Ex-FBI agent charged in four mob slayings

From CNN.com

NEW YORK (AP) -- It was at one of their weekly meetings in 1992 that FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio allegedly made it easy for his favorite mob informant to kill a gangland rival.

Prosecutors say DeVecchio told the informant, Colombo crime family captain Gregory Scarpa Sr., where the rival lived in Brooklyn.

He said the man always paused to unlock his front gate of his driveway when leaving for work every day at 4 a.m. -- confidential information honed from FBI surveillance.

The man was later gunned down, on his driveway, at 4 a.m.

Nearly 14 years after the slaying, DeVecchio was charged on Thursday with that killing and three others involving Scarpa in what prosecutor Michael Vecchione called "one of the worst cases of law enforcement corruption in the history of this country."

The 65-year-old former agent pleaded not guilty at his arraignment and was released on $1 million bond after agreeing to electronic monitoring. He did not speak at the hearing, where one of the two alleged mob hit men behind the slayings was denied bail. The second suspect was in Florida, awaiting extradition.

Prosecutors argued against bail, saying that the defendant's many supporters in law enforcement could help him flee the country. The comment drew angry murmurs from dozens of former FBI agents packed into the courtroom.

Defense attorney Douglas Grover told a judge his client had been an honest investigator who played a key role in the war on organized crime. He said that the agent already was cleared in previous investigations, and he accused prosecutors of relying on evidence from convicted mobsters eager to lie in exchange for leniency.

DeVecchio "was and always will be a man of the law," he said.

At an earlier news conference, District Attorney Charles Hynes said the case stemmed from the unusually close relationship between DeVecchio -- then head of the FBI's Colombo crime family squad -- and Scarpa, a shadowy government informant and Colombo captain nicknamed "The Grim Reaper."

The pair met each week during the 1980s and 1990s and discussed a bloody civil war within the Colombo family. DeVecchio "counseled Scarpa to protect himself by eliminating imminent threats," Hynes said.

DeVecchio warned Scarpa in 1984 that the girlfriend of the Colombo consigliere was cooperating with authorities, Hynes said. As a result, he said, she was shot and killed in a Brooklyn social club -- a pattern prosecutors said was repeated in the three other killings.

In return, Scarpa gave DeVecchio weekly cash payments and enhanced the agent's reputation within the FBI by helping him solve important cases, the district attorney said.

The corruption allegations weren't the first against DeVecchio.

At a 1996 hearing, DeVecchio's supervisor testified that four years earlier he had ordered the agent to cease having contact with Scarpa after other agents alleged the informant was still committing crimes. He said he later learned DeVecchio was still keeping in touch with him through Scarpa's longtime girlfriend, Linda Schiro.

The Department of Justice declined to prosecute DeVecchio after an internal probe, and the agent quietly retired in 1996 and moved to Sarasota, Florida. Scarpa died in prison in 1994.