Disgraced former NYPD detective Luis Scarcella boasted that the 22-year-old’s murder by his gangster uncle was a “murder of a public servant.”
Scarcella made the outrageous comments on a podcast, saying he would have done the same thing as Colombo crime family captain Nicholas Graciano, aka Nicky Black.
Despite his connection to Graciano, Scarcella was assigned to the case but did not make any arrests.
Murder victim John Alatico was shot four times in the chest near his home in Mapleton, Brooklyn in 1982.
Speaking on true crime podcast The Burden, Scarcella said she had already been told that her uncle was the perpetrator when she was asked to investigate the case.
“I’m questioning my uncle at his home as a suspect in this murder. He said the kid was not a good kid,” Scarcella said.
Asked if he had asked his uncle if he had killed Alatico, Scarcella said, “I don’t remember. Maybe I don’t want to remember.” I had to lock him up. I think Nicky would be fine with that.”
“The motive was that he (Alatico) had Nicky’s daughter addicted to drugs. We couldn’t prove it, but that was the scenario we were getting.”
The NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau investigated the incident, but Scarcella claims she came out of the incident “smelling like roses.”
But when Burden producers, including veteran journalist and producer Steve Fishman, reviewed the internal report, they found it was missing key details.
Mr. Scarcella even claimed that he did not know that his uncle was involved in organized crime.
Naturally, no one was arrested in the end, especially since Scarcella was so sympathetic to his uncle.
“Unfortunately, there was a term for murder of a public servant. This met the criteria,” Scarcella said on the podcast.
Asked whether the shooting of Mr. Alatico was a “murder of a public servant,” Mr. Scarcella attempted to argue.
“I don’t mean to disrespect his family. I don’t mean to disrespect him. But with Nikki Black, I’m sure he felt that way too. I’m sure he thought he was dead. “You should think it’s obvious,” he said.
But later in the episode, Scarcella said he saw things from his uncle’s perspective.
If it was his daughter who was addicted to drugs, he says, “I probably would have done the same thing and turned myself in.”
“It’s very difficult to call my uncle a murderer,” Scarcella complained — Graciano was shot to death in a 1992 mob murder.
“Okay, he was a murderer, are you happy? That’s hard to do,” Scarcella complained.
During his heyday in the 1980s and ’90s, Scarcella was a cigar-smoking New York City police legend known as “The Closer” because he could get confessions that no one else could.
By my count, he has solved at least 175 cases and solved the same number of cases again.
However, in 2013, witnesses began to question his record, and the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office began investigating his case history.
Since 2014, the DA’s Conviction Review Division has vacated 37 convictions related to Scarcella.
Eighteen cases have been overturned, the latest being Stephen Ruffin, 45, who spent 14 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit.
New York City has been forced to pay more than $110 million in settlements to more than a dozen wrongfully imprisoned people.
