Posted on 08/15/2019 8:09:40 AM PDT by Kaslin
The feared Chicago Outfit hitman Gerald Scarpelli and the multimillionaire sex predator and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein had little in common.
Except for the fact that both men reportedly committed suicide in the federal lockup, Scarpelli years ago, in 1989 in Chicago, and Epstein just the other day in New York. And in both cases, there were power players on the outside, worrying about what they'd say.
Today, just as then, the conspiracy theories run wild. Sex, power, politics, and intrigue. And Epstein kills himself after his lawyers had him taken off suicide watch? How perfectly convenient.
Who believes in coincidences?
Scarpelli wasn't some weak Fredo. He killed people he was told to kill. He robbed Brink's trucks and squeezed whimpering deadbeat gamblers. He loved his work, which was all about visiting violent force upon others weaker than him.
When the bosses worried that hitman Billy Dauber and Dauber's mouthy wife, Charlotte, would talk to the FBI, Scarpelli and his cowboy crew called "The Wild Bunch" tailed Dauber's car after it left his lawyer's office. It was the middle of the day when they blasted Dauber off the road outside Chicago. They cut them to pieces with automatic weapons, shotguns, and rifles.
Epstein was a wealthy man with powerful friends. His disgusting hobby was all about inflicting himself upon young girls and stealing their innocence.
Scarpelli was a thug who killed for money. Epstein purred like a vampire and dedicated himself to a life of stealing young souls.
Epstein's world involved billionaires and politicians, and that fantasy sex island that the FBI raided the other day. His infamous jet, the "Lolita Express," counted among its passengers many of the powerful, including former President Bill Clinton, a most frequent flier.
Immediately after Epstein was pronounced dead, the conspiracy theories began. Even President Donald Trump, acting as conspiracy theorist-in-chief, hinted in a retweet that the Clintons might have had something to do with it. Like Clinton, Trump knew Epstein, and once had said nice things about him, but years ago Trump had Epstein barred from his Florida club, Mar-a-Lago, reportedly for approaching young women.
Human beings just love conspiracy theories.
After Epstein's death, I received an email from a retired Chicago homicide detective. In his day, he investigated many of the city's heater cases, too many murders to count. The Chicago FBI didn't trust the Chicago Police Department, because Chicago's chief of detectives, William Hanhardt, was the mob's main man.
But the detective who emailed me was trusted by the FBI, so much so that he'd been a member of the federal Organized Crime Task Force. When Scarpelli was arrested, he had a bag of guns, including a British machine gun and magazines loaded with 9 mm hollow points. He planned to shoot his way out of any arrest and leave cops and FBI agents dead on the ground.
Once caught, he began talking. Word got out, as it always does. He was found dead on the shower floor in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, asphyxiated by plastic bags he'd collected from wastebaskets. And the detective was brought in to investigate. He told me about it in that email:
"When I was in the FBI Task Force a really bad guy, Outfit hitman, high profile prisoner Jerry Scarpelli killed himself in the MCC.
Scarpelli had been the target of a major OC (organized crime) case. Major effort to get this guy. He was captured in a sting operation. Dangerous dude. FBI SWAT team. FBI snipers, the works. SOB was carrying a machine gun. He never got to use it.
A mob underling had come over and was cooperating. Had information that would put Scarpelli away for life. FBI and Justice hoped Scarpelli would take down some really big names to save himself.
Once caught, he began talking. Word got out, as it always does. He was found dead on the shower floor in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago, asphyxiated by plastic bags he'd collected from wastebaskets. And the detective was brought in to investigate. He told me about it in that email:
"When I was in the FBI Task Force a really bad guy, Outfit hitman, high profile prisoner Jerry Scarpelli killed himself in the MCC.
Scarpelli had been the target of a major OC (organized crime) case. Major effort to get this guy. He was captured in a sting operation. Dangerous dude. FBI SWAT team. FBI snipers, the works. SOB was carrying a machine gun. He never got to use it.
