Da Vinci Code's Mafia Version

Friends of ours: Bernardo Provenzano

When top Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano was captured in April after 40 years on the run, his hideaway in the Sicilian hills turned up none of the extravagance of Cosa Nostra's cinematic lore. No suitcases of cash, no jewels, nothing to match the popular imagination of the all-powerful godfather. Still, Italian police had no doubts that the square-jawed 73-year-old living in near squalor in an abandoned farmhouse had reigned over the very real-life affairs of Cosa Nostra's billion-dollar business of drug trafficking, high finance and cold-blooded murder. Provenzano, who had been sentenced to life in absentia for a series of high-profile murders, had opted for the spare existence in order to keep the lowest possible profile as he tried to stay one step ahead of Italy's biggest Mafia manhunt ever.

Although no riches were found, there were some precious pieces of evidence when Provenzano was finally nabbed, in the hills above his hometown of Corleone. Most notably, police recovered dozens of the infamous pizzini, the tiny, tightly wrapped typewritten notes that the boss had used to communicate with his lieutenants. Thanks in part to the pizzini, several other key Mafia figures have been arrested since Provenzano's capture. But perhaps the most enticing find of all was a worn copy of the Bible, near Provenzano's bed. The soft-spoken don had filled the volume with notations, arrows and underlinings of certain passages. The markings may simply be the solitary spiritual musings of the boss, who was also found with several crucifixes at the time of his arrest. But Italian investigators suspect that the book could be a kind of Holy Grail in a century-long battle to unravel the secret codes and business methods of the Mafia's vast criminal network.

So far unable to unlock any potential secrets, the Italians have turned to the FBI for their code-busting expertise. A U.S. official confirmed an Italian newspaper story Thursday which reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit will be studying Provenzano's copy of the Bible. In the past, the FBI unit, located at the Bureau's laboratory in Quantico, Va., has uncovered illicit codes of prison gangs and deciphered messages from threatening letters. Now, they will try to determine if there are "any hidden messages" in the holy book, said a U.S. official. "It's an interesting challenge because both the Bible and Provenzano's notes are in Italian."

No doubt the biblical twist will add to the intrigue of the infamous crime network, which over the past century has occasionally crossed paths with the Roman Catholic church. But Cosa Nostra's sins share nothing with those of the Da Vinci Code or Francis Ford Coppola films — they are real. Provenzano is believed to have had a hand in the slayings of countless rival gang members, as well as of innocent bystanders and crusading magistrates. It's no longer a secret that some mobsters are deeply religious. The mystery remains that they can reconcile what they read in the holy scripture with what they write in the book of life.

Thanks to Jeff Israel

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No Egg McMuffin Results in Arrest of Mob Associates

Friends of ours: Bobby "the Beak" Siegel, Paul "Peanuts" Panczko
Friends of mine: Theodore Victor Ristich, Walter Frank Zischke

Bad luck and a couple of slices of toast.

That's what stopped two mob-connected burglars from adding a Creve Coeur jewelry store to a cross-country series of crimes that netted more than $40 million in loot - $350,000 of it in seven months.

So bad was their luck that Theodore Victor Ristich, 60, and Walter Frank Zischke, 62, didn't even take a chance with a jury. The crooks pleaded guilty Monday in St. Louis to federal charges that may add up to five years in prison to their already-bulging rap sheets.

In a sense, it was all because the office manager of a law firm in the same building as the Michael Genovese jewelry store on Olive Boulevard decided not to stop for an Egg McMuffin and went straight to work early one Saturday in June."The diet side of me said, 'Just go into work and have some toast,'" said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous out of concern for her safety. "Timing is everything."

She arrived about 7 a.m. to spot two suspicious-looking men in hooded sweatshirts. They spotted her too, and left.

Based on her call, Creve Coeur police stopped a van just before it might have disappeared onto Interstate 270. Officers found the lock to Genovese's door, along with tools and guides to antique malls, according to court records and Detective Tom Rich.

A search of the men's hotel rooms revealed more burglar tools and ads for antique malls and jewelry stores from magazines all over the U.S. An investigation revealed that police had snared men who spent decades robbing and burglarizing jewelry stores and banks, sometimes beside some of the most notorious members of the Chicago mob - men with names like Bobby "the Beak" Siegel and Paul "Peanuts" Panczko.

