Says FBI agent gave deadly info to mob
By Anthony M. DeStefano, Staff Writer Newsday
An FBI organized-crime specialist helped a Mafia assassin commit murder by passing along information about the identities or informants, a defense attorney told a Brooklyn federal jury yesterday.
FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio passed tips to mobster Gregory Scarpa Sr., a ‘trigger-happy killer,” because the agent had “no regard for human life,” defense attorney Gerald Shargel said in opening statements in the racketeering-conspiracy trial stemming from a two-year war for control of the Colombo crime family.
“It is going to be a dark day for law enforcement when the evidence unfolds,” Shargel told the rapt jurors.
Trial observers believe the information about the FBI agent’s actions could be damaging to the government’s case against one faction’s leader, Victor Orena Sr., and five other men accused of murdering rivals in the family feud, which is reported to have led to as many as 10 homicides between 1991 and 1993:
Shargel’s comments expanded on a letter prosecutors sent to detense attorneys in the case Monday that briefly described how DeVecchio “may have” provided information to Scarpa, himself an FBI informant, about the hideaways used by rivals in the family.
During the prosecution’s opening statements, Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Corcella acknowleged DeVecchio has been suspended.
“He’ll have his day in court,” she told the jurors.
Outside the courtroom during a recess, Shargel admitted none of the information passed along by DeVecchio actually led to any homicides. But, he said, U.s.
District Court Judge Edward Korman had indicated earlier in the case that the government understated what DeVecchio did when it used the words “may have” to describe the agent’s actions.
• De Vecchio, once head of the FBI unit monitoring the Colombo crime family, is not expected to be called as a government witness; Shargel would only say “no comment.”
Scarpa, a Colombo captain, died of AIDS in 1994 from a blood transfusion.
