Newsday reported Saturday that authorities believe that Gargano's body may be buried at a site in East Farmingdale where a team of FBI agents and police have been digging since Wednesday.
The newspaper said investigators received information from an informant who claimed the undergrad was killed in a revenge plot aimed at his cousin - a member of the Luchese crime family involved in a dispute with a Colombo crime family associate.
John Pappa, a Colombo associate, was at first suspected in the student's murder. Pappa is now in prison after being convicted in four other murders involving the Colombo family, but he denies involvement in Gargano's disappearance or killing.
His attorney, Michael Bachner, said that if the government had any proof, they would have indicted his client by now. The lawyer calls it "basically a Sopranos-type story."
Newsday reported that a new informant recently told FBI agents that the two mobsters were buried on Long Island after shootings by members or associates of the Colombo family.
Authorities believe William "Wild Bill" Cutolo, a Colombo underboss, was buried at the site in 1999, as was Ralph Greaves, an associate of the Colombo family slain in 1995 when bosses feared he might become an informant. Cutolo was killed in a battle between rivals for control of the family in the 1990s, prosecutors have said.
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