Deal with the Devil

by Peter Lance

  At that point, perhaps Kartagener should have stopped talking. But he went on to remind Weinstein that an EDNY judge had “showed . . . great humanity [and] allowed [Scarpa] to go home with an ankle bracelet once, and then he walked out the door and got shot in the eye.”45

  Renouncing the Mafia

  Then, in a display of audacity befitting the legal representative of the most audacious mobster alive, Kartagener proceeded to ask Weinstein “to consider the possibility of allowing this defendant to go home with whatever security devices might be appropriate, to die at home.”

  “That’s impossible,” Weinstein shot back.

  He then asked Scarpa if he wanted to add anything.

  As if he hadn’t been listening, Scarpa responded, “I expect to go home.”46

  “You’re not going home. You’re going to prison,” the judge said. “You understand that?”

  “Yes, your honor.”

  “If you want to say anything in amelioration of your crimes—”

  “No, your honor. There’s nothing more for me to say.” And then, alluding to his years as a TE informant, Scarpa added, “I tried to help, your honor. I’m sure you’re aware of that.”

  “Yes,” replied Weinstein.

  “But it just didn’t work out.”

  “I understand that, but I want a statement from you on the record, that as far as you’re concerned, you’ve cut off all ties to organized crime, and that you will do nothing in prison, or if you should leave prison, in connection with organized crime or any other criminal conspiracy. Is that clear?”47

  It was like asking Hannibal Lecter to promise he’d never kill again. But Scarpa responded, “Yes, your honor . . . I thought there was a possibility of me going home.”

  “No. It’s not possible,” said the judge. “But I want you to renounce and abjure any connection you may have had with organized crime.”

  “I do renounce it, your honor.”

  The transcript doesn’t record the expressions on the faces of the parties present, but one can only imagine them trading looks of bewilderment. Asking Gregory Scarpa to renounce his ties to the Mafia was like asking a great white shark to stop eating. But that’s what happened.

  Moments later, Valerie Caproni rightfully said, “I think Mr. Scarpa will say to you at this point whatever he thinks you want to hear, if he thinks it will get him out of jail. He desperately wants to go home.”48

  “I don’t agree with that,” Weinstein replied. He turned to face Scarpa. “Are you misleading me?”

  “No, your honor,” said Scarpa.

  “I don’t have that impression,” replied the judge.

  Gregory Scarpa was a sociopathic killer. Perhaps a psychopath. His protégé Larry Mazza later described him as “unscrupulous and treacherous.”49 Lin DeVecchio’s own lawyer called him “deceitful,” “a master liar.”50 Now, here was Jack B. Weinstein, the former chief judge of the Eastern District, a tough-talking New Yorker who had presided over dozens of organized crime trials—and he appeared to be buying Scarpa’s story of newfound redemption.

  At that stage in the hearing, Valerie Caproni called for an off-the-record discussion in the judge’s chambers. When the parties emerged, Caproni hinted at what had been discussed: not just Scarpa’s years as an informant but his deception.

  “It was the abuse of trust of the Federal Bureau of Investigation that I thought should be called to your honor’s attention,” she said.

  But then, mindful of Lin DeVecchio’s role in the still-pending war prosecutions, she seemed to contradict herself.

  “In all fairness to Mr. Scarpa, he has been quite an asset to the Federal Bureau of Investigation over the years.”

  Then, in another flip backward, she added, “It doesn’t mitigate the fact that he was a killer during the war.”51

  Finally, after all of this, Weinstein was ready to pronounce sentence.

  Noting Scarpa’s role in the murders of Fusaro, Grancio, and Lampasi, he stated that the sentencing guidelines “call[ed] for a prison term of life.”52

  Then he added, “This defendant has terminal AIDS because of a blood transfusion and has had one eye shot out. He suffers punishment far beyond what this court can mete out. Despite the defendant’s dreadful murderous conduct, and that of his gang, he is a person, a human being. While he has done acts worse than those of a wild animal we would forfeit part of our God-given humanity were we to ignore his status as a fellow human being. If he were sentenced to life he would have to go to a maximum security institution where he probably would have been denied what would be essential to his medical and other treatment during this terminal period. Ten years rather than life will permit a sentence with a more comfortable prison. The Court will recommend the defendant be imprisoned near the Metropolitan New York area so he can be visited by his family.” The final sentence: “Ten years in prison. Five years of supervised release. A fine of $250,000, payable as Probation directs, and a special assessment of $100. Good luck.”53

  It was an act of mercy by a sitting federal judge for a Mafia killer who had been merciless over the years with dozens of his own victims. Scarpa then thanked Weinstein and Kartagener praised the judge for his “great humanity.”

