Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business

by Joe Pistone

  Maybe it’s my turn to question Mafia defense attorneys after all that I had to put up with from them. You’ve got to wonder why Eppolito hired Cutler to begin with. Eppolito is fighting accusations that he’s with the Mafia, and he goes out and hires the one lawyer in New York with the loudest and biggest reputation for defending the Mafia. I would say that the personality change that Fran Eppolito saw in her husband after his sit-down with Big Paul Castellano at the White House led him to hire Cutler. Lou Eppolito was now not just talking with his hands, he was thinking with them. The wannabe actor who’d had bit parts in a dozen Mafia movies lost himself in the starring role of a lifetime. It reminds me of the movie that Ronald Colman won the Academy Award for when I was a kid, A Double Life, where he plays a stage actor who loses his own personality in the roles he plays. Come to think of it, an old Hooverite accused me of “going native” in my Mafia role as Donnie Brasco.

  Jury selection in the Mafia Cops Case began on March 6, 2006, almost exactly a year after the sensational news of their arrest. It’s a sad sign of our times that, of the first thirty jurors questioned, five of them were excluded because a close friend or relative had been killed or been a killer.

  The Mafia Cops Case was packed with writers. Eppolito’s book had been reissued by Pocket Star publishers. The two defense lawyers, Eddie Hayes and Bruce Cutler, in addition to having their own Court TV show, each had a book out. Tommy Dades had a book deal with Warner. Investigator William Oldham had signed a contract with Simon and Schuster for a book called, The Brotherhoods: A True Story of Two NYPD Detectives Who Murdered for the Mafia. Nicholas Pileggi, the author of the true crime book, Wiseguy, was writing a fictional account of the Mafia Cops based on the true facts of this case. Jimmy Breslin was in court to take notes for his book on the Mafia Cops. I don’t think any of these writers were disappointed by what they were about to hear.

  Before the trial, defense attorney Eddie Hayes pointed out that investigators Tommy Dades and Bill Oldham, as witnesses, had “a direct financial interest in the conviction.” Hayes later said, “The question is whether the government witnesses told Dades and Oldham what happened, or Dades and Oldham told the government informer what to say so they could sell the story.”

  The U.S. Attorney’s office didn’t need that cross-examination theme to blow a fog of smoke all over the integrity of their case, and so they dropped both Dades and Oldham from the witness list. The prosecutors’ biggest challenge was to remove “baggage” from their star witness, the very tainted Burton Kaplan, by finding corroborating witnesses, not by calling witnesses with their own “baggage.”

  Besides, there was plenty of evidence without Dades’ and Oldham’s testimony. As Dades said before trial, “It’s basically a slam dunk case. Unless they know where Osama bin Laden is, they’re not striking a deal.”

  In his opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Henoch, who ran a tight trial throughout, wasted no words. Henoch knew that the only weakness he had in a case that Tommy Dades also described to the press as “airtight” was the statute of limitations issue. Was the Mafia Cops’ partnership a criminal enterprise that began before the time of Gaspipe and rolled right along through the supermarket meetings with Kaplan in Las Vegas to last year’s Mafia drug money laundering? Henoch told the jury that the government would prove that Lou Eppolito “began seeking bribes in exchange for information as early as the late-seventies.” You’ve got to wonder about that meeting with Big Paul in 1979.

  Mitra Hormozi, the next federal prosecutor to address the jury, moved briskly from crime to crime, from murder to murder, sticking to the facts and the issues. “For years,” she said, Eppolito and Caracappa “armed one Mafia family—and one treacherous man within that family—with the power of the City of New York.” I’ll bet she read his book about that “power surge” Eppolito got from walking and talking like a wiseguy while at the same time kicking ass and taking names like a cop.

  In his opening statement, Bruce Cutler ignored Eddie Hayes’s advice and performed his one-man tribute to a romantic Hollywood vision of the Mafia. Cutler used words and phrases that any Mafia boss would have sanctioned. Cutler bellowed to the jury about our nation’s “moral and spiritual cancer” that had decimated the ranks of men of honor to “a few true believers in the outlaw life.” Cutler mentioned John Gotti by name. Cutler condemned those who “call each other tough guys, goodfellas, until the jail door is shut. Then they wet their pants and call their mommy, the government.” In the 1980s at Fran Eppolito’s kitchen table, if the two godfathers Steve Caracappa and Lou Eppolito had read that in the paper, they would have raised their double espressos and said “Salud!”

