Murder trials, even sensational cases filled with gut-wrenching testimony, usually begin slowly, with a staid, jury selection process. The trial of former FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, however, should be action-packed from the get-go. 

That’s because the first order of business next week will be for the trial judge to decide whether mobster Gregory Scarpa Jr. – whose late father Gregory Sr. was the ex-agent’s informer and alleged accomplice in four murders – is a credible witness whose testimony about the long relationship between his father and DeVecchio is worthy to be heard.

Prosecutors for Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes hope they do better with Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach on that score than Scarpa Jr. fared with the last judge who heard the murderous gangster testify about allegations of wrongdoing by the retired G-man.

Reichbach is expected to hear opposing arguments on that issue before he selects a jury from a panel of 500 Brooklynites who have been summoned to appear Monday as potential jurors in the blockbuster case. FBI agents have been convicted of murder in the past, but DeVecchio, 66, is the first charged with committing multiple mob murders while working as an agent.

Three years ago, after listening to Scarpa Jr. testify that DeVecchio had helped his father “hunt down and kill” rival mobsters during the 1991-93 Colombo family mob war, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Jack Weinstein summarily rejected the gangster’s account.

“The court finds this witness to be not credible. His source is also not credible,”

wrote Weinstein, (left) who noted in his ruling that “the only substantial information that Scarpa Jr. had” about alleged crimes by DeVecchio “was furnished to him orally by his parent.”

In sealed court papers, prosecutors have asked Reichbach to permit Scarpa Jr., who volunteered to be a prosecution witness after DeVecchio was indicted, to testify that the ex-agent was involved in a Queens murder with both Scarpas, four years before the first of four Brooklyn killings that are charged in the indictment.

DeVecchio goes to trial for the murders of Mari Bari, 31, in 1984; of Joseph (Joe Brewster) DeDomenico, 44, in 1987; of Patrick Porco, 18, in 1990; Lorenzo Lampasi, 66, in 1992.

As Gang Land disclosed three weeks ago, Scarpa Jr., 56, has told prosecutors that he killed the administrator of an abortion clinic after DeVecchio had alerted his father that the official, an ex-doctor who had lost his medical license, was cooperating in a tax fraud investigation against Scarpa Sr.

Sources say Scarpa Jr. has told prosecutors that at his father’s request he shot descalpeled doctor Eliezer Shkolnik to death at his Forest Hills home in 1980. It was the younger Scarpa’s first homicide and he has said that his actions made his father “proud of me.”

In 1998, Scarpa Jr. was tried and acquitted of participating in five murders, all of which he blamed on his father. Sources say he has changed his tune and now

admits those slayings along with several others. He will not receive any reduction in his current prison sentence in return for his testimony.

The request to allow Scarpa Jr. to testify about the Shkolnik slaying is contained in a so-called Molineaux motion that seeks to permit prosecutors to move into evidence alleged prior bad acts of DeVecchio that they say are similar to those charged in the indictment.

Reichbach (right) has scheduled a hearing for tomorrow on a motion – filed by New York Daily News general counsel Anne B. Carroll on behalf of The News, The New York Post, The New York Times, Newsday and the Associated Press – to unseal the court papers under provisions of the First Amendment and New York State Law.

In the sealed papers, sources say, prosecutors have also asked Reichbach for permission to introduce additional allegations of wrongdoing against DeVecchio that Scarpa Jr. and other witnesses have given authorities about the retired FBI supervisor.

Like Hynes's office, DeVecchio’s attorneys, Douglas Grover and Mark Bederow, declined to comment about the Molineaux motion.

Gang Land expects the defense lawyers to ask Reichbach to preclude the District Attorney’s office from using Scarpa Jr. as a witness at all, let alone allow him to testify about uncharged murders and other crimes that he claims to have heard about, almost entirely, from his dead father. (left)

Scarpa Jr. is two for two at failing to impress federal judges as a straight shooter – at least from the witness stand. His trial judge stated he committed perjury from the stand and hammered him with a 40-year-prison term for murder conspiracy and a slew of other racketeering crimes. 

But Angela Clemente, (right) the self-styled forensic analyst who was praised for jump starting the investigation that led to DeVecchio’s indictment by assistant district attorney Michael Vecchione, the lead prosecutor in the case, thinks Scarpa Jr. is a “credible witness.”

Clemente, who visited Scarpa Jr. “two or three times” in federal prison, testified last month at a pre-trial hearing that last year she told Vecchione that Scarpa Jr. was being “treated unfairly” and pressed the DA’s office to use him as a witness against DeVecchio.

