Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes will announce the filing of murder charges today against former mob-busting FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio for complicity in four gangland-style slayings in Brooklyn from 1984 to 1992, Gang Land has learned. 

There is no allegation that DeVecchio had any role in the actual killings. Sources say a grand jury relied on other evidence to indict the retired agent for the murders of a flashy dark-haired mob moll, two Colombo family gangsters, and an 18-year-old hoodlum who had begun cooperating with police. 

DeVecchio allegedly provided information to Gregory Scarpa Sr. – a Colombo capo who was the agent’s top-echelon informer for 12 years – that caused and aided the mobster to murder three victims and to order and entrust a fourth killing to others. 

“Essentially,” asserted one law enforcement official, “DeVecchio knew that the information he was giving Scarpa about those four people would cause him to murder them.”

DeVecchio, 65, has maintained his innocence since the allegations surfaced early this year. Accompanied by his lawyers, he surrender to the District Attorney’s office last night. He will be arraigned on the murder charges this afternoon, following a news conference at the DA’s office.

“We deny the charges in the strongest, most meaningful terms possible,” said his

lawyer, Mark Bederow. “The charges are fabricated. He didn’t do it. We believe they’ve indicted an innocent man. And that’s a shame.”

DeVecchio is the third retired FBI agent to be indicted for murders allegedly committed by their mob informers, according to an FBI spokesman. The others, Paul Rico and John Connolly, (left) worked in Boston. Rico died before trial. Connolly is scheduled for trial in Miami in August for the 1982 murder of a Florida businessman. 

Earlier this week, sources say, detectives from the District Attorney’s office traveled to Las Vegas to arrest the alleged triggerman in one of the murders – the May 1990 slaying of Patrick Porco, 18 – and to Florida to collar a suspect in a related murder that preceded Porco’s killing. DeVecchio is not implicated in the earlier murder.

In addition to Porco’s murder, the grand jury indicted DeVecchio for the murder of a onetime paramour of a top Colombo mobster, Mari Bari, (right) in 1984; the execution of a Scarpa crew member, Joseph (Joe Brewster) DeDomenico, in 1987; the rubout of a mob rival, Lorenzo (Larry) Lampesi, in 1992. If convicted, he faces 25 years to life in prison.

Hynes will also announce the arrest and indictment of John Sinagra, 41, for the Porco slaying, and of Craig Sobel, 38, for the murder of Dominick Masseria, 17, on October 31, 1989.

According to law enforcement officials, court records, and other sources, the police investigation into the Masseria killing ultimately led to the murder of

Porco. (left) The deadly insider tip that led to Porco’s death, according to the investigation by assistant district attorneys Michael Vecchione and Noel Downey, allegedly came from DeVecchio after he learned Porco was cooperating with police about Masseria’s killing.

Masseria was shot to death in front of a Brooklyn church by occupants of a car that had been pelted with eggs about two hours earlier in a Halloween prank. It is unclear whether Masseria had been involved in the egg assault.

The agent contacted Scarpa, who had been working as his confidential informer for 10 years by then, and told him that Porco “was talking to the cops and he could hurt your son (Joseph),” according to one source.

Scarpa, who had been grooming Joseph, his son with his longtime companion, Linda Schiro, to take over his many money-making rackets, ordered Joseph to kill Porco. At the time, the elder Scarpa, who had contracted the AIDs virus during a transfusion in 1986, had become even more bloodthirsty than he had been in previous years. He died in 1994.

Joseph, who had been dealing drugs with his friend Patrick, resisted. But the more Joseph Scarpa protested, the more his father insisted that Patrick was a rat and had to be killed. Sources say Joseph, who would be murdered in 1995 in a drug dispute, accompanied Sinagra (right) during the murder of his friend Patrick, but that Sinagra fired the fatal shots.

Porco’s body was dumped in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn over the Memorial Day weekend.

Rather than suffer the wrath and abuse of his father,

sources said, Joseph and Sinagra both assured Scarpa that Joseph had “pulled the trigger.”

DeVecchio, who had convinced Scarpa to resume working as a top echelon informer in 1980, allegedly alerted Scarpa (left) in 1984 that Bari, a former girlfriend of late family underboss Alphonse (Allie Boy) Persico, was also an FBI informer, sources said.

Scarpa shot Bari, a stunning 5-2 brunette, to death when she showed up at a Brooklyn social club on a ruse, a supposed interview for a position as a cocktail waitress.

Former consigliere Carmine Sessa has previously testified that Scarpa told him that Bari, who was killed in his Brooklyn social club, was whacked because she knew where Persico was hiding out at the time and could disclose the location to the law.

Authorities now say that was a cover story. Sources say that Mario Parlagreco, one of three former Scarpa crew members who testified before the grand jury, told investigators that Scarpa and his son Gregory Jr. told him during a “walk-talk” that Bari had been “talking to the FBI.”

The grand jury also heard evidence that three years later, sources say, DeVecchio provided another fatal tip, warning Scarpa to “watch out” for his pal

Joe Brewster after the agent learned that he was cooperating with state authorities. “He can hurt you,” the agent told his mobster-informer, sources said.

Days later, sources said, Scarpa killed DeDomencio, whose body was left in the back seat of a stolen car. 

During the bloody 1991-93 Colombo war, sources say, Scarpa killed Lampesi, a mob associate aligned with a rebel faction opposed to family boss Carmine (Junior) Persico, with the help of information allegedly supplied by DeVecchio.

The linchpin of the case against DeVecchio, sources said, is Scarpa’s longtime lover, Linda Schiro. She lived with Scarpa for decades, met DeVecchio numerous times when the agent visited Scarpa at their Bensonhurst home, and testified before the grand jury that indicted DeVecchio on March 9, sources said.

To obtain the murder indictment, sources said, prosecutors also used testimony of three FBI agents and three former members of Scarpa’s crew – including Sessa and Parlagreco, whose prior testimony concerning the Bari, Lampesi and DeDomenico murders is at odds with the current allegations against DeVecchio.

The sleeper witness in the case – in more ways than one – just may be Lawrence Mazza, (right) the third former member of Scarpa’s crew whom prosecutors tapped for information about the relationship between Scarpa and his FBI handler.

Mazza rose from supermarket delivery boy to Scarpa’s inner circle through the gangster’s bedroom door. Sources say Schiro seduced Mazza soon after he began delivering groceries to her home in the early 1980s, and later introduced him to Scarpa. As a witness during the 1990s, Mazza testified that be began having steamy sexual relations with Schiro after the mobster contracted the AIDS virus.