BOB GARFIELD:
Who needs Hollywood writers when you have Brooklyn? In Kings County, New York, last week, the district attorney's office was busy building its case against retired FBI agent Roy Lindley DeVecchio who, the state argued, conspired in four murders, spanning 8 years in the 1980s and '90s.

The trial had it all -- gangland-style murders, the infamous Colombo crime family and a mob mistress named Linda Schiro, who was the prosecution's star witness. Schiro claimed, quite convincingly on the stand, by all accounts, that Agent DeVecchio passed information about the victims to mafia capo Greg Scarpa.

And then the surprise bombshell. Village Voice reporter Tom Robbins showed up on Wednesday morning with two cassette tapes, the contents of which left the prosecution no choice but to drop all the charges against DeVecchio.

Robbins joins us now to talk about why he produced those tapes when ten years ago he promised his source he wouldn't. Tom, welcome to On the Media.
TOM ROBBINS:
Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:
Briefly, give me the cast of characters here.
TOM ROBBINS:
Well the biggest character was not in the room. He's dead since 1994, and that was a fellow named Greg Scarpa, Sr., who I met back in the early '90s when I was a reporter at The Daily News. Scarpa was a legendary figure in the South Brooklyn streets of Bensonhurst, where he was a swaggering character who everybody knew had killed many people and who was the loan shark to the loan sharks and the numbers bank for the numbers and who had his fingers in just about every crime that was going on.
BOB GARFIELD:
And the defendant, Lin DeVecchio.
TOM ROBBINS:
Lin DeVecchio was a veteran FBI agent. In fact, he used to look like Greg Scarpa a little bit. He used to have a big handlebar mustache and long curly hair and wear double-breasted suits. And he's toned down that image a little bit. He retired a few years ago. But he was tasked, starting in the late 1960s, to concentrate on New York's five organized crime families, and he became a specialist in Scarpa's family, the Colombo crime family.
BOB GARFIELD:
And finally, Linda Schiro, the mob moll who was the star witness.
TOM ROBBINS:
She was a teenager in Bensonhurst when she met Greg Scarpa. I don't know who swept who off their feet. Part of what she said on the stand was that, when she first met him in a bar called the Flamingo, Scarpa said, if you were mine, I'd air condition your subway car. [LAUGHS] That was before New York City cars were air conditioned.
BOB GARFIELD:
Ah, that's so sweet.
TOM ROBBINS:
She was a button-nosed brunette, very attractive, a very sweet and unassuming way about her and an accent that was straight out of My Cousin Vinny.
BOB GARFIELD:
[LAUGHS] And now the accusation was that DeVecchio had crossed the line from cultivating Scarpa as an FBI informant into actually participating in mob activities, including murder.
TOM ROBBINS:
Four murders. There were four counts of murder in this indictment. That's what it consisted of. DeVecchio was charged with having told Scarpa about the identities of three people who were claimed to be informants and one who was becoming so drug addled that DeVecchio told Scarpa, he's going to be a threat to you, you'd better get rid of him.
BOB GARFIELD:
And DeVecchio's interest in warning Scarpa about this, what was allegedly in it for him?
TOM ROBBINS:
In FBI lingo, Greg Scarpa was a top echelon source because he was a main figure in his Colombo crime family, and to have him talking to you, as the FBI did for many years, was considered a big feather in your cap. And the allegation was that Scarpa was able to basically seduce DeVecchio with his quality intelligence and get him to start participating in his crimes. And they also alleged that he shared in money, as well.
BOB GARFIELD:
And the evidence for the allegations was pretty much confined to the testimony of Linda Schiro. And on the stand this week, she was a pretty impressive witness. But, you had interviewed Schiro ten years ago for a book project, and you knew that something was amiss.
TOM ROBBINS:
A whole lot. Three of the four murders that she was putting in Lin DeVecchio's mouth, she'd never even mentioned to us his involvement. In two of them, when I went back and dug out an old cardboard box and looked at the transcripts I'd made back then and listened to the tapes, I was astonished to see that she had explicitly told us -— when we'd asked her whether or not he'd had any involvement with two of the murders, she said, absolutely not. One of the quotes was, "Lin didn't do that. I know it for a fact."
BOB GARFIELD:
Now, you had obtained this interview back in the ‘90s under a quite explicit guarantee of anonymity for Schiro, so you were in a bit of a bind as a reporter. How did you decide to come forward with your evidence in the form of your piece for The Village Voice?
TOM ROBBINS:
With great difficulty, Bob. [LAUGHS] I struggled with this for a long time because, as you know, journalists -- part of our stock in trade is getting people to talk to us, and confidentiality is crucial to that, being able to tell someone if you tell me something I will not reveal your identity. I won't reveal the information came from you.

In this case, the source had breached her own confidentiality by first going to the grand jury and then testifying publicly. Apparently, whatever concerns she had had back in 1997 when she spoke to us she'd gotten rid of. The other issue that remains is that once I realized, and I realized this when the trial first opened, that she was going to be the only eye and ear witness to the actual crimes that Lin DeVecchio is charged with, I realized that I probably held the only real exonerating evidence that existed.
BOB GARFIELD:
Is it your belief that, in general, putting this case aside for a moment, an agreement with an anonymous source is voided when the person either goes public or gives a different account of the same circumstances?
TOM ROBBINS:
Not automatically. It's a general sense that there's an unwritten rule that when you agree to speak to someone confidentially, there's a contract of truth there, and that if your person you're talking to lies to you, all bets are off.

In this case, I think that what trumped the confidentiality vow was what was weighing in the balance, a guy's life, the rest of his natural life in prison. To me, doing the right thing ultimately means acting as a citizen. If I don't come forward and the guy ends up being convicted, I don't want to live with that.
BOB GARFIELD:
Now, the argument against what you've done is that all journalists in the future will have more difficulty getting information from anonymous sources who can now legitimately fear that the journalist will renege. Anything you wish to say to all future journalists who are going to have a harder time [LAUGHS] because you chose to save DeVecchio from life in prison?
TOM ROBBINS:
I don't think I accept the premise, Bob. I mean, I do believe that the general public, the people we deal with and we talk to, understand the outer limits of this role. Confidentiality of sources, where someone risks their job, where people risk life and limb, they understand that there is a certain line in the sand beyond which you're not going to go. I don't think this is going to make it harder in the future. I would hope that, if anything, it kind of brings us back into the real world that everybody else lives in, which is that we try to do the right thing, [LAUGHS] which is what I, what I think I did here.
BOB GARFIELD:
All right, Tom. Thank you so much for joining us.
TOM ROBBINS:
Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:
Tom Robbins is a reporter with The Village Voice.