Deal with the Devil
Page 52
Ten days after Mazza’s testimony, Linda Schiro supplied the details that allegedly linked Porco’s murder to Lin DeVecchio—an allegation for which Schiro has never been effectively impeached.
Joey and Patrick “were like brothers,” she recalled.59 After staying on the New Jersey farm for about two and a half weeks, the two returned to Brooklyn. Then, during the Memorial Day weekend, she said, DeVecchio called the house and asked for Scarpa in a tone she described as “serious.”
Scarpa took the phone, Schiro recalled, and the conversation lasted “a couple of seconds.” He hung up and asked her to drive him to a pay phone. They got in her car and she drove to the phone, which Scarpa, she said, had used before to communicate with DeVecchio.60 Greg left the car, Schiro said, and went to the phone.
He then made a call that lasted “maybe five minutes,” Schiro said. Though she didn’t hear the conversation, when Scarpa got back in the car he was “really upset.”
“This fuck[ing] kid. I cannot believe that he is going to rat on Joey,” he exclaimed, according to Schiro. When she asked what he was talking about, Scarpa reportedly told her, “Patrick. Lin just told me that he is fucking ratting Joey out.”61
Schiro said she told Scarpa, “Patrick would never do that.” But Scarpa replied, “Listen to what I am telling you. He is ratting him out.” With that, she said, they drove back to the house. At that point, said Schiro, Scarpa yelled for Joey to come downstairs.62 Her testimony continued:
Vecchione: Did Joey come out?
Schiro: Oh yeah. Joey came down.
Vecchione: What happened?
Schiro: He came into the dining room and Greg said, “Sit down.” At first Joey sat, and then he said, “What is going on?” [Greg] says, “Something has to be done with this Patrick—you know—he is fucking going to rat you out.” So, Joey went nuts. He said, “Dad, what are you nuts? You don’t know what you are talking about. Patrick would never do that to me.” He says, “You’re crazy.” And he is telling his father that. So Greg says, “Listen to me.” And he banged his hand really hard on the table. “Where this came from, Joey, it is high up.” But that’s when Joey stood up, and he said, “I don’t give a fuck. . . . Patrick would never do that, Dad. You and him don’t know what the hell you are talking about.” And Joey just didn’t want to know nothing. He just walked upstairs.
Vecchione: Did he tell him—did Scarpa mention to him—what it is that Porco was going to be ratting on him about?
Schiro: Yes. That murder of Dominick Masseria.63
Later on, Schiro testified that Scarpa called her nephew John Sinagra and ordered him to go with Joey and kill Patrick. After furnishing some additional details about the murder, Schiro testified that Joey returned.
Schiro: And he just went upstairs and I followed him up. And he was crying. He was in a fetal position in the hallway upstairs. . . . He just kept saying, “Mom . . . I can’t believe Daddy. . . .” He was just in shock, Joey. He kept telling me, “I loved Patrick.”64
Shortly after the Porco murder, according to Schiro, Lin DeVecchio came to Scarpa’s house. Schiro said that she heard their conversation in the kitchen.
Vecchione: What did Scarpa say to DeVecchio and what did DeVecchio say to him?
Schiro: Lin walked in with a serious type of face. And Greg, he said “This kid [Joey] is sick. All he is doing is crying—you know?” And he says . . . [to DeVecchio,] “You told me he was ratting. I killed him and the kid . . . won’t come out of his room.”
Vecchione: What, if anything, did DeVecchio say?
Schiro: He says, “Well, listen, better he cries now than he goes to jail.”65
Schiro’s Earlier Interviews
About twenty minutes later, Vecchione asked Schiro about a series of books she had collaborated on with several writers, including the former cop turned magazine writer John Connolly and Sandra Harmon, who had cowritten a book about Priscilla Presley.66 Both Connolly and Harmon had interviewed her and developed book proposals.67 After talking to Harmon, Schiro said she was approached by Jerry Capeci, who she said was interested in “a book about the mob and Lin.”
