By TOM HAYS
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK--No one disputes that Nicholas Grancio died in a gangland-style shooting.
But a lawsuit filed by Grancio’s wife, Maria, and an investigation by state prosecutors have renewed questions about whether the gangster who ordered his killing in broad daylight more than a decade ago had an unlikely ally: an FBI agent.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, alleges that R. Lindley DeVecchio called off a surveillance team that was tailing Grancio in 1992 at the request of his trusted Mafia informant. That gave a team of hit men an opening to gun down the victim amid a Brooklyn mob war, the lawsuit said.
The case “is about the corrupt and unlawful relationship between law enforcement and a ruthless killer and career criminal that went unchecked for years and led to the cold-blooded murder of a man,” court documents say.
The legal action follows reports that the Brooklyn district attorney’s office has reopened an investigation into the relationship between DeVecchio, now retired and living in Florida, and Gregory Scarpa Sr., a member of the Colombo crime family known as a brutal killer and a shadowy government operative.
Named as defendants are DeVecchio and a current FBI agent, Christopher Favo. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges that Favo, at DeVecchio’s direction, ordered the surveillance team to retreat.
DeVecchio denied the accusations through his lawyer. A call to the FBI about Favo was not returned. Scarpa died in prison in 1994.
The lawsuit claims that on Jan. 7, 1992, Grancio was being followed by both an FBI surveillance team and a crew of killers headed by Scarpa. When Scarpa spotted the team, he called DeVecchio and persuaded him to order it back to headquarters, the lawsuit said.
Minutes later, Grancio was shot in the head as he sat in his car.
It is not the first time allegations that DeVecchio traded secrets with the mob have surfaced. He headed the FBI’s Colombo squad while the crime family was embroiled in a bloody power struggle. After Scarpa was recruited as an informant in the 1980s, they became so close the mobster referred to the agent as his “girlfriend” when speaking in code.
In 1995, federal prosecutors revealed that they suspected DeVecchio provided Scarpa the names of other gangsters cooperating with the FBI. He was also suspected of tipping off the mobster that the Drug Enforcement Administration was planning to arrest his son, and that authorities had bugged his social club.
But the Justice Department declined to prosecute DeVecchio after an internal probe, and the agent retired in 1996 with a clean record, said his attorney, Douglas Grover.
The allegations of corruption “were ridiculous then, and they’re ridiculous now,” Grover said.