Deal with the Devil
Page 61
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. “The FBI’s Compliance with the Attorney General Investigative Guidelines,” Inspector General’s Report, September 2005, 18.
9. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, March 1, 1974, 6.
10. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 18, 1974, 1.
11. FBI letterhead memo (LHM), March 1, 1975, 3.
12. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI, May 5, 1975, 1.
13. Letter from Edward A. McDonald, attorney in charge, Organized Crime Strike Force, EDNY, to Hon. I. Leo Glasser, July 22, 1986.
14. Fredric Dannen, “The G-Man and the Hit Man,” New Yorker, December 16, 1996.
15. R. Lindley DeVecchio and Charles Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing: The Shocking Frame-up of a Mafia Crime Buster (New York: Berkley, 2011), 64.
16. Ibid., 107.
17. Dannen, “The G-Man and the Hit Man.”
18. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 108.
19. Ibid., 114.
20. Addendum: Criminal Investigative Division, April 8, 1987, requesting additional authority for payment to Gregory Scarpa Sr. It describes broadly the “services” the informant provided in three major investigations, identified as “Shooting Star,” “Gambino Family,” and “Starquest.”
21. District Attorney Charles Hynes at the press conference announcing the indictment of Lin DeVecchio, March 20, 2006.
22. Jerry Capeci, “I Spy,” New York Daily News, October 19, 1998.
CHAPTER 10: GUNS AND RABBIS
1. R. Lindley DeVecchio and Charles Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing: The Shocking Frame-up of a Mafia Crime Buster (New York: Berkley, 2011), 109–10.
2. Jenner & Block employs 450 attorneys and has offices in Chicago, Washington, New York, and Los Angeles, http://jenner.com/people/JayDeVecchio.
3. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 21.
4. Ibid., 35.
5. Ibid., “costume,” 118; “gold chains,” 68.
6. Ibid., 69.
7. Ibid., 107.
8. U.S. v. Orena, transcript of direct examination of R. Lindley DeVecchio by Gerald Shargel, February 28, 1997, 166–67.
9. Interview with R. Lindley DeVecchio, “The Grim Reaper: Greg Scarpa,” Monsters, Biography Channel, airdate September 4, 2012.
10. U.S. v. Orena transcript, 67.
11. Memo from special agent in charge, FBI New York Office, to director, FBI. Subject: Gregory Scarpa. Top Echelon Criminal Informant Program, New York Division, November 21, 1961.
12. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 54–55.
13. Ibid., 32.
14. Author’s interview with John Patton, April 29, 2004.
15. Anderson Cooper, “The FBI’s Lin DeVecchio and ‘the Grim Reaper,’” 60 Minutes, CBS, airdate May 18, 2011.
16. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 109.
17. FBI teletype memo from FBI New York Office to director, FBI, July 1, 1980.
18. U.S. v. Gregory Scarpa Jr., testimony of R. Lindley DeVecchio, October 14, 1998, transcript, 3384–85.
19. R. Lindley DeVecchio, FBI 209 memos for Top Echelon (TE) informant designated “NY3461,” December 2, 1980, to August 27, 1993.
20. Bob Drury, “Mafia Mole,” Playboy, January 1997.
21. Scott Shifrel, “Mob Hit Man Testifies, Weeps at Lindley DeVecchio Trial,” New York Daily News, October 19, 2007.
22. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 73.
23. Accessing Bureau pay scales from that period, a former FBI agent consulted for this book estimated that the base salary for a GS-13—DeVecchio’s estimated General Schedule (GS) pay scale after ten years of service—would have been roughly $27,756, with a 25 percent voluntary overtime increase, for a total of $34,695. Certain agents in New York were awarded cost-of-living increases over the years, so it’s impossible to calculate DeVecchio’s 1976 salary precisely, but the retired agent called it a “fair estimate.”
24. U.S. v. Orena transcript, 165.
25. Alan Feuer, “For Ex-F.B.I. Agent Accused in Murders, a Case of What Might Have Been,”New York Times, April 15, 2006.
26. U.S. v. Orena transcript, 164.
27. Ibid., 161.
28. Al Guarte, “FBI Big Shots Knew Mob Rat Killed His Rivals,” New York Post, March 1, 1977.
29. 18 U.S. Code section 924, http://codes.lp.findlaw.com/uscode/18/I/44/924; 18 U.S. Code section 922, http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/922.html.
30. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 74.
31. U.S. v. Orena transcript, 165.
32. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 114; FBI teletype memo from FBI New York Office to director, FBI, March 8, 1985.
33. William Sherman, “You Pay G-Man’s Legal Bills,” New York Daily News, March 6, 2007.
34. According to an aide to Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) investigating the payments, the Justice Department cited two sections of the Code of Federal Regulations, 28 C.F.R. 50.15(a) and 50.16, that provide for the payment of legal fees for accused government employees if their actions on the job fall within the “scope” of their employment and the U.S. attorney general determines that the legal representation paid for is “in the interest of the United States,” http://cfr.vlex.com/vid/representation-private-counsel-expense-19679481.
35. Author’s interview with Gerald Shargel, November 9, 2011.
CHAPTER 11: THE ROYAL MARRIAGE
1. FBI, Manual of Investigative and Operational Guidelines, section 137-4, “Operation of Informant,” (6): “An alternate Agent must be assigned at the time the informant is opened. The alternate Agent must handle some contacts with the informant and must meet or observe the informant by the second contact after conversion. . . . Any deviation from this requirement must be approved personally by the special agent in charge and documented in a memorandum in the informant’s file.”
2. Author’s interview with Special Agent James Whalen (ret.), May 19, 2011.
3. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Compliance with Attorney General’s Investigative Rules,” September 2005, www.justice.gov/oig/special/0509/chapter3.htm.
4. Memo to special agent in charge from Supervisory Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio (C-10), January 24, 1992, 5.
5. R. Lindley DeVecchio and Charles Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing: The Shocking Frame-up of a Mafia Crime Buster (New York: Berkley, 2011), 70.
6. Jack B. Weinstein, judgment, memorandum, and order, U.S. v. Victor J. Orena and Pasquale Amato, March 10, 1997, 33.
7. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 144.
8. Interview with Whalen, March 16, 2011.
9. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 114.
10. Memo from FBI New York Office to director, FBI, November 10, 1980, citing an August 26, 1980, meeting reported that “Source furnished a complete up-to-date structural breakdown, placing all the members under the appropriate capos,” 3.
11. Ibid., 2–4.
12. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 13.
13. Ralph Ranalli, Deadly Alliance: The FBI’s Secret Partnership with the Mob (New York: HarperTorch, 2001), 70.
14. Memo re: debriefing of Robert “Rabbit” Stasio, May 16, 1996.
15. Special Agents Jeffrey W. Tomlinson and Howard Leadbetter II, FBI 302 memo re: Carmine Sessa, May 29, 1993.
16. Special Agents Jeffrey W. Tomlinson and Howard Leadbetter II, FBI 302 memo re: Carmine Sessa, April 27, 1993.
17. John Connolly, “Who Handled Who?” New York, December 2, 1996.
18. Jerry Capeci, “No Tipping the Capo to Legendary Mobster,” New York Daily News, June 14, 1994.
19. DeVecchio and Brandt,We’re Going to Win Th
is Thing, 123.
20. U.S. Department of Justice, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Compliance,” 6–7; 1982 Final Report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Undercover Activities, at 523 (Civiletti Informant Guidelines, section F.2).
21. R. Lindley DeVecchio, FBI 209 memo for Top Echelon (TE) informant designated “NY3461,” December 2, 1980.
22. Gregory Scarpa and Lili Dajani, marriage certificate, State of Nevada, February 2, 1975. See Appendix B.
23. “Hadassah Sets Teas,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, August 12, 1960.
24. “Miss Israel of 1960 on East Honeymoon,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, March 26, 1961.
25. “IBC Beauty in Romance: Miss Israel Elopes, Weds in Las Vegas,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, March 25, 1961.
26. “Miss Israel Gets a Congratulatory Call After the Show,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, August 12, 1960.
27. Ibid.
28. Jerry Capeci, “Ex-Agent Is Probed in Murder of a Doctor,” New York Sun, April 27, 2006.
29. Jerry Capeci, “Search for Lili Dajani,”New York Sun, February 11, 2007.
30. Jerry Capeci, “Prosecutors: Murder Is FBI Man’s ‘Bad,’” New York Sun, September 6, 2007.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Alice McQuillan, “Judge: 5th Mob Hit Can’t Be Linked to DeVecchio,” WNBC-TV, October 10, 2007: “A fifth mob hit can’t be linked to a retired FBI agent about to go on trial for allegedly helping the mafia commit four other slayings, according to a ruling Wednesday. However Brooklyn prosecutors did win their bid to raise allegations that retired agent R. Lindley DeVecchio accepted money and gifts from the mob for feeding confidential law enforcement information to the late Gregory Scarpa Sr., a powerful Colombo family capo who was also a government informant. Brooklyn supreme court justice Gustin Reichbach called the fifth murder ‘highly prejudicial,’ suggesting that prosecutors already had ample allegations of homicide.”
