Deal With the Devil: The FBI's Secret Thirty-Year Relationship With a Mafia Killer

by Peter Lance

  At trial, FBI Special Agent Lynn Smith testified under oath that, on September 23, 1993, she was part of an eight-person FBI surveillance team following Simone. She alleged that they tracked him to the deli-superette on the corner of Arthur Kill Road and Elverton Avenue, and that she overheard him talking on a phone “located outside [the] door of the superette.” Asked by Simone’s defense lawyer John Patton if there was one phone or two, she replied, “One on the left and one on the right, on each side of the door.”22

  But Simone’s attorney established that only one phone was located on a side wall of that deli—not a pair of phones by the front door, as Smith alleged. “We had the deli owner,” says Simone, “who was prepared to testify that there had never been two phones where this agent said she’d been.”

  “Understand the significance of this,” says Angela Clemente, the forensic investigator whose lawsuit uncovered the newly released Scarpa files. “The FBI is so intent on nailing this poor cop that they put eight agents on him. A female agent testifies under oath to a phone that doesn’t exist so they can make it look like Joe is calling to tip off wiseguys. The truth is he used to stop at that deli before coming home to call his wife and ask if she wanted him to bring home cold cuts for dinner. But the Bureau goes to all this trouble to make it look like he’s caught up in some major leak to the Colombos.”23

  In another instance, Patton showed the jury a series of documents supplied by the FBI that purported to prove that Simone had taken that $1,500 bribe. But the lawyer, a veteran of defending cops, lined up the staple marks on the copies to demonstrate that one of the incriminating pages had been replaced by the Feds after Joe’s arrest.24

  Favo’s Role in the Simone Investigation

  One of Simone’s chief accusers at trial was his immediate superior in C-10, Special Agent Chris Favo. What the jury didn’t realize, at the time, was that for almost two years leading up to Simone’s arrest, Favo had suspected his immediate supervisor, Lin DeVecchio, as the source of the Colombo war leaks. But he’d kept quiet about his suspicions until January 1994, a month after Simone’s arrest, when he came forward with agents Leadbetter and Tomlinson.

  As noted, in the months that followed, Favo poured out his concerns about the alleged tainted Scarpa-DeVecchio relationship in a series of FBI 302s.25 But none of that kept him from taking the stand against Joe Simone.

  “At the start of trial, I was worried,” recalls Simone. “Not because I was guilty, but because of the way the jury was made up. There were these twelve Nordic, blue-eyed, blond-haired people,” he said. “There wasn’t an Italian American among them except for an alternate. No blacks. No Hispanics. None of the people you think of as New Yorkers. And I’m sittin’ there scared shitless. I see these people starin’ at me—especially the foreman. He just stared me down during the whole trial.”

  The real turn in the proceedings came during a lunch break, when Simone’s brother John was reading—ironically—the Daily News. “There had been a huge DEA bust,” remembers Joe. “And my brother calls me over with the paper and says, ‘Do you know any of these guys?’ And I looked at it and it said that Lindley DeVecchio was in charge of this DEA task force. I’m thinking, that can’t be right. He’s Mr. Organized Crime. So I go up to John Patton and say, ‘This doesn’t make sense—DeVecchio’s supposed to be the top guy in the country on wiseguys. Why would he be working drugs?’”

  Neither Patton nor his client had any idea that by then, under FBI suspicion, DeVecchio had been moved over to the DEA position. The OPR investigation had commenced, but except for some rumors Simone had heard, no one outside the Bureau or the Justice Department knew that DeVecchio was a target of an FBI internal affairs probe.

  “So right after lunch, when Favo gets on the stand,” says Simone, “John Patton decides to play a hunch and he takes a shot. ‘Is it true,’ he asks, ‘that your supervisor DeVecchio is under investigation for corruption?’ Suddenly, you can hear a pin drop in the courtroom and Favo says, ‘I’m not allowed to disclose that at this time.’”

  “That was it,” says Simone. “Confirmation that something was wrong. John turned around and gave me the Groucho eyebrows. That’s how we discovered that Lin DeVecchio was the bad guy and I had been set up to take the heat off him.”

