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But no one had counted on the fog. It had sheathed the island in a dense black veil. In the darkness, the Bypass Gang escaped.
That same month, John "Otto" Heidel, a safecracker who was cooperating with the police on the Bypass case, was gu
After those two shootings, Intartaglio knew "without a doubt" that there was a leak. Something was rotten in the department. Now, fifteen years later, he felt able to confirm his suspicions: Stephen Caracappa had been a detective in the Major Case Squad.
For Doug Le Vien, the hit on Eddie Lino back in November 1990 gave a definitive shape to his wary thoughts about the department. He had gone over the crime-scene reports at the time and seen right away how it must have gone down. The black Mercedes pulling obediently to the side of the road on the Belt Parkway. Lino lowering his window.And the shooter squeezing off nine bullets at close range. Mortally wounded, with his foot on the accelerator, Lino had crashed into a schoolyard fence. At the scene was a wristwatch the shooter presumably had lost as he fled. Lino, it seemed, would have never stopped his car and rolled down his window to speak to another wiseguy. But he would have for someone flashing a badge.
At the time, LeVien had called up a buddy who was advising the NYPD's Organized Crime Control Bureau. LeVien listened carefully as his friend shared a similar fear. Then the friend spoke the unspeakable: "You're right. I think a cop whacked Eddie Lino."
To this day, Joe Ponzi wears a gold ring with his eighty-year-old father's shield number. In fact, he had first met Lou Eppolito when the detective worked under his father in a Brooklyn precinct. Now his thoughts focused on the two accused cops.Why did they do it? he kept asking.
Back in 1984, when Internal Affairs had suspended Eppolito for several months for passing intelligence files to Rosario Gambino, a major Mob heroin trafficker, Ponzi felt the detective was getting a bad deal. Sure, Lou was full of himself, a slow-witted, self-aggrandizing onetime muscleman going quickly to seed, a "parade cop" who seemed more intent on collecting headlines and medals than collars.
Still, the way Ponzi looked at it, the department was coming down on him not because of anything Lou had done but because of who he was: the son of Ralph "Fat the Gangster" Eppolito, a Gambino-family killer, and the nephew of James "Jimmy the Clam" Eppolito, a genuine power in the family. When Lou threw himself a fund-raiser-a "racket," as cops call their shindigs-to help him make ends meet during the suspension, Ponzi was one of the several hundred people who bought a ticket. And when a departmental trial cleared Lou and he went on to be promoted to detective second grade, Ponzi thought justice had been done.
Now he had other thoughts. Perhaps Eppolito had been rotten all along. Perhaps he had been leading a double life since the day he joined the department, in 1969. He was his father's son. Or maybe the Internal Affairs investigation and the suspension had pushed him over the edge. Made him a killer for the Mob. Ponzi was not sure he would ever know.
Steve Caracappa was even more perplexing. He seemed in every way an unlikely friend to the ebullient Eppolito. Caracappa was dour, reserved, a rail-thin presence who looked as if he'd had all the life squeezed out of him."The Undertaker," fellow detectives called him. Sure, he had been arrested on a burglary charge in his youth. But he had served in Vietnam, and, by all accounts, he was a good cop and a skillful, conscientious detective. Was it really his watch that had been left at the Lino hit, as the precinct scuttlebutt had it at the time? Was he the leader of the two? Perhaps, Ponzi speculated, the old adage was true: Still waters run deep.
But after eighteen months of his team digging up the past- "We're archaeologists," Intartaglio jokingly said-Ponzi had worked his way to several certainties.The two retired detectives, he felt, were traitors-and killers. And the time had come to bring them to justice.
In retirement, the two former detectives, bound by friendship and their secrets, stayed close. In 1994, Eppolito moved to Las Vegas, settling into a big bright house with a five-foot fountain on the lawn and baronial columns flanking the entrance.The Cadillac in the pink cobblestone driveway completed his idealized picture of gaudy success. Caracappa and his second wife followed a year later, moving into a more modest home across the street.
Starting in the fall of 2004, the task force, assisted by local DEA agents, began keeping a close watch on the two men.And they also began looking for a way to gather evidence about what the pair were up to in good-time Vegas. An inspired plan was hatched. Eppolito's book had set the investigation in motion, providing both Casso and Betty Hydell with a name to match the husky face.And now, John Peluso hoped, Eppolito's book would bring him down for good.
Posing as a high-flying Hollywood producer named Steve Corso, a DEA agent phoned Eppolito and a
That was all the starstruck would-be actor and screenwriter needed to hear. Eppolito had hovered, fierce, bloated, and largely mute, in the crowd scenes of a handful of Mob movies, starting with Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas (1990), and had written a predictable and sentimental tough-guy feature called Turn of Faith, which had gone straight to DVD. But Eppolito had even larger ambitions. He just needed his break. Over the next few months the "producer" spent many days and evenings with both of the retired detectives and their families. And all the time he had a Kel transmitter about the size of a pack of cigarettes taped to his chest. Nearly every word they spoke-close to seventy-two hours' worth-was recorded.
A convivial Eppolito bragged about all the wiseguys who were still his pals. He also reminisced about cops looking up license-plate numbers as favors. And when Corso, one swinger to another, asked Eppolito if he could score him some crystal meth-a bunch of his Hollywood friends were coming to town and wanted to party, he explained-Lou said, No problem.With the help of his twenty-four-year-old son, Anthony, the deal was done, according to authorities.
Several days later, the task force moved in for the arrests. Corso invited both Eppolito and Caracappa to di
Just as Eppolito and Caracappa were about to give their names to the maitre d', Peluso, gun drawn, a
As they were led handcuffed to the waiting unmarked cars, the maitre d' rushed after them. "You've got to give me their names," he insisted to the agents."I need to cancel the reservation.This is a busy place."
"Pick up the papers tomorrow," a gleeful Intartaglio shot back. "You want their names, read the front page."
As the case moves to trial, the task force is still fighting. Only, now they're battling among themselves-for the spoils.
"True crime," as the genre is called by eager publishers and producers, is truly big business. Once the story broke-cops accused of murder! cold-blooded mafiosi! intrepid investigators!-phones started ringing.