When a federal appeals court doused any real hope of freedom for them, ex-NYPD detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa looked to the U.S. Supreme Court for a little delay. Hey, anything\u2019s better than facing the painful rage of the relatives of the eight men they murdered for the mob at their sentencing.<\/p>\n
But last week, after prosecutors objected to that notion, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Jack Weinstein set December 3 as a day of reckoning for the convicted Mafia Cops \u2013 some 22 years after they murdered their first victim, jeweler Israel Greenwald on Feb. 10, 1986.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe victims of the defendants\u2019 heinous crimes have a strong interest in the imposition of sentence and indeed the right that sentencing proceed free from unreasonable delay,\u201d said assistant U.S. Attorney Evan Norris, adding that \u201cthe public, too, has a great interest in finality.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caracappa, 66, who\u2019s been housed at Brooklyn\u2019s Metropolitan Detention Center since April 2006, when jurors found the rogue detectives guilty of eight murders, bribery, drug dealing and other crimes, was the first to ask to put off his sentence until after his appeal to the high court.<\/p>\n
Eppolito, 60, followed the lead of his partner-in-crime when he returned to the MDC after copping a tax fraud plea in Las Vegas, where his decision to take the weight for ripping off the IRS of $102,000 in tax money allowed his wife to escape any prison time.<\/p>\n
Except for their relatives and appeal lawyers \u2013 Daniel Nobel and Joseph Bondy \u2013 it\u2019s hard to find anyone with nice things to say about the ex-detectives, who took part in additional slayings and other failed murder plots while on the mob\u2019s payroll, according to court papers in the case.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s easy to grasp why they would rather tackle the conservative leaning Supreme Court with four justices appointed by Presidents named Bush and three judges by<\/p>\n
other Republican Presidents (Reagan and Ford) than face the widows, children and siblings of the men they killed who are sure to attend the sentencing \u2013 many for the second time.<\/p>\n
(At the first proceeding, Weinstein delayed the official sentence pending post trial proceedings that ended with him reversing the convictions on technical reasons but stating he would give the men life if he were overruled.)<\/p>\n
\u201cYou took away our daddy,\u201d wailed Greenwald\u2019s daughter Michal two years ago as she called out both defendants by name and recalled that she last saw her father (right) when she was a 10-year-old school girl and he gave her a hug as she waited for a bus on the day they killed him and buried him under a Brooklyn garage.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy doing that you took away our childhood. You took away our mother. You stole our innocence. You filled our nights with nightmares and our days with torture,\u201d she said, recalling how over the years she and her family became envious of others whose deceased loved ones were buried in a cemetery \u2013 \u201cenvious of a grave!\u201d<\/p>\n
Saul Bienenfeld, who represents Michal and her mother Leah in a wrongful death suit against the NYPD and New York City, told Gang Land that Mrs. Greenwald and other family members would attend, even in the unlikely event that victim statements are not permitted at the official sentencing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no way you could keep them away,\u201d said Bienenfeld.<\/p>\n
For closure and other reasons many relatives of other murder victims \u2013 there are seven wrongful death suits pending in Brooklyn Federal Court against the city and the Mafia Cops \u2013 are also expected to attend.<\/p>\n
Mother\u2019s Grief Lives On
\nPauline Pipitone, a distraught 80-year-old woman whose 26-year-old son, Nicholas Guido, was killed the same year as Greenwald, won\u2019t be making the trek to court.<\/p>\n
Guido, (right) the only Mafia Cops\u2019 murder victim with no criminal ties, was shot to death on Christmas Day in 1986 outside his Brooklyn home as he showed an uncle a new car he had bought. A telephone installer, Guido was killed only because he had the same name as a gangster the rogue detectives had fingered for their mob partners.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Pipitone did not attend the first sentencing, has not given any interviews, \u201cand is a very private person,\u201d said her attorney, Mark Longo. He added that the only time she has spoken publicly about her grief was when prosecutors called her as a trial witness.<\/p>\n
The attorney gave Gang Land a heart-wrenching letter the ailing Mrs. Pipitone wrote to Mayor Bloomberg two years ago in which she asked him \u2013 with no success \u2013 to intercede with city lawyers who were dragging out her lawsuit \u201cso that I won\u2019t be here to see justice done.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember running out to the street that day, seeing him laying against the driver\u2019s seat in the car. They told me he had probably tried to move over to protect his uncle who was sitting next to him. He was wearing a new white jacket he had just gotten for Christmas. Seeing the red against the white \u2013 I still won\u2019t wear anything white.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs. Pipitone said that not a day goes by that she doesn\u2019t think of her dead son, and she knows that his father, her first husband, died two years later of \u201ca broken heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo amount of money in the world will bring him back to me. No amount of money could replace a life lost to a mother because of what was done by those men who were allowed to use their police shields to do horrible things. And if I could, I would gladly give anything I get back to you if I could have the last 20 years back with my son.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was written by The Boss. Posted on Thursday, October 30, 2008, at 3:48 pm. Filed under Other Mafia Orgs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When a federal appeals court doused any real hope of freedom for them, ex-NYPD detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa looked to the U.S. Supreme Court for a little delay. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-from-2008"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":421,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419\/revisions\/421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}