by Peter Lance
Favo then wrote, “Some of us on C-10 were still in a rather untenable position since we felt uncomfortable about not being able to discuss certain elements of our investigation of Scarpa’s crew with SSA DeVecchio.”18
Caproni’s solution, according to Favo, was for them to pass on any new information to the DEA and let Drug Enforcement agents conduct the war investigation from there on. But Favo wrote, “We had worked very hard to put these cases together and preferred that the FBI handle its problems properly rather than rely on the DEA to solve our problems.”19
“Understand the position that Favo, Leadbetter, Tomlinson, and Andjich were in,” says defense lawyer Flora Edwards.20 “They had taken a shot at the king and missed. Lin was the most powerful organized crime agent in New York. He had a direct pipeline to the Director and the DC officials, like Agent Fuentes. Favo and the others were effectively accusing him of a possible murder conspiracy for which he might not just lose his job but get indicted, and now they realized that they weren’t being taken seriously by Donald North.”
So Favo, whose wife was pregnant, put in an application for six weeks’ annual leave to begin on March 16, two months after he’d first gone to North.21 But at that point, when an official whose name was redacted from Favo’s statement heard that he’d put in for the leave, it was suggested that Favo meet with another official he “trusted.”22
After a three-hour discussion, this person, whose name was also redacted, relayed Favo’s allegations to Bill Gavin, then the deputy assistant director in charge (ADIC) of the FBI’s New York Office.23
Apparently sensing that he would now be taken seriously by the FBI leadership, Favo then recommended that OPR interviews be conducted with a dozen agents in the NYO; four assistant U.S. attorneys including Caproni, Stamboulidis, Andrew Weissmann, and Ellen Corcella; and half a dozen cooperating witnesses: Carmine Sessa, Larry Mazza, Joseph Ambrosino, Jimmy Del Masto, Billy Meli, and Mario Parlagreco, all members of Scarpa’s Wimpy Boys crew who had not only committed dozens of crimes with “34” but had also been a party to the special attention he seemed to get from his law enforcement source.24
Further emboldened at that point, Favo even recommended that the OPR investigators talk to the three EDNY judges who had presided over various Scarpa-related cases, including I. Leo Glasser, who brokered Scarpa’s deal in the credit card case; Magistrate John L. Caden, who’d arraigned Scarpa after the gun-toss bust; and Judge Jack B. Weinstein.25
In his affidavit, Favo argued, “The sentencing of [Scarpa] was lighter than expected, and it is possible that SSA DeVecchio might have contacted the judges prior to sentencing.”26 Favo used a kind of formal “FBI-speak” in that affidavit, but in a diary he kept that became part of the OPR record, he revealed more of the distress he was feeling.
Chris Favo’s Diary
The entries below track the trajectory of Favo’s emotions, beginning with his hope that coming forward would produce some results, and ending with the sense that he and the other agents had made a huge strategic mistake in challenging DeVecchio:
January 21 North commends us for taking action. North says everything will be confidential. North supports us.
January 26 Lin calls me into office . . . throws me out. Says he will be cleared. “That’s fine, I don’t care.” I call North. North says he believes Lin. I complain that investigation is not confidential. . . . Lin has been telling people he will be cleared & return. North says there is nothing we can do about that. North says we can still call him if there is any new evidence but we will have to live with the problems.
January 31 In full view of squad, Don North approached me & Howard and told us to write the 302s on the OPR matter and turn them in to him. (There is no longer any doubt who will be held responsible for Lin’s problems.)
February 4 Lin holds squad meeting . . . denies any wrongdoing. But critical of anyone who believes CW over him . . . I was reminded that when Lin was declaring his innocence he said that anyone that did not believe him could go F— themselves.27
But Favo and the other agents had already gone on the record with their accusations, and the Office of Professional Responsibility was duty-bound to investigate. That put Valerie Caproni, who was supervising the war prosecutions, in a difficult position, since the leaks Lin DeVecchio appeared to have made to “34” could seriously damage her cases.
Caproni Asks for a Delay in the OPR
In February 1994, Caproni was preparing to go to trial against Anthony “Chuckie” Russo and a series of codefendants in a major war prosecution before Judge Charles P. Sifton.
“So what Valerie did,” says defense lawyer Alan Futerfas, “was to push the Justice Department to delay the OPR. But worse than that, when Judge Sifton later demanded that the prosecutors turn over all documents relating to the DeVecchio-Scarpa investigation, she failed to turn over a key 302 involving a confession by Scarpa Sr.’s underling Larry Mazza.”28
It was the “Girlfriend 302,” in which Larry Mazza had confessed that there were so many potential leaks to Greg Scarpa.
“Understand the significance of this,” says Ellen Resnick, Futerfas’s partner. “The production of that 302 to defense attorneys at a critical time would have been devastating.” So where was it? According to a later sworn affirmation by Caproni, it remained in the drawer of her desk.29 In a subsequent pleading to Judge Sifton, Futerfas noted:
The undisclosed “Girlfriend 302” was created on February 7th, 1994 and given to AUSA Valerie Caproni on February 23rd, 1994 . . . the “Girlfriend 302” is a bombshell providing potent corroborating evidence of an SSA’s misdeeds. Prosecutors receiving this document had to know that it was an extraordinary piece of paper, one which, if disclosed, would open the flood gates resulting in agents and others being subpoenaed, demands for additional discovery and probably requests for continuances or mistrials by trial counsel. The fact that this document was received by the USAO just seven (7) days after this Court’s direct order, and not disclosed to the Court is not explained.30
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 t
o 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.