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FBI Used Mobster to Help Solve KKK Murders
by
findingDulcinea Staff
New testimony in the trial of a former agent confirms long-established rumors that the FBI hired mafia enforcer Gregory Scarpa Sr. to step outside the law in the search for civil right activists murdered in 1964.
30-Second Summary
On Oct. 29, Linda Schiro told the New York State Court that the FBI employed her former boyfriend, Gregory Scarpa Sr., to find the bodies of the three men killed in Louisiana’s “Mississippi Burning” incident.
The mobster allegedly applied himself to the task with gusto. According to his ex-girlfriend, Scarpa extracted the whereabouts of the dead men from a Ku Klux Klan member by “putting a gun in the guy’s mouth and threatening him.”
The public outcry that followed the killings helped bring about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the incident inspired a 1988 movie starring Gene Hackman.
Shiro was testifying as the principal witness in the trial of R. Lindley DeVecchio, a former FBI agent accused of aiding Scarpa in four murders in the 1980s and 1990s.
Such collaboration between a federal law enforcement agency and the mob is not without precedent.
In 1944, the precursor of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services, is meant to have called on legendary mob boss Lucky Luciano for help contacting the Italian mafia prior to the Allied invasion of Sicily.
In the 1960s, the agency sought assistance from the underworld in attempts to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
The mobster allegedly applied himself to the task with gusto. According to his ex-girlfriend, Scarpa extracted the whereabouts of the dead men from a Ku Klux Klan member by “putting a gun in the guy’s mouth and threatening him.”
The public outcry that followed the killings helped bring about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the incident inspired a 1988 movie starring Gene Hackman.
Shiro was testifying as the principal witness in the trial of R. Lindley DeVecchio, a former FBI agent accused of aiding Scarpa in four murders in the 1980s and 1990s.
Such collaboration between a federal law enforcement agency and the mob is not without precedent.
In 1944, the precursor of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services, is meant to have called on legendary mob boss Lucky Luciano for help contacting the Italian mafia prior to the Allied invasion of Sicily.
In the 1960s, the agency sought assistance from the underworld in attempts to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Headline Links: Schiro’s testimony
Scarpa and DeVecchio supposedly began to work together in the 1980s and 1990s, the mobster paying for information from the agent with “cash, jewelry, liquor, and prostitutes.”
Source: The New York Sun
The FBI has never admitted to using the mob to solve the 1964 killing of three civil rights activists. When the Associated Press made inquiries after Linda Schiro testified in court on Oct. 29, the agency declined to comment.
Source: MSNBC
Background: The R. Lindley DeVecchio trial
DeVecchio is a disgraced former FBI agent, currently being tried for aiding mobster Gregory Scarpa Sr. in four murders in the 1980s and 1990s. Scarpa’s girlfriend is the principal witness in the trial. The New York Times reports that DeVecchio is receiving staunch support from former agency colleagues.
Source: The New York Times
In addition to Scarpa’s alleged involvement in the Mississippi Burning investigation, DeVecchio’s trial has also revealed that the heads of five mafia families discussed killing Rudy Giuliani in 1986. At the time, the presidential candidate and former mayor was a “mob-busting” federal prosecutor.
Source: The New York Daily News
The University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law provides an account of the 1967 Mississippi Burning trial. Hearing the case was Judge William Cox, who had little sympathy for the civil rights movement. Seven of the seventeen men indicted were convicted, receiving two sentences of ten years, two of six, and three of four years. According to the UMKC, Cox said of his sentence, “They killed one n****r, one Jew, and a white man—I gave them all what I thought they deserved.” The UMKC site details the murders, the investigation, the 1967 trials and the later trials subsequent to the case being reopened.
Source: UMKC School of Law
The precursor of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), made use of mafia boss Lucky Luciano during World War II, according to CourtTV’s Crime Library Web site. While the Allies were preparing to invade Sicily, the OSS contacted Luciano at Sing Sing, where the gangster was incarcerated. The U.S. agents allegedly sought to utilize Luciano’s connections in the old country. When the war was over, the governor of New York commuted Luciano’s sentence on the condition that he leave America for Italy and never return, an action that theorists surmise repaid Luciano for services rendered during wartime.
Source: Crime Library
In the early 1960s the CIA enlisted the help of various mafia bosses in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, according to official agency memos. Although attempts to poison the Cuban leader failed, the CIA's relationship with the mob continued: the mobsters used their knowledge to blackmail the CIA into doing them favors that included setting up an illegal wiretap and blocking one gangster's court-ordered deportation.
Source: USA Today
Reference Material: The Klan, the Civil Rights Act and 'Mississippi Burning'
In 1866, bored Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee, formed a social club that took its name from the Greek word Kyklos, which means “circle.” The organization quickly mutated into a vehicle of political power and racial oppression, and the Supreme Court eventually ruled the Klan unconstitutional in 1882. A second, twentieth-century Klan sprung up, and the “Encyclopedia Britannica” provides a history of both groups.
Source: PBS
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
The 1964 Civil Rights Act was “the most important piece of civil rights legislation in the nation’s history and on July 2, 1964, President Johnson signed it into law,” reads the U.S. government’s “backgrounder on the civil rights act.” The “heart of the law,” according to the government account, “deals with public accommodations, so that African Americans could no longer be excluded from restaurants, hotels and other public facilities.”
Source: U.S. Department of State
The text of the 1964 Civil Rights Act is available online.
Source: U.S. Department of State
The Federal Bureau of Investigation provides a 948-page summary of the investigation into the “Mississippi Burning” killings of 1964.
Source: The FBI
The 1998 movie “Mississippi Burning,” based on the murders of the three voting rights activists in 1964, starred Gene Hackman, Willem Dafoe and Frances McDormand. More information on the film is available from the Internet Movie Database.
Source: The Internet Movie Database
Related Links: The CIA's 'Family Jewels'
Earlier this year the CIA released classified documents detailing a number controversial operations. For more information see the Beyond the Headlines story “CIA Releases Top Secret Files from the 1960s and 1970s.”
Source: findingDulcinea
Updates: Linda Schiro perjures herself
On Oct. 31, prosecutors moved to have the charges against former FBI man DeVecchio dropped after star witness Linda Schiro gave testimony that contradicted her accounts from an interview of 1997. On that occasion, she denied DeVecchio was connected with two of the murders he is accused of having helped arrange and failed to mention a third, according to The New York Post. The district attorney is expected to follow the prosecutors’ recommendations and throw out the case.
Source: The New York Post
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