The stunning collapse of the murder case against ex-FBI agent R. Lindley DeVecchio has triggered a nasty case of the blame game among current and former officials of the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office. 

On one side, there’s DA Joe Hynes (right) and Michael Vecchione, chief of the DA’s Rackets Bureau and the prosecutor who last week asked that charges against DeVecchio be dropped. Hynes and Vecchione have insisted they never had a clue that key prosecution witness Linda Schiro ever gave dramatically different versions of her story to writers before turning state’s evidence. 

On the other side is retired NYPD Detective Thomas Dades, a former investigator for the office. Dades has stated that Schiro acknowledged to him and assistant district attorney Noel Downey early in the probe that she had spoken to writers about her life with the late Greg Scarpa and given prior conflicting accounts.  Downey handled the case until he resigned to take a better-paying job.

Gang Land has reluctantly become much more a part of this story than we ever wanted to be. But, as Village Voice reporter Tom Robbins said last week when he surfaced tape recorded interviews that he and I made with Schiro in 1997 that contradicted her sworn testimony, “What else could we do?”

But listening to the complaints of DA Hynes and his top aide brings back memories of another time that two top prosecutors had heaps of egg on their faces after a high-profile collapse, perhaps the most stunning mob case setback of this generation.

That, of course, was the stunning 1987 acquittal of John Gotti, who is still the only Mafia boss to beat a federal racketeering case. That case catapulted the

swashbuckling Dapper Don to the cover of Time Magazine; the verdict set up his short but lucrative reign as head of the powerful Gambino crime family.

As Gotti celebrated in Queens, a dejected Diane Giacalone, who had spent five years of her life on the case, dutifully stood in front of a phalanx of TV cameras, and along with her boss, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Andrew Maloney, took the heat from the media.

“We presented the evidence as best we could,” said Giacalone. “That was our job. A jury verdict is the end of the case, whether it’s guilty or not guilty.” She declined to blame the FBI for not helping her, as she could have, since the agency had given her no help in her investigation and little during the trial. “My personal feelings are mine,” she said.

Maloney, who took over as chief federal prosecutor in Brooklyn after Gotti was indicted, didn’t run and hide, or say, as he easily could have, that he had nothing to do with the case. He said he was “disappointed by the verdict” but he didn’t second guess it, stating simply, “the jury has spoken.”

He also didn’t mention his strong belief that the fix was in, and that the FBI had heard that a juror was bribed, but wasn’t able to substantiate it. As it turned out, they would five years later, after underboss Salvatore (Sammy Bull) Gravano turned on the mob and confessed that he had been able to reach a member of Gotti’s jury.

But Hynes and Vecchione have done little but whine about their setback since

Vecchione asked Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach (right) to toss the case in the “interests of justice.”

With Vecchione playing the heavy, the DA’s office has reportedly reneged on an agreement to relocate Schiro and has asked that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate her for perjury – even though he has stated publicly that he believes she spoke truthfully in court.

Vecchione has lashed out at Dades, a longtime friend and co-author of a still-unreleased book about “Mafia Cops” Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, for publicly backing Schiro’s claim that Vecchione double-crossed her after throwing in the towel against DeVecchio a week ago.

Vecchione also suggested that it was somehow Robbins’s and my fault for not disclosing the tapes earlier.

“Had we been provided these tapes much earlier in the process, I dare say we wouldn’t have been here,” he said as he stood in the well of the court and asked the judge to dismiss the case. Both Vecchione and Hynes repeated that excuse several times to reporters over the next few days.

It’s easy for Vecchione, and Hynes, to say that, but talk is cheap.

Vecchione’s actions throughout the case indicate that he might have tried to blunt her tape recorded remarks by bringing them out first, and have Schiro explain them away. That’s what he did with inconsistent remarks she made to FBI agents, as well as differing accounts she gave two other authors with whom she discussed potential book deals.

Or, he might have simply ignored them, and let the defense question Schiro

about them, as he did with previous contradictory testimony from other prosecution witnesses who would put the lie to her accounts.

Take the 1992 slaying of Lorenzo Lampasi. (left) He was killed, according to Schiro’s court testimony, after DeVecchio furnished Scarpa his home address, the time he left his home each morning, and the fact that he had to get out of his car to open a gate before driving away. (You can hear Schiro describe the murder to Robbins and me by checking the Village Voice website.)

