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  • Deal with the Devil

  • The FBI's Secret Thirty-Year Relationship with a Mafia Killer
  • By: Peter Lance
  • Narrated by: Peter Lance
  • Length: 19 hrs and 54 mins
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (46 ratings)
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Deal with the Devil

By: Peter Lance
Narrated by: Peter Lance
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Summary

From an award-winning investigative reporter: the shocking story of the mob killer who terrorized the streets of New York City for decades...while working for the FBI.

In Deal with the Devil, five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter Peter Lance draws on three decades of once-secret FBI files and exclusive new interviews to disclose the epic saga of Colombo family capo Gregory Scarpa, Sr., who spent more than 30 years as a paid Top-Echelon FBI informant while wreaking havoc as a drug dealer, loan shark, bank robber, hijacker, high-end securities thief - and killer.

A Mafia capo who "stopped counting" after 50 murders - earning nicknames including "the Grim Reaper" and "the Killing Machine" - Greg Scarpa was enlisted by the FBI as early as 1960. His detailed debriefings on Mafia practices and activities went straight to J. Edgar Hoover and revealed the structure of Cosa Nostra long before the celebrated Valachi hearings. In 42 years of murder and racketeering, Scarpa served only 30 days in jail, thanks to his secret relationship with the Feds. But Scarpa's most deadly reign of terror came in the period from 1980 to 1992, when more than half his homicides occurred - even as Scarpa was serving as a paid informant under Supervisory Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, who ran two organized crime squads in the FBI's New York Office.

The celebrated case agent on the 1985-1986 Mafia Commission prosecution, DeVecchio had persuaded Scarpa to return to the fold as an informant, under laws that explicitly forbid organized crime insiders from committing murder or other crimes while receiving compensation from the Bureau. And yet, drawing on secret memos that went to every FBI director from Hoover to Louis Freeh, Lance documents that Scarpa not only continued his violent rampage during these years, but actually launched a new war for control of the Colombo crime family - a conflict that left 12 dead and dozens injured.

Before he died of AIDS, contracted through a tainted blood transfusion, Scarpa committed or ordered 26 murders - including the violent rubout of his own brother Sal in 1987 and the drive-by slaying of his nephew Gus Farace, which triggered a 500-agent manhunt - all while serving as an informant for Lin DeVecchio. When DeVecchio himself was indicted on four counts of murder in 2007, Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes called the case "the most stunning example of official corruption... I have ever seen." Yet the murder charges against DeVecchio were dismissed a short time later - even as a New York State Supreme Court judge described the FBI's association with Scarpa as a "deal with the devil."

After the case's abrupt dismissal, Lance started peeling back the layers on what defense attorneys called Scarpa's "unholy alliance" with the FBI. Through exclusive interviews with Scarpa's son Greg Jr. and former Lucchese boss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, among others, as well as more than 1,150 pages of confidential briefing memos, many revealed here for the first time, Lance traces links between the Scarpa case, the infamous Mafia Cops case, and more.

Written with the same astounding capacity for penetrating criminal networks that marked Lance's previous books, Deal with the Devil is a page-turning work of investigative journalism that reads like a Scorsese film.

©2013 Tenacity Media Group Ltd. (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers

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Don't bother

It's like listening to court files / court cases....it's just all a bit clerical and definitely not a gritty look into mob life. Not great. Far to much information about court cases and prosecution files + cases. Draining to listen to

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Badly Narrated

Tried hard to get to grips with a pretty complicated story. Despite being very interested in the subject matter this was a grind. The narrators constant quote, unquotes and tedious, uninterested voice ruined the listen

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Bad narrator

I didn’t like the narration, his voice spoiled the dialogue which stopped me getting into the story and I just lost interest.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Goes on a bit!

Story goes on a bit often repeating itself several times, if there's a abridged version this would work better.

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loved it

a well documented book and a riveting listen from start to finish.
I am.now downloading the authors other books

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Good story had to listen to it twice though.

I think the film smoking aces was loosely based on this story. interesting goes to show the government is the biggest mob going.

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struggled with this book.

To many quotes and very hard to follow. I have read any books on mafia crime nine as difficult as this.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic.

fantastic. brilliantly written. brilliantly read. true story about a true mafioso and the very unorthodox FBI agent. Not only do you get from this a typical mafioso story but also a story of a friendship. regardless of how wrong it may have been. will listen to many times again in the future.

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Excellent

Had read the book previously so knew the story but purchased audiobook. very well researched true story which deals with the unholy alliance between Scarpa and his FBI agent handler. Long and entertaining listen.

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