In the midst of a bloody internal war tearing apart the Colombo crime family, Nicholas 'Nicky Black' Grancio, a 62-year-old male captain, met a violent end on a Brooklyn street corner on January 7, 1992. Grancio, a loyalist to the faction led by acting boss Victor 'Little Vic' Orena, was behind the wheel of his Toyota Land Cruiser at the intersection of Avenue U and McDonald Avenue in Gravesend when the attack occurred.
The brutal slaying was a pivotal moment in the vicious power struggle between the Orena supporters and those loyal to the imprisoned boss, Carmine 'The Snake' Persico.
The assassination was carried out by members of the Persico faction, specifically a crew led by the notoriously violent Gregory Scarpa Sr.. Larry Mazza, a protege of Scarpa, later claimed that he was the one who fired the fatal shots from a shotgun, coming within inches of Grancio's head.. The hit was reportedly ordered in retaliation for a failed assassination attempt on Scarpa just days earlier, an attack that Scarpa believed Grancio was personally involved in.
On the day of the murder, Grancio was under surveillance by an NYPD and FBI task force, who had received a tip that his life was in danger. However, shortly before the fatal encounter, the surveillance team was inexplicably pulled away. It was alleged that Scarpa, who was a longtime FBI informant, used his connection with his FBI handler, agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, to have the surveillance removed, thereby creating the opportunity for the hit.
In the aftermath, the law eventually caught up with those responsible. In 1993, Gregory Scarpa Sr. pleaded guilty to the murder of Nicholas Grancio. A year later, his associates in the crime, Larry Mazza and James Delmasto, also pleaded guilty to conspiring with and assisting Scarpa in carrying out the murder. Grancio's wife later filed a lawsuit against FBI agents R. Lindley DeVecchio and Christopher Favo, alleging they conspired with Scarpa to bring about her husband's death. The case was ultimately dismissed due to a lack of sufficient admissible evidence.
