Tuesday, June 10th 2008, 4:00 AM
Pauline Pipitone, mother of slain Nicky Guido, leaves trial of Mafia Cops in March 2006. Rosier/News
Pauline Pipitone, mother of slain Nicky Guido, leaves trial of Mafia Cops in March 2006.
It’s time for this poor woman to stop losing.
Pauline Pipitone’s son was murdered in cold blood on Christmas Day, 1986.
Then, her husband, Gabe, died of a broken heart three years later, and was buried beside her son in Green-Wood Cemetery.
Then, in 2006, 19 years after her son’s death, two rogue city detectives, known as The Mafia Cops, were tried on a 70-count Federal RICO indictment involving eight murders, including that of Pipitone’s son, Nicky Guido.
Then Pipitone testified at their trial. Then, the two dirty cops, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, were convicted on all counts.
Then Judge Jack Weinstein vacated the convictions on a statute of limitations technicality.
Then, while Eppolito and Caracappa were remanded in the Brooklyn federal lock-up, pending the prosecutor’s appeal, Pipitone retained civil lawyer Mark Longo, who filed a $50 million federal lawsuit against Eppolito and Caracappa.
Then Longo filed a $15 million lawsuit, against The City of New York, alleging that the Police Department failed to properly protect her son, because they also failed to “spot a pattern and practice of illegal activity” involving the two cops.
Then Pipitone’s lawsuit against the city was tossed because it wasn’t filed within 90 days of her son’s murder.
“It took the greatest police department in the world 19 years to arrest two of their own for my brother’s murder,” says Mike Guido, Nicky Guido’s brother. “But my mother was supposed to crack the biggest case of police corruption in NYPD history inside 90 days?”
Then Longo moved on, pursuing the federal case.
Then, last month, the City of New York added insult to Pipitone’s injury when it served a judgment of $486.96 on Pipitone for the court costs related to her original failed $15 million lawsuit.
“This is how the city compensates this poor elderly woman for the murder of her son,” says Longo. “With a judgment instead of justice. It’s beyond insensitive.”
“Mark Longo paid my mother’s court costs out of his pocket,” Mike Guido said last week. “My mother doesn’t even know about this. She’s upset enough that she has to go in and give the same deposition she gave three years ago to the federal court. If she knew they were basically saying that not only did you lose a son, but now you have to pay for the privilege, she’d probably have a breakdown.”
Pipitone keeps losing.
But this latest bureaucratic dagger makes we the people of the City of New York all losers.
We all lose our collective dignity when our city levies a cover charge on a mother for seeking justice in the murder of her son.
The law here is not just an ass; it’s an ass that needs to be kicked.
Pipitone will never kick the image of her son dying on the sidewalk in front of her house on Christmas Day 22 years ago.
The two men that a federal jury convicted of setting up Nicky Guido for that gangland rubout were Eppolito and Caracappa.
The saddest part of the story is that when The Mafia Cops used an NYPD computer to locate a cheap hood – also named Nicky Guido – for a hit, they passed on to the hit men the home address of a different Nicky Guido, a telephone company worker with no mob affiliations, whose name was on the Fire Department list.
The wrong Nicky Guido.
And so, on that awful December day while Pipitone celebrated Christmas at home, outside her door, two sociopaths in leather jackets stepped out of a dark sedan on 17th St. just off Prospect Park West, and opened fire on her youngest son Nicky, who was showing off his new car to an uncle.
Nicky Guido died on the sidewalk as twinkling Christmas lights reflected in his dying eyes.
His murder went unsolved for 19 years.
“But we contend the NYPD knew and didn’t tell us who was responsible for Nicky Guido’s death until 2005,” Longo said when he filed suit against the city.
That year, the case was cracked open by a new informant named Burton Kaplan, who testified that he was the middleman between The Mafia Cops and the mob assassins who murdered the wrong Nicky Guido.
Then Pipitone testified about her personal sorrow that never went away.
Then the case was dismissed. Then she got billed for it.
“Then I read in the Daily News last week that Eppolito and Caracappa are still collecting millions in city pensions that no one can touch,” says Mike Guido. “These two murderous punks get to keep their city pensions while my mother, who lost a son because of them, gets billed by the city? How the hell does anyone call this justice?”
For shame.
It’s time for this poor woman to stop losing.
