Preliminary Theatrics In FBI Murder Trial

Murder trials, even sensational cases filled with gut-wrenching testimony, usually begin slowly, with a staid jury selection process. The trial of a former FBI agent, R. Lindley DeVecchio, however, should be action-packed from the get-go.That’s because the first order of business next week will be for the trial judge to decide whether mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. — whose late father, Gregory Sr., was the exagent’s informer and alleged accomplice in four murders — is a credible witness whose testimony about the long relationship between his father and Mr. DeVecchio is worthy to be heard.Prosecutors for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles Hynes, hope they do better with a state Supreme Court justice, Gustin Reichbach, on that score than Scarpa Jr. fared with the last judge who heard the murderous gangster testify about allegations of wrongdoing by the retired G-man. Justice Reichbach is expected to hear opposing arguments on that issue before he selects a jury from the panel of 500 Brooklynites who have been summoned to appear on Monday as potential jurors in the blockbuster case. FBI agents have been convicted of murder in the past, but Mr. DeVecchio, 66, is the first to be charged with committing multiple mob murders while working as an agent.Three years ago, after listening to Scarpa Jr. testify that Mr. De-Vecchio had helped his father “hunt down and kill” rival mobsters during the 1991–93 Colombo family mob war, a Brooklyn U.S. District Court judge, Jack Weinstein, summarily rejected the gangster’s account:“The court finds this witness to be not credible. His source is also not credible,” wrote Judge Weinstein, who noted in his ruling that “the only substantial information that Scarpa Jr. had” about alleged crimes by Mr. DeVecchio “was furnished to him orally by his parent.”In sealed court papers, prosecutors have asked Justice Reichbach to permit Scarpa Jr., who volunteered to be a prosecution witness after Mr. DeVecchio was indicted, to testify that the ex-agent was involved with both Scarpas in a Queens murder that took place four years before the first of four Brooklyn killings charged in the indictment.Mr. DeVecchio is on trial for the murders of Mari Bari, 31, in 1984; Joseph “Joe Brewster” DeDomenico, 44, in 1987; Patrick Porco, 18, in 1990, and Lorenzo Lampasi, 66, in 1992.As Gang Land disclosed three weeks ago, Scarpa Jr., 56, has told prosecutors that he killed the administrator of an abortion clinic after Mr. DeVecchio alerted his father that the official, an former doctor who had lost his medical license, was cooperating in a tax fraud investigation against Scarpa Sr.Sources say Scarpa Jr. has told prosecutors that he shot descalpeled doctor Eliezer Shkolnik to death at his Forest Hills home in 1980 at his father’s request. It was the younger Scarpa’s first homicide, and he has said that his actions made his father “proud of me.”In 1998, Scarpa Jr. was tried and acquitted of participating in five murders, all of which he blamed on his father. Sources say he has changed his tune and now admits those slayings, along with several others. He will not receive any reduction in his current prison sentence in return for his testimony. The request to allow Scarpa Jr. to testify about the Shkolnik slaying is contained in what is known as a Molineaux motion that seeks to permit prosecutors to introduce into evidence testimony about alleged prior bad acts of Mr. DeVecchio they say are similar to those charged in the indictment.Justice Reichbach has scheduled a hearing for tomorrow on a motion — filed by the New York Daily News general counsel, Anne Carroll, on behalf of the News, the New York Post, the New York Times, Newsday, and the Associated Press — to unseal the court papers under provisions of the First Amendment and New York State law.In the sealed papers, sources say, prosecutors have also asked Justice Reichbach for permission to introduce additional allegations of wrongdoing against Mr. DeVecchio that authorities say Scarpa Jr. and other witnesses have made against the retired FBI supervisor. Like Mr. Hynes’s office, Mr. De-Vecchio’s attorneys, Douglas Grover and Mark Bederow, declined to comment about the Molineaux motion.Gang Land expects the defense lawyers to ask Justice Reichbach to preclude the district attorney’s office from using Scarpa Jr. as a witness at all, let alone to allow him to testify about uncharged murders and other crimes he claims to have heard about, almost all of them from his dead father.TWO-TIME LOSER