By Chris Fuchs
On May 5, 1999, Henry Vega was supposed to travel to a construction site somewhere in Queens and carry out a contract killing for a mobster, an undercover police officer testified at Vega’s trial on charges of killing an off-duty officer in Flushing.
He was waiting for directions, a set of keys to gain entry to a trailer, and $6,000 for the hit that night, the officer told the jury in State Supreme Court last Thursday. But instead, a detective testified, Vega was picked up by police that afternoon, taken to a station house in South Jamaica and shown that the planned hit was all a ruse.
Vega, a 35-year-old man from Flushing, is accused of shooting off-duty Police Officer George Scheu in 1987 when he tried to stop Vega from breaking into a car outside the officer’s Flushing home. In addition, Vega is accused of the 1996 robbery and shooting death of a man in Kissena Park, in a case that has not yet come to trial.
In December 1998, Vega befriended the professed owner of a nightclub, set up by police to monitor Vega, called Charlie’s Barbershop on Booth Memorial Avenue in Flushing. During an eight-month period, Vega sold cocaine to the club owners, who were in fact undercover officers. He is serving a sentence of 92-years-to-life after being convicted of those charges. It was during this investigation that authorities learned of Vega’s suspected role in Scheu’s death.
The owner of the nightclub, an undercover officer named Charlie Scadero, testified that he played every bit the role of a gangster from an organized crime family. On one occasion, when Vega offered him a cheap watch for $1,000, Scadero declined. “You want to be perceived as a criminal,” he testified. “I don’t think anyone would pay that much for the watch.”
Meanwhile, when Vega visited the nightclub, two officers would hide beneath a trap door and usually switch on surveillance equipment, including a video camera and a listening device, Scadero said. On more than a half-dozen occasions, between December 1998 and May 1999, Vega had frequented the club, which was furnished with a bar and card tables, he said.
Then on March 4, 1999, inside Charlie’s Barbershop, Vega admitted to fatally shooting Scheu after he was shown a newspaper clipping about the officer’s death, according to a videotape played in court.
“He said he went home and his mother put new skin on his hands,” the undercover officer testified, referring to burns Vega had suffered after firing the gun.
Vega’s attorney, Jonathan Latimer, tried to expose inconsistencies in the undercover officer’s testimony. For instance, in the news account that Vega was shown, the police were said to have retrieved the .38 caliber pen gun with which Scheu was murdered. Vega, however, told Charlie that he still had the weapon, the officer testified.
Latimer also confronted the undercover officer with another article about a double homicide that occurred in the Bronx. According to Scadero, Vega, after viewing the news clip, admitted some involvement in the murders. But Latimer suggested that the officers never followed up on it because they were only concerned with the murder of Scheu, saying Vega had become a target rather than a suspect.
Later on in his cross-examination, Latimer pointed out several discrepancies between what was recorded on videotapes and what was in the transcript taken down by the officer.
Detective Louis Lilla, one of the officers who operated the surveillance equipment in Charlie’s Barbershop, was the next witness to testify. He said that he and his partner, Detective Steve Brown, picked up Vega on Booth Memorial Avenue and 138th Street on May 5, 1999, identifying themselves as police officers. They then drove seven miles to the 113th Precinct in South Jamaica, he testified, because the precinct had a large interrogation room with a one-way mirror.
There, Vega was shown an hour and a half worth of videotapes, including one in which Charlie said he wanted to “whack” Henry. Vega was incredulous that Scadero was an undercover officer, Lilla said.
“He became a little choked up,” the detective said, answering questions from Saunders. “It was as if he couldn’t believe it.”
Reach reporter Chris Fuchs by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
