Killer Colombo hitman serving life for 4 murders denied compassionate release
A Mafia killer who whacked other members of his own Colombo crime family hit crew— and shoved the severed penis of one murder victim into the dead man’s mouth — will not get compassionate release, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled.
John Pappa, 50, won’t get a break on his two life sentences plus 65 years for four gangland murders in the 1990s, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Pamela Chen ruled, describing his crimes as “brutal and senseless” and suggesting the remorse he showed at a hearing last year was a cynical act.
“The court cannot shake the impression, after observing and listening to defendant over the course of the two-hour April proceeding, that he feels no remorse about committing the four murders nor empathy for the victims or their families,” Chen wrote. “Defendant’s statements … felt hollow and performative.”
Pappa, who has the creed “Morte prima di disonore” — meaning “death before dishonor” — tattooed across his back, committed the 12th and final murder of the bloody Colombo civil war of the early 1990s, then killed a fellow button man because he wanted credit for the slay.
The whole sordid affair was laid out in Chen’s ruling, filed May 30.
Pappa and another mobster, John Sparacino, were part of a three-man “hit team” assembled by Eric Curcio, and on Oct. 20, 1993, they rubbed out Colombo underboss Joseph Scopo, ambushing him as he pulled up to his Queens home in Ozone Park.
Sparacino sprayed Scopo’s car with bullets, but Scopo managed to get out of his car and run off.
Pappa ran after him, shot him three times and killed him.
Sparacino began taking credit for the killing, which angered Pappa and Curcio, so the two started plotting to kill him. But first, they went after one of Sparacino’s friends, Rolando Rivera. because he told his girlfriend that Curcio warned him to stay away from Sparacino.
Rivera’s loose lips doomed him. On June 7, 1994, Curcio and Pappa drove with Rivera in a stolen van to Staten Island, and when they crossed into the Forgotten Borough, they shot him four times and shoved him out of the van while it was moving.
An off-duty cop found Rivera alive, but he died shortly after.
Their attention turned back to Sparacino after learning he’d dissed Curcio and Pappa at a nightclub. So they enlisted a pal in the drug trade, Calvin Hennigar, to lure Sparacino to his Staten Island home. There, Hennigar shot him in the back of the head.
Pappa and Hennigar drove Sparacino’s body to another spot on Staten Island in a stolen car, and lit the vehicle on fire, their victim still inside.
An autopsy revealed Sparacinio’s gruesome fate — he had been hog–tied and mutilated, with a flap of skin cut from his face and his severed penis shoved in his mouth.
Finally, Pappa turned on Curcio, who he thought wasn’t giving him credit for the Scopo kill, and who may have killed one of his close friends.
“I killed Joe Scopo, I did all the work,” Pappa complained to Joseph Iborti, who testified at Pappa’s 1999 trial.
No one would help Pappa with the hit, so he went solo, ambushing Curcio outside his place of business on Oct. 4, 1994 — shooting him more than 10 times.
Pappa was convicted of all four killings in 1999, while Hennigar was found guilty of the Sparacino slay.
Pappa put in for compassionate release in 2022, arguing that his history growing up led him into the arms of La Cosa Nostra. His father was a Genovese gangster murdered by the Colombo crime family in retaliation for committing two slayings — a story people told Pappa as a child — and his stepfather was locked up for drug and tax evasion charges.
“Pappa was raised in a life of organized crime and drug dealing, and after his father was killed and his stepfather was incarcerated, he
began to look up to organized crime members to fill the fatherhood gap,” wrote his lawyer, Shon Hopwood.
At a tense hearing last year, the loved ones of Pappa’s victims spoke out, asking Chen to keep him locked away forever.
“You’re a phony, you’re a fake, you’re a loser, and you’re a killer, and that’s all you’ll ever be. Remember that. You’ve taken lives. You’ve
gotten that taste. Don’t act like you deserve anything from anybody. You deserve nothing but suffering like we’ve suffered,” said Michelle Gedz, who was five months pregnant with Rivera’s daughter when he died. “You are pure evil and you are the spawn of evil, and there is nothing else you will ever be.”
At the April 2024 hearing, Pappa told Chen he found his humanity in prison.
“It’s been productive. It’s been transformative. I’ve completely changed my way of thinking, my belief system. I’ve learned that working as hard as you possibly can, being honest and helping others, that those are the three keys to a meaningful life,” he said. “I now see things clearly, act correctly, and my actions are positive, effective, and completely unselfish.”
Sparacino’s brother, Salvadore, interrupted Pappa as he spoke, declaring: “And the Oscar goes to you.”
https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/06/08/colombo-killer-john-pappa-jailed-for-life-in-4-nyc-rubouts-denied-compassionate-release/
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