Retired F.B.I. Agent Is Accused of Role in Killings

When R. Lindley DeVecchio, a 65-year-old retired F.B.I. supervisor, stood up in a courtroom in Brooklyn yesterday to face charges that he had helped his prized Mafia informant commit four murders, the tension was clear.

On one side of the gallery, filling roughly two-thirds of the blond wood benches, were nearly four dozen mostly gray-haired men in dark-colored suits. Retired F.B.I. agents who had once been Mr. DeVecchio’s colleagues, they were now his supporters. Most sat stiffly upright and spoke little.

In front of them, at the prosecution table in the well of the courtroom, sat two somber senior prosecutors from the office of the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes. Mr. Hynes, after a 13-month investigation, had hours earlier announced the indictment of Mr. DeVecchio on charges that he had helped his informant commit four mob murders in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, accepting weekly payoffs totaling more than $66,000.

Also in the gallery were several more prosecutors and investigators who had worked on the case.

After Mr. DeVecchio’s lawyer entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf, one of the prosecutors, Michael F. Vecchione, who is the chief of the district attorney’s investigations division, outlined the charges in the case. Mr. Hynes had said the investigation had “uncovered a troubling path of confidential leaks, payoffs and death,” and he called the case “the most stunning example of official corruption that I have ever seen.”

Mr. Vecchione, in arguing against bail for Mr. DeVecchio, went through each of the murders, detailing for State Supreme Court Justice Gustin L. Reichbach what he said was Mr. DeVecchio’s direct role and his reasons for “instructing” his informant, Gregory Scarpa Sr., to commit the killings.

In most of the cases, including the slaying of another mobster’s former girlfriend, Mary Bari, the prosecutor said, it was because the victims had begun talking to the authorities and posed a threat to Mr. Scarpa or his relatives. Mr. Scarpa, who contracted AIDS from a transfusion and died in prison in 1994, was a captain in the Colombo crime family.

But it was Mr. Vecchione’s argument that former F.B.I. agents had sought to intimidate witnesses on Mr. DeVecchio’s behalf, and his contention that a network of former agents who had once worked overseas made him a flight risk, that transformed the hard-fought argument into a pitched battle with the defense.

The contention that the former agents would help Mr. DeVecchio flee prompted groans, angry grumbling and some laughter from retired agents in the gallery.

And Mr. DeVecchio’s lawyer, Douglas E. Grover, belittled Mr. Vecchione, contending that his office was unaccustomed to making organized crime cases, a charge Mr. Vecchione sharply disputed.

Mr. DeVecchio is charged with four counts of second-degree murder for acting in concert in the killings and could face a sentence of up to 25 years to life.

Wearing a gray checked button-down shirt with the collar open and dark slacks, Mr. DeVecchio did not speak during the hourlong hearing and sat impassively. Mr. Grover called him an honest lawman who had played a key role in the bureau’s battle against organized crime.

Ultimately, Justice Reichbach released Mr. DeVecchio on $1 million bail, co-signed by 5 of the 45 former agents who Mr. Grover said were willing to step forward. The judge ordered that Mr. DeVecchio surrender his passport and that his movements in and out of his home in Sarasota, Fla., be monitored with an electronic bracelet.

One of two other defendants, John Sinagra, 38, an accused mob figure charged in one of the killings, pleaded not guilty and was held without bail pending a hearing on Monday. Another defendant, Craig Sobel, 39, was being held in Florida pending extradition.

After the bitter argument over Mr. DeVecchio’s bail, the spectacular charges against him still resonated in the courtroom, though some of the accusations first surfaced more than a decade ago, when fellow agents told their superiors of their suspicions that he was funneling secret information to Mr. Scarpa.

Internal investigations into those allegations by the F.B.I.’s Office of Professional Responsibility and prosecutors with the Department of Justice — inquiries that several former federal officials have criticized as deficient — failed to uncover enough evidence to charge Mr. DeVecchio with a crime or even to discipline him.

Mr. Hynes said his investigation began in February 2005 after a member of the House Judiciary Committee, William Delahunt, Democrat of Massachusetts, brought allegations involving Mr. DeVecchio to his attention. Mr. Delahunt was investigating allegations against F.B.I. agents involved in organized crime cases.

In the new case, one law enforcement official said the key witness was Linda Schiro, Mr. Scarpa’s companion of many years. She knew details about the relationship between the gangster and the lawman because Mr. Scarpa had confided in her, and she was present for telephone calls and meetings between the men in which they discussed their crimes, the official said.

Mr. Grover cited her at the arraignment and dismissed her testimony, saying that during the earlier inquiries she had said she knew nothing about the murders. He quoted her as saying then, “I stay out of the kitchen,” a reference to the room in Mr. Scarpa’s Brooklyn home where Mr. DeVecchio and his informant had their weekly meetings.

But another law enforcement official said that Ms. Schiro has reported that during the earlier investigation she felt intimidated by other F.B.I. agents who were associated with Mr. DeVecchio. Both law enforcement officials were given anonymity because the investigation is continuing. Mr. Grover also said at the arraignment that transcripts of testimony by several Colombo family turncoats in trials during the 1990’s contradicted the theories about Mr. DeVecchio’s role in the murders.

The killings detailed by Mr. Vecchione began in 1984, with the slaying of Ms. Bari, 31, the former girlfriend of a fugitive mob figure. She was shot to death by Mr. Scarpa and others in his Brooklyn social club after Mr. DeVecchio warned him that she was talking to the authorities and might reveal the whereabouts of her former boyfriend, Mr. Vecchione said.

In 1987, prosecutors said, Mr. DeVecchio provided information that led to the killing of a Colombo soldier, Joseph DeDomenico. The agent told Mr. Scarpa that Mr. DeDomenico was using drugs, committing crimes without sharing the proceeds with Mr. Scarpa and flirting with born-again Christianity, all of them lapses that Mr. DeVecchio said made him a threat, the prosecutor said.

Two years later, a group of teenagers — including Mr. Scarpa’s son Joseph — were joyriding on Halloween when one of them shot and killed 17-year-old Dominick Masseria after a fight that started over thrown eggs, according to the indictment.

Mr. Masseria had no ties to organized crime, and prosecutors concede that Mr. DeVecchio had no role in his death. But when Patrick Porco, 18, one of the youngsters in the car, was interviewed by the police about the killing in 1990, Mr. DeVecchio warned Mr. Scarpa that Mr. Porco posed a threat to Joseph, the prosecutor said. So Mr. Porco, too, was killed. Mr. Sinagra was charged yesterday with that crime.

The last killing, on May 22, 1992, was part of the bloody Colombo war of that era. Mr. Vecchione said Mr. DeVecchio, using information he gleaned from his agents’ surveillance of a Scarpa rival, Lorenzo Lampasi, told Mr. Scarpa that Mr. Lampasi would get out of his car before dawn each morning to lock a gate when he left his home, leaving him vulnerable to attack.

Before the hearing yesterday, Chris Mattiace, 58, who worked with Mr. DeVecchio for 25 years and was one of the retired agents who later crowded into the courtroom, said: “We don’t believe it. We believe in him. We believe that the charges are frivolous.”

But members of Mr. Masseria’s family, who attended the district attorney’s news conference, took a different view. Even though Mr. DeVecchio was not charged in the young man’s killing, they suggested that suspicions that the retired supervisor had a role in the Porco killing had kept the truth from coming to light. “If we can’t trust the F.B.I., who can we trust,” said Dorothy Garuccio, a sister of Mr. Masseria.