NYPD Detective Who Infiltrated Mob in 1972 Dies
Detective LeVien was part of a 1972 sting centered on a junkyard in Canarsie, Brooklyn. New York’s five families would meet here. Credit Barton Silverman/The New York Times New York Detective Who Infiltrated the Mafia, Dies at 68 - The New York Times : Douglas A. LeVien Jr., a former undercover police detective who in 1972 infiltrated the meeting ground used by New York’s five Mafia families, a landmark operation that produced scores of convictions, died on July 30 while vacationing in Saratoga, N.Y. He was 68. The cause was a heart attack, his son Vincent Douglas LeVien said. Except for several months in the late 1970s when, under apparent threat of death from a high-ranking mobster, he was placed in the federal witness protection program, Detective LeVien lived in Brooklyn all his life.