  My man Little Al, now 73 and in the Witness Protection Program for fifteen honorable years, was the first witness for the prosecution. Fat Pete Chiodo had been on the witness list but didn’t make the cut. Little Al testified that as acting boss of the Lucchese family he knew that Gaspipe had two NYPD detectives on the payroll, but he didn’t know their names. On cross-examination, Bruce Cutler instigated a shouting match and wanted to know why Little Al hadn’t said anything before now about Gaspipe having two “bulls” on the payroll. “Maybe I have,” Little Al shouted back, “I’ve been around longer than you, you loudmouth.” A little later Little Al told Cutler, “I wouldn’t agree with you on anything.” Providing an insider’s insight into the way of the wiseguy, Little Al, in the personal “baggage” section of his cross-examination, told about one of his own hits. “He got himself killed,” Little Al said, “even though I killed him.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THE MAFIA COPS CONVICTED

  THE GOLDEN MOMENT, the payoff for all the hard work and skillful case preparation, came when Burton Kaplan testified. In hindsight, my guess is that the investigators and prosecutors were not overly concerned with Kaplan being able to hold up under a tough cross by Cutler and Hayes. They knew they had a ton of corroborating witnesses. The investigators had gone out and found several strong “baggage handlers” to handle Kaplan’s “baggage.”

  Before Kaplan took the stand, both Little Al and the 5’ 4” tow truck operator and frightened gravedigger had already given Kaplan a good jolt of credibility. Israel Greenwald’s remains alone should have been enough to handle Kaplan’s “baggage.”

  Kaplan detailed the steady relationship of a $4,000-a-month retainer as payment for information on “wiretaps, phone taps, informants, ongoing investigations, and imminent arrests.” That’s a mouthful. A lot of mayhem could flow from ongoing betrayal like that. But of course, it didn’t stop there. These two godfathers of the kitchen table were hands-on wiseguys. It was “kiss city.”

  Kaplan described how the Mafia Cops helped “kiss” the first three victims, Israel Greenwald, Jimmy Hydell, and the wrong Nicky Guido. These three victims were victims that had been designated for death by Gaspipe and Kaplan.

  Eppolito put the fourth victim on the executioner’s block. This is the one murder that Caracappa was not charged with. On St. Valentine’s Day 1987, Pasquale Varialle, age 26, was gunned down on a sidewalk a stone’s throw from where Israel Greenwald’s remains rested under five feet of concrete. Eppolito had picked up word that Varialle was an informant. Trying to be worthy of his $4,000-a-month, he passed that information to Kaplan who passed it to the “homicidal maniac.”

  Around Columbus Day on October 8, 1987, Otto Heidel, age 30, was changing his tire on E. 35th Street in Brooklyn. Giving a guy a flat tire makes it easier to come up behind him and whack him. Otto was a burglar with the Bypass Gang. Otto was also a secret police informant. Bob Intartaglio’s people had fixed Otto up with a wire. Eppolito learned about it and exposed the fact that Otto was an informant to Kaplan. But that wasn’t good enough. Eppolito provided a cassette tape recording that Otto had secretly made. This proved to Gaspipe that Otto was a wired rat. The hit on Otto took place a month after Eppolito had lost his cousin Junior Santora on a Brooklyn street in a hit, so Eppolito didn’t have to split any of this
money with Junior.

  Shot to death in a garage apartment in Los Angeles on February 4, 1990 was Anthony Dilapi, 53. He was the nephew of Tom Mix Santora. Dilapi is the former Teamsters official and Lucchese soldier who tried to get away from Gaspipe’s “killing frenzy” by disappearing to Los Angeles. Kaplan explained that Eppolito and Caracappa brazenly reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department for help in locating Dilapi. They got his address and passed it to Kaplan. Gaspipe handled it from there.

  In May 1990, the month of the hit on Jim Bishop of the Painters Union investigation, Gaspipe Casso and Vic Amuso went on the lam based on insider information about a pending indictment in the Windows Case. As suspected, the Mafia Cops had provided that leaked information.

