by Tommy Dades
Joe finally asked him, “What do you think? Think they could have done all this?”
Larry Ponzi shook his head and responded, “Honestly, I got to tell you, I just don’t see it. Tell me Eppolito beat somebody within an inch of his life, tell me he’s got more civilian complaints than any cop who ever lived, tell me that maybe he was taking money from somebody or that he dangled some guy out a window and I’d say, that could be, this was a guy who liked to live big. But this other stuff, to be on the pad for the boss of the Lucchese family and to be a hands-on participant in whacks? No, that just couldn’t be. No.”
At the weekly meetings Vecchione and Henoch continued making assignments. Tommy Dades moved forward in several directions, trying to find routes of investigation that wouldn’t be blocked by the Feds’ obsession with secrecy.
For example, Casso claimed that he had handed over Hydell’s body to two Lucchese soldiers, Frank Lastorino and Joey Testa, for disposal. After that he didn’t know what happened to it. Dades wanted to find out exactly how much Lastorino and Testa knew about the killing. Testa was in prison serving several life terms; Lastorino had about eight years left in his sentence but had had some problems and lost his phone privileges. Dades was going to talk to both men. He couldn’t offer them any time reduction, but he could make their lives a little easier. If they told him where to find Hydell’s body, which might provide some physical evidence to verify another aspect of Casso’s story, he could make sure that the remainder of their time in prison was a lot more pleasant. He didn’t expect to find much left of Hydell. He guessed the body had been cut up and buried somewhere. But who knew what went into the ground with him? Maybe Eppolito or Caracappa had stuffed a handkerchief in Hydell’s mouth and covered it with duct tape. Maybe a tiny piece of that duct tape had been overlooked when they disposed of the body and had a partial fingerprint on it. Maybe some hairs or fibers got caught under his fingernails or in the rope that bound his feet or in the handcuffs that held his hands. It was worth taking a shot at them.
But every time Dades began planning to meet either man, the Feds would block him. Supposedly they were concerned he would reveal too much information about the investigation, that word would get out.
That happened over and over to Dades, Ponzi, to all the investigators. They weren’t permitted to do what they’d been doing throughout their careers—talk to people who had information and get it out of them.
Shut out from a primary source, Dades followed the paper trail. As he had done so many times previously, he read and reread the folders in his office, looking for the next bit of information that had been overlooked. For a time he got intrigued by Casso’s claim that Eppolito and Caracappa had planned to kill Sammy Gravano in 1988. Supposedly they sat in their car watching Gravano’s office at 1809 Stillwell Avenue on and off for three months, waiting for him to make a mistake. But he was always with too many people for them to make a move.
What few people other than Dades knew or remembered was that the NYPD was also watching Gravano at that time. He knew it because his former partner Patty Pesce spent eight hours a day sitting in an apartment directly above a fish store taking surveillance photographs. If the detectives had been there, it was possible Patty had caught them on police Candid Camera. Dades got hold of literally thousands of photographs taken during that period. And he looked through them one by one by one, over and over. He remembers, “I went through them like crazy. I didn’t even know exactly what I was looking for—anything that connected Eppolito and Caracappa to that place. Whatever it might be, if it was there, I knew I would find it.” He searched the pictures for vehicles or license plate numbers that might be associated with the cops, looking for one or both of them walking down a street carrying a cup of coffee or leaning against the car smoking a cigarette, looking for one-tenth of a second in the past that proved the two cops were there. He spent days going through the photographs—and found nothing. Just another idea that went nowhere.
Dades also remembered reading in some report somewhere that one of the detectives sitting on Sammy had confronted Eppolito and Caracappa. Apparently this unidentified detective didn’t know who these two guys were but spotted them sitting there day after day. He probably asked the usual questions: What are you doing here? Where are you from? That detective could put Eppolito and Caracappa together when they weren’t supposed to be together, doing exactly what Casso said he had sent them to do. Dades’s problem was that he couldn’t identify the detective. There were no records he could check, no other cops who knew who it might be. Patty Pesce had no idea who he was. Finding that detective would have been a grand slam, but he just couldn’t do it.
The task force continued spending a lot of time trying to identify the garage in which Hydell was transferred to the trunk. They talked about it a lot at their meetings, tossing out ideas, trying to find the right approach. While it seems like a specific garage on Nostrand Avenue would be pretty easy to locate, in fact this was a tough and very tiresome task. Unlike TV cop shows, in which investigations move smoothly and rapidly, with each step bringing the cops just a little closer to the perp, in real life an investigation usually takes months, often nothing happens for long periods of time, and sometimes the biggest enemy to be overcome is boredom. If Bill Oldham wanted to speak to a potential source, for example, sometimes he had to begin by finding someone who knew where that source might be found. A lot of the people living in this world didn’t have legitimate jobs where they could be found nine to five Monday to Friday or homes where they spent each night. So to find that someone who knew how to find the source, he might have to backtrack three people. That’s the drudgery of a real investigation.