  “I did what any other judge would do, I am sure,” Weinstein added as Caproni moved to dismiss any other government counts.

  In the end, having failed with his “AIDS dementia” argument, hoping to put off sentencing via an extended psychiatric evaluation, Scarpa, the master strategist, played the “death card” and won. Although Greg himself was facing his own “life sentence,” there was an enormous disparity between his relatively light punishment and the multiple life terms, plus sixty years, plus the $2 million fine, that Weinstein had imposed on Carmine Sessa’s brother Michael. All of that underscored the special treatment “34” continued to get from the Feds. The younger Sessa was a junior capo convicted of a single homicide. Scarpa had spent more than four decades in a career of murder, mayhem, and racketeering and left enough bodies in his wake to put him in the ranks of the world’s top serial killers.

  “It’s beyond belief,” says defense attorney Flora Edwards. “AIDS virus or not, Scarpa was given the federal equivalent of a love tap at this late stage, and by the same judge who showed absolutely no mercy to Vic Orena Sr.”54

  As for Scarpa’s imminent death, he would continue to defy all the medical predictions.

  Chapter 33

  THE OPR

  If any of the special agents who worked under Lin DeVecchio doubted whether he’d passed FBI intel to “34,” those reservations must have ended in early January 1994, when Larry Mazza finally flipped and Chris Favo started debriefing him. The FBI 302 memorializing that interrogation, which began on January 7, later became known as the “Girlfriend 302,” after the name Mazza said that Scarpa used to refer to his source. Most of the alleged leaks Mazza described were later disclosed by the Feds, and Lin DeVecchio was suspected of being that source.1 The potential security breaches were so serious that, coupled with the allegations of Favo and fellow agents Tomlinson and Leadbetter, they prompted DeVecchio’s internal affairs investigation by the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The entire “Girlfriend 302” is reproduced in Appendix E, but some of its key revelations are below:

  One of the sources that supplied information on a regular basis was referred to as “THE GIRLFRIEND.” The source would call him at home, as well as beep him. . . . SCARPA SR.’s wife, LINDA . . . referred to the source as “THE GIRLFRIEND” when giving messages to SCARPA SR. regarding phone calls. On occasions when the source beeped SCARPA SR., he would stop whatever he was doing in order to return the call. When in his own home, SCARPA SR. always returned the calls to the “GIRLFRIEND” using the telephone in the basement. . . .

  The information that SCARPA SR. received through his source(s) included, but was not limited to, the address of VICTOR ORENA’s girlfriend’s home in Queens, New York, including descriptive information that it
was a white, two family home with aluminum siding. Shortly after SCARPA SR. is shot at, he learns that the panel truck used in the murder attempt was rented from Queens, New York . . . as well as SALVATORE MICIOTTA and JOSEPH SCOPO’s addresses. He also received information regarding the scheduled drug arrest of GREGORY SCARPA JR. and his crew, and the scheduled Credit Card arrest of SCARPA SR. He received a copy of the Complaint issued against himself, and was told that his problems with the Law might disappear if he stayed out of trouble.

  On one occasion, MAZZA was in SCARPA SR.’s house when he received a telephone call from “THE GIRLFRIEND” on the basement telephone. After the call, he told MAZZA that the “GIRLFRIEND” said that the members of the ORENA faction were very close to killing him.2

  In another debriefing, Mazza told Favo and his colleague Special Agent Maryann Walker-Goldman:

  One or two days after the arrest of CARMINE IMBRIALE . . . GREG SCARPA SR. told MAZZA that IMBRIALE . . . was cooperating. . . . SCARPA SR. also talked about killing IMBRIALE some time in the future.3

  Mazza’s revelations only corroborated what Favo and the other agents already knew. But they were potentially very damaging—particularly the intel on Joe Scopo. The fact that Scopo had been killed outside his home three and a half months earlier raised the prospect that Scarpa had learned of Scopo’s address from his source in law enforcement. If that source was Lin DeVecchio—if he was the “Girlfriend”—that could make Lin a possible co-conspirator to homicide.