After an arrest in 1994, Zischke told the FBI that the men had stolen about $40 million from 40 jewelry stores, according to documents. "If there ever was a professional criminal, it's Ristich and Zischke," said retired FBI agent Jack O'Rourke, once part of the bureau's "top thief" team. He said both were well-known to law enforcement. He likened their crimes to those in the 1995 Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro movie "Heat."

O'Rourke said Ristich was "primarily an armed robber and a burglar," who once confessed to robbing a restaurant with one of the top mob hit men. "Zischke was more of an old time, tough-armed robber," he said.

Federal court documents show that Ristich, 60, of Bloomingdale, Ill., has been convicted of burglary three times, possession of burglary tools six times, transportation of stolen property, racketeering conspiracy and armed robbery. He is now on parole for robbing a bank in Wisconsin.

Zischke, 62, recently of Maine, has been convicted of auto theft, armed robbery, two counts of attempted murder, escape, numerous burglary-related charges, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, concealed weapon charges, robbery, false imprisonment and racketeering conspiracy, documents show.

Each pleaded guilty Monday to one count of transport of stolen goods, with sentencing set for Dec. 1. They still face charges in St. Louis County of burglary and possession of burglary tools.

Rich said fingerprints taken after their arrest identified Ristich and Walter Wonish - Zischke's new name in witness protection. Rich and FBI Special Agent Mark Wood then dug through "lots" of crimes and recognized Zischke and Ristich on some surveillance videos. Rich and Wood linked one or both to 10 burglaries in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, Virginia and Pennsylvania.

In front of U.S. District Judge Carol E. Jackson, Ristich and Zischke admitted they planned to drill the lock at Genovese's, which prosecutors said kept about $2 million in jewelry in showcases.

Zischke admitted taking about $350,000 in jewelry and coins from 10 antique malls, a goldsmith and jewelry stores in Illinois and four other states. In court, Zischke said Ristich did not participate in all 10.

Zischke told authorities he is a self-employed carpenter with two college degrees. Ristich, a high school graduate, has the looks of a businessman but said he is a member of a machinery movers' union.

Rich suggested the aging men may have lost the stamina for armed robbery and switched to burglary. Zischke has asthma and Ristich high blood pressure and cholesterol problems.

Zischke's lawyer did not return a message Monday but turned down a request to interview Zischke last month.

Attorney Scott Rosenblum declined to allow an interview with Ristich but said he was satisfied with the plea agreement. Prosecutors could have sought life terms under racketeering laws. Rosenblum said, "They're a couple characters. Nice guys. You can't help but like them."

Rich and Wood said that Zischke and Ristich would spend as little as two minutes in a store, sweeping the loot that they wanted - the untraceable stuff - into one of the large plastic Rubbermaid containers they carried.

That's a little less time than an early-morning stop at McDonald's.

Thanks to Robert Patrick

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Hoffa Challenged for Boss

Friends of mine: Jimmy Hoffa

From a remote Oregon base, Tom Leedham is trying again to unseat the heir to the best-known name in American labor, James Hoffa, for the leadership of the 1.4-million-member Teamsters Union.

Academics, labor lawyers and other specialists say that while there are issues to discuss, it might take a major scandal to rile up enough of the membership to trounce Hoffa, and that hasn't happened.

Leedham, who got 35 percent of the vote against Hoffa five years ago, disagrees. "Everything is different now because Hoffa has a record to run on and it is a record of very weak contracts, the first pension cuts in the history of our union and the biggest dues increase in the history of our union that happened without a membership vote," he said at Oregon's Labor Day picnic, a brief respite from his nationwide campaign.

When Hoffa took over in 1998, he said the union was bordering on bankruptcy with only about $3-million in assets and virtually no strike fund. He put through a 25 percent dues increase that he said revived the fund and put the union on a sound footing. Leedham said it violated campaign promises.

Pension accrual issues have cut benefits or extended retirement ages for tens of thousands of Teamster drivers, mostly in the central region extending from Nebraska though Pennsylvania, to make up for diminished pension funds.

