An Interview with Jennifer Mascia

Sean F. Jones

(This is an excerpt--check out Issue 7 in print for the full interview.)

  Jennifer Mascia is a child of murder. The victim of the murder in question was a mob informant known as Joe Fish. The assailant was John Mascia, Jennifer’s father. Mascia drove Fish to Brooklyn’s Owl’s Head Park and as soon as the pair stepped out of the car Mascia shot him five times. It was not Mascia’s first murder, nor his last. The murder led Mascia to Fishkill Correctional Facility, where he met a do-gooder from Manhattan Beach named Eleanor; she was interviewing prisoners for a planned book on prison reform. Eleanor’s interest in prison life soon became an interest in John. After his release, Eleanor traded in her life of service for one with the charming ex-con, often on the lamb—from the FBI, from creditors, and from a past with a piling body count. Jennifer was their only child.

Jennifer learned nothing of her father’s crimes during her childhood. She thought that using fake names, shuffling through Social Security numbers, and bouncing from Gucci shopping sprees to scrounging a life out of food stamps was simply the shape of her own typically dysfunctional childhood. After all, her parents loved her madly, attended her school plays, and goofed around on weekday nights in front of the TV. But soon the lies piled too high, and after a few deathbed confessions Jennifer became obsessed with finding out the truth about her father’s villainy. Soon she gained insight into how her parents’ tumultuous backgrounds led them to lives of crime, and came to terms with the toll her own dysfunctional past had taken on her—it turned her into a journalist.

Jennifer excavated her family secrets in her frank debut book, Never Tell Our Business to Strangers.

Have you learned any thing new about your parents since the book was published?

No, but people came forward who were related to me and we had a kind of family reunion on Facebook. I saw photographs of my great-grandmother in Italy. But in terms of any salacious things—people coming forward saying, “Your father killed my blah blah blah . . . ”—nobody’s done that. That’s the one thing people were kind of worried about: “Will people be coming after you?” But no.

How did your extended family react to you writing the book?

Everyone was supportive. My father had kids from his previous marriage who are older than me, and they have kids of their own who are my age. They were supportive and agreed to be interviewed. The only people who were upset were my father’s family who didn’t get along with my mother. My mother’s viewpoints about my father’s family are in the book and they took offense to that. But that was the only thing.

Now that you know about his past, do you think of your father and mother as villains?

My father was a good dad. Then, when he died, I found out [about his murders]. So that dad who I thought was my dad—a carpet cleaner— is kind of preserved. And this guy I’m finding stuff out about is a new John Mascia. And never the twain shall meet.

But my mother loved him knowing what he did, along with everyone in the family. He was the black sheep and the favorite son. What I’ve learned is that people tend to overlook a lot because charisma goes a long way. I don’t entirely agree with the forensic psychologist [who diagnosed him as a sociopath]. My father, I think, did feel remorse, love, and compassion. Because he had those qualities, he wasn’t a complete sociopath. There were aspects of him that were redeeming.

It seems your father was able to compartmentalize his life between loving his family and unleashing his rage on his victims. It is similar to your ability to compartmentalize your feelings for him. Do you think that talent is genetic?

I think I get my ability to compartmentalize from my mother. She blinded herself to a lot about my dad, but she knew what he was capable of. Like my mother, I’ve always been attracted to the bad boy—I have a taste for the darkness in people. She got that from her father who was a horrible alcoholic who treated her like shit; she’d finally met a dark guy who didn’t treat her like shit.

I couldn’t love my father if I thought about the fact that he killed people twenty-four hours a day. I love him in spite of it. I remember the tender times.

Do you find it easier to forgive villainy because of your relationship with your father?

Do I read about people who killed other people and have a soft spot for them? No. It’s funny, I used to question my mother about this very thing after he died. “Mom, Dad killed people,” I would say, and she would say, “But he was your father!” Like that excused everything. My dad was the exception.

I don’t look at the BTK killer [Dennis Radar, a massmurdering strangler who was a pillar of his community] and say, “But he had a family, and everything with them was great! He had another side! He should be sympathized with!” I don’t think that way at all. It really is a personal exception. I’m sure Sammy the Bull’s son and Victoria Gotti feel the same way.

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