In January 2015 Pauline Pipitone finally had full justice served when the city settled with her for 5 Million. The Guido case is indeed a tremendous sad tragedy and no amount can make up for the loss of a child but this should bring her some closure.
In case you didn’t know about the Guido story, the cops gave Anthony Casso inside information about a Nicholas Guido and because Casso was too cheap to pay the cops to do the deed or get the right address, Casso’s goons messed up and got the wrong guy. (Read more details here.)
In fact one can surmise that if the cops would have actually gotten the job, poor Nicholas would have lived and the real Nicholas Guido would have died. When Burt Kaplan, star witness in the Mafia cops trial was testifying he brought up a conversation he had with Frank Santoro Jr. about Casso’s decision to not pay the two cops for information about where the real mobster Nicky Guido lived. According to Kaplan, Santoro said: ‘Maybe ‘Gas’ should have paid the $4,000 and he would have gotten the right Nicky Guido.’
So in this case history would have been very different if the cops actually did it.
Yet despite the fact that the cops didn’t actually pull the trigger and only gave up a confidential name…the city is responsible because giving up the name Nicholas Guido was the catalyst that caused innocent Nikki Guido’s untimely demise.
Now in the case of my father, the opposite can be said. Let’s say Kaplan was too cheap to pay 30K to the cops and decided to do it himself, or get a cheaper run of the mill hitman to do it like in the Guido case. Though my Father could have still been killed, the story would have played out very very differently for us.
But Kaplan did hire the cops and they did agree to do it. And not only did the cops use police databases to look up my fathers address and license plate so that they don’t err and kill the wrong guy, they actually pulled him over under the guise of a hit and run, kidnapped him, led him to a garage and brutally murdered him. That in itself is horrific considering their direct involvement, but then they went ahead and secretly buried him knowing his loved ones would never know what happened. It is also reasonable to assume since they had a stake in not getting caught, that they did everything in their power to impede our investigation. An investigation that could have been solved considering we had knowledge of two important names involved ….. In fact every time we came closer to solving this case, something would happen to keep it cold. It is obvious that these cops, with direct access to sensitive information, made sure this case remained cold.
While one can never compare pain and suffering, it is hard to ignore the obvious cause and affect a murder by cops as opposed to thugs caused our family. If he were killed by a thug, I would still have lost a father and my kids still would not have met their grandfather, but our lives and our level of pain and suffering would have been completely different if there was a body and closure and life insurance and social security and a grave. Without the power of a badge to kidnap a grown adult and the power of the badge to cover up and destroy an investigation we would not be here today holding the city liable.
I used to envy anyone who had a grave to go to….can you imagine being envious of a grave?
That is what happens when a loved one disappears and you know they are not coming back and you long to have closure.
And so in conclusion, these cops were bad, as bad as they came. And without the power of the badge that the city negligently gave them, they would not have gotten away with any of their actions and both Guido and my Father’s story would have a different ending
Money will never ever bring back Nikki. Money will never bring back my father and the childhood and support we lost. But it will bring a small sense of comfort and closure and will give the city incentive to never turn a blind eye to corruption..
