by Peter Lance
But Caproni, who ran the criminal division in the Eastern District at the time, went even further. As the FBI geared up to conduct its OPR investigation of DeVecchio, she called one of the two initial investigating agents and asked him to delay the investigation.
“Caproni . . . contacted SSA FUENTES and requested that no interviews of the LCN CWs occur until after the conclusion of the first trial, which was expected to last approximately six weeks.”31
“In other words,” says defense attorney Edwards, “further corroboration by the Colombo turncoats of the Scarpa-DeVecchio ‘marriage’ could result in an acquittal.”32
Caproni couldn’t have made her request for a slowdown in DeVecchio’s OPR because she thought DeVecchio was innocent. Four days after that January 27 phone call to Fuentes, the OPR special agent interviewed her again. In a five-page 302, Caproni revealed that she’d known as far back as 1987 that Scarpa Sr. was an FBI informant. She admitted that information she obtained from DeVecchio on Scarpa’s crew was “of little prosecutive value” and that DeVecchio had threatened “to get” Chris Favo if an OPR was opened on him.33
But following a discussion with Ralph A. Regalbuto, the unit chief of the OPR Inspection Division in Washington, Caproni was advised that “further investigation of this matter would be held in abeyance as requested.”34
In a twenty-two-page memo, Alan Futerfas effectively accused the U.S. attorney’s office of obstructing justice and deceiving not only the defense but the judge.35
Meanwhile, Chris Favo, DeVecchio’s first accuser, was beginning to regret coming forward. In a diary entry from late April 1994, he recounts a visit to William Doran, Donald North’s boss in the New York Office:
April 22 He told me that he refused to move Lin from the squad pending the completion of the investigation. . . . He said that he would not bury Lin somewhere. We argued about whether the OPR had been closed. . . . He emphasized the importance of following the chain of command. I told him I went to for advice [and] not to open an OPR. . . . I told him I believe it was a mistake that would follow us for our careers and that we would never be trusted.
By now, though, the genie was out of the bottle. The OPR investigation would go on for another twenty-eight months. But two years after Favo met with Doran, there was a signal that the younger special agent’s prediction had been correct. Rather than being celebrated for their honesty in reporting their suspicions, DeVecchio’s accusers—Favo, Leadbetter, Tomlinson, and Andjich—were seen by many in the FBI’s New York Office as instigators who had kicked over a hornet’s nest.
The Smoking Gun
The best evidence of that is a memo I uncovered that was sent by Doran’s boss James Kallstrom, the assistant director in charge of the New York Office, to FBI Director Louis Freeh, himself a former special agent in the NYO.
The memo was drafted by James Roth, the principal legal officer (PLO) of the NYO, and sent to Freeh under Kallstrom’s aegis. Although Lin’s name was misspelled, the intent of the memo was clear:
“NY requests that whatever investigation is to be conducted as a result of this letter be conducted expeditiously,” wrote Roth on behalf of Kallstrom. “The failure of the DOJ . . . to administratively resolve this matter continues to have a serious negative impact on the government’s prosecutions of various LCN figures in the EDNY and casts a cloud over the NYO.”36
That was it: the smoking-gun memo confirming the FBI’s fear that the DeVecchio-Scarpa scandal could scuttle the many Colombo war prosecutions. Now, when it came to the OPR investigation of Lin DeVecchio, Kallstrom was effectively urging Washington to end it and end it soon.
(Peter Lance)
Despite the sworn testimony of six cooperating Colombo family witnesses, including Scarpa’s own protégé Larry Mazza, despite the charges brought by agents Favo, Leadbetter, Tomlinson, and Andjich that DeVecchio had crossed the line and repeatedly supplied intelligence to a vicious killer, the FBI eventually closed the OPR. But not before Lin DeVecchio, who refused to take a polygraph, took the Fifth Amendment and received something that agents I interviewed for this book said was virtually unheard of in the Bureau: a grant of immunity.
