by Peter Lance
As with Favo himself, who was later called as a witness, the two senior DOJ lawyers monitored every word of their testimony.28 “How can you interpret their presence,” says Andrew Orena, who attended the trial, “as anything short of intimidation? They were literally breathing down on these guys.”29
Under direct examination, Andjich described his three visits to Scarpa’s house, the first on the day of the November 18, 1991, shootout and the other two when DeVecchio “parked” Andjich in front of a TV while he spoke to Scarpa in the kitchen. Andjich testified that he believed it was Lin DeVecchio who had “turned up” the volume on the living room TV, preventing him from hearing the conversation later described in the infamous “Kitchen 302.”30 And, just as he’d sworn in his OPR statement, Andjich recalled Scarpa using the words “murder” and “hit” but testified that he “couldn’t make out anything more of the conversation.”31
During the OPR, Andjich had complained that while one of the visits lasted “thirty to forty-five minutes,” DeVecchio’s 209 memorializing the interview contained “less than half a page of content.”32 But he didn’t volunteer any of that now on the stand, nor did the ADA elicit those facts from him—evidence that might have shown that DeVecchio was hiding information about “34” from the agents who worked under him.
Under cross-examination by Mark Bederow, Andjich did admit that he was “shocked” that he hadn’t been part of DeVecchio’s debriefing of Scarpa.33 The agent conceded that it may have been Scarpa who had turned on the TV but recalled that it was Lin who “raised the volume.”34
Under direct examination, Andjich had testified that in 1992, when the FBI was about to arrest Scarpa, he’d been concerned that DeVecchio might warn his source. Now, Judge Reichbach asked Andjich “whether or not that assumption was based on something concrete.”
In his sworn OPR statement, Andjich had stated that, besides Favo, Tomlinson, Leadbetter, and possibly SA Maryann Walker-Goldman, he didn’t know of any other agents on the C-10 squad who “were worried that SSA DeVecchio was divulging information to Scarpa Sr.”35 But the fact that he’d cited those names back then was significant. It underscored the sense that at least three special agent in the C-10 squad were concerned that DeVecchio may have been leaking intel to his source. Now, as DeVecchio stared at him from a few feet away, Andjich testified that he didn’t “have a recollection” of any concrete reason to conclude that DeVecchio might have “tipped off” Scarpa.36
When Special Agent Jeff Tomlinson took the stand, he testified that he’d participated in the debriefings of both Carmine Imbriale and “Joey Brains” Ambrosino. Then, about half an hour into his testimony, when Judge Reichbach asked Tomlinson whether his duties included “evaluat[ing] the information provided by informants,” Jay Kramer, one of the DOJ lawyers, intervened.
“Our assessment of the [DOJ] authorization for him to testify today in this proceeding,” he said, “does not include opinion testimony; rather his substantive knowledge regarding the contents of either report, including whether they are consistent; inconsistent. Not his opinion regarding them.”37
Even the ADA who conducted the direct examination seemed unable to get Tomlinson to repeat his most damning criticism of DeVecchio: the allegation, which he made in his sworn OPR statement, that Imbriale had told him Scarpa admitted killing Nicholas Grancio, and that Tomlinson was “confident [that that information] was provided to SSA DeVecchio.”38 In fact, neither Scarpa’s role in the murder of Nicky Black nor Lin DeVecchio’s knowledge of it ever came up while Tomlinson was on the stand.
Finally, after questioning by Judge Reichbach himself, Tomlinson admitted that Carmine Sessa had told him “he believed that Lin DeVecchio was Greg Scarpa’s law enforcement source.”39 Tomlinson, a former state police officer, was one of the three agents who’d found DeVecchio’s relationship with Greg Scarpa Sr. so problematic that he’d risked his career by complaining about it. But his testimony at DeVecchio’s trial ended without the DA ever eliciting the full depth of what “bothered” Tomlinson “about SSA DeVecchio’s relationship with Scarpa Sr.,” as expressed in his OPR statement.40
At this stage of the trial, virtually every round had gone to the defense.
Favo Takes the Stand
Early in his testimony, Chris Favo testified that an official FBI investigation into the Colombo war hadn’t been opened until December 9, 1991, three weeks after the shootout on Eighty-Second Street that Scarpa claimed had marked the start of hostilities.41 At that point, DeVecchio still had enough faith in Favo to make him the case agent on the probe and Favo retained that role until June 1996, when the last of the war cases had been litigated at the trial level. That was less than three months before the OPR was concluded and DeVecchio was allowed to retire with a full pension.
For the next half hour, the direct examination by Senior Assistant DA Mike Vecchione took Favo through a discussion of various war events, starting with the November 18 shootout and moving forward through February 1992. But curiously, the pit-bull-like prosecutor never touched on the murder of Nicholas Grancio—after which Favo was sued in civil court, along with Lin DeVecchio, for allegedly making Nicky Black vulnerable by pulling away the FBI and NYPD surveillance details. Detective Tommy Dades had told me that the Brooklyn DA had originally planned to add the Grancio hit to its indictment of DeVecchio.42 Now, in questioning Favo, who learned that Scarpa had been involved in the homicide four days after the rubout,43 Vecchione inexplicably ignored it.
