FBI Guilty

In a stunning blow to the FBI’s credibility, a federal jury in Brooklyn yesterday acquitted seven men of charges they took part in a bloody war for control of the Colombo family.

Instead, jurors said later they believed a high-ranking FBI agent helped fuel the feud by feeding information to a now-dead capo who was supposed to be an FBI informant but who also was deeply involved in the conflict.

The verdict was the fourth defeat for Brooklyn federal prosecutors in a Colombo family case and the second in which Colombo captain Gregory Scarpa’s ghost dealt the fatal blow.

Jurors said yesterday Scarpa. who died ofAIDS last year, should

have been the one on trial, not the defendants whose acquittal was met with tears from friends and family and stoic expressions from the federal law enforcement officials who had hoped to send the to prison. 

They said Scarpa – whom defense lawyers portrayed as a crazed killer

“Hannibal Lecter, against whom the defendants had to defend themselves — was a man to be feared but was still allowed to run wild, and even aided by his FBI handler.

The defendants, Juror No. 186 said, “were a group of guys trying to keep themselves alive” evidence, he said showed “Scarpa was running free doing what he wanted to do.” And that, he noted, included murder.

Juror 180, who like others on the jury asked to identified only number. said panel members believed most of the government didn’t make its case. 

The Seven Defendants were secretly recorded tapes of several of them discussing war strategy. The tapes include Victor M. Orena Jr. instructing an associate on how to operate a new gun.

As one juror told a defense lawyer after the verdict, “The tape almost had you guys down” But it was the specter of Scarpa that hung over the trial and clearly influenced its outcome.

Defense attorneys hammered at the fact that Scarpa had been an FBI informant for years and that his handler, Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, who was in charge of the agency’s Colombo squad, fed him information.

Defense lawyers called two FBI agents who worked under DeVecchio and reported their supervisor because they believed he had been compromised by Scarpa. But when one agent testified he did not report his suspicions until January, 1994, some 18 months after they developed, defense lawyers charged a “government cover-up” had been under way.

The defense charged Scarpa— who switched to the Persico faction in the middle of the war— was an agent provocateur in the war.

Jurors, who deliberated for about 10 hours, over three days, agreed.

“It was a bit scary,” said Juror 238, a woman.

“That the FBI was feeding information to someone so deadly,” chimed in Juror 180.

“It was him [Scarpa] who made it seem a war was going on,”

said No.238.  De Vecchio, who has been reassigned to another squad, denies wrongdoing. Testimony showed he is the subject of an internal FBI review.

Jurors also said they were disturbed about four missing pieces of evidence: a gun, shell casings, a photo of a van used in a shooting and a garbage bag that held a pile of handguns found in a defendant’s home.

‘SCARPA WAS RUNNING FREE DOING WHAT HE WANTED TO DO.’

-juror 186