“If you’re investigating an agent for alleged misconduct,” says former agent Dan Vogel, “he or she has a lot of incentives to cooperate. As in the case of DeVecchio, they could be looking at criminal charges. So there’s no incentive for management to let them off the hook with a grant of immunity. Otherwise, why would they ever be motivated to tell the truth?”37
Later in this book, we’ll examine the decision by the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to terminate the OPR inquiry—but suffice it to say that, despite an investigation that produced nearly one thousand pages of sworn statements from FBI agents, prosecutors, judges, and cooperating witnesses, the Justice Department concluded that “prosecution of SSA DeVecchio in this matter is not warranted.”38
At least in the short run, Lin DeVecchio had scored a victory.
Chapter 34
THE DYING DECLARATION
Given the kind of violent life that Greg Scarpa Sr. had led, it’s no surprise that, in the end, he would take a page from Dylan Thomas and not go gentle into that good night. After his sentencing, Scarpa was transferred to the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota. There he lay in a hospital bed in a prison ward, where Linda Schiro visited him daily. Despite the reports of AIDS-related dementia at his sentencing hearing and the fact that he was now down to a birdlike weight of 116 pounds, he reportedly remained lucid to the end.1 He also seemed to embrace a new level of sentimentality.
Linda Schiro told me that, in contrast to his reputation as a cold-blooded killer, Greg always showed a human side at home. “One time my daughter’s baby was sick,” she said, “and Greg just sat on the couch and cried. He was crying because the baby was going to the hospital.”2 Little Linda told an interviewer that, after the purported attempt on his life outside the house on Eighty-Second Street—when she and her son were allegedly caught in the line of fire—her father came home and “just broke down and cried like a baby.”3
Now on April 7, 1994, with less than two months to live, Scarpa sent his lawyer Stephen Kartagener a card. On the cover it had a sketch of two bear cubs under an umbrella during a downpour. The caption read, “Thanks for being such a good friend . . . even on my bad days.” Inside he’d written “Good Luck,” signing it simply “Greg.”
Greeting card sent by Greg Scarpa to his attorney, April 7, 1994
(Fred Dannen)
Because of his deteriorating condition, however, there was a concern among defense lawyers that the real truth about the third Colombo war might die with Scarpa. After all, many attorneys representing war defendants were arguing that the conflict had been fomented by the man the FBI knew as Top Echelon Criminal Informant NY 3461-C-TE. Not only was that the argument enunciated by Vic Orena, who was now doing life in a federal prison, it was also the position taken by Carmine Persico’s son Alphonse “Allie Boy” Persico, for whom the war was ostensibly fought. The Feds’ theory had been that Scarpa had spilled all that blood out of loyalty to Allie Boy, who was due to be paroled in 1993 and thus was expected to assume control of the family.
But on May 13 of that year, the younger Persico was indicted on racketeering charges that also included the pastry shop murders of John Minerva and Michael Imbergamo. Indicted along with him and the Russo brothers were a number of Scarpa’s crew members, including Robert “Bobby Zam” Zambardi, Larry Mazza, and Jimmy Del Masto.4
Their trial was due to start on June 28, 1994. So on May 24 attorney Barry Levin, who represented Allie Boy, asked EDNY judge Charles Sifton to allow the ailing Scarpa to be deposed by videotape.5 An FBI memo describing Levin’s motion noted his opinion that “Scarpa [would] not survive until the trial.” The next day, Sifton granted the motion. After the interview, Scarpa signed a sworn affidavit—a statement that represents his last recorded words. Most of the statement is reproduced in the following
pages.
In the affidavit, Scarpa not only exonerates Allie Boy Persico of any involvement in inciting the war on behalf of the so-called Persico faction but provides new insights into how the Killing Machine continued to affect dozens of Colombo family members even to the end—seeming to blame the start of the war entirely on his surrogate, Carmine Sessa.
1. On May 20, 1994 I was interviewed by Margaret D. Clemons, an investigator representing the offices of Barry Levin, an attorney representing Alphonse Persico. I requested this interview through my wife, Linda Schiro. This interview took place in my hospital room where I am currently incarcerated at FMC Rochester, Rochester, Minnesota.