  But the Feds, who by then were well aware of DeVecchio’s alleged leaks to Scarpa, didn’t make it any easier on Simone’s lawyer. “We tried several times to get the phone records,” Patton recalled. “LUDS—records from Joe’s phone that we could compare against his DARs. And each time, mysteriously, for those particular weeks, the phone people told us they were missing.”26

  “Sal Miciotta was the personification of evil,” says Patton. “The guy had no moral center. And it was simply his word against Joe’s, without a shred of probative corroborating evidence. The fact that they even got an indictment was outrageous. These prosecutors ruined the life of a great cop, just to cover for a dirty agent.”

  And yet, in the end, after hearing all the evidence, the jury acquitted Joe Simone on all counts. “I cried like a baby,” he says, “and the foreman, who I was scared of, stood up and yelled out, ‘Not guilty!’”

  Double Jeopardy

  The New York Times covered the verdict in a prominent two-column story: “Detective Is Found Not Guilty of Selling Secrets to the Mafia.”27 Newsday did the same: “Cop Not Guilty of Fed Rap.”28 Simone’s hometown paper, the Staten Island Advance, gave him a banner headline: “Detective Acquitted of Mob Charges.”29 Later, they followed up with a piece headlined “Cop Puts His Life Back Together. Simone: ‘It Feels Good to Be Free.’”30

  But Jerry Capeci was absent from the Daily News coverage of the acquittal. That job was left to Greg B. Smith. In a short one-column piece headlined “Juries Show Little Respect for ‘Big Sal,’” Smith reported, “A Brooklyn federal jury took just two hours to declare Detective Joseph Simone innocent.”

  Even that vindication was buried in the third paragraph of a story that focused on the extraordinary efforts by the Feds to protect the murderer and priest-beater Salvatore Miciotta. Still, Smith quoted a juror who told him that “no one believed the Feds’ witnesses, including Miciotta, who claimed Simone had fed him secrets.”

  Jerry Capeci’s “Gang Land” column two weeks later was headlined “Cop Still Treading Hot Water.”31

  “He was acquitted of federal charges that he sold his badge to mobsters during the bloody Colombo war,” wrote Capeci, “but it may not yet be all over for Detective Joe Simone. . . . The Feds can’t simply call a ‘do over’ in Simone’s case. But they can—and are—pushing city cops to pick up the ball they dropped and prosecute Simone on departmental charges that would cost the 19-year veteran his pension. Despite the acquittal charges, Gang Land sources say FBI agent Chris Favo and assistant U.S. Attorneys Stanley Okula and Karen Popp firmly believe Simone was guilty as charged.” Quoting an unnamed cop, Capeci blamed the acquittal on “just a bad jury.”

  Once again, the reading public was in the dark. Because of the secretive nature of the OPR process, no one outside of the FBI and Justice Department knew that one of the charges DeVecchio would face was Chris Favo’s accusation that his boss had regularly leaked confidential FBI information to none other than Jerry Capeci. The only hint of Simone’s point of view in that “Gang Land” piece was a quote from his lawyer, John Patton: “‘We’re not afraid of a G.O. 15,’ Patton said, in a reference to the regulation that forces cops to answer all questions or be fired.”

  Sure enough, the NYPD’s internal affairs division went ahead and filed charges. “They essentially mirrored the federal indictment,” said Patton, who was confident of an acquittal, especially after several former FBI colleagues of Simone agreed to testify on his behalf. But the NYPD “indictment” included a charge that Simone had “wrongfully failed and neglected to report to this Department a bribe offer”—a reference to the piece of paper Joe had refused to touch, which Miciotta had described as an envelope full of cash. It d
idn’t seem to matter that there was no independent proof that the paper Miciotta had tried to hand Simone was “a bribe.”

  Again, the proceedings would hinge on the word of a decorated detective—who the hearing examiner admitted had been “handpicked” for the elite Colombo task force—versus the allegations of Big Sal, one of the very suspects he had investigated.