  Further, the notion that Scarpa had learned the whereabouts of the rented panel truck used in the Eighty-Second Street shootout—which Favo himself had uncovered—must have sent a chill through Favo. In his book, Lin DeVecchio effectively blames Favo for “start[ing]” the Colombo war by “stirring up Billy Cutolo.”4 In fact the Feds had attributed the attack outside Scarpa’s house on November 18, 1991, to “Wild Bill.” Now, with Mazza’s revelations, the opposite could be said: If the Girlfriend had tipped off Scarpa that “the Orena faction” had plotted to kill him, that revelation might have prompted his killing spree.

  Finally, Mazza’s assertion that Scarpa had learned about Imbriale’s cooperation had surely come from DeVecchio—because Favo had overheard DeVecchio telling “34” as much over the “Hello” phone in C-10. That was evidence in and of itself that Lin DeVecchio was the Girlfriend. At that point, Favo and his fellow agents could no longer look away from the growing Scarpa-DeVecchio scandal.

  “Getting SSA DeVecchio in Trouble”

  On Sunday, January 17, 1994, the day before the Martin Luther King holiday, Favo, Tomlinson, and Leadbetter went to DeVecchio’s boss, ASAC Donald North. What happened next was recounted by Favo in a sworn statement made to OPR Supervisory Special Agents Robert J. O’Brien and Timothy T. Arney. Because that statement, in Favo’s own words, provides so many details on the events that occurred after he and the other agents blew the whistle, we’re reproducing sections of it here.

  FAVO: For a long time I have had a concern that SSA DeVecchio may have divulged information to his former source Gregory Scarpa Sr. . . .

  We were about to begin one of several trials with respect to the “Colombo LCN Family War” and were concerned about information from the Confidential Witnesses (CWs) indicating that Scarpa, Sr., had a law enforcement source, specifically in the FBI New York Office.

  ASAC North met with us in the New York field office. We were not interested in getting SSA DeVecchio in trouble, we only wanted to see if he could be transferred to another squad and replaced by another supervisor so we would be able to continue our investigations and prosecutions in the “Colombo LCN Family War” matters, without a concern that he might . . . disclose information regarding certain of our cases.5

  According to Favo, North told him that he would “switch” DeVecchio with another supervisor in the C-6 squad—presumably to remove Lin from the loop. But later Favo said North told him that the agent swap wouldn’t happen, “because it would disrupt both C-10 and C-6 and it made no sense to disrupt both squads.” Favo said another proposal was made a few days later to have DeVecchio trade places with Chris Mattiace, the former C-10 supervisor, who was then working out of the New Rochelle office.

  In order to bring Mattiace up to speed, Favo prepared a detailed seven-page 302 memo recounting a number of incidents during the war when information developed in C-10 somehow found its way to Scarpa. Among his revelations:

  Over the length of the war I began to withhold information concerning Gregory Scarpa or what could not be leaked to the media because I believed SSA DeVecchio was leaking information to both Scarpa Sr. and Jerry Capeci.6

  In that 302, Favo also revealed that DeVecchio had asked him to use the FBI’s Fast Track system for linking telephone numbers to addresses. After running down two area code 516 (Long Island) numbers, which Favo said Lin told him were tied to the safe houses of Jo Jo and Chuckie Russo, Favo wrote that he personally checked the locations—one of which turned out to be a pay phone at a Waldbaum’s supermarket. When he questioned his boss about it, DeVecchio told him that “the numbers were for one of Scarpa’s loan shark victims.”7

  As it turned out, after Favo filed that 302, North didn’t transfer DeVecchio. The previous fall, during a meeting at the EDNY, Lin DeVecchio had threatened to have Favo’s “ass” if he triggered an OPR investigation.8 Now, ten days after Favo first went to North, DeVecchio called him into his office. Clearly word had gotten back to him that his number two was the primary source of the accusations. In his sworn statement, Favo revealed what happened next:

  SSA DeVecchio . . . asked me who had been saying things about him. I told SSA DeVecchio that I could not discuss the matter with him. SSA DeVecchio told me to get out of his office. 15 minutes or so later, SSA DeVecchio called me back into his office and told me that SSA Thomas Fuentes of the Organized crime section, criminal Investigative Division, FBIHQ, was going to come up to New York and clear him.

