Retired FBI agent released on $1m bail in murder case

NEW YORK -- A retired FBI agent was indicted on murder charges yesterday for allegedly 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. One of the two alleged mob hitmen behind the slayings was jailed without bail. The other was in Florida, awaiting extradition.

Colleagues of the FBI veteran were quick to defend him against the charges.

''We all know Lin, and we all know he's not capable of doing these kinds of things," James Kossler, a former supervisor with the FBI's New York office, said Wednesday.

Hynes said the charges stemmed from the close relationship between DeVecchio -- then head of the FBI's Colombo crime family squad -- and Gregory Scarpa Sr., a government informant and Colombo captain nicknamed ''The Grim Reaper."

The pair met each week during the 1980s and 1990s and discussed a bloody civil war within the Colombo family. In exchange for bribes, DeVecchio ''counseled Scarpa to protect himself by eliminating imminent threats," Hynes said.

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.

Scarpa gave DeVecchio weekly payments and also enhanced the agent's reputation within the FBI by helping him solve important cases, Hynes said.

DeVecchio surrendered Wednesday night at the Brooklyn district attorney's office. He had no comment as he entered.

DeVecchio retired in 1996. Scarpa died in prison in 1994.