As noted, in 1997 Capeci had conducted a series of audio interviews with Schiro in partnership with Tom Robbins, his former colleague at the Daily News, who went on to write for the Village Voice. Capeci had also been cited in DeVecchio’s OPR investigation as a possible recipient of some of Lin’s alleged leaks. Chris Favo had told FBI agents that his boss had asked him to call Capeci on the day Carmine Sessa was arrested “so he could send a photographer over.”68 Favo had also insisted that “throughout the course of the war, important [FBI] investigative information was disclosed in Jerry Capeci’s weekly column.”69
On January 12, 2006, barely a week after it was announced that a Brooklyn grand jury was investigating DeVecchio, Capeci wrote a column for the New York Sun describing Schiro as “a central figure in the investigation.”70 Writer Sandra Harmon later insisted that on that same day—January 12—she sent an e-mail to the Brooklyn DA’s office, citing both the Connolly and Capeci-Robbins book proposals along with the book proposal on Schiro she’d written.71 The implication was that, some twenty-one months before the trial, Vecchione and company were on notice of at least three sets of interviews that Linda Schiro had given to various writers—interviews the defense could later use to try to impeach her if she’d given any prior statements inconsistent with her testimony before the grand jury or at trial.
As recently as August 2007, Capeci had received a subpoena for his sources and notes relating to DeVecchio for the Kastigar hearing. In fact, according to a Daily News report, in fighting the subpoena, Capeci had stated in court pleadings that he’d promised Schiro in 1996 that their interviews would be kept “strictly confidential.”72 So it was no secret to Mike Vecchione that Robbins and Capeci had elicited statements from Schiro a decade before DeVecchio’s trial that might conflict with her sworn testimony.
Now, twenty-one months after Capeci first cited Schiro as a “central figure” in his case, Vecchione was questioning Schiro on the stand about the very interviews the columnist had conducted with her in preparing his book proposal with Robbins.73 In response, Schiro testified that Capeci’s book was “supposed to be fiction. A lot of fiction and fact.”74
The next day, October 30, Doug Grover subjected Schiro to a blistering cross-examination, repeatedly attempting to demonstrate that she had made a number of prior inconsistent statements over the years—particularly to FBI agents—when it came to her knowledge of Scarpa’s dealings with Lin DeVecchio. In questioning her about a conversation she had with FBI agent George Gabriel, who interviewed her in December 1994 during DeVecchio’s OPR investigation, Grover asked:
Grover: Do you recall that it was during that conversation with Gabriel, that for the first time you said that Greg Scarpa had received information about impending arrests from Lin DeVecchio?
Schiro: Yes.
Grover: And do you recall that, for the first time, you made the statement DeVecchio informed Scarpa of the identification of, and you used the words “potential rats.” Is that right?
Schiro: Yes . . .
Grover: And was this the first time you ever said that?
Schiro: To George Gabriel?
Grover: To anybody?
Schiro: Yes. I believe so.75
Later, after a recess, Grover homed in on a conversation Schiro had had with Gabriel on May 10, 1995. This was two days after Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Corcella had given a letter to defense attorneys disclosing eight potential leaks by DeVecchio to “34” in the course of the war—including the whereabouts of Orena loyalist Sal Miciotta.
Grover: Do you recall telling George Gabriel words to the effect that DeVecchio never provided Scarpa with any information about where Colombo Family members were hiding during the war?
Schiro: I might have. I might have said that.76
Grover then refreshed her recollection by showing her Gabriel’s 302 memorializing that May
10 debriefing session and Schiro admitted she’d told him that “DeVecchio never provided Scarpa with any information about where family members were hiding during the war.”77
Vecchione Expresses Confidence in Schiro
During the next recess, I caught Mike Vecchione in the hallway and asked him if he was worried that Grover was successfully impeaching the credibility of his chief witness. Vecchione smiled and looked me straight in the eye.
With great bravado he said, “Peter, the FBI can put whatever it wants into a 302. Back then Linda was scared. Greg had died. She was looking to DeVecchio and the FBI to protect her. She said a lot of things in order to cope. To survive. But I can tell you with certainty, she was telling the truth about Lin in the grand jury and she’s telling the truth about him now on the witness stand. I’m not worried in the least.”78
With that he patted me on the back and went into the courtroom. I was so struck by his tone of certainty that I went into a stall in the men’s room, pulled out a small microcassette recorder, and recorded that conversation verbatim while it was fresh in my mind. Within twenty-four hours, Michael Vecchione would eat those words.