Leedham, 55, is a low-key man who doesn't fit the usual image of a Teamster official. A top officer of Oregon's statewide Local 206 since 1984, Leedham started as a warehouse worker after one year of college. He wound up running the union's 400,000-member warehouse division under Ron Carey, who defeated Hoffa for the union presidency in 1996 and was kicked out of the union for using $800,000 in union funds for his own campaign.

Leedham has the support of the feisty, dissident Detroit-based Teamsters Democratic Union. Whether he is tilting at a well-entrenched windmill or can actually oust Hoffa will be known in November. Ballots go out in early October.

Hoffa spokesman Rich Leebove said their campaign takes all challenges seriously but sees Leedham's effort as "more of a vanity campaign." "He has no record to run on, so he is attacking the Hoffa administration," he said in a telephone interview. Leedham, Leebove said, "is just part of the old guard trying to come back in a new guise."

Hoffa is the son of the famously absent Jimmy Hoffa, who ran the union from 1957 to 1971, served prison time for jury tampering and pension fund irregularities, and was presumed murdered by the mob in 1975. He was declared dead in 1982, but his body was never found.

Under the incumbent Hoffa, the Teamsters paid millions of dollars for an investigation led by former federal prosecutor Edwin Stier into any remaining links of the union to organized crime.

Stier and his team all quit the same day in April 2004, with Stier saying Hoffa was blocking investigation efforts "under pressure from a few self-interested individuals." Hoffa called the statement "reckless and false." But overall, the younger Hoffa has a pretty good record, said Gary Chaison, who teaches labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "Many of the problems the Teamsters face are being faced by all unions, such as globalization and outsourcing," he said.

Robert Bruno, associate professor at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois in Chicago, said there are issues Leedham can run on but wondered if they would mobilize a union with often-low voter turnouts.

Bruno said signs are that union members are becoming more defensive, concentrating on protecting what they have and worrying less about union growth. Most recent Teamster growth has come from taking in other unions, not from expanding the ranks of truck drivers, he said.

Chaison said defeating any incumbent union leader is difficult. "He has the patronage, he's the one who shakes the hands."

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"Bizarro FBI" Roots for "Defendant"

When Lin DeVecchio goes to court, he never goes alone.

His lawyers are there, making arguments. The news media are there, taking photographs and notes. His wife sometimes shows up, making small, sorrowful faces as she grips him by the hand. Then there are the men who make a path for him as they escort him back and forth through the crowd. The ones with the gray hair and the jowls, the stern faces and the off-the-rack suits.

Almost from the moment he was charged in March with helping to commit four murders for the mob, R. Lindley DeVecchio has been surrounded by this posse of supporters: retired F.B.I. men who for years were not only his colleagues, but also his friends.

They watch his back. Personally guarantee his million-dollar bond. Solicit money for his legal bills. Scoff at his accusers. Interview — or, some have said, intimidate — witnesses in the case. And at every chance they get, tell whoever cares to listen that Mr. DeVecchio is an innocent man.

Sixty-five years old and retired from the F.B.I., Mr. DeVecchio stands accused in a state indictment of four counts of second-degree murder. The Brooklyn district attorney’s office says he helped an informant in the mob, Gregory Scarpa Sr., kill four times in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, so that Mr. Scarpa could rid himself of rivals and win bloody battles in a war within the Colombo family.

To a federal agent, there is nothing more toxic than a corruption charge — which even by association can ruin a career. And the charges faced by Mr. DeVecchio are radioactive: that he gave secret information to Mr. Scarpa in exchange for $66,000.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that 19 former F.B.I. agents have put their names and reputations on the line to save their troubled friend. These were not the bureaucrats or pencil pushers of the New York office, but its veteran undercover and investigative men. “We’ve all worked with Lin since the early 1970’s,” said Joseph D. Pistone, the real-life Donnie Brasco, who infiltrated the Bonanno crime family as an undercover agent in the 1970’s.

“We’re all veteran street guys,” Mr. Pistone said. “If anyone could smell something bad, it would be us. And with Lin, we never smelled bad.”

The so-called Friends of Lin DeVecchio have a total of 480 years of street experience, give or take a few, and while most spend their time these days on a golf course or at the shore, they remain encyclopedic on the subject of the mob.

Who knows better than us, they say, what happened 20 years ago at Carmine Sessa’s bar or at Larry Lampesi’s house near McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn? (Both places will figure prominently at trial.) “We gathered the information,” said James M. Kossler, who from 1979 to 1989 was Mr. DeVecchio’s boss.

