When racism becomes a family affair (1987 article including interview with Wimpy Boys)

[gohnjotti]

This is a Daily News article from January 21, 1987, by Laura Miller. I don't know if it's been posted before but I thought it was a fantastic read.
It's based on the theory that the murder of Salvatore Scarpa in his social club was the result of an alleged race-based robbery, as witnesses saw the assailants - most of whom were black - yell "Remember Howard Beach" as they fled the club with jewelry and cash. The "Howard Beach" chant referred to the race-based murder of Michael Griffith, a black kid in Howard Beach, by the hands of white youths.

Here's the article:
Wednesday, January 21, 1987

Howard Beach has become a password for violence in this city - a battle cry, an arm band on the sleeve of every two-bit, lousy punk who before Michael Griffith died Dec. 20, never needed an excuse to bully, beat and rob people. Police say 80 racially motivated crimes have been reported - in some, "Howard Beach" was the war whoop.
But last week, the punks went too far. They hit on the wrong neighborhood. And killed the wrong guy.
Because last week, four armed blacks charged a Bensonhurst social club filled with teenagers drinking Coke and playing video games, and they tore the jewelry off their necks and left the club's owner, 56-year-old Salvatore Scarpa, dead on the floor with three bullets in him. And as the punks, high on power, shouted "Remember Howard Beach!" they couldn't have known the dead man on the floor was a soldier in the Colombo crime family.
They couldn't have known that the poison and hatred that the Howard Beach incident has come to symbolize had spilled on the doorstep of the city's Mafia families. And that this city would have to feel the aftershocks of that.

Monday was a federal holiday, honoring the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. But not all federal officials had a day off work. New York City FBI agents were on duty - especially those who monitor the activities of the city's crime families.
They had one ear to the police radio.
"Today would be a very symbolic day to dump four blocks in the Gowanus," said an agent. "With the Mafia, you don't get mad, you get even. You take care of your own problems."
Two FBI agents were sent last week to 1275 74th St., to the scene of the murder, to the heart of a timeless Italian neighborhood filled with pizza stands, cannoli shops and funeral parlors. Where, for some, strangers are automatically pegged as cops, and blacks are automatically disdained. They went back to 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan with a sense of the mood of this neighborhood.
"I wouldn't want to be a black guy walking through that neighborhood," said the unnamed FBI agent. "I really wouldn't. Somebody's got to pay, and it doesn't matter if it's the guilty party."

Standing outside Wimpy's Social Club, an unmarked joint on 13th Ave. where Colombo wiseguys - mobsters - gather to drink and play pool, are eight neighborhood kids. It's Monday night, and the snow is coming down hard, and Wimpy's is locked tight and the venetian blinds are drawn.
The kids have on black leather jackets, and one wears a black beret. They are 14 to 16 years old - just a hair younger than the Howard Beach whites who beat up Griffith and his friends on the basis of race alone. These kids chain smoke. They rough each other around. They cuss and swear and flex their small muscles in their tiny jackets.
Two of them say they were in the 74th St. club when Scarpa was shot, and they know enough of the right details to be believed. One of them, 14-year-old Ronald Moran, is especially hot about what happened. "I want you to put down my name and address," he said. "I want the ######s to know my address. I want them to come." Moran has been looking through hundreds of mug shots down at the police station; he's been questioned. But he says the police are working too slowly on the case. "All the older kids around here are doing it faster," he said.
One kid turns angrily on Moran:
"That was stupid to say. Just shut up."
This is Joey Scarpa, the 15-year-old nephew of Sal; the son of Gregory Scarpa, a high-profile Colombo family capo, who the FBI says has been arrested more times than pizzas have been baked in Bensonhurst. "My dad was mad when he read in the papers that my uncle died in a Mafia hit. That's not true. It was just a plain old robbery. They wouldn't take the jewelry and the money in a hit. That's bogus."
No, the kids all chime in, it was just blacks making trouble.

"Believe me, if they come here again, it'll be bad," said 14-year-old Mike DelDuca. "I was watching Martin Luther King stuff on TV today, and I was wetting myself. The cops are taking big hoses, hosing the ######s down the street."
As the kids joust together and holler with a woman who takes notes, old Italian men wearing hats start peering out the door of the New Parkway restaurant, and young Italian men in their 20s pull up to the curbs and watch our their windows. They scowl and shake their heads. They call the kids over to them and scold them for talking to strangers.
In Bensonhurst, they take care of their own problems.

Along with the four blacks who burst into the social club last week, there was a fifth man. He wore a ski mask to cover his face - and gloves to cover his hands.

The FBI suspects he was a white man, hired by someone inside the Colombo family to knock off Sal Scarpa, who was allegedly dealing drugs and pimping local girls out of his Coca-Cola teen club - a severe embarrassment for the Colombo family.

The FBI suspects the masked man was ex-cop Carlo Antonino, who was found shot dead in Sheepshead Bay an hour after the Scarpa murder. The FBI suspects Antonino hired the four, unknowing black punks to make the mob hit look like a simple robbery. If so, the Colombo family would have had to kill Antonino to cover up the hit completely. If that is what happened, New York suffered an even greater injustice.

Because that means that one or two men at the top of a major New York crime family are using troubled black youths, who are all too ready to commit crimes in the name of Howard Beach, to do their depraved bidding.

They are instilling in the rest of the Colombo crime family and in the next generation of mafiosi and in all the people of Bensonhurst - a neighborhood already infected with racism - the kind of bigotry that could give us Howard Beaches for years to come.

