Prosecutors will throw out murder charges against former FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio today because testimony by their chief witness about all four murders in the case is at odds with tape recorded accounts she gave about the slayings to two newspaper reporters 10 years ago.

For all intents and purposes though, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s case went down the tubes nearly three weeks ago, on the first day of the trial. 

That’s when dogged investigative newsman Tom Robbins decided to look for cassette tape recordings that he had stuffed into an old cardboard box along with other vestiges of a short-lived book project that he worked on in 1997. 

Until then, Robbins, who shared many a byline with Gang Land when we were colleagues at The Daily News, had done little reporting about the sensational case in which the ex-agent was charged with helping his top echelon informer, mobster Greg Scarpa, commit four slayings from 1984 to 1992. 

These days, Robbins toils for the Village Voice. And although he still writes about organized crime – indeed Gang Land often links to his mob-connected efforts – he is an equal opportunity muckraker and focuses lots of efforts on labor racketeering and political corruption. 

But on the morning of October 15, Robbins was in attendance as prosecutor Joseph Alexis and defense lawyer Douglas Grover each stressed the key role

that Scarpa’s longtime lover, Linda Schiro, would play during their opening statements to Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach. 

“Sounds like Linda’s the entire case,” said Robbins, as he read back the accounts that the prosecutor had said he expected Schiro to relate about DeVecchio’s alleged involvement in each murder, before leaving the courtroom to search for tape recordings of talks that we had with Schiro about the same four slayings back in February and March of 1997. At the time, Robbins, Schiro and Gang Land were partners-of-sorts in a possible book and movie deal about her life with Scarpa, who had died of AIDs three years earlier. 

As Robbins reported yesterday, during her discussions with us, Schiro did not implicate DeVecchio in three of the murders. She omitted him from the 1984 slaying of onetime mob moll Mary Bari, and specifically excluded him from participating in the murders of mobsters Joseph (Joe Brewster) DeDomenico and Lorenzo Lampasi in 1987 and 1992.  

Schiro did tell us that DeVecchio was involved in the 1990 slaying of 18-year-old Patrick Porco, a friend of her son Joseph whom DeVecchio had fingered as a “rat,” as she testified this week. In her courtroom rendition, however, she seemed to gild the lily when she recalled a memorable post-slaying discussion between Scarpa and DeVecchio that she left out of our conversation. 

When Scarpa lamented that his son was distraught about the murder of his son, she testified, DeVecchio replied: “Better he cries now, than he does it in jail.” 

Robbins’s article, which appeared on the paper’s website shortly before

testimony ended Tuesday, triggered a whirlwind of activity in court yesterday.

It began with Grover and lead prosecutor Michael Vecchione telling Reichbach that each had subpoenaed the tapes that Robbins – who showed up in court with the tapes and an attorney – had cited in the story, and with Vecchione announcing that he was inclined to dismiss the charges if the tapes backed up the published report. 

Under prodding from Vecchione and Grover, the judge advised Schiro to retain an attorney – and later appointed one for her – and put the trial off until today to allow both sides to copy excerpts of the tapes that pertained only to the four murders in the case.

Robbins’s attorney, Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma – who had cited New York’s Shield Law to block defense lawyers from subpoenaing Gang Land’s notes relating to the same interviews – successfully argued that only the excerpts that Robbins used to write his article should be turned over to the parties. 

Outside the courtroom yesterday, Robbins told reporters that he felt duty bound to disclose Schiro’s prior accounts about the murders in the case: “DeVecchio is facing life in prison. What she said on the stand about the murders was completely different than what she told us. I had no choice but to disclose what she said in 1997.” 

The smile on his face and the bounce in his step as he walked out of court onto sun-drenched Jay Street yesterday morning underscored the obvious: Lin DeVecchio heads a short list of winners in the case that Brooklyn District Attorney Joe Hynes called the “most stunning example of official corruption” he had ever seen. 

For a defendant to be acquitted in a case in which he is charged with four murders would be a huge win; to have the prosecution toss the case while its key witness is still on the stand is unheard of. 

DeVecchio’s lawyers, Grover, Mark Bederow and Ginnine Fried, (above left) are obvious winners, And even if Tom Robbins hadn’t been able to locate those damning Schiro tapes, they had a good shot of carrying the day for DeVecchio. With little fanfare, they got several witnesses, including FBI agents who voiced suspicions about DeVecchio back in 1994, to bring out key evidence for the ex-G-man. 

Turncoat Colombo capo Carmine Sessa, (right) who was among the missing for a while, comes off as a winner for showing up, and not suddenly recalling some new morsel of important evidence that had eluded him for the past 13 years.  

Former assistant district attorney Noel Downey and onetime investigator/consultant Thomas Dades (left) make the Gang Land

winners list for having the foresight – more likely, good luck – to leave the DA’s office months before the case went to trial. 

The obvious big loser is Hynes. (right) In addition to the DeVecchio debacle, Reichbach blasted his office’s investigation of John (Johnny Loads) Sinagra, the alleged triggerman in the Porco shooting, ultimately dismissing his indictment because the DA’s office waited 11 years before looking into allegations of Sinagra’s involvement in the slaying. 

Schiro, whom Judge Reichbach warned about possible criminal charges stemming from her trial testimony, is also a big loser. It’s unclear if her prior conflicting accounts of the murders will jeopardize the $2200 a month in rent and other expenses she has been getting or the commitment that the DA’s office has made to relocate her after the trial. 

Angela Clemente, (left) the self-styled forensic analyst who worked for several mobsters and jump started the DA’s investigation, is a loser. So are Anthony (Chuckie) Russo, and numerous other wiseguys who viewed a DeVecchio conviction as a get out of jail card. 

Four-time killer Larry Mazza, who romanced Schiro with Scarpa’s approval, is a loser for remembering something new 13 years after his last appearance –

hearing Scarpa use the name “Lin” in a phone call – and for his tired act of bursting into tears when speaking of how he disappointed his father by becoming a gangster. 

Gregory Scarpa Jr., (right) who has been in New York virtually begging to testify, is a loser. He’s due to be shipped back to segregated confinement at the Supermax federal prison in Florence, Colorado for the next 28 years. 

As the lead assistant district attorney in the case, Mike Vecchione has to wear a loser’s cloak. But the brawny, in-your-face prosecutor came up a winner-of-sorts yesterday on the worst day in the two-year-old case. He seemed to know, even before he heard the tapes, that Robbins had the goods, that the case was a goner, and he asked for a delay. 

“Judge, if we can’t go forward after listening to these tapes, or we shouldn’t go forward because of what’s on these tapes, then we’re prepared to do what would be necessary, and that would be to dismiss this case,” said Vecchione. (left)

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.

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