Dades also got in touch with several retired cops who knew the neighborhood. Cops learn the secrets of the places they work. They know what happens behind locked doors and late at night. They know where the power is and the people who make things happen. The one bit of information they had about the garage—this came from an informant—was that at one point the owner was being shaken down by a Lucchese capo named Bruno Facciola. The owner knew Eppolito and Caracappa from the precinct and asked them for help. They turned to Kaplan, who brought it to Casso, and the problem was solved. That’s the kind of story that gets known around a precinct. Tommy asked people who had been there at the time if they had ever heard anything about a garage around Nostrand that was having some problems with a wiseguy and got some help from Gaspipe Casso. That was as much information as he could give them. Once again, some people had a vague memory of something like that happening, but nobody had an address for him.
The search for the garage continued.
They had a lot more success finding the house in which Hydell had been murdered. Casso didn’t remember the address; all he remembered was that it was close to Toys “R” Us and it was owned by a Mafia soldier. By going through real estate tax bills and other documents the task force was able to narrow it down to three or four locations. But one of them had belonged to a wiseguy named James Gallo who was known to be associated with people around Casso. Finally, they had the house.
Jimmy Hydell had been murdered in the basement of an ordinary house on East Seventy-third Street. New York Real Property records confirmed the house was then owned by James Gallo, who’d sold it two years later. Casso explained that Gallo’s house was used because it was close to the Toys “R” Us parking lot, it had a finished basement, and Gallo and his family were away on vacation. Tommy wasn’t going to be able to speak with Gallo; he had died a long time ago. But the house, the murder scene, was still there.
East Seventy-third Street was tree lined and quiet. During the day it seemed almost deserted. The house was larger than a Cape Cod but certainly no mansion. A comfortable place with a bloody history.
Nothing in this case came easy. The ownership of the house was legally murky. Two years after the murder Gallo had sold it to a now elderly woman. This woman had recently resold it, but the new buyers hadn’t yet closed on it.
The deal was set, but they were waiting to do the final walk-through. The elderly owner proved to be very cooperative, although she was quite surprised to learn what horrors had taken place in her basement. She gave the task force permission to search the place. But the closing date already had been scheduled, so there was some discussion about whether or not the buyers had the right to be notified. Informing them that at least one person—and maybe more—had been murdered in the basement of the house they’d just bought might make them hesitate about closing. Some people get very sensitive about murders in the basement. And if they decided to walk away based on information provided by law enforcement, who knew what might happen? It sounded like it could be the basis of one of those weird lawsuits the papers love to write about. Eventually the situation was explained to the new owners, who also granted permission to search the place.
Just to make certain everything was done completely legally, Vecchione drew up a search warrant allowing investigators, accompanied by forensic scientist Ralph Ristenbat, an employee of the Chief Medical Examiner’s office, and his associates, to search the scene. As Dades stipulated, “I am…informed by Ralph Ristenbat that, based on his experience and training, he is aware that physical evidence, including blood, bodily fluids, tissue samples, and bone fragments can remain at and be recovered from crime scene areas over 17 years after the crime occurred. He further states that such samples can survive washing and painting of the area, and that samples recovered over 17 years after an incident may be successfully used to conduct DNA testing that can provide evidence relating to the death…” The affidavit requested permission to remove “floorboards, ceiling and flooring” to enable examiners to search for evidence.
Only a few years ago most people outside law enforcement had never heard of forensic science. But numerous nonfiction and dramatic television shows have made it the hottest major on college campuses as well as the subject of many books. A forensic scientist identifies physical evidence and attempts to link it to a specific person or persons. Dades had worked often with the NYPD crime scene team but preferred the more meticulous DNA evidence collection team from the Medical Examiner’s office at Bellevue Hospital.
The task force knew that chances of finding any physical evidence in the house were slim to nonexistent, but the basement still had to be searched. Even if they found nothing, they had proved that the house Casso described as being close to the Toys “R” Us actually existed, that it was owned by John Gallo, that Gallo was an associate of an organized crime family, and that he was known by and associated with people within Gaspipe Casso’s circle. And if during the trial a clever defense lawyer asked Dades if they’d found the crime scene and bothered to search it, the answer would be yes, sir.
No one was currently living in the house. Dades went with Detectives Mike Galletta and Jimmy Harkins and several other investigators from Hynes’s office as well as Ralph Ristenbat’s team. From the very beginning of this investigation Dades had been running into brick walls—but this time he ran into walls of mirrors.
The basement had been completely renovated since the killing—twice. The entire room was now covered with mirrors. The walls, the ceiling, everything except the floor was mirrored. It was like being in a fun house lacking the fun. The floor was covered with worn tiles, but it was impossible to even guess when they had been installed. Reflected in those mirrors, the small search team was magnified into an army. The mirrors also made the search even more difficult, as it would be necessary to break them to get behind the walls.
Even if the room hadn’t been touched since the murder it was unlikely they would find any evidence. Normal life erases most traces of the past. Any evidence that had been left there in 1986 almost definitely had been wiped, washed, vacuumed, swept, or painted away. But still they scoured the room. As the search team went to work Dades stood to the side, imagining ghosts. He wondered where in the room they had put Hydell. Where did they kill him? Toward the back, he guessed; that’s the way it was usually done, as far away from any windows as possible.