“It might have been,” says Andrew Orena, “that Vecchione didn’t want to visit this sensitive subject with Favo, since the civil suit was still pending. But it’s not as if he got anything substantial out of Favo. As it turned out, his testimony was incredibly weak.”44
Later, Vecchione did get Favo to discuss how he’d overheard his boss talking to his informant “34” over the “Hello” line in the squad after Carmine Imbriale’s arrest in February 1992, and how DeVecchio had told Scarpa, “I don’t know what he’s saying about you. Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office has him.”45 Favo also admitted that he’d suggested to DeVecchio that he tell Scarpa he’d been overheard in a wiretap threatening Imbriale, so that the Grim Reaper would think twice before killing him.46
Favo then confirmed that part of the teletype DeVecchio had sent to DC in order to get Scarpa reopened after he’d been closed on March 31 wasn’t “truthful.”47 But he’d used much stronger language in his sworn 1995 statement during DeVecchio’s OPR, calling the teletype “false.”48 The best Vecchione got out of Favo was a few more details regarding the infamous “we’re going to win this thing” incident: As DeVecchio uttered those words, Favo recalled now, he “slammed his hands on the desk” and was “chuckling. . . . Not laughing out loud,” added Favo, “but laughing a little.”49
Later, in a signal that Favo, a Notre Dame graduate with a law degree from Columbia, might be dialing back on his memory of events relating to his boss’s OPR, Vecchione asked him whether he knew the results of the thirty-one-month internal affairs investigation he had prompted.
“I don’t,” Favo answered with a straight face.50
“That had to take the cake,” says Andrew Orena. “Here’s Favo, whose career in the FBI almost got derailed over that OPR, and he’s saying he doesn’t remember how it turned out?” After Grover objected, Favo backpedaled. “I was never informed of the results of the investigation, directly,” he said.51
Later, on cross-examination, Doug Grover asked Favo: “In the winter and spring of 1992, did the FBI make efforts to prevent murders of various members of the two factions?” Favo answered, “Yes.”52 Once again, however, the murder of Nicky Grancio never came up.
Meanwhile, the presence of DOJ lawyers Tully and Kramer continued to be a factor in the courtroom. They seemed to intimidate even Grover. At one point, while asking Favo whether the C-10 squad dealt with “encryption issues” involving police radios, Grover began by saying, “Without getting into details so I don’t upset the guys in
the jury box. . . .”53
Favo’s testimony ended on the third day of the trial, with little or no new evidence emerging to link Lin DeVecchio to the four murders in the indictment. If, in fact, Vecchione had decided to go easy on Favo and bypass the embarrassment of the Nicholas Grancio homicide, he seemed to get little in return from the testimony of Lin’s chief FBI accuser. The most explosive testimony of the trial, from Larry Mazza, was still to come—including the moment when Mazza broke down on the stand.
“Mob Killer Becomes a Crybaby”
That was the headline on the Daily News story by Scott Shifrel the day after Larry Mazza took the stand and recalled the plans he’d made before becoming Greg Scarpa’s murderous protégé.54 Mazza was about half an hour into his direct examination by Mike Vecchione when he referred to his enrollment at John Jay College at the age of eighteen.
When asked “what was it” that brought him to John Jay, Mazza suddenly burst into tears.55 The proceedings had to be halted while he was given a tissue and a glass of water, but he continued to weep until Judge Reichbach called a break.
After a five-minute recess, Mazza, who had earlier admitted to participating in the murders of Gaetano Amato, Vincent Fusaro, and Nicky Grancio, pulled himself together enough to describe how his father, an FDNY lieutenant, had inspired him to go to college. By 1993, however, he said he had become the “confidant” and “right hand man” to Greg Scarpa, whom he described as “a vicious, violent animal.”56
Later, Mazza testified about the events on the night of Halloween 1989, when Joey Scarpa, Greg’s son by Linda Schiro, had gotten into an altercation with Dominick Masseria, who was killed on the steps of a Fifteenth Avenue church in Brooklyn. After the killing, Mazza said, Joey and his good friend eighteen-year-old Patrick Porco, who had witnessed the murder, “went on the lam,”57 shipped off to Scarpa Sr.’s horse farm in Lakewood, New Jersey.
Vecchione then asked Mazza if he recalled a conversation he’d had with Greg on May 27, 1990. Mazza nodded, recalling that it happened over the Memorial Day weekend. Scarpa was “very concerned,” he said, that Porco “was a rat and he could hurt Joey.” According to Mazza, Scarpa “wanted to kill him.” Later, after Porco was shot to death, Mazza said he went to the Scarpa house and found Joey “extremely upset. Distraught.” Scarpa told Mazza “they killed [Porco,] and Joey was so reclusive he couldn’t even speak.” In fact, he “didn’t want to leave [his] room.”58
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?
