Former NY cops arrested for alleged murders

By ADAM GOLDMAN
The Associated Press

LAS VEGAS -- The two men entered Piero's Italian Cuisine, a
dimly lit restaurant just off the Strip where a scene from the
gangster movie "Casino" was filmed.

Steve Caracappa, right, is taken to a building at the Las Vegas Detention Center in Las Vegas in this March 10, 2005 file photo. Caracappa, a former New York City police officer, was arrested in connection to eight mob-related slayings. Caracappa and another New York police officer, Louis Eppolito, have also been charged wit two attempted murders, murder conspiracy, obstruction of justice, money laundering and drug distribution. Prisoner at left is unidentified. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, John Locher)

It could be a typical eatery in
New York, where the men,
Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, had been police detectives before retiring to the desert good life about a decade ago. They'd worked
closely on the NYPD, and when they moved with their families to Las Vegas they bought neighboring houses. Dinners out were a relaxing ritual, one in which the two could confide in each other and talk old times.

But as they walked toward the maitre d's stand at Piero's on the
night of March 9, surrounded by heavy oak paneling and white
tablecloths, the familiar scene suddenly soured.

About a dozen DEA and FBI agents converged on the pair. They threw the lanky Caracappa and the barrel-chested Eppolito against the wall and handcuffed them. Tucked in Eppolito's waistband,
agents found a loaded and chambered .45-caliber semiautomatic
handgun.

The best friends said nothing, but their expressions were ashen
as they were whisked off to a local jail, to be held without bail
until federal marshals shipped them back to New York for trial.

Eppolito, 56, and Caracappa, 63, were charged with eight
murders, two attempted murders, murder conspiracy, obstruction of
justice, money laundering and drug distribution in one of the worst
corruption cases in the annals of the New York Police Department.

Even the most seasoned law enforcement officers were shocked by
the allegations - that the two ex-cops had worked for organized
crime, supplying lethal information about informants and even
serving as mob hit men.

"I have never dealt with anything this egregious," said John
Peluso, assistant special agent in charge of the DEA's New York
field office, who ran the investigation and helped collar the
alleged Mafia cops.

Las Vegas is all about second chances.

For a decade after leaving New York, Eppolito and Caracappa had
their second chance. The former detectives apparently believed they
were untouchable because only one or two people could actually put
the finger on them, said a law enforcement source who spoke on the
condition of anonymity.

"Anyone that goes 10 years without incident," Peluso said,
"would certainly believe they're in the clear."

Twice before, Eppolito had been cleared in investigations of
purported mob ties.

The ex-partners bought houses across the street from each other
in a quiet gated community dotted with tall palms several miles
west of the teeming Las Vegas Strip.

They spoke on the phone frequently. Like the old days in
Brooklyn, where both men were born and raised, the two would get
together to drink espressos, always talking with their hands.
Together, the men looked like two godfathers, Eppolito's wife once
remarked.

But there were differences as the men went about their new
lives.

Caracappa purchased a modest three-bedroom home for $234,690. It
fit his style, quiet and unassuming.

He went to work at the Southern Nevada Women's Correctional
Facility in North Las Vegas, becoming assistant chief of security
for the private company running the prison. He later opened his own
investigative business and consulted for another firm.

The jobs fit.

Eppolito operated on a much grander scale.

The gregarious former bodybuilder who loved to tell jokes bought
a two-story, four-bedroom house that cost $361,600 and was nearly
twice as big as his neighbor Caracappa's. There was space for
Eppolito's mother-in-law, who would could cook her savory Italian
dishes in the roomy kitchen, and a pool for family gatherings.

Eppolito's office took center stage. Surrounding his large desk,
he hung photographs of his three children along with awards -
including two medals of honor - from his 20 years with the NYPD.

In Las Vegas, he intended to parlay his storied career into
stardom. He would write screenplays and land acting parts - a plan
that was not far-fetched in his case.

He had a policeman's eye for detail and an ear for dialogue, and
he knew a good story when he heard one. He held membership cards to
both the screenwriter and actor guilds.