A mob underling had come over and was cooperating. Had information that would put Scarpelli away for life. FBI and Justice hoped Scarpelli would take down some really big names to save himself.
He was no rat. He was not going to spend his life in prison.
Another Homicide Detective and I were sent in to conduct the investigation. No agents.
It was a suicide. Conspiracy theories reigned. All coming from people who did not know squat."
I didn't have a newspaper column then, but when I began writing this column, I'd write occasionally about Scarpelli. He'd already started to flip, and he was in that in-between world, between the Outfit and the feds. The Outfit was worried.
Try holding your breath and see what happens. The life inside of you would compel you to rip the bag off your head. But I've since learned inmates bent on killing themselves can find a way. Perhaps by twisting a bedsheet anchored to the bed or the door around their neck, then rolling on the floor. As it tightens, they lose consciousness and die.
But still, I don't believe Scarpelli killed himself. And Epstein? Let's wait for the facts.
"I don't blame you," the retired detective told me. "When you're dealing with federal agencies with three letters for their name, you're not alone."
Why do we love conspiracy theories?
For psychic protection. Even those of us who'd rather die than be caught reading those wretched supermarket tabloids still look at the headlines, as the steak and arugula roll by.
Generation upon generation of corrupt and cynical leaders have taught us that those who believe in coincidence are fools. And so, we build alternate realities from the dust and mud of discredited institutions.
We use them like armor to shield us from the world.
“Why do we love conspiracy theories?”
Who cares...Epstein’s is NOT a ‘conspiracy theory’, unless one believes the 1 in 100,000 probability that everything in place to protect his life all failed at once.
As to ‘conspiracy theories’, how about the one that Trump was/is a Russian Agent and Putin got him elected? I don’t know too many “we’s” here as in “we love conspiracy theories”...we all hated it, precisely because it was ONLY a conspiracy theory, meant to prevent him from winning, and then to force him out of office.
So, do yourself a favor, Mr. Kass, and don’t try to speak for us - you are CLUELESS.
HOW were his Lawyers able to take him off Suicide Watch? I thought it was the Hapless Warden and a Dr.!
If this wasnt another case of Arkanside - it sure gives a darned good imitation of it !
Conspiracies are known to exist and people get convicted for conspiring so just saying “Conspiracy Theories” means nothing. You can say one is likely, not likely, possible, impossible or whatever but every single conspiracy theory is not exactly the same as any other.
Look at this point everyone knows he was murdered and the culprits will never be exposed!
Remember this idiot’s name. He will eventually eat crow.
Would it be possible to paste in the text once, so we don’t have to keep re-reading the same sentence? Or just delete all the duplicate paragraphs before posting?
(See Orrs, Steele, Simpson, Clinton, FBI, et al...)
Not "Collusion" -- "Conspiracy"!
TXnMA
A wise man, no doubt wiser than I, once said that the history of conspiracy is the history of the world. I agree, from “et tu Brute” to the actor J.W. Booth and friends and on and on. Those who lecture on how “rare” and “difficult” real conspiracies are seem to me to be living in an alternate universe but maybe I’m just a nutcase. On the other hand I am familiar enough with the definition of conspiracy to know that it is far from rare. We used to listen to a song called Winter Wonderland which had a lyric line that went,
Later on we’ll CONSPIRE
as we dream by the fire
Apparently it was not necessarily considered evil to conspire then. People could conspire to do good things.
Very few people who talk about the madness of conspiracy theories seem to have any idea of what the word means.
Other than Kurt Schlicter, Townhall has to have some of worst writers/journalists around.
Lets see, I’m a Chicago detective. Anything Scarpelli had, died with him. It was a federal case. He died in a federal institution. Federal task force or not, there is no federal statute for murder, so any charges would have to be made on the state level or the perp(s) would have be charged with some federal crime and the murder would be like a “lesser included crime”, if one can imagine that. So, 2 CPD detectives go into the jail, no one talks, guards don’t know sh*t, no cameras, no nothing....yeah, It was a suicide.
The hardest decision those two detectives made that day was where they were going to eat lunch.
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