Oct 29 2007
Mafia girlfriend: FBI used mob muscle to help civil rights case
NEW YORK — The FBI covertly used mob muscle to help solve the 1964 disappearance of three civil rights volunteers in Mississippi, a gangster’s ex-girlfriend testified Monday, becoming the first witness to repeat in open court a story that has been underworld lore for years.
Linda Schiro described how she traveled with Gregory Scarpa Sr. to Mississippi, where he told her he had forced a Ku Klux Klan member to reveal the location of the volunteers’ bodies by “putting a gun in the guy’s mouth and threatening him.”
The FBI has never acknowledged that Scarpa, nicknamed “The Grim Reaper,” was involved in the case.
The testimony came during the trial of R. Lindley DeVecchio, who has pleaded not guilty to four counts of murder in what prosecutors have billed as one of the worst law enforcement corruption cases in U.S. history. An indictment alleges Scarpa plied DeVecchio with cash, jewelry, liquor – and even prostitutes – in exchange for confidential information on suspected rats and rivals in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Until now, Schiro was too afraid to speak out about the illicit alliance, prosecutors say. But the mob moll, who was with Scarpa nearly three decades, was coaxed into testifying about what went on behind the scenes with assurances authorities would protect her life.
Defense attorneys have sought to portray Schiro – who testified that prosecutors were paying her $2,200 a month for living expenses – as an opportunist who framed DeVecchio at the behest of overzealous prosecutors, and to improve her chances for a tell-all book deal about Scarpa, who died behind bars in 1994.
The notion that Scarpa strong-armed a Klan member into giving up information about one of the most notorious crimes of the civil rights era has been talked about in mob circles for years.
It happened during the search for suspects in the disappearance of civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, who were beaten and shot by a gang of Klansmen and buried in an earthen dam. The case was famously dramatized in the movie “Mississippi Burning.”
Investigators struggled for answers in the early days of the case, stymied by stonewalling local Klan members. The Daily News reported in 1994 that a frustrated J. Edgar Hoover turned to Scarpa to beat the information out of local Klansmen.
Schiro recalled Monday how she and Scarpa walked into a hotel in Mississippi where the FBI had gathered during the investigation, and how the gangster winked at a group of agents. She said an agent later showed up in their room and “handed Greg a gun.”
Later, she said Scarpa helped find the volunteers’ bodies by “putting a gun in the guy’s mouth and threatening him.” She said an unidentified agent returned to the room, gave Scarpa a wad of cash, and took back the weapon.
Her remarks about the Mississippi episode were only a brief part of Schiro’s full day of testimony, which is considered crucial for the case. She is scheduled to return Tuesday.
Schiro, 62, started dating Scarpa at age 17 after meeting him in a bar. She spent most of her life around mobsters, so his boasts that he had been involved in 20 gangland murders didn’t frighten her, she said.
“I wasn’t upset. I was impressed,” she said.
She said she was more surprised when the Colombo crime family captain first told her about his ties to the FBI. “I said, ‘What do you mean, you’re a rat?’” she recalled. “And he said, ‘No, I just work for them.’”
After DeVecchio became the informant’s “handler” in 1978, Schiro said she was allowed to sit in on weekly meetings at the couple’s apartment. She recounted how when Scarpa offered stolen jewelry to the agent, he “took it and put it in his pocket,” she said.
Schiro testified that in the fall of 1984 she overheard DeVecchio warn Scarpa that the girlfriend of another Colombo capo was a potential “rat.”
“You know you have to take care of this?” DeVecchio said, according to Schiro.
“I’ll take care of it,” Scarpa said.
The girlfriend was gunned down at a mob social club a few days later.
Another time, Scarpa complained to Devecchio about a fellow mobster who was acting strangely, “not coming around anymore and becoming a born-again Christian,” she said.
The agent, she said, cautioned, “You know we’ve got to get rid of this guy before he starts talking.”
Prosecutors say Scarpa ordered the gangster killed in 1987.
Mafia girlfriend: FBI used mob muscle to help civil rights case – By TOM HAYS – Associated Press Writer – Posted on Mon, Oct. 29, 2007 – Sun Herald – http://www.sunherald.com/306/story/175570.html