  While on the lam Gaspipe kept in contact with Kaplan. On August 30, 1990, Lucchese capo Bruno Facciola, age 54, was tackled in a garage, killed and had a canary stuffed in his mouth by Louie Bagels Daidone, the ex-Indiana State quarterback, future acting boss, and future lifer who was thrown for a loss in 2004 by Little Al and Little Joe and our little friend RICO. As suspected, Eppolito and Caracappa had informed Kaplan that Bruno the capo was an informant.

  By now Caracappa had been transferred to the newly formed Organized Crime Homicide Unit and had easier access to the kinds of information that would earn blood money for their criminal enterprise. The very idea of forming a unit to focus on Mafia hits was revolutionary. For the first ninety years of the twentieth century the NYPD despaired of ever solving a Mafia hit. Not even the victims cooperated with the police. Now there was a unit that specialized in the still enormously difficult job.

  Finally, building up to it by degrees, Eppolito and Caracappa got the chance to feel the mother of all power surges. They actually “kissed” a wiseguy themselves for a fee of $65,000. On November 7, 1990, on the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, they activated the police flashers on what appeared to be a typical unmarked police car. They pulled over the black Mercedes of Eddie Lino, a Gambino capo. They had followed Lino from his social club and had waited for an appropriate spot on the Belt Parkway to get Lino on to the parkway’s berm. Eddie Lino, a cousin of the Bonanno family capo Frank Lino, had been one of John Gotti’s shooters in the hit on Big Paul Castellano and Tommy Bilotti. More importantly to Gaspipe Casso, Eddie Lino was also one of the three shooters who wounded him that Jimmy Hydell had given up.

  Eppolito asked Eddie Lino, “What’s on the floor?” When Eddie Lino turned to look at the floor on the passenger side, Caracappa shot him in the back of the head. At ten o’clock that night Eppolito visited Kaplan in the hospital. Kaplan was recovering from eye surgery. Eppolito announced with pride, “I got good news. We got Eddie Lino.”When Kaplan asked why Caracappa did the shooting and not Eppolito, the son of Fat the Gangster said, “Steve’s a much better shot.” Come on, the skinny Caracappa must have fired six inches from Lino’s head. In fact, Eppolito couldn’t admit that his partner had a personal stake in killing Lino because any personal satisfaction in making the hit might have lowered the price. Caracappa’s revenge had to do with Lino’s hit on Tommy Bilotti. Turns out Caracappa and Bilotti were bosom buddies growing up together on Staten Island. Small world.

  Kaplan testified that “Gaspipe purchased a copy of Lou’s book, which is the source of our problems.”

  Gaspipe making the Mafia Cops from the photo in the book would be easy for a jury to believe. The two crooked cops are individually distinctive in appearance, and unforgettable as partners—the Stick and the former Mr. New York City. These two were on the street together working undercover in reverse for years. A lot of people, like Betty Hydell, had seen them doing a lot of little things that could be trouble for them if they ever got identified, but they couldn’t resist putting their picture in Lou’s book.

  Burton Kaplan testified about his decision to leave his wife and daughter Dolores—grown now and a Criminal Court judge—and go on the lam. He testified about his meetings with the Mafia Cops in a Smith’s supermarket in Las Vegas. Caracappa’s lawyer Eddie Hayes asked Kaplan on cross-examination if Kaplan hadn’t been afraid of the detectives when he met with them. “Believe me,” Kaplan said, “that was on my mind. . . .” Why else was he meeting with them in a supermarket?

  At one point Kaplan told Hayes, “I’m being honest. I’m a criminal.” At the end of the day, outside of court, Eppolito said, “He doesn’t bother me.”

  Next came the rest of the prosecution’s “baggage handlers.”

  A Las Vegas resident testified that he had observed Kaplan and the distinctive-looking Eppolito and Caracappa appearing to be having a meeting and conducting business on two occasions at the Smith’s supermarket. Investigators, if they are extremely lucky, find that kind of witness by wearing out the soles of their shoes.