  I believe SSA DeVecchio had spoken to ASAC North and learned that SSA Fuentes was going to be in charge of the OPR inquiry. SSA DeVecchio asked me who was in charge of handling a CW by the name of Billy Meli. Meli is a very important CW in our prosecutions and had identified Scarpa’s source as an FBI agent. I told DeVecchio that Meli is being handled by SSA Leadbetter. . . . I told SSA DeVecchio that I was not going to answer his questions about what Meli had said or about this matter.9

  The disclosures by Meli were troubling. A longtime member of Scarpa’s Wimpy Boys crew, Meli confirmed for Leadbetter the allegation that Scarpa had received one of the 1987 DEA arrest lists and the fact that Cosmo Catanzano, a crew member on that list, might cooperate with authorities. That was the revelation that had caused Scarpa to order Meli and others to dig Cosmo’s grave in anticipation of his murder.10

  Continuing in his sworn statement, Chris Favo then described DeVecchio’s reaction to the charges.

  SSA DeVecchio reiterated that he would be cleared and then would return to the squad. SSA DeVecchio was angry about being accused of releasing information. DeVecchio told me that despite what had happened, he would deal with me professionally.11

  According to Favo, though, that never happened. Worse, as Favo saw it, North had already decided to back DeVecchio, and Lin’s response to the accusations was that cooperating witnesses like Mazza and Meli were “liars.”12

  Favo then found out that SSA Fuentes and SSA Jack Barrett, tasked to run the OPR, “were now, or had been in DeVecchio’s chain of command, were close friends of North’s [and] could not be viewed as independent.”13 At the time, Fuentes was supervisor of the Organized Crime Section of the Criminal Investigative Division at Bureau Headquarters in Washington.14 In Chris Favo’s mind, the foxes had been assigned to investigate the chicken coop. He was so worried, he wrote, that he went to AUSA Valerie Caproni and warned that “SSA Fuentes monitors New York’s OC program and . . . DeVecchio indicated Fuentes would clear him.”

  According to Favo, word quickly spread through the squad that i
t was he and the other agents who had informed on DeVecchio:

  We felt our request for confidentiality had not been taken seriously. On one occasion . . . ASAC North came out to Howard Leadbetter and me in the squad room and in front of other agents asked whether we had the 302s ready. When we asked what 302s he meant, ASAC North indicated they were the 302s from the CWs concerning Scarpa. I believe it is possible that and may have heard ASAC North make the comment to us. It was unprofessional for ASAC North to ask that question in the squad room.15

  Then, wrote Favo, the OPR investigation seemed to be abruptly terminated:

  Mattiace did not want to transfer to New York City from New Rochelle. Later I heard that De Vecchio had been cleared of wrongdoing and would not be transferred. . . .

  ASAC North told me that SSAs Fuentes and Barrett had conducted an inquiry and found that SSA De Vecchio could not have given the “DEA list” information to Scarpa, Sr. ASAC North told me that the inquiry had been terminated.16

  According to Favo, Lin made that clear to the other squad members at an open meeting.

  Three days later DeVecchio called a squad meeting attended by everyone except Andjich who was at a neutral site meeting. DeVecchio said he had been cleared but the case could be reopened later. DeVecchio declared his innocence and was critical of anyone who believed a CW over him.

  DeVecchio added that the whole situation was handled incorrectly by the agents who went to the EDNY and in the future anyone with a problem should bring it to him. It was speculated that SSA DeVecchio may decide to retire and that would solve problem with SSA DeVecchio’s presence as supervisor of C-10.17