34. FBI letterhead memo (LHM), March 1, 1981, 1–4.
35. Transcript of press conference unsealing indictment in People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, March 30, 2006.
36. Anderson Cooper, Andy Court, and Anya Bourg, “The FBI’s Lin DeVecchio and ‘the Grim Reaper,’” 60 Minutes, CBS News, May 18, 2011.
37. Anthony Villano with Gerald Astor, Brick Agent: Inside the Mafia for the FBI (New York: Quadrangle, 1977), 68.
38. Jerry Capeci, “Echoes of Mob War Reverberate 15 Years Later,” New York Daily News, July 20, 2006.
39. DeVecchio and Brandt,We’re Going to Win This Thing, 219.
40. Special Agents Jeffrey W. Tomlinson and Howard Leadbetter II, FBI 302 memo re: Carmine Sessa, May 10, 1993.
41. Tomlinson and Leadbetter II, FBI 302 memo, April 27, 1993.
42. Special Agents Jeffrey W. Tomlinson and Howard Leadbetter II, FBI 302 memo re: Carmine Sessa, May 6, 1993.
43. John Kroger, Convictions (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), 135.
44. Ibid.
45. Tomlinson and Leadbetter II, FBI 302 memo, May 6, 1993.
46. Ibid.
47. Interview with Little Linda Schiro, “I Married a Mobster,” Investigation, episode 6, Discovery Channel, airdate December 3, 2011.
48. Brad Hamilton, “Daddy’s a Death Machine,” New York Post, May 27, 2012.
49. DeVecchio and Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing, 123.
50. Hamilton, “Daddy’s a Death Machine.”
51. “Attorney General’s Guidelines on FBI Use of Informants and Confidential Sources,” part F (promulgated 1980; superseded 1996).
52. “Attorney General’s Guidelines Regarding the Use of Confidential Informants,” part C(l)(b)(i) (promulgated 2002).
53. Kroger, Convictions, 135.
CHAPTER 12: GOING TO HELL FOR THIS
1. “Alphonse Persico, 61, Is Dead; Leader of Colombo Crime Family,”New York Times, September 13, 1989.
2. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Detective Tommy Dades, NYPD (ret.), August 15, 2007, transcript of Kastigar hearing, 622.
3. Jennifer Fermino and Todd Venezia, “Romance and Rubout of Mafia Kingpin’s Moll Doll,” New York Post, February 26, 2006, reproduced on the website: theChicago http://www.thechicagosyndicate.com/2006/02/romance-and-rubout-of-mafia-kingpins.html.
4. Jerry Capeci, “Former Mob-Busting Agent to Be Charged with Murder in Mafia Hits,” New York Sun, March 9, 2006.
5. John Kroger, Convictions (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), 130.
6. Leonard Buder, “Colombo Figure Given 25 Years on ’80 Charge,” New York Times, December 19, 1987.
7. “Alphonse Persico, 61, Is Dead.”
8. Fermino and Venezia, “Romance and Rubout.”
9. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Carmine Sessa, October 25, 2007, transcript, 1359.
10. Ibid., 1342.
11. Ibid., 1454.
12. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Larry Mazza, October 18, 2007, transcript, 753.
13. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Sessa testimony, 1360–61.
14. Ibid., 1455–56.
15. Ibid., 1426.
16. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Linda Schiro, October 29, 2007, transcript, 1601–2.
17. Ibid.
18. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Sessa testimony, 1362.
19. Ibid., 1365–66.
20. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Schiro testimony, 1608. In the New York Post, veteran crime reporter Murray Weiss quoted a grand jury witness who reportedly testified that, in commenting to Scarpa on the placement of Bari’s body, DeVecchio had told him, “You got some pair of balls.” Murray Weiss, “‘Mob’ Fed’s Filthy Lucre—FBI Agent Cashed in as Mafia Slay Mole: DA,” New York Post, March 30, 2006.
