The Mafia Hit Man's Daughter by Linda Scarpa

thought he had a license to kill,” a retired agent recalled. “Around 1970, an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration got blown away, and the DEA heard that Scarpa was the triggerman. They wanted to interrogate Scarpa, and Tony did a tap dance to obstruct their investigation. Scarpa was not arrested or charged with that murder.”
    In his book Villano credited my father with finding out the name of the man who executed Medgar Evers, the Mississippi field secretary for the NAACP. Evers was shot in the back by a rifle bullet in the driveway of his Jackson home on June 12, 1963.
    Villano said the FBI contacted my father, whom he referred to as “Julio,” to go down to Mississippi to “persuade” a member of the white Citizens’ Council to give up the name of the person who assassinated Evers. The FBI, in return, paid my father for his services, as well as guaranteed him a walk on an armed-robbery charge he was facing.
    â€œIf he would assist the investigation in Mississippi, he would be the beneficiary of the best the bureau could do for him,” Villano wrote in his book.
    Villano said my father agreed, so my father and his girlfriend flew to Miami Beach to establish an alibi. He checked her into a hotel and then went to Jackson, Mississippi, to a store managed by the white Citizens’ Council member. My father told the guy he had just moved to Jackson from Chicago and needed to buy a television set. After the purchase he told the man to hold it and he would return later that night—although he might be a little late.
    Around 9:20 P. M., my father showed back up at the store and asked the manager, who was alone, to put the television in his car. He said he had a bad back and couldn’t lift anything. The manager agreed. When they got to the car, my father told him to put the TV in the backseat because the trunk was filled with clothes.
    When he opened the door and leaned in to secure the television, my father pushed him to the floor and jumped onto the backseat. Then he shoved a gun in the manager’s ribs and ordered him to stay put and not open his mouth. An FBI agent, who had been lying on the front seat, jumped up and started driving.
    Villano said they drove south for a few hours, with a car full of agents following them. Finally they arrived at a deserted building somewhere in the Louisiana bayou. The agents surrounded the house, while my father brought the guy inside. He tied him to a chair near an open window. My father told the man he worked for the grand dragon of the Chicago chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, who was unhappy with the assassination of Medgar Evers because he hadn’t coordinated it.
    My father told the appliance store manager to tell him who did it and he would let him go. The guy spilled his guts. My father then went outside to talk to the agents, who had heard everything through the open window. They said the guy’s story was a crock—the names weren’t right and the facts didn’t match up with their information.
    According to Villano, my father threatened the guy, but he lied again. For the third time my father asked the man to tell him what he wanted to know. But that time he wasn’t taking any chances. He stuck his gun in the guy’s mouth and said if he didn’t tell him the absolute truth, he was going to blow his head off, which he said later he would have done.
    It worked. Villano said my father told the guy to tell him the story again—slowly—so he could write it down. When my father finished writing the man’s statement, he told him to sign it. In the end, because of my father’s involvement, the FBI arrested Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers.
    Although Hoover’s office tried to say Beckwith was tracked down by other means—his fingerprints were allegedly found on the rifle—Villano said that was “pure hokum.” Two all-white juries ultimately