Chapter 42
G-MAN STICKS IT TO DA
On October 30, 2007, the second day of Schiro’s testimony, Tom Robbins, the former Daily News reporter who had years ago published a flawed account of Scarpa’s Mississippi missions, rocked the DeVecchio murder trial with a story in the Village Voice, where he now worked. Entitled “Tall Tales of a Mafia Mistress,” the story revealed that ten years earlier, he and Jerry Capeci, who had cowritten the Mississippi stories, had interviewed Linda Schiro for a book they planned to write.1
As noted, Capeci himself had identified Schiro as a “central figure” in the case as early as January 2006; indeed, after Lin was indicted, Schiro was described in a New York Times piece as “the key witness” in the case against DeVecchio.2 Given the early warning that Schiro would be playing such an important role, it strains belief to think that Capeci and Robbins wouldn’t have sought to examine the audiotapes of their interviews with her long before trial—especially since Capeci’s notes had been subpoenaed months earlier by the defense for the Kastigar hearing.
But according to Capeci, his former partner Robbins, whom he called a “dogged investigative newsman,” didn’t search for the recordings until the first day of trial, just two weeks before Schiro’s testimony.3 Now, in his Voice piece, Robbins wrote, “The story she told us then is dramatically different from the one she has now sworn to as the truth.”
The very next day, Robbins showed up in court with a lawyer and waived his privilege under Section 79 H of the New York Civil Rights Law, which permits reporters to keep their interviews and notes confidential.4
Jerry Capeci
(New York Daily News)
Tom Robbins
(Associated Press)
Mike Vecchione
(Peter Lance)
But before he’d even listened to the tapes, and apparently based solely on Robbins’s description of their contents in the Voice article, a red-faced Mike Vecchione made an astonishing announcement to the court: “I think that if after listening to these tapes we cannot go forward or should not go forward . . . because of what’s on these tapes, then we’re prepared to do what would be necessary, and that would be to dismiss this case if that is the situation.”5
“When I heard about that admission,” says defense attorney Flora Edwards, “I almost fell over. Here was the chief prosecutor on the biggest murder case in recent Kings County memory. They had put years into the preparation. They’d been at trial for two weeks—and without even hearing what was on those tapes Vecchione was prepared to fold the tent and go home. He didn’t say to the judge, ‘We want to weigh our options.’ He didn’t allow himself any wiggle room to finish his case-in-chief and maybe call Greg Scarpa Jr. to bolster Linda. He just painted himself into a corner. . . . It was absolutely unbelievable.”6
“Keep in mind,” says Andrew Orena, “this was a bench trial before a really smart judge—not a jury. Judge Reichbach had already stated that he was in a position to separate out the Kastigar issues. Why couldn’t the DA have waited for a full damage assessment?”7
But within hours, after Vecchione had listened to the tapes, the case was finished.
“Ex-F.B.I. Agent’s Murder Trial Fizzles, as Does Chief Witness,” read the headline in the New York Times.8 The New York Post declared, “DeVecchio Off Hook,”9 followed by “Moll Rat Is a Tape Worm,”10 a pair of stories written by Alex Ginsberg who, just two weeks earlier, had filed a piece about Lin under the headline “‘Crooked Fed’ & ‘Grim Reaper’ Joked.” The banner headline across the double-truck story in the Daily News was “Tapes Show Mob Moll Made It Up.”11 In the New York Sun, Jerry Capeci was ebullient. His “Gang Land” column was headlined: “G-Man Wins. Tapes Foil Mob Moll.”12 The next day, a page-one follow-up story by Ginsberg in the Post showed a smiling DeVecchio and his wife toasting with champagne at Sparks Steak House—the site of Paul Castellano’s murder—under the headline “Up Yours: G-Man Sticks It to DA with Toast at Mob-Slay Site.”13
(New York Post)
Suddenly, in the eyes of the New York media, Lin DeVecchio was the victim and Linda Schiro the perpetrator. Back in 1997, when they interviewed her, Capeci and Robbins had promised Schiro they would keep their interviews secret. But DeVecchio was facing twenty-five years to life on each of the four murder counts, so Robbins justified his last-minute production of the tapes this way:
“Tell me what else I could have done? If you sit silent, then someone could go to jail for life. I chose not to live with that.”14
On the other hand, the Schiro tapes didn’t clear DeVecchio of all the charges in the DA’s indictment—not by a long shot. They never addressed his possible role in the Mary Bari murder. And they actually implicated him in the murder of Patrick Porco, Joey Scarpa’s teenage friend. There’s little doubt that they definitively cleared him in the May 1992 murder of Lorenzo “Larry” Lampasi. But that was one murder out of four. And as we’ll see, a new analysis of the tape transcripts compared to the trial transcript raises serious questions about why the DA precipitously dismissed his entire case.
