"My Lover's Husband: The Mafia's 'Grim Reaper' Who Took 200 Lives—but Chose Me as His Hitman"

LARRY Mazza was already nervous about meeting his secret lover’s husband – then he saw his romantic rival swaggering towards him laden with expensive jewellery and wearing sun glasses.

His immediate thought was “.”

Fromer hitman Larry Mazza (left) with Robert De Niro Credit: Supplied Linda Schiro who was married to hitman Greg Scarpa Credit: Discovery Channel

Larry was right, but Greg Scarpa wasn’t your run-of-the mill mobster.

Scarpa was a , a hitman who “stopped counting at 50” murders.

Nicknamed the Grim Reaper, Scarpa was perceptive enough to realise Mazza was sleeping with his wife Linda.

He told the then 19-year-old young buck: “I know what’s going on with you and Linda.”

But rather than making Mazza his next victim, Scarpa made him an offer he didn’t refuse.

The captain in New York’s Colombo crime syndicate invited Mazza to work with him and he went on to get involved in 24 murders.

Talking to The Sun about his terrifying introduction to the Mafia, Mazza, 65, says: “I wasn’t sure if I should deny the affair or not.

“I thought I would, but I said to him, ‘Greg I’ve got a lot of respect for you, but only an idiot won’t see what’s going on.’

“I remember he banged on the desk with a smile. And he walked me out and he said he’s okay with it and as long as no one outside of us three finds out.

“That’s when he told me and when I learned one of the first rules. He said if anybody does find out you will be killed.

“I was only 19 but that was one of my first lessons. Also, in that time period I learned he had two other wives, so I started wondering if I just made his life easier with his third wife or his common-law wife, as Linda turned out to be.”

If he hadn’t met Scarpa, it seems unlikely Mazza would have followed such a dangerous path.

He had good grades at school and intended to become a fireman like his father.

But while doing supermarket deliveries in 1979, aged 17, he fell for Linda, who was in her early 30s.

Mazza recalls: “She was beautiful and there was an attraction. It was mutual seduction. I was hoping it was going that way and it certainly did. We wound up having an affair that lasted almost ten years.“

When he told Linda that he was thinking of studying to become a police officer she replied “you can’t be a cop, you’re too good for that.”

A year into the relationship she convinced Mazza to meet her husband, saying that “he would do anything to make me happy.”

The two men didn’t discuss the affair during their first meeting, instead the mobster gave Mazza the job of sales manager in one of his companies.

Larry when he worked at a supermarket Credit: Supplied Greg Scarpa with Linda Credit: Polaris

Mazza says: “When I had to come over to his office – which was the social club called Wimpy Boys – I saw there was a lot of gangsters hanging out there. I was there every day.”

It would take another six months before Scarpa confronted his young protege about what he was getting up to with Linda.

Once the air was cleared, the pair started working in various mafia rackets.

Gradually, he learned how much Scarpa should be feared.

Mazza says: “He was killing in his late teens, early 20s so he had enough under his belt to become a ‘made guy’ at a very young age. I think he was 18 or 19 when he got made, which is very young.

“He did murders. He had told me once that he had stopped counting at 50.

“He even told me once ‘if I’m going to kill somebody, I’m going to leave them on the street because I want people to see I killed for a reason.’ He was a different breed of animal.”

Scarpa, who died in prison in 1994 aged 66, a year after being jailed for three murders, is suspected of being involved in 200 deaths.

His main accomplice was Anthony Casso, who was sentenced to 455 years in prison for murder, racketeering and extortion in 1998.

Mazza was also lured into killing for the Colombo clan.

He confesses: “I was around probably couple of dozen, not that I pulled the trigger on all of them.

“Some I was just in outside car crash car, backup shooter, there’s a whole different levels, getaway driver, eventually you know you’re going to pull the trigger. I’m not saying I didn’t, but I was involved in about 24 murders.”

The body count erupted in 1989 due to a war within the Colombo family, which had been riven by feuds for decades.

Mazza explains: “Ultimately during the Colombo family war, I became a known shooter.

“If we were driving around and we spotted somebody on the other side, we pulled up, got out and did whatever it took.

“Sometimes we were involved in shoot-outs both ways. Several times there were attempts on our lives.”

Larry when he was a gangster Credit: Supplied Fellow mafia hitman Anthony Casso Credit: Getty

There was no remorse when Scarpa took revenge for an attempt on his life by a rival gangster.

Mazza remembers: “Greg opened the window and put the rifle out and he shot him. The first one he hit him right in the head you could see the guy’s eyes roll back he fell really like a sack of potatoes he was done.

“Then Greg shot him two more times, he hit him once in the neck once in the body.”

Not that Mazza was any less cold-blooded in his approach to the job, which he insists he never did for money.

He heard that a “heavyweight” hitman called Nicky Black was threatening to have him bumped off.

So when he came across Black by chance in New York, he leaned out of a car window and aimed his shotgun.

Mazza admits: “I was within inches of Nicky Black I had the shotgun right behind his ear.

“I pulled the trigger and our number-one enemy was out of the way.

“It was a tough scene, the cops said later that they found parts of his brain on the window. It was one that I just could never forget.”

Displaying little remorse, he adds: “The war I have no regrets about. I had no choice but to kill. They were hunting us down.”

The war came to an end after two innocent “kids” were shot dead in the crossfire of a Colombo shoot out.

The police came down hard on the Mafia, arresting as many known members as possible.

One of the men helping detectives was Scarpa, who had been an FBI informant since 1964.

Mazza believes that the Mafia mole’s handlers knew about his bloody exploits.

Larry is a personal trainer and writer today Credit: Supplied Larry advised Robert De Niro how to play a gangster in The Irishman Credit: Alamy

He claims: “He was doing a lot of those hits whilst he was with the FBI. He was doing a lot of hits under the FBI’s protection.

“They just turned away or just denied it because he was such a prized informant.”

When Mazza was arrested he struck a plea bargain, for giving information against an allegedly corrupt ex-FBI agent.

He served nine years in jail and became a personal trainer in Florida.

Mazza’s intimate knowledge of New York mobsters led him to be chosen as a technical advisor on the 2019 Martin Scorsese movie The Irishman.

The film’s star soaked up as much information as possible.

Mazza reveals: “He asked me ‘how do you get rid of weapons?’ I made a comment to him, ‘if you scuba dive down you could get enough weapons to start another war.’

“And he laughed at that, and the line in the movie was: ‘If you can send a scuba diver down we could arm a small nation’.”

The ex-hitman wrote a book called The Life and has received offers to turn it into a movie or TV series.

Mazza, who still operates a gym and works as a consultant in the gambling industry, is far happier having turned his back on crime.

He concludes: “I’m my own man. It’s great, it’s much more satisfying and earning like this and I have a life like this. I earn a lot of respect from people and I earn money without the previous life, you can’t beat this.”

For Larry’s book The Life visit https://larrymazza-thelife.com/