But Vecchione knew that two of his witnesses, Colombo turncoat Carmine Sessa and FBI agent Chris Favo, would contradict essential aspects of her testimony. Yet, he opted to call them anyway, and leave it to the defense to bring out the contradictory testimony.

Which they did. Sessa testified that he gave Scarpa the fatal information. Favo, who had voiced suspicions in 1994 about DeVecchio’s close relationship with Scarpa, said that until Lampasi was killed on May 22, 1992, the FBI had never done any surveillance or investigative work on him, and had no idea who he was.

According to court documents, Hynes’s office ignored similar evidence that contradicted Schiro’s testimony about the other three murders as well. In his written opinion, Judge Reichach, who was trying the case without a jury, stated that he heard “no evidence” other than Schiro’s testimony that DeVecchio had “committed any of the acts charged in the indictment.”

No question, the DeVecchio (right) case was a bitter pill to swallow. But before revving up their rhetoric, Hynes and Vecchione might have been better served by simply emphasizing that – faced with a tough choice – they did the right thing by tossing the indictment.

As for Mike Vecchione (left) and Tommy Dades, it sounds like the end of a beautiful friendship. The two will forever be linked by “Skells: The Inside Story of the Mafia Cops Case,” a completed book about the ex-NYPD detectives that they wrote with best-selling author David Fisher. It won't be published until after a federal appeals court makes a final decision on their convictions.

But the prosecutor and the former consultant-investigator are engaged in a bitter feud these days regarding Schiro, who says she informed the DA’s office early on that she had told different stories about the murders in the case to Robbins and me, as well as other potential authors who spoke to her years ago.

Dades publicly backed Schiro’s recollection last week when he was questioned about the matter in The Post and The Daily News. Vecchione disputed that, drawing a distinction between leaving DeVecchio out of murders as opposed to stating unequivocally that he had nothing to do with them.

“The only conflicting stories she told” involved “the absence of evidence regarding three of the four murders. Not conflicting stories about the three murders. And there’s a big difference,” the prosecutor told The Daily News's Denis Hamill Tuesday.

Contacted by Gang Land, Dades, who resigned from the DA’s office in May, said he was not involved in debriefings of Schiro or any trial preparation, and had no knowledge of what she testified to in court.

He insisted, however: “I do know that she told me that she had told inconsistent

stories to several authors, including you. She said she had told you and them lies, fact and fiction is how she put it.”

Asked whether he thought Vecchione was splitting hairs, or calling him a liar, Dades (right) said:

“Well, to be honest I really don’t care what he thinks of me. It’s more important what I think of him. A week or two prior to her testifying he made me vouch for him to her that his handshake was gold on certain issues relating to her cooperation, and I told Linda that Mike is an honorable man and wouldn’t lie. 

“He gave me his word that he would not break his promise. I do not know why he did. He’s the person I’m upset with. My only beef is with Michael Vecchione, not with anyone else in the DA’s office. Nor do I think that they did anything wrong.

“His handshake was his bond. He made me get on the phone and vouch for him with her. When the case was dismissed, he went back on his word. When I complained to him that I gave her my word, and I vouched for you, he basically told me not to answer her phone calls. I have no problem with anything that the DA’s office did. That’s who my problem is with, Mike Vecchione.”

The DA’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Lastly. Regarding published remarks to the contrary by the 62-year-old Schiro and her 38-year-old daughter, “Little Linda,” (right) claiming that neither of them knew that the elder Schiro’s words in 1997 were being tape-recorded, we offer the following:

Surely they remember me placing a big clunky tape-recorder on the table in front of Big Linda and pointing the end where the microphone is located in her direction, after first checking to make sure it was working by making sounds that seemed right then but pretty silly now, “Testing 1,2,3,4.” And then, occasionally picking it up and moving it to the kitchen counter, or sink, as Schiro moved around her spacious beachfront condo. 

Found after an exhaustive investigation by the entire Gang Land staff, the trusty old tape recorder declined to comment about its whereabouts for the past 10 years. It agreed to pose for a picture, though. 

Mob Star: The Story of John Gotti

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The book's 125 columns chronicle the New York Mafia landscape from John Gotti's heyday in 1989 as the swashbuckling Dapper Don to the remarkable day in 2003 when Gotti's longtime rival Vincent (Chin) Gigante gave up his Daffy Don routine and confessed to having put on a crazy act for three decades.

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