By ALEX GINSBERG
June 11, 2008
He wanted to be the Grim Reaper's Grim Reaper.
The star witness in a Brooklyn cold-case murder shocked onlookers yesterday by claiming he threatened from jail to knock off the mob world's most feared killer, Gregory "The Grim Reaper" Scarpa.
"I was calling Gregory up and threatening to kill him when I got home," said Reyes Aviles, a Mohawk-sporting personal trainer who ran with a rough crowd in Bensonhurst in the 1980s.
"You were calling Gregory Scarpa up and threatening to kill him?" asked incredulous defense lawyer Bruce Barket.
"That right," Aviles shot back. "I was going to come home one day."
Scarpa, also nicknamed "The Mad Hatter" and "The Killing Machine," was a Colombo soldier who claimed to have stopped counting his murder victims after 50. He also was the FBI's most valuable source, providing inside information on organized crime for 40 years before he died in 1994.
His handler, star FBI man Lindley DeVecchio, was charged with leaking information to Scarpa, but the case collapsed last fall.
Aviles said he was angry at Scarpa for not supporting him after he went to jail.
He's testifying to help put away Craig Sobel, 40, in the 1989 shooting of a Brooklyn teen.