21. Michael Brick, “Ex-F.B.I. Agent’s Murder Trial Fizzles, as Does Chief Witness,” New York Times, November 1, 2007.
22. Tom Robbins, “Tall Tales of a Mafia Mistress,” Village Voice, October 30, 2007; Jerry Capeci, “G-Man Wins: Tapes Foil Mob Moll,” New York Sun, November 1, 2007; Scott Shifrel, “Ex–News Reporters Step Forward with Crucial Recordings,” New York Daily News, November 1, 2007.
23. “The Schiro Tapes,” Village Voice, November 1, 2007.
24. Author’s interview with Linda Schiro, November 3, 2007.
25. Judge Leslie Crocker Snyder (ret.), “Report of the Special District Attorney in the Matter of the Investigation of Linda Schiro,” October 22, 2008, 18–28.
26. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Mazza testimony, 713.
27. Ibid., 757.
28. Ibid., 759.
29. Brad Hamilton, “Moll’s ‘G-Man’ Torment: I Gave Up a Lot to Come Forward. I’ve Been Victimized,” New York Post, November 4, 2007.
30. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Dades testimony, 636–37.
31. John Marzulli, “Prober’s Life: Zero to Hero,” New York Daily News, March 12, 2005.
32. Jerry Capeci, “Mob Scion May Bolster Turncoat Case,” New York Sun, June 28, 2007.
33. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Dades testimony, 595–602.
34. Alex Ginsberg, “We’re Going to Hell for This,” New York Post, August 16, 2007.
35. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Dades testimony.
36. Ibid., 622.
37. Fermino and Venezia, “Romance and Rubout.”
38. Buder, “Colombo Figure Given 25 Years.”
39. “Alphonse Persico, 61, Is Dead.”
40. R. Lindley DeVecchio and Charles Brandt, We’re Going to Win This Thing: The Shocking Frame-up of a Mafia Crime Buster (New York: Berkley, 2011), 5.
41. Kroger, Convictions, 135–36.
42. Todd S. Purdum, “Puzzle of Gangland-Style Killings Eludes Brooklyn Police,” New York Times, October 10, 1987.
CHAPTER 13: LOVE COLLISION
1. Brad Hamilton, “My Life as a Colombo Hit Man,” New York Post, March 4, 2012.
2. Carmine Persico was a member of an early 1950s gang called the South Br
ooklyn Boys, which was an outgrowth of a violent World War II–era gang known as the Garfield Boys. “Boy 16, Arraigned as Gang Slayer; Father of Victim Accuses Police,” New York Times, May 14, 1950.
Salvatore Gravano was a member of the Rampers, an early 1960s gang that roamed the streets of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Peter Maas, Underboss: Sammy the Bull Gravano’s Story of Life in the Mafia (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 13.
While Persico and Gravano came from working-class families (Carmine’s father was a legal stenographer, Sammy’s father a housepainter who owned his own home), they both gravitated to criminal activity in their midteens. By Mazza’s account he didn’t commit his first felony until he was in his early twenties.
3. Author’s interview with Larry Mazza, January 8, 2013.
4. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Larry Mazza, October 18, 2007, transcript, 715–48.
5. Author’s interview with Little Linda Schiro, November 3, 2007.
6. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, testimony of Linda Schiro, October 29, 2007, transcript, 1536–38.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 1539.
9. Ibid., 1543.
10. John J. Goldman, “Gotti Accuser Sentenced to Five Years in Plea Deal: Mafia: Salvatore Gravano Is Rewarded for Testifying Against the Notorious Gambino Family Boss and Other Organized Crime Figures,” Los Angeles Times, September 27, 1994.
11. Gregory Scarpa v. Victory Memorial Hospital et al., deposition transcript, March 1, 1988, 6–7.
12. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Schiro testimony, 1157–58.
13. Schiro interview.
14. Hamilton, “My Life as a Colombo Hit Man.”
15. Ibid.
16. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Mazza testimony, 747.
17. Ibid., 745.
18. Hamilton, “My Life as a Colombo Hit Man.”
19. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Mazza testimony, 745.
20. Hamilton, “My Life as a Colombo Hit Man.”
21. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Mazza testimony, 721–22.
22. Hamilton, “My Life as a Colombo Hit Man.”
23. John Kroger, Convictions (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008), 132–33.
24. People v. R. Lindley DeVecchio, Mazza testimony, 739–40.