The Two Transcripts Compared
When the case against Lin DeVecchio collapsed on November 1, no verbatim transcript of Schiro’s trial testimony was available to allow for an independent comparison of her interviews with Capeci and Robbins from 1997. The trial transcript was almost immediately sealed. But I later managed to secure a copy, and what I found when measuring Schiro’s 1997 statements against her sworn testimony in 2007 was eye-opening.
Of particular concern was the suggestion, published widely in the media, that the tapes exonerated DeVecchio in the murder of Joseph “Joe Brewster” DeDomenico.15 Jerry Capeci’s “Gang Land” column was one of many venues reporting that on the tapes, Schiro had “specifically excluded [DeVecchio] from participating in the murder of mobster Joseph (Joe Brewster) DeDomenico.”16 But a careful comparison of the tape transcript against Schiro’s trial transcript suggests otherwise.
On October 29, 2007, under questioning by prosecutor Michael Vecchione, Schiro testified that DeVecchio had made two trips to meet with Scarpa sometime before March 1986. Both meetings, Schiro insisted, took place in the kitchen of their house with the SSA and his informant sitting in a “breakfast nook,” their usual meeting place, as Schiro stood a few feet away. The direct examination went like this:
Vecchione: What did Greg say to DeVecchio in your presence?
Schiro: He just told Lin that he doesn’t understand what is going on with Joe Brewster. He doesn’t come around anymore. He is doing burglaries with an alarm guy that Greg did work with. . . . And he was becoming this born-again Christian. Drugs, drinking.
Vecchione: What if anything did he say to DeVecchio about that stuff?
Schiro: To see what you could find out about him.
Vecchione: And what, if anything did DeVecch
io say at that point?
Schiro: That he would take care of it.17
Schiro then recounted what happened a week or two later, when DeVecchio returned.
Vecchione: What if anything did DeVecchio say and what did Scarpa say?
Schiro: He said he was right about what he was saying about Joe Brewster.
Vecchione: Who is doing the talking now?
Schiro: Lin was doing the talking to Greg.
Vecchione: And what did Lin say to Scarpa?
Schiro: After he said he was right about him drinking, doing drugs, and the burglaries, he says, you know we got to take care of this guy before he starts talking.
Vecchione: Let the record reflect, the witness has used her right hand to make a motion with her fingers and her thumb, moving them together.18
Eighteen months later, Joe Brewster was murdered. Linda testified that the job was done by Greg Scarpa Jr., Mario Parlagreco, and William Meli, another member of Greg Sr.’s Wimpy Boys crew.19
Later, after becoming a government witness, Meli told FBI agents that “it was incredible the way Scarpa Sr. trusted Schiro.” The FBI 302 memo on Meli’s debriefing went on to say that Scarpa “would talk about all kinds of criminal efforts including murders, right in Schiro’s presence.” Meli even recalled Scarpa “talking about the murder of Joseph DeDomenico, aka Joseph Brewster, in front of Schiro after they had killed DeDomenico that same evening.”20
Now, consider what Schiro reportedly told Robbins and Capeci during their interview in 1997. In his initial Voice piece on October 30, 2007, Robbins writes, “That interview took place on March 1, the day after agent DeVecchio had himself been forced to take the witness stand in Brooklyn federal court, where he was grilled by attorneys for a pair of Colombo crime family members seeking to have their convictions overturned.”21