  Now, in the NYPD hearing, Chris Favo was determined not to get caught off guard. When asked if his immediate supervisor, DeVecchio, was under investigation for leaking information, Favo said that he had been “directed not to answer.”32

  This time, the hearing officer—who tried the case without a jury—came down with what Patton described as “a horrendous decision.” Despite the fact that it was part of Simone’s job description to meet with mobsters and elicit information for the OCID Task Force, Deputy NYPD Commissioner Rae Downes Koshetz decided that the paper offered to Joe had been a bribe and that he should have reported it to his police department superiors, even though he had told both Chris Favo and DeVecchio about the encounter.

  Further, Koshetz seemed to conclude that Simone’s “guilt” was also directly related to his association with Phil Ciadella, the high school football coach, whose uncle was in the mob.

  Joe had testified fondly that he enjoyed going over to Phil’s house because Ciadella’s elderly mother and father “would treat [him] like their own son.” He described them as “seventy-, eighty-year-old people that I had respect for.” Despite the fact that neither of those pensioners had a criminal record, Commissioner Koshetz righteously declared:

  Members of this Department are forbidden to associate with known criminals. Even if Ciadella was not on a data base, his connection to the mob was too close for comfort. Moreover, the Respondent’s claim that associating with such people is part and parcel of living and raising a family in certain parts of Staten Island, is unavailing; if a New York City police officer can not conduct his personal life without associating with mobsters or their close relatives, he is expected to move elsewhere.

  “This astonishing decision, in which Detective Simone was found guilty and stripped of his pension, suggested one of two things,” said Patton. “Either the hearing officer was incredibly naïve with respect to the fact that Joe was working in an OC squad and expected to mix with wiseguys as part of his job, or she was doing the bidding of the Feds.”

  One hint of an answer to that question came when William J. Bratton, who was police commissioner at the time of Simone’s guilty verdict, put off signing the final papers that would have stripped Joe of his pension. Bratton, who later served as LAPD chief, eventually retired from the NYPD and was replaced by Howard Safir, then FDNY commissioner. The appointment was made by then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.33

  No Mercy from a Veteran Fed

  Safir had spent thirty-five years with the federal government. He had been assistant DEA director before becoming chief of the U.S. Marshals’ WITSEC Program—a unit with intimate ties to the Southern and Eastern Districts that monitored many of the turncoat mobsters that the FBI’s New York Office sought to protect.

  “The day Howard Safir became police commissioner after Bratton left,” says Joe, “that morning at nine something, he signed the papers saying that I was through.”

  Ironically, Rae Downes Koshetz, the hearing examiner who seemed so clueless about the way an OCID cop like Simone got intelligence from the mob, ended up serving as co-counsel along with legendary defense lawyer Eddie Hayes in representing ex-detective Stephen Caracappa, one of the so-called Mafia Cops.34

  As a measure of the injustice in the Simone case, because Caracappa and ex-detective Lou Eppolito were charged and convicted after their NYPD retirements, they were allowed to collect their tax-free disability pensions even though they are serving life terms.35 But Simone, who was acquitted of federal charges, was arrested just hours before his pension would have vested, allowing the department to take it from him.

  “How outrageous can you get?” says Patton. “Joe was set up. They should have given him a chance to get out and take care of his five kids. To honor nineteen years of great service.”

  The blow to his family and his reputation sent Simone into a spiral. “First there was severe depression; then I wound up becoming an alcoholic,” he says. Simone was bitter. “At one point during the trial, Favo had this smirk on his face,” he remembers. “And I went up to him and I said, ‘You little shit. You didn’t cheat me out of my pension. You cheated my wife and my kids. And I will never forgive you for that.’”

  Today, Simone, the veteran cop who helped lock up a third of the wiseguys during the Colombo war, resorts to working odd jobs to pay the bills. His wife works full-time as a nurse. Having gone through rehab, he now attends seven AA meetings a week as he tries to piece his life together, enjoy his grandchildren, and forget.

  Not surprisingly, Lin DeVecchio weighs in on Simone’s case in his book. In a long section, he relates a conversation he says he had with Dave Stone, whom he describes as a “well respected supervisor” in the FBI’s NYO.36

  “No way Joe Simone is corrupt,” DeVecchio writes, quoting Stone. “No way Joe is a dirty cop.” Lin then replies, “Favo says he’s got a good case.” Then, after Stone’s assurance that Simone was one of his best detectives, Lin adds, “Favo said he’s got him on tape with Big Sal Miciotta”—an allegation that was proven entirely untrue at Simone’s trial.

