NYT: Detectives Used Badges to Kill for the Mob, Indictments Say

[kskiska]

Where was Kerik?


Two retired New York City police detectives, onetime partners who had long been suspected of ties to organized crime, were charged by federal prosecutors yesterday with taking part in eight murders on behalf of the Mafia - most while one or both were still active members of the police force.

The charges, detailed in an indictment unsealed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, were among the most startling allegations of police corruption in memory. In one case, in 1990, prosecutors said the detectives, driving an unmarked police car, pulled over a Mafia captain on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn and shot him to death for a rival mob figure. In another, in 1986, they flashed their badges and kidnapped a mobster, threw him in the trunk of their car and delivered him to a rival, who tortured and killed him.

"In a stunning betrayal of their shields, their colleagues and the citizens they were sworn to protect, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa secretly worked on the payroll of the mob while they were members of the N.Y.P.D," the United States attorney in Brooklyn, Roslynn R. Mauskopf, said at a news conference to announce the indictment.

For years, Ms. Mauskopf charged, the men had been paid handsomely for their role in the killings and for routinely funneling secret information about criminal investigations to other members of organized crime. In most of the killings, she said, they did not pull the trigger but helped other hit men track down the victims, at one point becoming so instrumental that they were put on the mob's payroll at $4,000 a month.

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http://nytimes.com/2005/03/11/nyregion/11mob.html?hp&ex=1110517200&en=b30d4adc6e325974&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[seasat]

1. You know something sad.

This is a pretty big story to me yet when I was switching channels between the "news" channels tonight, it was Micheal Jackson 24/7 on the US channels. I first heard about this story on news channel SI from the CBC.

[NYC]

2. This is a very big story.

Extremely important. It ought to be all over the news.

...The charges, dramatic as they are, were not entirely surprising: the pair were investigated by the F.B.I. and the New York Police Department in 1994 after a Mafia informant provided officials with many details of the killings. But the informant, who prosecutors said had commissioned many of the crimes, was later discredited, and federal authorities at the time were unable to build a prosecutable case, officials said yesterday...

...after (Eppolito) .. retired, he wrote, with Bob Drury, Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob, in which he chronicled what he said were wrongful accusations brought by the Police Department that he sold information to the mob...

Mr. Caracappa, who was Mr. Eppolito's partner in the robbery unit, went on to join the department's prestigious Major Case Squad, where he helped form the Organized Crime Homicide Unit. There, he specialized in the Luchese family and served as a clearinghouse on police and F.B.I. investigations into all mob killings, collecting information. It was information, prosecutors now allege, that he sold to members of the Mafia - revealing the identities of confidential informants, wiretaps and pending cases. In one instance, the information allowed Mr. Casso and the Luchese family boss to flee before they were indicted...

[truthisfreedom]

3. 4k a month? sheesh. ruin your life and kill people for that? oh, wait...

they were being paid to do things they LIKED to do. sick freaks.

[daleo]

4. Maybe they will cut a deal with the federal government.

Negroponte needs a few good men like this.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

5. Where was Kerik?

Where's Scorcese?

[Kat45]

8. No shit! That has "movie" written all over it.

[Trillo]

6. Note that it's a U.S. attorney who's screaming bloody murder

and who's being quoted as claiming this is a breach of trust. Where are the 'cops on the beat' expressing outrage?

Whenever a citizen is treated ill by the cops, tazered, the cops themselves seem to slander the victim in the news, and are quoted extensively by reporters.

Where's the outrage by cops on the street? Does their silence tell us something? If so, what?

[NYC]

7. Both cops receive $70,000 pension each.

New York Post, Sunday, March 13, 2005 (print edition)

Front page headline: KILLER CASH, City stuck paying accused NYPD "hit men".

by Brad Hamilton and Lukas Alpert.

Two rogue cops charged with doing double-duty as mob hit men each collect a tax-free pension worth around $70,000 a year -- and will shockingly continue to collect the taxpayer-funded cash even if they are convicted, The Post has learned.

Both Stephen Caracappa, 63, and Louis Eppolito, 56, had their pensions boosted because they suffered heart attacks, sources said. (A 25% increase over what they would have gotten. This is 75% of highest single year salary, and is tax free because of heart condition.)

...(won't lose pensions if convicted) NYC police officers can lose their pensions if they are fired for official misconduct, but Caracappa and Eppolito retired more than a decade ago.

...By night, they are accused of being coldblooded killers, allegedly hunting down Mafia enemies or feeding key information to their criminal cronies...

In 1994, Lucchese mobster Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso made a stunning allegation that he hired the two cops to rub out Edward Lino, a top-earning heroin and coke dealer and the shooter in the gangland slaying of Paul Castellano outside Sparks Steakhouse.

Article is two full pages, including photographs.