By Dennis Hevesi July 1, 1995, NY Times
In a case that hinged on the connection between an F.B.I. agent and a mob captain acting as an informer, all seven suspected members of a faction of the Colombo crime family were found not guilty yesterday of conspiring to murder members of another faction.
There was virtually rapt silence in Judge Edward R. Korman’s courtroom in the Federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn as the first six names were read and followed by, “Not guilty,” and then an eruption of glee as up to 100 friends and relatives, the defendants and their lawyers punched the air, shouted, hugged, wept and slapped one another’s backs at the final finding. The jury deliberated 12 hours in the seven-week trial.
One juror, who identified himself only as Juror 0186, said, “There wasn’t sufficient evidence” for a conviction, and added that the pivotal moment “was when they showed the sheet of the conversations with DeVecchio and Scarpa.”
“It showed that Scarpa was basically running free,” the juror added.
The juror was referring to R. Lindley DeVecchio, the agent who until last year headed the C10 Squad of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, assigned to investigate the Colombo gang, and Gregory Scarpa, a reported Colombo captain who was also Mr. DeVecchio’s informer. Defense lawyers said their clients were forced to protect themselves from Mr. Scarpa while Mr. DeVecchio shielded the informer.
The prosecution had portrayed the defendants as conspirators who arranged a series of murders to install their patron, Victor Orena Sr., as head of the family. The war, prosecutors said, erupted in 1991 between the faction loyal to Mr. Orena, the acting boss, and Carmine Persico, the imprisoned boss, who wanted his son Alphonse to succeed him.
The defendants included Mr. Orena’s sons Victor Jr. and John and Thomas Petrizzo, a contractor who helped build many skyscrapers in the city. The prosecution described Mr. Petrizzo as a mob captain, leading a double life.
Mr. Scarpa was a commander for the Persico faction. He pleaded guilty to murder and died in prison last year, after contracting AIDS from a blood transfusion.
The defense contended that its clients were just trying to protect themselves from the Persico faction and Mr. Scarpa in particular. Tacitly conceding that the defendants were gang members, one lawyer, James LaRossa, said:
“Some of them had weapons. But there is no testimony in this record that they ordered anyone killed, no evidence that they stalked anyone or that they went out to shoot anyone.”
Mr. Scarpa, Mr. LaRossa added, killed six in the Orena faction.
The defense argued that the murders were helped by Mr. Scarpa’s relationship with Mr. DeVecchio. Testimony about that was given by two F.B.I. agents, Jeffrey W. Tomlinson and George Leadbetter 2d, who worked under Mr. DeVecchio. They said they came to suspect that Mr. DeVecchio had disclosed confidential information that had helped Mr. Scarpa evade arrest.
On June 19, the last day of testimony, a third F.B.I. agent, Christopher Favo, recounted a day in May 1992 when, he said, Mr. DeVecchio slapped his desk at the news that two Orena men had been killed.
“And you wrote down that he got excited about it,” Mr. LaRossa asked. “Didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Mr. Favo responded.
“You said that he said to you, ‘We’re going to win this thing,’ right? Meaning the war, right?”
“Yes.”
“Meaning the Persico side, right?”
“Yes.”Mr. DeVecchio, who has declined to comment, was transferred last year to other duties.
Members of the prosecution team did not respond to messages at their office yesterday. But in his summation, the prosecutor, George Stamboulidis, conceded that the evidence was circumstantial. “How do you know that there was an agreement to murder?” he asked. “In short, because there were murders.”
The prosecution case relied on taped conversations of defendants, telephone records and the testimony of accomplice witnesses. The evidence included bulletproof vests, pistols, reverse telephone directories and street maps supposedly used to find victims.
Mr. Stamboulidis reminded the jurors of one gang member’s testimony about a conversation in which Mr. Petrizzo reportedly said of the Persico faction, “These people are no good, and they all have to die.”
Yesterday a juror, Philip Severino, listed important items of evidence that were never produced: “Missing photos of a supposed shooting attempt on Scarpa taken by the police or the F.B.I. A missing revolver that was thrown out a window by Mr. Scarpa. It was recovered but missing when it came time to produce it. Shell casings in an assassination attempt on Scarpa. A garbage bag found when the F.B.I. did an early morning raid on Victor Orena Sr.’s house on Long Island. It supposedly contained guns.”
“I had a problem,” Mr. Severino said, “with four items missing.”
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July 1, 1995, Section 1, Page 25
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