You Can Go Home Again

At FBI headquarters, DeVecchio was told of the gangland slaying. "We're gonna win this thing!" he allegedly responded, slapping his hand on the desk. By "we," he apparently meant Scarpa's branch of the Colombo syndicate. (The incident, publicly reported years later as part of an internal FBI investigation into DeVecchio's handling of Scarpa, became the basis for a scene in "The Sopranos" finale.) Scarpa was finally convicted of murder and racketeering. He died of AIDS, contracted from a blood transfusion, in prison in 1994. A Justice Department inquiry that began that year failed to turn up enough evidence to prosecute or discipline DeVecchio. But then, two years ago, Linda Schiro, Scarpa's longtime girlfriend (and mother of Joey) began talking. She tied DeVecchio, who had retired from the FBI in 1996, to four murders. Schiro said she had initially kept quiet to protect herself from DeVecchio. Prosecutors said DeVecchio even called her a "stand-up broad" for keeping her mouth shut when investigators questioned her in the inquiry.

At DeVecchio's trial, which opened to much press fanfare in mid-October, defense lawyer Douglas Grover (himself a former mob prosecutor) charged that Schiro was a liar who was framing DeVecchio to line her own pockets. The defense pointed to Schiro's work with a self-styled "relationship coach" to sell a book about her 30-year romance with Scarpa. "Watch the money," Grover told the court. "Watch the books. She is talking to authors, and there are more deals."

Schiro had been talking, all right—telling different stories to different people. In a 1997 interview with Tom Robbins of The Village Voice and veteran mob reporter Jerry Capeci, Schiro said DeVecchio had not been involved in the Bari and Lampasi murders. (Schiro corroborated the prosecution's charge of DeVecchio's role in the Porco murder, but another witness said Porco had told the Scarpas himself that police questioned him.) After wrestling with his duty to a source—Schiro had been speaking under a confidentiality agreement—Robbins decided he had to come forward, and the Voice published the story of the 1997 Schiro interview during the second week of trial. Robbins provided tapes of his Q&A to the prosecutors. After listening to it, the Brooklyn D.A.'s office decided that the credibility of the prosecution's star witness was damaged beyond repair. The prosecutors decided to drop all charges. State Supreme Court Justice Gustin L. Reichbach agreed, though he noted that the FBI had made "a deal with the Devil" in employing Scarpa as a confidential source.

Back in Florida, sitting at his kitchen table 10 days after he walked free from a Brooklyn courtroom, DeVecchio said he was "angry, you bet. Still am." His wife piped up, "We've tried to keep a good sense of humor through the whole thing." Deadpanned DeVecchio, "It's kind of a black comedy." He said he's looking forward to the small things he missed while under indictment: "I wasn't going to go to the beach and show my ankle bracelet off." "Two summers without wearing shorts or a bathing suit," his wife added. DeVecchio has big legal fees to pay off. "I have a story I'm going to need to sell," he said. Who would play him in the movie? Mark Wahlberg, he said. He is a fan of "The Departed," in which Wahlberg plays a cop who kills a colleague who gets too close to a mobster.

© 2007