Much of that information has been posted on a Web site, www.lindevecchio.com, which attempts to refute the state indictment with transcripts of federal trials and with private F.B.I. reports called 302’s. There is information about how to donate money toward Mr. DeVecchio’s legal expenses. The Web site also levels personal attacks against the state’s lead prosecutor, Michael Vecchione; its chief witness, Linda Schiro, Mr. Scarpa’s former companion; and Sandra Harmon, who is a self-described relationship coach and the co-author with Priscilla Presley of a tell-all book on Elvis Presley, and who had planned to write a book with Ms. Schiro but wrote one instead about Mr. Scarpa’s son.

Mr. DeVecchio’s supporters make no bones about their deep disdain for the Brooklyn district attorney, Charles J. Hynes, who they say considers a good Mafia case to be rounding up gamblers on Super Bowl Sunday. “Here you have a rackets bureau that doesn’t know a thing about organized crime,” Mr. Kossler said. “They don’t know what they’re doing. If they had a track record of making great O.C. cases, fine — but they don’t.”

The bad blood between the state and the F.B.I. goes back many years, to at least 1992, when Mr. Scarpa went into hiding after Brooklyn prosecutors obtained a warrant for his arrest on a gun possession charge. From April to August of that year, court papers say, Mr. Scarpa met or spoke with Mr. DeVecchio seven times, but the F.B.I. neither informed the state of his whereabouts nor arrested Mr. Scarpa.

Jerry Schmetterer, a spokesman for Mr. Hynes, waved off accusations that the office was incompetent. “These people who are making these allegations can’t possibly know the depth of the evidence we have compiled to make this case,” he said.

Part of that evidence is likely to include the testimony of Lawrence Mazza, Mr. Scarpa’s one-time disciple, who has already told investigators that Mr. Scarpa had a friend in law enforcement, whom he used to call “the girlfriend.” Mr. Mazza, who now works at a gym in southern Florida, said that several weeks ago, one of the retired agents paid him a visit. Without saying exactly what happened, he said the agent had tried to intimidate him in connection with the case.

Mr. Kossler scoffed at the charge, saying the former agent had gone to Florida merely to interview Mr. Mazza on Mr. DeVecchio’s behalf. As a witness for the prosecution, Mr. Mazza is of obvious interest to the defense, he said. While the prosecution has said in court that intimidation of witnesses may have occurred, it will not publicly discuss Mr. Mazza’s accusation.

At its core, the DeVecchio case is about the tenuous give-and-take that exists between an agent and a confidential source. Prosecutors say that Mr. DeVecchio abused that give-and-take, giving Mr. Scarpa names and addresses of men who wound up dead.

Mr. DeVecchio has said that in the 12 years he “ran” Mr. Scarpa, he never leaked a secret and never received anything more than a Cabbage Patch doll, a bottle of wine and a pan of lasagna.

As for the Friends of Lin DeVecchio, they maintain it takes a special sort of man to handle Mafia informants. He must speak the language of the street and of the F.B.I. He must appreciate the criminal mind without admiring it. He must be able to cultivate trust among those who trust no one but themselves. “That’s the fine line the agent has to walk — to always remember who he is and who he’s dealing with,” said Christopher Mattice, who served for many years as the F.B.I.’s informant coordinator in New York. “You have to talk the language and make them understand you understand what’s going on.” And most important, he said, you must remember that no conversation between an agent and a mole takes place in a vacuum. Questions fashioned to elicit information give information: If Agent X asks about Gangster Y, it means that he is interested in Gangster Y. If Gangster Y winds up dead, is that Agent X’s fault?

For now, Mr. DeVecchio’s trial is scheduled to open at the beginning of next year, and his federal friends are planning to attend. “The bond is very close,” said Douglas E. Grover, Mr. DeVecchio’s lawyer. “It’s not just that they worked together; it’s like they were in the Army together, like they went through the wars.”

Should things go poorly for Mr. DeVecchio, his supporters will not quit, they say. “We’ll continue to do what we’re doing,” Mr. Kossler said. “We’ll fight this as far as it has to go.”

Thanks to Alan Feuer

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