April 6, 2006
By MARIA NEWMAN and COLIN MOYNIHAN
A jury in New York City today found two retired police detectives guilty of using their detective’s shields to murder for the mob.
The two former detectives, Louis Eppolito, 57, and Stephen Caracappa, 64, were charged with participating in at least eight killings as assassins for the mob. The jury in Federal District Court in Brooklyn deliberated for two days before they delivered their verdict just after 2 p.m. today and found them guilty of 17 acts of racketeering including murder for hire.
The two, who were partners in the New York City police force, now face the possibility of life in prison.
They had pleaded not guilty.
The two men sat impassively as the verdicts were read, while some family members in the courtroom wept. The two had been free on bail during the trial, but after the guilty verdicts were read, United States District Court Judge Jack B. Weinstein revoked their bail pending their sentencing on May 22. They were escorted to jail immediately.
United States Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said that in the guilty verdicts, a jury “of citizens that they were sworn to protect” were holding the men accountable “for their stunning betrayal of the badge, accountable for disgracing the finest police department in the world and accountable for abusing in the most heinous way imaginable the privilege and the power of public service.” Afterward, Mr. Eppolito’s daughter, Andrea, criticized the way in which her father and Mr. Caracappa were prosecuted.
If there was any corruption, she said, it “came from the government.”
“My father did not do these things,” she said.
Her brother, Louis Eppolito Jr., was more sanguine about the verdicts.
“To watch my father go to jail for the rest of his life — it’s very, very painful,” he said.
But, he went on to say, “I respect the jury’s decision and I have to live with that the rest of my life.”
Bruce Cutler, Mr. Eppolito’s lawyer, seemed to say that the verdict would be appealed.
“It’s an appearance of justice but it’s not justice,” he said. “For me, it’s just the end of the beginning of the struggle that I continue. I won’t abandon it.” Mr. Caracappa’s lawyer, Edward Hayes, said simply, “I still say I have the highest respect for the prosecution in this case.”
According to prosecutors, Mr. Eppolito, whose father was a member of the Gambino crime family, and Mr. Caracappa led double lives for years. While they worked as respected detectives in the police department, they also moonlighted as hired killers for the Luchese crime family under Anthony Casso from 1986 to 1990.
The two men earned salaries of $4,000 a month from the mob, prosecutors said. Another time, they earned $65,000 for the slaying of Eddie Lino during a phony traffic stop, prosecutors said.
Another murder the two men were involved in stemmed from faulty information they provided to mobsters about Mr. Casso. The information led to them wrongly fingering an innocent man, who was killed on Christmas Day as his mother was washing dishes from the family’s holiday meal.
In his closing arguments in the case, Assistant United States Attorney Daniel Wenner called the case against the two, “the bloodiest, most violent betrayal of the badge this city has ever seen.”.
