By ZACH HABERMAN and ALEX GINSBERG
June 6, 2006 — Twenty years after two NYPD detectives began moonlighting as murderers for the mob, a federal judge yesterday vowed to lock them up and toss away the key – heeding impassioned pleas for justice from their victims’ loved ones.
“This is probably the most heinous series of crimes ever tried in this courthouse,” Judge Jack Weinstein told Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, who were convicted April 6 of racketeering charges that included eight murders, kidnapping, drug dealing and obstruction of justice.
The judge vowed to sentence the destructive duo to life in prison, fine them $1 million each and seize all their assets – but put off their punishments pending a June 23 hearing where the pair will argue that their high-priced lawyers, Bruce Cutler and Edward Hayes, didn’t do their jobs.
Before he promised a lifetime of justice for the crooked cops, victims and relatives of the many families destroyed by their murderous night jobs had their say in court.
“You remember me, Mr. Eppolito?” asked Barry Gibbs, whom Eppolito framed in a hooker’s death.
“I’m Barry Gibbs. Remember what you did to me? I had a family, too!” Gibbs screeched from the third row of the packed gallery, interrupting Eppolito’s final, rambling defense about trying to live up to his father’s pressures.
Eppolito turned to the man – who was eventually freed after 19 years in jail – and flatly said, “No.”
Weinstein had court officers eject him. But as he was removed, screaming, “You remember me, huh?” Gibbs got a round of applause from five women who lost loved ones while Eppolito, 57, and Caracappa, 64, were on the payroll of both the NYPD and Luchese family underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso.
Michal Greenwald Weinstein, whose dia mond-merchant fa ther disappeared in 1986 when she was 10, echoed the sentiment.
“You took away our daddy, and you took away our childhood,” she told the disgraced ex-cops.
“Do you know what it’s like to be asked hundreds of times throughout your life what happened to your father and not have an answer?
“Do you know what it’s like to visit a friend who recently lost a loved one and to be en vious of them because they had a grave . . . en vious of a grave?”
Israel Greenwald’s re mains were discovered under a Brooklyn garage’s floor in April 2005. He had been shot twice in the head, and the murder was eventually traced to the cops.
Betty Hydell, whose son was another of the cops’ victims, said from the witness stand, “I wish you stay in hell the rest of your life – and you die alone.”
Prosecutor Robert Henoch asked Weinstein for the maximum sentence.
“These two men stand before you unrepentant and remorseless and perhaps by a higher power, unforgiven,” he said.
“We don’t have death squads as policemen. At least we’re not supposed to,” he said.
Investigators had traced eight murders to the cops, committed while they were helping Casso between 1986 and 1990 – and receiving $4,000 a month from him.
Eppolito, whose father was a member of the Gambino crime family, was always the more public of the two cops.
He played a bit part in the mob movie “GoodFellas,” tried to make it as a Hollywood scriptwriter and wrote an autobiography, “Mafia Cop” after he retired in 1990. In it he claimed he was the 11th most decorated cop in the NYPD – which the department says is untrue.
Caracappa, who retired in 1992 and receives a $63,000-a-year pension, helped establish the NYPD’s unit for Mafia murder investigations.
Caracappa said nothing in court yesterday, but Eppolito gave a long speech saying he had always tried to live down the reputation of his father, Ralph “Fat the Gangster” Eppolito.
“I was one hell of a cop,” he told the judge. “I tried my best on every case.”
He made a bizarre plea to the families of his victims – inviting them to visit him in jail so he could convince them of his innocence.
“I think I would prove to them I never hurt anybody,” he said, as Gibbs interrupted him.
In contrast with the victims’ families, the only relative of the two ex-cops present was Louis Eppolito Jr., who reconciled with his father during the trial, after years of estrangement.
“That was a little surprising,” the son said outside court. “I was his only flesh and blood in the courtroom today. I can’t speak for them. I don’t speak to them, so I don’t know why they didn’t show up.”
Leah Greenwald, widow of Israel Greenwald, was asked about Eppolito’s plea for the families to visit him in jail.
“What I was thinking is that he is talented, he knows how to talk,” she said.
“Also, he’s an actor and he wants to believe that he is innocent. and you know sometimes you live in an imaginary world and even though you committed many crimes you want to believe that you are innocent and I think he wants to believe that he is innocent.”
Together the two lifelong friends spent a total of 44 years on the force. They eventually retired to homes on the same block in Las Vegas.
But in 1994, Casso became a government informant and began to link the cops to murders, like the 1986 slaying of Gambino mobster James Hydell.
Prosecutors developed a solid case when mobster Burton Kaplan, serving a 27-year jail sentence, described how he carried orders from Casso to the cops.
Beginning in 2004, the former Luchese family associate, provided grisly details of murders they carried out and described how their fees increased, to $35,000 for the murder of Hydell and $70,000 for rubbing out Gambino crime captain Eddie Lino.
Lino’s daughter Danielle, spoke for her family inside court, and later, outside the building, she added, “I know my family sounded angry, but the truth of the matter is that this is not a thank-you statement.”
” I truly hope they do rot in prison for eternity and burn in hell.”
Eppolito and Caracappa were convicted after the jury deliberated 10 hours.
U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said, “They didn’t deliver us from evil. They themselves were evil personified.”
The sentencing comes a week after the family of two of their victims, who ran a private sanitation firm on Long Island, sued the department for failing to uncover the cops’ connection to Casso.
Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow were murdered in 1989, allegedly after Casso got confirmation from NYPD files, supplied by the corrupt cops, that they were still cooperating with investigators.
Eppolito is trying for a new trial based on his claim that defense attorney Cutler failed to put on a competent defense. Through his new attorney, Joseph Bondy, he has asked for Casso to appear at the June 23 hearing.
The defense did not put Casso on the stand during their trial even though he claimed to have exculpatory evidence that could benefit them.
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