[gohnjotti]

Ronald Moran - the 14-year-old interviewed in the article - had a short-lived Mafia career. In 1992, he murdered Joseph Randazzo during a shootout involving Joey Scarpa and Greg Scarpa. This was the shootout in which Greg Scarpa, dying of AIDS, lost an eye.
Moran was arrested in 1996. The 25-year-old pleaded guilty to the Randazzo hit, as well as writing threatening letters to two 68th Precinct detectives, the following year. Facing 27 years, he became a federal informant, and cooperated against his mob higher-up - Bensonhurst stalwart and Lucchese family mobster James "Froggy" Galione. Moran and Michael "Mikey Flattop" DeRosa (possibly the Michael 'DelDosa' from this article) testified against Galione, and later helped feds make a case against Eugene 'Boobsie' Castelle and Joseph 'Joey Flowers' Tangorra in 2000.

[Wiseguy]

Not surprising at all but this writer seemed the type who found the mob having racist attitudes more objectionable than the host of other crimes they're guilty of.

[newera_212]

So that's it. I remember reading that Messy Moran was there at the time of the Sal Scarpa hit. Didn't realize or put together that he was only 14 years old. Funny that Moran went from "looking at Mugshots with the cops" to sending a hand written Christmas card to Detective Dates threatening to kill him from the MDC in just a 6 or 7 year span. I'm sure he got his ass beat or got slapped around by some of the older kids after the paper printed that he was looking at mugshots with the cops lmao

[B.]

Very interesting stuff. The speculation about the Sal Scarpa hit has always made me wonder what the true story is.

[Villain]

Not surprising at all but this writer seemed the type who found the mob having racist attitudes more objectionable than the host of other crimes they're guilty of.

I dont want to stir shit up and i completely respect and understand your post but still i want you to know this...you see, back in 1961 Ross Prio purchased the franchise for the Playboy Club that was located in Miami, but later the franchise was purchased back by Hefner because of a racial incident that occurred in the club. Prio and the Outfit didnt want any blacks coming to the joint or on other words they wanted the club to operate as a segregated joint but Hefner opposed any segregation and that’s why he purchased it back from Prio for a much higher price.

[Wiseguy]

Not surprising at all but this writer seemed the type who found the mob having racist attitudes more objectionable than the host of other crimes they're guilty of.

I dont want to stir shit up and i completely respect and understand your post but still i want you to know this...you see, back in 1961 Ross Prio purchased the franchise for the Playboy Club that was located in Miami, but later the franchise was purchased back by Hefner because of a racial incident that occurred in the club. Prio and the Outfit didnt want any blacks coming to the joint or on other words they wanted the club to operate as a segregated joint but Hefner opposed any segregation and that’s why he purchased it back from Prio for a much higher price.

Interesting story. Good to see a lifelong pornographer felt something was beyond the pale and decided to take a moral stance.

[Villain]

Not surprising at all but this writer seemed the type who found the mob having racist attitudes more objectionable than the host of other crimes they're guilty of.

I dont want to stir shit up and i completely respect and understand your post but still i want you to know this...you see, back in 1961 Ross Prio purchased the franchise for the Playboy Club that was located in Miami, but later the franchise was purchased back by Hefner because of a racial incident that occurred in the club. Prio and the Outfit didnt want any blacks coming to the joint or on other words they wanted the club to operate as a segregated joint but Hefner opposed any segregation and that’s why he purchased it back from Prio for a much higher price.

Interesting story. Good to see a lifelong pornographer felt something was beyond the pale and decided to take a moral stance.

[richard_belding]

Interesting since Angela Clemente, who blew this case "open" years later, said Moran was able to identify Phillip Paradiso as the masked man the very night of the murder. Crazy to think -if her version of the story is correct- Paradiso and brother Greg both being informants at the time of the murder.

this case has always been a been a huge question mark. Great article

[TallGuy19]

It was suspected that Greg Scarpa had Sal killed because he discovered that Greg was an informant. Given the way the hit was carried out, it wouldn't surprise me. Making it look like a robbery by a group of black guys, and then murdering the hitman immediately after sounds like something he would do.

[Southshore88]

Didn’t Scarpa die of aids from tainted blood of a crew member because he didn’t want to get blood from a black man?

[bluehouse]

Scarpa hired them for sure noway he couldnt find those blacks afterwards using his fbi contacts and also his crew.Didnt the people around him find it suspicious that the grim reaper didnt look for revenge after his brother was killed

[furiofromnaples]

What happened to the 4 black guys? Was whacked?

[newera_212]

Not surprising at all but this writer seemed the type who found the mob having racist attitudes more objectionable than the host of other crimes they're guilty of.

I dont want to stir shit up and i completely respect and understand your post but still i want you to know this...you see, back in 1961 Ross Prio purchased the franchise for the Playboy Club that was located in Miami, but later the franchise was purchased back by Hefner because of a racial incident that occurred in the club. Prio and the Outfit didnt want any blacks coming to the joint or on other words they wanted the club to operate as a segregated joint but Hefner opposed any segregation and that’s why he purchased it back from Prio for a much higher price.

Interesting story. Good to see a lifelong pornographer felt something was beyond the pale and decided to take a moral stance.

Even better was that moral stance was probably just a work, built on the foundation of making money. He saw which way the wind was blowing in more of the cosmopolitan areas of the country and knew that adhering to Jim Crow laws in that type of establishment would push away the more liberal demographic of people who would be frequenting the place, on top of turning away money from black people themselves. It was a money move masked by morality - pretty much the M.O. of every company today. Hef was ahead of his time, I guess

[Villain]

In addition, the racial case with Prio is probably a rare example since the Outfit was known to collaborate with the blacks, including Prios crew