By Any Means True Story: What the New Mafia Movie Changes

Mark Wahlberg and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in By Any Means. Official Paramount Pictures publicity photograph by Eli Ade, reproduced for editorial coverage; original press-image source.

By Any Means opened in U.S. theaters on September 4, 2026, pairing Mark Wahlberg’s real-life Mafia killer Gregory Scarpa with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II’s fictional FBI agent in a violent civil-rights thriller. The movie is rooted in the murder of Mississippi activist Vernon Dahmer and longstanding reports that federal agents secretly used Scarpa to extract information from Ku Klux Klan members.

That remarkable premise is not a documentary record. Director Elegance Bratton has confirmed that Wayne Strider, the agent played by Abdul-Mateen, did not exist, while the FBI has never officially acknowledged Scarpa’s alleged Mississippi missions. Members of Dahmer’s family have also challenged the film’s accuracy, making the line between history and invention essential to understanding the By Any Means true story.

What to know about By Any Means

• The release: Paramount opened By Any Means exclusively in U.S. theaters on Friday, September 4, 2026. No official streaming date has been announced.
• The real figures: Gregory Scarpa and Vernon Dahmer were real. Scarpa was a Colombo crime-family member and longtime FBI informant; Dahmer was a businessman and civil-rights leader murdered after helping Black citizens register to vote.
• The major invention: Wayne Strider is fictional. Bratton says the character was created to place a Black protagonist at the center of the story.

Bratton directed from a screenplay by Sascha Penn. The cast also includes Nicole Beharie, Giancarlo Esposito as Dahmer, Josh Lucas, LisaGay Hamilton, LaChanze and David Strathairn.

The real Gregory Scarpa was a Mafia killer and FBI source

Gregory Scarpa Sr. was not a conventional law-enforcement ally. He was a feared member of the Colombo organization, one of New York’s Five Families, whose criminal career included racketeering and murder allegations. He was also a confidential FBI source for decades, a relationship that later became one of the Bureau’s most notorious informant scandals.

Scarpa’s dual identity is what gives the movie its mob hook. He could move through violent circles and use methods federal agents could not lawfully employ, while his government relationship gave him protection and access. The arrangement did not transform him into a hero. It demonstrated the danger of an agency relying on a source whose value came from the same violence it was supposed to investigate.

The FBI’s public Vault contains heavily redacted records on Scarpa, but the agency has not formally confirmed the specific story shown in By Any Means. Reputable accounts have nevertheless reported that agents brought him south during civil-rights investigations in the 1960s.

Vernon Dahmer’s murder is the movie’s historical center

Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer Sr. was a successful Black businessman, farmer and NAACP leader in the Hattiesburg area. He helped Black residents register to vote at a time when white supremacists used intimidation, employment retaliation and violence to suppress political participation.

On January 10, 1966, Ku Klux Klan members attacked Dahmer’s home and store with gunfire and firebombs. Dahmer fought back while his family escaped the burning house. He later died from his injuries.

The murder generated national outrage and a long legal pursuit. Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, was finally convicted in 1998 of ordering the killing after earlier trials ended without a conviction.

By Any Means makes Dahmer, played by Giancarlo Esposito, the moral reason for the investigation. Bratton told Entertainment Weekly that he consulted Dahmer’s widow and daughter and wanted audiences to leave thinking about the activist rather than only the notorious gangster attached to the case.

Scarpa’s Mississippi role remains reported, not officially confirmed

The most widely repeated version of the story places Scarpa in Mississippi twice. In 1964, according to later reporting, the FBI allegedly used him while searching for civil-rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. Scarpa was said to have threatened or tortured a Klansman for information about where their bodies were buried.

Accounts then claim Scarpa returned after Dahmer’s 1966 murder to help identify people involved in the attack. The Mob Museum summarizes both alleged missions, while contemporary reviews of By Any Means note that the FBI still has not formally acknowledged using Scarpa in this way.

That uncertainty must remain attached to the claim. Scarpa’s work as an FBI informant is documented; the specific Mississippi interrogations rest on reporting and later reconstructions rather than official confirmation—much as the Lufthansa heist’s popular history extends beyond what courts proved.

Wayne Strider is fictional—and the director says so

The film’s central partnership is not literally historical. Wayne Strider, the Black FBI agent assigned to handle Scarpa, was created for the screenplay. Bratton explicitly confirmed the invention in his September 4 interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Bratton said the character allowed the movie to enter the period through a Black protagonist rather than making another civil-rights drama primarily about a white person’s moral awakening. Strider’s conflict with Scarpa also gives the thriller its basic tension: a federal agent committed to law must work beside a criminal whose usefulness depends on breaking it.

The director describes his approach as seeking emotional truth even when an exact situation did not happen. That is a legitimate dramatic method, but it also means viewers should not treat the pair’s conversations, confrontations or investigative path as a transcript of an FBI operation.

The same caution applies to scenes that alter the Dahmer family’s history. The Guardian noted that the movie places Ellie Dahmer in additional danger for dramatic effect, while the real Ellie survived the attack and continued a long life of activism. She celebrated her 101st birthday in 2026.

The Dahmer family dispute cannot be treated as a footnote

The production involved relatives from both the Scarpa and Dahmer families. Bratton said Gregory Scarpa Jr., Linda Scarpa, Ellie Dahmer and Bettie Dahmer contributed memories and research. Scarpa Jr. was reportedly overwhelmed when Wahlberg’s makeup and a recreated family setting reminded him of his father.

But family participation was not unanimous approval. Dahmer’s youngest son called for a boycott, describing the film as largely fictional and objecting to what he viewed as a white-savior framework. That criticism directly challenges the movie’s decision to place an infamous white mobster inside the pursuit of justice for a murdered Black activist.

The dispute also sharpens the movie’s central moral problem. Scarpa’s alleged involvement is fascinating because it exposes the government’s willingness to use criminal violence. Yet fascination can become distortion if the gangster receives more narrative weight than the people who organized, resisted and suffered under white supremacy.

What critics are saying as the movie opens

Early reviews agree that By Any Means is brutal and deliberately provocative, though they differ on whether its genre machinery clarifies the history. The Guardian praised Bratton’s visual force while criticizing heavy-handed choices and historical embellishment. The New Yorker found power in the film’s civil-rights context but argued that its crime-thriller structure sometimes substitutes convenient violence for complicated history.

For MobstersDaily readers, the strongest reason to see the film is its extraordinary reversal of the real Donnie Brasco operation: instead of an agent infiltrating the Mafia, the FBI allegedly turned to a Mafioso when lawful institutions were failing to penetrate Klan violence. That premise connects organized-crime history to a much larger American story without making Scarpa’s criminal life admirable.

What happens next

By Any Means is now playing in U.S. theaters. Paramount has not announced a digital rental date or a Paramount+ premiere, so any streaming timetable remains speculation as of September 5, 2026.

The real foundation is powerful enough without exaggeration. Vernon Dahmer was murdered for defending Black voting rights. Gregory Scarpa was both a Mafia killer and a federal source. Reports that the FBI secretly connected those two histories have circulated for years.

By Any Means turns that collision into cinema. Its most important question is not whether Scarpa can be recast as a hero, but what it says about justice when institutions decide that a violent criminal is the tool they need.

Sources

• Paramount Pictures — By Any Means
• Entertainment Weekly — Elegance Bratton interview, September 4, 2026
• The New Yorker — review and historical context, September 4, 2026
• The Guardian — review and Dahmer-family dispute, September 3, 2026
• The Mob Museum — Gregory Scarpa and the film’s historical basis
• FBI Vault — Gregory Scarpa Sr. records