He already had landed small roles in about a dozen movies,
portraying a hoodlum in "Bullets Over Broadway" and "Fat Andy,"
a gangster in "Goodfellas."

Playing wiseguys came easy to Eppolito.

Years earlier, he had co-written an autobiography called "Mafia
Cop: the Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob."

His father was Ralph Eppolito, an enforcer and Gambino soldier,
known around the neighborhood as Fat the Gangster. Uncle Jimmy the
Clam was a Gambino captain. And the Clam's son, Cousin Jim-Jim,
also ran in the same circles.

In a 1992 interview with a Las Vegas radio station, Eppolito
said he looked forward to continuing his writing career: "I guess
I got a lot of years of knowledge on both sides of the fence..."

Court records suggest Eppolito maintained his ties with La Cosa
Nostra, making calls to Luchese and Bonanno crime family
associates. But he mostly kept any Mafia connections to himself.
His new friends in Las Vegas saw Eppolito as the good cop.

"Louis is a very truthful guy. He speaks from the heart," said
James Vesci, a transplant from Queens and Staten Island, who owns
New York Pizza and Pasta on Las Vegas' west side, where Eppolito
would stop regularly for the tasty eggplant parmesan and
conversation.

Vesci said Eppolito was proud of being a cop, and he believes
Eppolito would never do anything to taint the shield he had carried
with pride. Eppolito, he said, hated corrupt cops.

One day Eppolito looked Vesci in the eye and said: "Any cop
that would sell himself is a rag."

Eppolito's autobiography hints at a contradictory view.
"I not only had the capacity to kill, I had the capacity to
forget about it, to not let it bother me," Eppolito wrote in his
book.

"In a way, it's very similar to the mentality of organized
crime. You do what you have to do and don't think twice about the
consequences."

Like mobsters, Eppolito the cop knew how to break bones. One
time in the name of murky justice, he savagely beat a junkie who
had badly hurt a transit police officer. Eppolito claims he crushed
all the man's fingers, snapped both his wrists and pounded his
skull with a brick. In an earlier incident, he took a lead pipe to
a wife beater's head.

"That was the law of the street," Eppolito explained during
the 1992 radio interview, his calm, squeaky voice belying his bulky
6-foot frame and the explosive violence contained within it.

And if anybody ever filed a complaint? In that case, he'd lie,
Eppolito said in his book. His daddy, a man he respected greatly,
had taught him that trick.

These reflections on his life story and the earlier corruption
accusations were not ignored by authorities.

Federal agents have long memories. "We don't forget," DEA
agent Peluso said. "We give new meaning to the words cold case."

So, when an investigator from the Brooklyn district attorney's
office approached his agency with some uncorroborated information
about the ex-cops two years ago, Peluso said, "I saw promise in
what they had provided and I authorized an investigation."

During that probe, Burton Kaplan, a convicted drug dealer with
ties to the mob, started to talk. The 71-year-old Kaplan had been
sentenced in 1998 to more than two decades in federal prison.

"He's getting older," said a law enforcement source familiar
with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
"He started thinking about not wanting to spend his most senior
years in prison."

The source said Kaplan wanted to see his granddaughter again,
and he could cement the Casso connection with Caracappa and
Eppolito.

According to documents filed in federal court in New York, a
witness will testify that a business relationship was formed
between Casso and the two detectives in about 1985. The two, the
indictment states, went on Casso's payroll in 1986 and were paid
$4,000 a month. They remained Casso employees for eight years.

The indictment says the two provided Casso with sensitive law
enforcement information and killed on his behalf. Two other
witnesses are expected to testify that Casso bragged about having a
law enforcement connection and that he knew about imminent arrests
and current investigations.

"Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito are the people who allowed Mr.
Casso to see the future," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Henoch
said at a detention hearing in Las Vegas. Casso, who admitted his
role in 36 killings, remains in prison.

David Chesnoff, Caracappa's lawyer in Las Vegas, questioned the
integrity of the government's witnesses; Eppolito's lawyer, Bruce
Cutler, called them reprobates.

His client, Cutler said, "denies everything in the indictment
other than his name and he was a policeman."

Related Link: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/3/13/111151.shtml