2. During this one hour interview, I told Ms. Clemons the following:
3. Carmine Sessa respected me and looked to me as the “Boss” of the family. Sessa knew me to be the most powerful family member at the onset of the war.
4. In fact, I was the most powerful entity in the Colombo Family and an authoritative figure who bowed down to no one.
5. I was not aware of the attempt on Vic Orena’s life. I first learned of the attempt on Orena’s life when Carmine Sessa told me about it. Sessa came to me two weeks after the attempt to request my assistance.
6. Carmine Sessa never once mentioned Allie Persico to me. Allie Persico was of no concern to anybody. Allie Persico is a friend who was not going to and who had no intentions of taking over the leadership of the Colombo Family. . . . Allie was never earmarked to take on any position in the family at all.
7. There was never any plan for family members to engage in a shooting war at all. At Joe Saps’ wake, the rebels were given two weeks to come back into the fold and if they didn’t, they would be killed. This was an empty threat and there were no plans to kill anyone.
8. In November, 1991, members of the Orena faction shot at me while I was in a car with my daughter and two year old grandchild. I was so upset over this that my only intention was to retaliate for what had happened to me and my family. I had no instructions to retaliate from anyone, especially Allie Persico who is a “nobody” and who is completely insignificant within the family regardless of his relationship to his father, Carmine Persico. I did not need anybody’s permission to act. By the end of November, 1991, nobody could have stopped me from retaliating.
9. The war began at this point in time and plans were made to kill Orena faction members. Prior to November, 1991, there were no meetings or agreements between anyone to engage in a war. This war began with Lawrence Mazza, James Del Masto and myself in the forefront. I wanted to finish them all for what they had done to me and my family.
10. Carmine Sessa’s duty as Consigliere was to get involved. Sessa was happy and eager to do so.
11. After the attempt on my life in November, 1991, I never, nor did anyone else to my knowledge, communicate with, speak with or have anything to do with Allie Persico.
12. Nobody financed the war. Everybody did their own thing. I never gave the Persico’s [sic] any money and nobody ever gave me one cent.
13. . . . The Fusaro killing was entirely unplanned. . . . I shot Fusaro and hit him with the first shot. It was just good luck.
14. In all of the meetings that I attended during the war with Persico faction members, Allie Persico’s name was never mentioned by anyone. There was no reason to mention Allie because he was totally uninvolved and unimportant. Allie has no power to give orders, permission, approval or anything else. . . .
I am giving this sworn and truthful statement in the event of my demise so that the court will have the benefit of my testimony in the event a deposition is not held in time.6
In the statement, Scarpa let Allie Boy Persico off the hook for his alleged participation in the war—albeit by dismissing him as a toothless heir to the throne. But he also told the truth, for the first time, about his own position in the Colombos, describing himself as the “Boss” and “the most powerful family member” when the war commenced.
The only part of the statement that seemed entirely disingenuous was his claim that he’d been unaware of the initial move on Vic Orena by Sessa in June 1991. Given Scarpa’s position of power at the time, his ability to control and manipulate Sessa, and his antipathy for Orena—the one family leader who truly stood in his way—it’s simply not believable that Scarpa didn’t engineer that drive-by on Long Island, particularly since it was predicated on Sessa’s false belief that he was about to be murdered by Orena.