  A few paragraphs later in the book, DeVecchio describes an exchange he says he had with Stone about Simone’s impending arrest, writing that he gave Stone permission to make the collar.

  “I’ll take him in my car. No cuffs,” he quotes Stone as saying. “Favo worked with Joe on my squad for a year,” Dave added. “Joe Simone helped teach him a lot. They should . . . let him surrender himself.” Lin then writes that he told Stone, “It’s in the Eastern District’s hands. The best I can do is let you arrest him.”

  Earlier in the book, seemingly sympathetic to Simone, DeVecchio writes, “Detective Joseph Simone, a twenty-year veteran and a father of six [sic], was the first fellow law enforcement officer that Chris Favo ever officially accused of corruption—even before me.” But on the morning of Simone’s arrest, and in the months that followed, there’s no record of Lin DeVecchio doing a thing to intervene on Simone’s behalf.

  “I want to know where Lin was when my life was being destroyed,” Joe told me in an interview.37 “He just sat there and let me twist in the wind. He even writes in his book that Favo said he had a tape of me and Miciotta. But there was no tape. It’s outrageous.”

  More outrageous was the timing of Simone’s arrest. If DeVecchio, who was the squad supervisor at the time, had waited another twenty-four hours, Simone would have retired, and under NYPD rules he’d have his pension today. Now, nearly ten years after “the roof caved in,” he still doesn’t have his retirement benefits from the department.

  “Of all the many injustices exposed in the scandal over Gregory Scarpa Sr. and Lin DeVecchio,” says Angela Clemente, “what the Feds did to Joe Simone—one of their own—is among the worst.”38

  Chapter 36

  GASPIPE’S CONFESSION

  By the spring of 1994 the Feds were in damage-control mode, seeking to protect their war prosecutions from the growing taint of the Scarpa-DeVecchio scandal. At that point they’d offered two explanations for the leaks: first that Detective Joe Simone had passed on intel to the Colombos, and second, as alleged during that meeting with Valerie Caproni in the fall of 1993, that the intelligence had come to Scarpa via his good friend Anthony Casso.1 But despite the NYPD’s punitive move on Simone’s pension, he was entirely vindicated in federal court, and by April, Casso was about to shatter the second theory—that he had shared his “crystal ball” of intelligence received from the Mafia Cops with Greg Scarpa.2

  Within days of being seized at his New Jersey hideout in January, Casso was taken from the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) to the U.S. attorney’s office in Brookly
n. Ostensibly, the meeting was to discuss whether he should provide handwriting samples as ordered by Judge Eugene Nickerson. But when he got into a room with FBI agent Richard Rudolph from the Lucchese squad, Gaspipe dropped a bomb.3

  “If you guys make me a good offer . . . I’ll work with you,” he said, knowing that AUSA Charlie Rose’s office was a few doors away. Rose* was the senior Eastern District prosecutor who had been assigned to Casso’s case, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg O’Connell.4

  At that point, Casso was well aware that his former crime partner Greg Scarpa had earned a generous plea deal after offering to cooperate and renounce his ties to LCN. And Casso, like Scarpa, was known for his Machiavellian playbook.

  As Phil Carlo put it in Gaspipe, “For Charlie Rose this was truly a monumental occasion. Anthony Gaspipe Casso turning was a milestone in the annals of crime history.” In February, a deal was structured in which Casso would serve six and a half years after pleading guilty to a seventy-two-count indictment. Considering the fact that Casso, who had been made in 1974 at the age of thirty-two,5 would take responsibility for fifteen murders and reportedly admit to another twenty-one, it was a plea bargain worthy of Sammy Gravano’s.6

  At that moment in late February, however, it was far from a done deal. The plea was in a preliminary stage that the Feds call a “proffer.” It wouldn’t be official until it was reduced to writing and all parties, including the court, had agreed to the terms. In the meantime, according to Casso, his then lawyer, who represented a number of other Mafiosi, withdrew from representing him. As Carlo explained it, this attorney didn’t want “to get a reputation as [one] who facilitated such cooperation.”7

  With other wiseguys, that might be bad for business.