HAS AT LEAST ONE FRIEND ON THE OUTSIDEScarpa Jr. is currently two for two at failing to impress federal judges as a straight shooter — at least from the witness stand. The judge at his last trial ruled that he had committed perjury on the witness stand and hammered him with a 40-year-prison term for murder conspiracy and a slew of other racketeering crimes.But Angela Clemente, the selfstyled forensic analyst who was praised for jump-starting the investigation that led to Mr. DeVecchio’s indictment by the assistant district attorney, Michael Vecchione, who serves as the lead prosecutor in the case, thinks Scarpa Jr. is a “credible witness.”Ms. Clemente, who visited Scarpa Jr. “two or three times” in federal prison, testified at a pretrial hearing last month that she had told Mr. Vecchione that Scarpa Jr. was being “treated unfairly” last year and pressed the district attorney’s office to use him as a witness against Mr. DeVecchio.Ms. Clemente said she’s had numerous telephone discussions withtheimprisonedmobstersince they first met in 2003. But she also acknowledged that she doesn’t know how long he’s been in prison, or for what crimes. In fact, she testified, she knows “very little about anything pertaining to his criminal history.”She has met several of Scarpa Jr.’s family members and used to speak with them on a regular basis, Ms. Clemente said. She added that she considers Scarpa Jr. to be a “personal friend.”Pressed by Mr. Bederow on whether Scarpa Jr. is “somebody you care about deeply?” Ms. Clemente said: “I don’t know about that. I do believe he’s a friend, yes.”At this point in his life, Scarpa Jr. — who has been ostracized by the mob, is regularly housed in solitary confinement, and isn’t due to get out of federal prison until 2035 — will take any friend he can get.OPPOSING LAWYERS HOLDING A GRUDGE MATCHThey were prosecutors a generation ago in the same highly regarded Brooklyn homicide bureau that produced Bruce Cutler, the outspoken longtime mouthpiece for the late John Gotti, and Mark Feldman, a soft-spoken gangbuster who headed federal mob cases in Brooklyn from 1995 to last year.Today, however, the aforementioned Mr. Grover and Mr. Vecchione are the lead lawyers on opposite sides of the highly charged De-Vecchio case. And, from all appearances, it’s not just business — it’s very personal.From their first courtroom confrontation, when the ex-agent was arraigned on March 30 of last year, right up to one they had Tuesday, the animus between Messrs. Grover and Vecchione has been visible for all to see and hear.Mr. Grover, who toiled for six years as a federal mob prosecutor after leaving the Brooklyn district attorney’s office in 1980, has ripped Mr. Vecchione’s office as one with “no idea” how to prosecuteorganizedcrimecasesor”deal with witnesses,” naming Gregory Scarpa Sr.’s longtime lover Linda Schiro as a prime example.This week, the animosity was again on display. In the Tuesday hearing, Mr. Vecchione charged that Mr. Grover had intimidated Ms. Schiro 13 years ago when he spoke to her amid an earlier investigation of Mr. DeVecchio’s dealings with Scarpa. The prosecutor alleged that Mr. Grover had spoken to Ms. Schiro after she had already spoken to FBI agents three times for an internal probe of Mr. DeVecchio they were conducting. Mr. Vecchione told the court that even though the alleged intimidation took place 13 years ago, when Mr. Grover met Ms. Schiro in October 1994, he only learned about it 10 days ago from speaking to Ms. Schiro and her then boyfriend, John Baran, while preparing for the trial.Because of this alleged intimidation, the prosecutor said, the lawyer should be bounced from the case. Justice Reichbach indicated that he was unlikely to grant the prosecutor’s request, but reserved a final decision until tomorrow.As luck would have it, records show that Baran was arrested for driving without a license last week in Queens.A spokesman for Mr. Hynes’s office assured Gang Land that Baran did not break the law while driving to and from the district attorney’s office on the days he was reporting on the 13-year-old intimidation tactics. Those days, he was picked up and driven back and forth.As for whether Mr. Vecchione had known about Baran’s arrest when he reported his allegation of intimidation on Tuesday, the spokesman said the prosecutor had, but did not think it necessary to disclose that information to the judge.This column and other news of organized crime will be available today at ganglandnews.com.

Preliminary Theatrics In FBI Murder Trial

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