On June 8, 1994, the day after he put his hand to that sworn affidavit, Gregory Scarpa Sr. finally died. Nine days later, an FBI 209 report was sent to DC, stating that the war had been waged largely by “the Persico faction.” The 209 admitted nonetheless that “all of his life, COLOMBO LCN Family member GREG SCARPA Sr.—deceased, hated the PERSICO’s [sic], although he was frequently under their control. . . . As an example of this hatred, Scarpa had once supported the ‘GALLO GANG.’”7
But the airtels, memos, and 209s we’ve produced in this book demonstrate that this statement was untrue—and that Scarpa had conspired against the Gallo brothers just as he did against Carmine Persico, the Gallos’ nemesis. That misrepresentation of the family’s history calls into question the final statement in that 209: that the FBI’s trusted source, “34,” was really lying when he exonerated Allie Boy Persico. Citing an unnamed source, the 209 alleged that Scarpa Sr. had signed that affidavit only under duress:
SCARPA, SR. would never have voluntarily given the affidavit he gave to the defense lawyers of ALPHONSE PERSICO aka “LITTLE ALLIE BOY”, wherein SCARPA, SR. claimed that it was SCARPA, SR. alone who started and ran the recent “COLOMBO War” and that A. PERSICO is innocent and had nothing to do with it. The source has been told that the reason SCARPA, SR. submitted this affidavit, to aid in PERSICO’s trial defense, is that [unknown subjects] in PERSICO’s “crew” threatened to murder SCARPA’s wife if SCARPA did not submit the affidavit.8
That may have been the position the government took during Allie Boy’s trial later that summer, but the jury didn’t buy it. Scarpa’s final statement was ruled admissible under the “dying declaration” exception to the hearsay rule, and on August 8 Persico walked out of court a free man.
Although thirty-five other Colombo war defendants had previously been convicted, Allie Boy Persico became the first to be acquitted as a result of the mounting evidence exposing the FBI’s secret relationship with Greg Scarpa Sr.9 Each new trial seemed to undermine the government’s theory that the war was the result of a struggle for control of the family between Vic Orena and the Persicos. To use the metaphor Judge Weinstein uttered years later, the Colombo war prosecutions were starting to “unravel.”
A New Take on the Eighty-Second Street Shootout
Defense lawyers like Gus Newman, who were working to get a new trial for Vic Orena, even went so far as to argue that the alleged attack on Greg Scarpa and Little Linda Schiro on November 18, 1991, was a creation of Scarpa himself. Citing the sworn testimony in a series of war cases, Newman argued in a 1996 memorandum of law that, “despite Scarpa’s ominous predictions to the FBI of a growing conflict, no shooting occurred for five months after Sessa’s attempt to kill Victor J. Orena in June, 1991.”10
The fact that the peace was kept for months after Vic Orena went to the Commission actually reinforced the Commission’s value in avoiding bloodshed. A mob war was always bad for business, and profit was the motivating factor among the family bosses who sat on the Five Families’ ruling body. But Greg Scarpa, the FBI’s in-house Mafioso, decided to do an end run around the Commission and its rules.
On November 4, 1991, in his debriefing to Lin DeVecchio, Scarpa predicted that he and Carmine Sessa “would be the ORENA’S [sic] side pick to be hit.”11 And sure enough, two weeks later, he was seemingly proven right when the shootout took place outside of his house, allegedly at the hands of masked Orena gunmen.
Curiously, despite the fact that their faces were hidden, DeVecchio immediately identified the assailants as “members of th
e ORENA faction.” Quoting Senior in his 209 that same day, Lin then predicted that “this would start the shooting war between the two factions.”12
At three thirty that afternoon, DeVecchio sent Chris Favo to the house on Eighty-Second Street.13 Favo interviewed Scarpa but later admitted that he didn’t prepare a 302 documenting the meeting, as was customary, because Scarpa was an FBI informant.14 Favo also interviewed Little Linda Schiro, another purported victim of the attack, but no report on that conversation was prepared either. As attorney Gus Newman noted, “while Scarpa’s daughter was obviously an important witness to the events that allegedly occurred, the government has never called her to testify at any of the several ‘Colombo War’ trials in which the purported November 18th shooting was introduced.”15
Newman also alleged that “the physical investigation of the crime scene was plagued with irregularities.” Though Favo himself took photographs of the Mercedes Little Linda was driving,16 he testified later that the bullet holes were all grouped in a narrow section of the fender.17 At the crime scene on November 18, the NYPD collected latent fingerprints on the van that had allegedly blocked Greg Sr.’s escape route.18 But the prints failed to match any of the alleged suspects, including Cutolo crew members “Chickie” DeMartino and Frank Ianacci, who had reportedly been seen earlier that day getting into a similar-looking van.19