Clemente said she’s had numerous telephone discussions with the imprisoned mobster since they first met in 2003. But she also acknowledged that she doesn’t know how long he’s been in prison, or for what crimes. In fact, she testified, she knows “very little about anything pertaining to his criminal history.”

Clemente said she has met several of Scarpa Jr.’s family members, and she used to speak with them on a regular basis. She added that she considers Scarpa Jr. (left, Polaris Images) to be a “personal friend.”

Pressed by Bederow as to whether he is “somebody you care about deeply?” Clemente said: “I don’t know about that. I do believe he’s a friend, yes.”

At this point in his life, Scarpa Jr., who has been ostracized by the mob, is regularly housed in solitary confinement, and isn’t due to get out of federal prison until 2035, will take any friend he can get.

They were prosecutors a generation ago in the same highly regarded Brooklyn homicide bureau that produced Bruce Cutler, the longtime outspoken mouthpiece for the late John Gotti, and Mark Feldman, a soft-spoken gangbuster who headed federal mob prosecutions in Brooklyn from 1995 to last year. 

Today, however, Doug Grover (right) and Mike Vecchione are the lead lawyers on opposite sides of the highly charged DeVecchio case. And, from all appearances, it’s not just business – it’s very personal.

From their very first courtroom confrontation, when the ex-agent was arraigned on March 30 of last year, right up to one they had Tuesday, the animus between Grover and Vecchione has been visible for all to see and hear.

Grover, who toiled for eight years as a federal mob prosecutor after leaving the  DA’s office in 1980, ripped Vecchione’s office as one with “no idea” how to prosecute organized crime cases or “deal with witnesses,” ultimately naming Gregory Scarpa Sr.’s longtime lover Linda Schiro as a prime example.

This week the animosity was again on display. In a hearing on Tuesday, Vecchione charged that Grover had intimidated Schiro 13 years ago when he spoke to her amid an earlier investigation of DeVecchio’s dealings with Scarpa. The prosecutor alleged that Grover had spoken to Schiro after she had spoken three times to FBI agents conducting an internal probe of DeVecchio.

Vecchione told the court that even though the alleged intimidation took place 13 years ago, when Grover and Schiro met in October of 1994, he only learned

about it 10 days ago from speaking to Schiro and then-boyfriend John Baran while preparing for trial.

Because of the alleged intimidation, the prosecutor said, the lawyer should be bounced from the case.

Reichbach indicated that he was unlikely to grant the prosecutor’s request, but reserved a final decision until tomorrow.

As luck would have it, records show that Baran was arrested for driving without a license last week in Queens.

A spokesman for the DA’s office assured Gang Land that Baran did not break the law by driving to and from the DA’s office without a license on days he was reporting on the 13-year-old intimidation tactics. Those days, he was picked up and driven back and forth.

As to whether Vecchione (left) knew about Baran’s arrest when he reported his allegation of intimidation on Tuesday, the spokesman said the prosecutor had, but did not think it necessary to disclose that information to the judge.

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti – the book it took yours truly and Gene Mustain 17 years to do – tells the complete saga of John Gotti, from his treacherous rise to his defiant downfall. Although we didn't know it at the time, we began working on "Mob Star" in 1985, when we began covering the Gotti story as news reporters.

The first edition came out in 1988, and we finished this new edition three days before Gotti died in June 2002. We added a postscript, and with a 40,000-word update, the new edition contains the entire Gotti saga right up to his time in prison and his death from throat cancer.

The 378 page, full-size book uses eight additional chapters, a prologue and an epilogue to complete the story we began telling (better than any other reporters, we might add!) when we covered the Gotti-orchestrated, midtown Manhattan assassination of former Gambino boss Paul Castellano.

For the last and best words on Gotti, this is the book to have. It is specially priced at Amazon.com at $11.02, more than five bucks off the suggested retail price.

The best of Gang Land is available in a book store near you. Or you can pick up a copy of "JERRY CAPECI'S Gang Land: Fifteen Years Of Covering The Mafia" at a special low price from the Godfather of online booksellers, Amazon.com.

The 330-page oversized book includes an index and eight pages of photographs. It is sure to contain a few of your favorite columns, as well as some you may have missed during Gang Land's lengthy run that began in 1989 in The New York Daily News and continues today online and in The New York Sun.

The book's 125 columns chronicle the New York Mafia landscape from John Gotti's heyday in 1989 as the swashbuckling Dapper Don to the remarkable day in 2003 when Gotti's longtime rival Vincent (Chin) Gigante gave up his Daffy Don routine and confessed to having put on a crazy act for three decades.

Amazon.com has it in stock for $12.32  – 35% off the $18.95 list price.