice guy, called me and told me the other FBI agents knew I was lying. He told me the other agents were going to come back to talk to me and I should just tell them the truth. But, of course, I didn’t tell them the whole truth about the murders. I told them that Greg gave Lin jewelry, including an antique ring for his mother, and he gave him jewelry for his girlfriend and his daughter.

  I remember the time that Lin was going crazy to get his daughter a Cabbage Patch doll. So Greg had his gangster friends get the doll for Lin. I used to cook for Lin all the time, eggplant parmigiana. Even when the war was going on, he would come to the house and go through the back entrance. When Greg had to call Lin, I would back the car up to the back door, so Greg could get in the backseat and then get down on the floor. I would drive Greg to the phone—guys, meanwhile, are looking to kill him—and he’d call Lin.

  When the DA’s office sent people to my house to convince my mother to testify against Lin, they told her they had other witnesses who were going to confirm her story. They said they had a rock-solid case against Lin. I wasn’t buying it.

  “You’re not going to beat the FBI,” I told them.

  “How can you say that we’re not going to win?”

  “Well, first of all, the FBI isn’t going to let Lin go down and then have to let twenty-five or thirty or maybe more Mafia guys get retrials and let them all get out of jail.”

  I believed that’s just what happened.

  During her testimony my mother told the court about the money my father paid Lin for the information that he used to murder people. She even explained that before Lin came over to the house, she’d pull the blinds and lock the doors. All through her testimony my mother told the court what she was saying was fact.

  I was supposed to testify as well. I had been scheduled for the day after the charges against Lin were ultimately dropped. I was going to tell the truth about what I saw—when Lin was at the house, I saw my father give him envelopes with money in them. And my father did cover the doors when he came over. Lin even went on vacation with us to our house in Florida. What FBI agent does that?

  Lin also called the house a lot and I’d answer the phone. Whenever he had to talk about something that he didn’t want my father to talk about on the house phone, he would make my father call him from another phone, either a pay phone or the phone downstairs in my aunt’s apartment.

  When my brother and I were younger, my parents would take us when they had to leave the house if my father had to call Lin from the pay phone. We’d sit in the backseat and wait for him to get off the phone. Lin had a phone called the “hello” phone, which my father used to call when he wanted to reach Lin.

  The DA knew about the tapes because Tom Robbins, one of the reporters, wrote about them during the trial. He was summoned to appear before the judge on October 31, about a week after his story was published. At that meeting the prosecutor said he was going to drop the case if the tapes confirmed what was in Robbins’s story.

  So, on November 1, the DA’s office knew they were going to flip the case on my mother, but they didn’t tell us. Then before she was to get back on the stand that day, someone talked to her and confused her. The result was that she said the opposite of what she had been saying all along.

  Of course, when she said that at trial, all hell broke loose. The judge told her she could face perjury charges. After that happened, I called the cop who had initially approached my mother about testifying against Lin. I was flipping out about what they were doing to my mother.‘

  “Don’t worry. Your moth
er is going to be found not guilty of perjury. Don’t worry.”

  It was like he knew already.

  “How do you know?”

  “Don’t worry. It will work out.”

  He was right. A special prosecutor decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge my mother with perjury either for what she said before the grand jury or at trial.

  CHAPTER 19

  A DAY IN THE LIFE

  I love my father, and I always will, but I have anger and resentment toward “the life.” It’s a life of horror—filled with nothing but misery, death and nightmares. This life destroys everything around you.

  When you marry someone in the Mob or are conceived by someone in the Mob, there is really no way out of it. You lose people you love. There is so much pain you can’t get over it. I live with the pain every day, as do the families of my father’s victims. But I don’t expect tears, nor do I want sympathy.

  When I was a child, the man I knew was very loving, affectionate, caring and protective. As I got older, I knew what he was. I knew that he was in the Mafia, and I knew what he did. But I still loved him. I didn’t agree with the things that he did, but he was always there for me when I needed him.

  He was like Jekyll and Hyde. One minute, in the house, he would be this big teddy bear who would sit there and watch Wheel of Fortune with us—we’d all guess the letters—and Family Feud. I mean he would play video games with us, laugh and joke around. He’d bake and cook. He was so sensitive when it came to us.

  Once he left the house, he was a different person. In some circumstances he was still a very caring person. When he was sick, I used to go to Manhattan with him when he had to get transfusions. He’d give out money to homeless people there. He would pull over if he saw somebody in the streets cold or hungry, and he would give them $100. So he did have this other, caring side to him.

  But when he left the house to be the person that he was in the streets, he was completely different. He could walk out of the house and go shoot someone. I could hardly believe some of the stories I heard. I told myself he couldn’t have done those things. But he did.