Did cops double as mob hit men?

Dennis Murphy Correspondent • Profile

In Las Vegas, the players on the Strip know that a safe bet for celebrity sightings and traditional Italian food — a Caesar’s and Osso Bucco— is Piero’s.

It was supposed to be a quiet night at the restaurant one Wednesday in March, but it turned out to be anything but. As manager Linda Kajor started greeting two regulars strolling in for an early dinner, out of nowhere, guns were drawn all around.

"Out of nowhere, the people at the end of the bar came running forward with guns drawn," recalls Kajor. "The front doors open up, and cops come running in. There are cops everywhere running after these two men that were standing there. We were very scared.”

The two patrons were suddenly thrown up against the wall and cuffed by federal agents.

The pair were former New York City detectives about to be charged, astonishingly, as hit men for the mob. Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa weren’t just accused of being crooked, violent, or on the take —  they were accused of being “mafia cops” and taking part in nine murders on behalf of an organized crime family, starting as far back as the 1980s.

U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf called it a “stunning betrayal of their shields, their colleagues and the citizens they were sworn to protect.”

A plotline worthy of a grade-D mob movie
It sounds like the stale script from a hack screenwriter with its storyline of bent cops, played by the usual over-the-top suspects.

“This is a story of an organized crime person who joins the police department and then participates in organized hits and compromises investigations,” describes veteran police reporter Murray Weiss, who now works for New York’s Daily News. “People go ‘Ah, piece of junky pulp fiction.’ But it’s reality.”

Eppolito and Caracappa have both declared their innocence all along. Is this cops-gone-wild story mainly outrageous accusations made by convicted gangsters looking out for their own skin?

Caracappa’s defense attorney, Ed Hayes, thinks so. “Nobody gave these guys a fair shot,” says Hayes.

According to the prosecutor’s version however, the charges against the two former detectives are indefensible — and the most extreme acts took place on New York City’s busy Belt Parkway.

The former cops are accused of pulling over a small time hood in an unmarked police car in 1990 and killing him on behalf of another mobster who allegedly paid them $65,000 for the hit.

“It’s still shocking to think that two cops would actually pull the trigger and kill someone,” says Newsday reporter Rocco Parascandola.

Even New Yorkers who thought they’d heard it all were flabbergasted.

“Never has there been allegations like this. Never has there been policemen going out with their badges and killing people systematically and working with organized crime,” says Weiss.

A 'Dirty Harry' type and his low-key partner
Stephen Caracappa worked in a major case squad tracking homicides inside organized crime circles. He had access to confidential information on mob informants. Slight and intense, Caracappa was as low-key as his friend was swaggering.

Louis Eppolito, a gold chain-wearing, pinky-ringed, decorated street detective from Brooklyn made his name taking down the toughest of thugs.

Eppolito, a former body builder, liked reading about his exploits the day after a big arrest. He seemed to relish the notoriety and the deference that came his way as the son of a mobbed-up family.

“He just loved being the ‘Dirty Harry’ guy,” says Weiss. “His uncle’s name was ‘Jimmy the Clam’ and these were tough gangsters at seriously important levels of organized crime.”

After he retired from the NYPD, Eppolito wrote a self-congratulatory autobiography, “Mafia Cop.” The book was about walking the straight line as a detective from a family background steeped in organized crime.

But was he a straight cop? In 1984, he’d been the target of an internal police investigation, suspected of leaking confidential documents to a known mob figure. He was cleared of the charges, but the rumors about Eppolito followed him all the way to his retirement in 1990.

After he turned in his badge, he even toyed with his reputation and got a few bit parts playing Mafiosos in movies like “Goodfellas.”

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