My Father, The Killer

Honor thy father. But not for murder. A soldier in the Colombo crime family pinned a mob hit on his gangster dad yesterday, saying the old man conspired with a rogue FBI agent to frame the men now serving life for the crime. Gregory Scarpa Jr. said he was coming forward “to clear my conscience.”
He did it via a closed-circuit television hookup that beamed his testimony from a supermaximum-security prison in Colorado to Brooklyn Federal Court.
“Having other people blamed for what my father did didn’t sit well with me,” said Scarpa, 52, who is serving a 40-year sentence for murder conspiracy.
He was referring to former Colombo acting boss Victor Orena and capo Pasquale Amato, who were convicted more than a decade ago of the 1989 murder another capo. Thomas Ocera was strangled, then buried in a Queens park.
Orena and Amato, both 69, are hoping Judge Jack Weinstein will grant them new trials based on the singing son’s story that his dad, Gregory Scarpa Sr., and former FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio actually arranged the hit.
In 1997, Weinstein rejected their previous bid for new trials based on claims that DeVecchio had deliberately fueled a 1991 Colombo civil war by leaking secrets to Scarpa Sr., who was battling Orena and Amato for control of the crime family.
The elder Scarpa, who died of AIDS in 1994, had blamed Orena and Amato for an earlier attempt on his life in which his daughter and grandchild were caught in the line of fire. Although they weren’t hurt, he vowed “to get them all,” Scarpa Jr. testified.
His father told him he whacked Ocera because the capo was “spreading rumors” that Scarpa Sr. was a rat.
Asked by Orena’s attorney Flora Edwards why he didn’t speak up sooner, Scarpa Jr. explained, “In no way, shape or form did I want to help [Orena].” But he added, “Time heals all wounds.”
Scarpa Jr. revealed new details of the alleged coverup: He said his father and DeVecchio planted guns under Orena’s porch as part of the frameup.
He also said DeVecchio received $100,000 from his father from crime family proceeds, and said he recalled arranging champagne trysts with call girls for his father and DeVecchio at the Holiday Inn in Staten Island.
During his testimony, he stood up at one point, revealing that his hands were shackled to a chain around his waist.
DeVecchio’s attorney Douglas Grover blasted the gangster’s allegations as “scandalous and ridiculous.”
“There is no way on God’s Earth that Lindley DeVecchio participated in anything remotely resembling a frame,” he said.
The younger Scarpa’s credibility was previously questioned by Federal Judge Reena Raggi when she sentenced him in 1999, calling his claims to have spied on World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef “part of a scam.”
Scarpa Jr. and Yousef are now neighbors at the federal penitentiary in Florence, Colo.
During cross-examination, Scarpa Jr. admitted that he has been in prison since 1988 and that his knowledge of the Ocera slaying comes straight from his dad.
DeVecchio retired in 1996 after the Justice Department declined to prosecute him for leaking information to Scarpa Sr.