Prosecutors: Murder Is FBI Man’s ‘Bad’

As if four murders weren’t enough, Brooklyn prosecutors want to throw another mob hit at a former FBI agent, R. Lindley DeVecchio. And this time, the victim is a former Manhattan abortion doctor who was shot to death at his Queens home.Citing the murder as a “prior bad act” similar to the four slayings charged in the indictment, prosecutors have sought permission to introduce evidence of Mr. DeVecchio’s alleged involvement in the 1980 rubout of Eliezer Shkolnik at the ex-agent’s upcoming trial.The allegations linking Mr. DeVecchio to the Shkolnik killing and other “bad acts,” Gang Land has learned, are contained in sealed court papers, a so-called Molineaux motion, that the Brooklyn district attorney’s office filed with a New York Supreme Court justice, Gustin Reichbach, the judge in the blockbuster murder case against the retired Gman.Prosecutors say the slaying of Shkolnik, who lost his license to practice medicine in 1976, was set in motion by Mr. DeVecchio in the fall of 1980, when he allegedly alerted Colombo mobster Gregory Scarpa Sr. that the ex-doctor was cooperating in a tax probe of the gangster, with whom he shared a mistress.Mr. DeVecchio’s warning to Scarpa Sr. allegedly came shortly after the agent won FBI approval to restore the wiseguy to a top echelon informer status after a five-year hiatus triggered by a dispute over money Scarpa had had with his former control agent.Sources say Scarpa’s son, Gregory Jr., has told prosecutors that he and a member of his late father’s crew, Joseph “Joe Brewster” DeDomenico, killed Shkolnik, 52, after Mr. DeVecchio had alerted the elder Scarpa that the defrocked doctor, who acted as administrator for a Manhattan women’s clinic where he had practiced as a doctor, was an informer for the Internal Revenue Service. Scarpa Jr. would kill DeDomenico seven years later, again on orders from his father and allegedly also with help from Mr. DeVecchio.Allegations linking Mr. DeVecchio to Shkolnik’s murder were first reported last year by Gang Land. At the time, Shkolnik’s son Hunter, now a lawyer in Manhattan, told Gang Land that he was away at college when his father was killed.Several months later, detectives told him it was unlikely that they would be able to solve the case. “They had hit a wall,” he said. And they suggested that Shkolnik and other family members not try to retrieve his father’s medical business, advice they readily accepted. “That’s what they said to us. ‘Don’t do it. You don’t want to get involved. It’s probably what got your father killed.’ Now that I’m looking back at the things that were said to us at the time. … In retrospect, they may have been right,” he said.The younger Scarpa, now 56 and serving a 40-year term that doesn’t end until 2035, remembers details of the early morning killing of Shkolnik on December 3, 1980, very well, he has told prosecutors.Sources say he has told prosecutors the Shkolnik murder was his first homicide and was a special request from his father, who was proud of the work he did.The elder Scarpa, who died of AIDS in 1994, gave his son the ex-doctor’s home address, gave him a picture of his target, and said: “Do this for me,” Scarpa Jr. has told authorities.After he and DeDomenico killed Shkolnik in the vestibule of his Forest Hills apartment building, they drove to Manhattan and threw the murder weapon into a sewer, Scarpa Jr. told prosecutors, stating that Joe Brewster told his father that Scarpa Jr. had handled his assignment very well. “He was proud of me,” Scarpa Jr. recalled, said one source.Prosecutors and defense lawyers have declined to comment about the prosecution’s Molineaux motion, which sources say the judge sealed after it was filed Tuesday.Last year, Mr. DeVecchio’s attorney, Mark Bederow, labeled the allegations as “pure fantasy. We said it before, and we will say it again: Lin is innocent. The idea that Lin DeVecchio conspired with Greg Scarpa Sr. to murder anyone is ludicrous. It didn’t happen.”Gregory Scarpa Jr. says otherwise, however, and Brooklyn prosecutors want him to relate that tale from the witness stand, a move that Mr. DeVecchio’s attorneys are sure to oppose.TRIAL DELAYED TO GIVE DA A CHANCE TO REPLENISH TEAMIn the wake of embarrassing legal moves at a pretrial hearing that forced two veteran prosecutors off the prosecution team, Justice Reichbach has postponed the long-delayed trial until October 1 to give two replacement prosecutors sufficient time to get up to speed in the case.At the hearing last week — during which the sole issue was whether the prosecution used testimony for which Mr. DeVecchio had received immunity in its case — a veteran anti-corruption prosecutor, Kevin Richardson, and appeals specialist Monique Ferrell disclosed that they had read Mr. DeVecchio’s immunized testimony in preparing for the hearing.Under questioning by defense attorney Douglas Grover, Ms. Ferrell testified she never considered setting up an “ethical screen” to prevent trial prosecutors like herself from possibly being tainted by Mr. DeVecchio’s immunized testimony during the hearing.During Mr. Richardson’s testimony, Justice Reichbach interrupted the defense lawyer and asked the prosecutor why the district attorney’s office didn’t assign other attorneys to conduct the hearing to remove any possibility that the trial team would be “exposed” to the forbidden testimony.Mr. Richardson said he didn’t know. He did know, he testified, that in order to conduct the hearing it was “necessary to understand the material that was the subject matter.”The transcripts apparently had all the impact of a throwaway summer paperback: The prosecutor insisted that the material would not affect his “prosecution decision-making in any way.”Justice Reichbach wasn’t satisfied. He said he was troubled — “a bit befuddled,” he put it — by the decision to use the trial prosecutors at the hearing. He then asked the name of the supervisor in District Attorney Charles “Joe” Hynes’s office who had made that decision. Again, Mr. Richardson said he didn’t know.Rather than risk a possible negative ruling on the immunity issue at the end of the trial, Mr. Hynes’s office decided Tuesday to replace Mr. Richardson and Ms. Ferrell with mob prosecutor Laura Neubauer and appeals lawyer Jacqueline Linares. The team is led by the office’s rackets bureau chief, Michael Vecchione, and includes Assistant District Attorney Joel Alexis.As a spokesman for the district attorney’s office, Jerry Schmetterer, put it: “In order to protect against any problems down the line, we volunteered to make some changes in the prosecution team.”A PLEA OFFER HE COULDN’T REFUSEAfter hanging tough for a year on a stock fraud indictment, a Gambino family wiseguy, John “Johnny G” Gammarano, caved last week when the feds made him a sweet last-minute plea bargain offer that was too good for the veteran gangster to pass up.Inthe plea deal, Johnny G agreed to serve 33 to 41 months in prison. In the end, however, the sentence could be a life term for the cancer-stricken 66-year-old. His life-threatening ailments, which have been a bone of contention for months, came up again last Thursday as he pleaded guilty to racketeering in Brooklyn Federal Court.The issue arose when Judge Brian Cogen told Johnny G that his age and health had been factored into his plea deal and that his lawyer would not be permitted to request a lesser term for health reasons at sentencing.Gammarano recently underwent surgery for lung cancer and goes for follow-up tests every three months. When he asked what would happen if his cancer returned, he was told that it was a risk he took in pleading guilty and that he would have to live with it. He hopes he does.Johnny G and his 40-year-old co-defendant in the case, William Scotto, whose plea deal has no health strings attached and who also faces a recommended 33 to 41 months, are currently set for sentencing on November 9.This column and other news of organized crime will be available today at ganglandnews.com.

Prosecutors: Murder Is FBI Man’s ‘Bad’

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