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Suspected of mob ties, former FBI agent indicted on murder charges
Associated Press
Published March 31, 2006
NEW YORK - A retired FBI agent was indicted on murder charges Thursday, accused of taking bribes from a mobster to supply him with inside information that led to four underworld slayings in Brooklyn.
R. Lindley DeVecchio, 65, was arrested in a case of "confidential leaks, payoffs and death" dating back two decades, District Attorney Charles Hynes said.
DeVecchio pleaded not guilty and was released on $1-million bail. He did not speak at his arraignment.
Prosecutor Michael Vecchione had wanted DeVecchio held without bail, calling his "one of the worst cases of law enforcement corruption in the history of this country."
Defense attorney Douglas Grover called the charges "nonsense" and described his client as an honest investigator who played a key role in the war on organized crime.
Hynes said the charges stemmed from the unusually close relationship between DeVecchio and Gregory Scarpa Sr., a government informant and Colombo captain in the Colombo crime family.
In 1984, DeVecchio allegedly warned Scarpa that the girlfriend of a high-ranking Colombo figure was cooperating with federal authorities. As a result, authorities say, she was shot and killed in a Brooklyn social club - a pattern prosecutors said was repeated in three slayings of Scarpa rivals, the last one in 1992.
Scarpa gave DeVecchio weekly payments and helped him solve important cases, Hynes said.
[Last modified March 31, 2006, 01:10:06]
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