Mob Moll: Mafia Solved Civil Rights Case
In the latest revelation in the ongoing murder trial of a former FBI supervisor in New York, the longtime mistress of a Mafia enforcer has testified that the FBI relied on mob muscle to solve an infamous 1964 civil rights case. (It was dramatized in the movie Mississippi Burning.)
Witness Linda Schiro says her former boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa Sr. (aka “The Grim Reaper”), was asked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to help find the bodies of three murdered volunteers, reports the Associated Press. Scarpa told her he solved the case by putting his gun in the mouth of a Ku Klux Klan member, Schiro testified yesterday. The FBI has never acknowledged the role Scarpa, who died in prison in 1994, allegedly played in solving the case.
Her revelation came in the trial of former FBI supervisor R. Lindley DeVecchio. He is charged in state court with helping a prized Mafia informant murder four people, “in what authorities have called one of the worst law-enforcement corruption cases in U.S. history,” according to AP.
Further details are provided by linked articles in an earlier ABAJournal.com post, which also discusses a $100 million verdict against the government in a wrongful conviction case in Massachusetts involving similar allegations against the FBI.
Another ABAJournal.com post discusses testimony at DeVecchio’s trial by a different witness, who said that New York City’s ruling crime families considered killing Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the mid-1980s.
Daily News (“Court hears inside story of FBI agent, mobster and his moll.”)
CBS News (“Mafia Squeeze Puts Squeeze On G-Man”)