The searchers swept the floors, reaching as far as possible under the floorboards. They chipped away at several floor tiles. Because oblique lighting casts shadows that enable people to see things unseen under ceiling lighting or lamps, they turned off all the lights and laid their flashlights on the floor, looking for anything unusual. They poked several holes in the walls and searched behind them, looking for patches, a piece of cloth, maybe a bullet hole or even a spent bullet. And they found nothing. Tommy Dades checked the house off his list.
Dades and Ponzi, Bobby I, Oldham, they just kept going, checking leads, following paths that led into rooms of mirrors, going nowhere. What makes cold cases so tough is that the network of informants that every good detective builds has little value. Dades had maybe fifty informants on the street, multiplied by the number of people each one of those guys could reach out to and question. But this was the next generation of skells. The old-timers, the class of ’86, were mostly gone, dead or in prison. Those few guys still around who had been there back when remembered nothing. Maybe they knew the price of every score they’d made, and they remembered the legendary deals and the disputes and the big-time players. But even Tommy and Mike had to admit that Casso had been smart enough to keep the biggest secret of his career to himself—the identities of the Mafia cops.
Burt Kaplan was going to be the key to convicting the cops. That had become apparent to everyone. Dades, Ponzi, and Vecchione would talk about it a lot. How do we approach him? What can we offer him? What would convince him to flip now when he refused offers years earlier, when he easily could have negotiated his get-out-of-jail-free card? Meanwhile, as is often the case, things they didn’t even know were happening were about to make all the difference.
CHAPTER 9
In Las Vegas, the current investigation was progressing into the past. The Feds were trying to pull off a pretty complicated trick, attempting to find evidence proving that Eppolito and Caracappa were committing crimes in the present that had a connection to criminal acts committed less than ten years earlier. That was the only possible way to create a RICO charge. Eppolito’s subpoenaed telephone records showed that he was in contact with known members of both the Lucchese and Bonanno crime families. And surveillance had videotaped a known Bonanno associate driving a car owned by Eppolito. Most importantly, the DEA’s undercover operative, Steve Corso, the gambling accountant posing as an accountant interested in getting involved in the movie business, had successfully forged a relationship with Eppolito. In fact, Eppolito had even given him an autographed copy of his memoir, Mafia Cop. Eppolito apparently liked to impress Corso by dropping the names of organized crime celebrities. He secretly had been recorded bragging about his “former and current LCN [La Cosa Nostra] connections,” among them Gambino family leader John Gotti. He told the undercover that he was trying to raise money to produce one of his scripts and that he had already received $25,000 from a Bonanno family associate. When asked if he was nervous about taking money from the mob he replied that he “doesn’t give a shit.”
Meanwhile, the DEA was setting several traps for him. Their belief was that Caracappa was tied to him by history and would be forced to go wherever his garrulous partner led. Caracappa wasn’t stupid; he knew that Eppolito’s problems would quickly become his, so he couldn’t afford to let Eppolito freelance. One DEA plan called for Steven Corso to ask Eppolito to launder $75,000 he’d made in drug deals, enabling the government to follow the money. In the second scenario the undercover told Eppolito that several friends—two of them “famous” players who might be willing to invest in a screenplay Eppolito had written entitled Murder in Youngstown—were flying in from Los Angeles for the weekend and wanted to have “a good time.” “These guys,” Corso told Eppolito, “being young, they like to party. And they do things I have no knowledge about. Basically, that’s designer shit, designer drugs…They want me to get them either Ecstasy or speed.”
Eppolito under
stood and replied that he would contact “Guido,” a friend of his son Anthony—the clear implecation being that he could handle that request. Every word was caught on tape.
Weeks later Anthony Eppolito was videotaped selling an ounce of crystal meth to Corso for $900 and guaranteeing the drugs would be good—proudly adding that he was sure of that because the people who supplied them knew it was for a deal involving Louis Eppolito.
The cooperating witness, Corso, captured Eppolito telling his tales on hundreds of hours of tape in meetings that took place all over Vegas, from fashionable Italian restaurants at places like Caesars Palace and the Venetian to their living rooms. During their many conversations, it became clear that Eppolito may have retired from the NYPD, but he still enjoyed playing the tough-guy role. He bragged to Corso about a fight he’d had with a contractor who was late finishing some work for him. The contractor was holding a hatchet. Eppolito took it from him. “I told him, ‘Don’t think I won’t put this through your fucking head, faggot.’ I said, ‘You are nothing but a faggot,’…I said, ‘If you don’t finish this job today or tomorrow,’ I said, ‘I’m gonna personally kill you in front of your friends, then I’m gonna kill your friends.’ And he fixed it. I said, ‘You’re taking kindness for weakness. Don’t do that…If you ever want to push, I will personally kill you, and I’ll do it in front of your mother and father and then I’ll kill them.’ Got to let them know that you’ll kill first…that’s embedded in me.”
