{"id":439,"date":"2009-03-06T02:15:30","date_gmt":"2009-03-06T02:15:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.israelgreenwald.com\/?p=439"},"modified":"2015-03-13T02:15:40","modified_gmt":"2015-03-13T02:15:40","slug":"mafia-cops-louis-eppolito-and-steven-caracappa-sentenced-to-life-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/?p=439","title":{"rendered":"‘Mafia Cops’ Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa sentenced to life in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dailynews\"<\/a>
\nBy John Marzulli DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER<\/strong>
\nUpdated Friday, March 6th 2009, 4:16 PM<\/p>\n

“Mafia Cops” Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, convicted in April 2006 of committing eight murders while on the payroll of a mob underboss, received life sentences Friday in Brooklyn federal court.<\/p>\n

Eppolito, the son of a mobster, was sentenced to life plus 100 years. Partner Caracappa received life plus 80 years. Each was fined more than $4 million.<\/p>\n

Although the pair remained jailed in the years since they were convicted of betraying their badges, their case was tied up in appeals that delayed their sentencing.<\/p>\n

Caracappa, 67, and Eppolito, 60, committed the killings between 1986-90. The elder detective stood to declare he had nothing to do with the slayings.<\/p>\n

“I am innocent of these charges,” Caracappa insisted.<\/p>\n

Eppolito, speaking before his sentencing, made the same claim.<\/p>\n

“I’m a big boy, I’m not a child,” he said. “The federal government can my life. But they can’t take my soul, they can’t take my
\ndignity. I never hurt anybody. … I never did any of this.”<\/p>\n

Federal Judge Jack Weinstein – who overturned their convictions on a technicality, but was reversed by an appeals court – handed down the lengthy terms.<\/p>\n

Weinstein, after their convictions, said the pair had committed “the most heinous series of crimes ever tried in this courthouse.”<\/p>\n

He threw out their convictions in June 2006, citing the statute of limitations in the racketeering case. Prosecutors appealed, and the convictions were restored last September.<\/p>\n

The crooked pair earned as much as $65,000 for one of their hits on behalf of brutal mob boss Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso. The jailed Mafiosi, suspected of 36 murders, paid the rogue cops a $4,000-a-month retainer while they worked for him.<\/p>\n

The defendants committed the killings while simultaneously on the payrolls of the NYPD and the Luchese crime family.<\/p>\n

Caracappa, who retired in 1992 after 23 years with the NYPD, helped establish the department’s clearing house for Mafia murder
\nprobes.<\/p>\n

Eppolito grew up in a mob family: His father, grandfather and an uncle were members of the Gambino family. The dichotomy between his career and his upbringing was covered in his autobiography, “Mafia Cop: The Story of An Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob.”<\/p>\n

Eppolito, who retired in 1990, had a bit part in the classic mob movie “Goodfellas” – and later fancied himself a Hollywood script writer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Marzulli DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Updated Friday, March 6th 2009, 4:16 PM “Mafia Cops” Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, convicted in April 2006 of committing eight murders while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-from-2009"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","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=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/israelgreenwald.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}