Gregory Scarpa
American mobster (1928–1994)
Gregory Scarpa Sr. (May 8, 1928 – June 4, 1994), nicknamed the Grim Reaper and the Mad Hatter, was an American caporegime (captain) and hitman for the Colombo crime family of New York City, as well as an informant for the FBI. During the 1970s and 1980s, Scarpa was the chief enforcer and veteran hitman for Colombo boss Carmine Persico. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for three murders in 1993 and died the following year.
Biography
Gregory Scarpa was born in New York City on May 8, 1928. His parents were Salvatore and Mary Scarpa, first-generation immigrants from the village of Lorenzaga of Motta di Livenza near Treviso, Italy. He was raised in the working-class neighborhood of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn. As a child living in the Great Depression, Scarpa helped his father deliver coal throughout the city. His older brother, Salvatore Jr., may have introduced Gregory to the Colombo crime family, which he reportedly joined in the 1950s.
During the 1950s, Scarpa married Connie Farace. She and Scarpa had one daughter and three sons, including Gregory Scarpa Jr., who followed his father into the Colombo family and eventually rose to the rank of caporegime (captain).
The public source identifies “Gregory Scarpa” as american mobster (1928–1994). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gregory, Scarpa and American.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1914799. VIAF identifies the subject as 305282652. The Library of Congress control number is no2013100784. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 1994 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gregory Scarpa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.