  An NYPD officer at the Eddie Lino crime scene had found a Pulsar watch with a black face lying near the curb 100 feet from Eddie Lino’s black Mercedes on November 6, 1990. Eddie Lino still had his watch on, and the Belt Parkway is not a place where people dump perfectly good watches. A year before Lino got hit, there had been a promotion at the Major Case Squad and the man promoted, Sgt. Joseph Piraino, had a homemade video of the occasion. Sgt. Piraino came to court with a still photo from that video. It showed Steve Caracappa with a cigarette dangling from his mouth like Humphrey Bogart. On his wrist was a Pulsar watch with a black face.

  Burton Kaplan’s former personal assistant in various legitimate and illegitimate matters, Thomas Galpine, testified that on two occasions he delivered cash to Eppolito. One of those occasions was a trip to either Martinique or St. Marten’s; Galpine wasn’t sure. But he was sure that Eppolito and his wife were on vacation in the Caribbean and Eppolito needed cash. Galpine delivered ten thousand in hundred-dollar bills.

  Galpine testified that Kaplan told him that Eppolito and his partner were on the Lucchese family payroll for information. Kaplan’s old address book was introduced. It had the Mafia Cops’ unlisted phone numbers under the name “Marco.” I hope that using an Italian code name like that wasn’t another instance of an “ugly stereotype.”

  In all, the Mafia Cops had received $375,000 from Gaspipe and Kaplan. Who knows what they got from the Gambino family. Who knows the full extent of what they did for the Gambino family besides supplying Rosario Gambino with a copy of his classified NYPD folder.

  Lou Eppolito had to have been extremely bothered by one particular corroborating witness. Her name was Cabrini Cama. She testified that between 1983 and 1989 she had been Eppolito’s mistress—what the wiseguys call his cumare.“He was a nice guy,” she said. She also said that during their time together Eppolito, Caracappa, and Burton Kaplan used her apartment for meetings where the cops exchanged confidential information for cash. Wife Fran Eppolito sat in the front row and listened to every bit of that. Eppolito was playing every part of that new wiseguy role of his, cumare and all. If I had been technical advisor on the movie version of this story, I’d have advised that the only thing missing to go along with the espressos and the talking with hands was a cumare—until Cabrini the cumare opened her mouth and put closure on her relationship with her ex.

  The most heartwarming corroborating witness, though, was Judd Burstein, a hero who deserves a lot of credit. He had been Kaplan’s lawyer in 1994 when Jerry Capeci broke the news that Gaspipe had turned and had fingered two dirty NYPD detectives. Kaplan waved his attorney-client privilege so that Burstein could testify in this trial about confidential communications between them. Burstein testified that after Kaplan learned the news in 1994, he called Burstein “in a panic. . . . He said, ‘This is a big problem for me. I was the go-between for Gaspipe and these two cops.’”

  Burstein gave a seldom-heard explanation for his motive in contacting the prosecutors and telling them what he remembered Kaplan had said to him just before Kaplan went on the lam ten years earlier. “I thought it was my obligation as a citizen to come forward. This is the right thing to do.”

  It looked like the Mafia Cops we
re about to be buried under five feet of concrete witnesses when Gaspipe reared his ugly head. Gaspipe wrote a letter saying that he had “information favorable to the defense.” Hayes and Cutler demanded a mistrial. Instead, Judge Jack Weinstein gave them an opportunity to talk to Gaspipe on the phone from his prison in Florence, Colorado. If they chose, they would be permitted to call him as a defense witness.

  On the phone, Gaspipe told the lawyers and their clients that he and Kaplan had made the whole thing up about the Mafia Cops. Gaspipe had gotten their names for the Rembrandt (a frame up) from his “real” Crystal Ball, an FBI agent. “Let me tell you something,” Gaspipe told a captive audience, “Burton Kaplan is saying on the stand what I want him to say on the stand. I was supposed to be part of this.” Gaspipe said that he and a couple of Lucchese soldiers had done the Eddie Lino hit. The Mafia Cops never gave any information to him and he never gave them any money. Any inside tips he ever got he got from a rogue federal agent, and that agent wanted these cops framed. The Mafia Cops did not deliver Jimmy Hydell to him at a Toys ‘R’ Us parking lot or anywhere else. They were not involved in the hit on Israel Greenwald; Burton Kaplan had done that hit.

  Gaspipe explained that his late wife Lillian, and Kaplan’s wife Eleanor, coordinated the details and carried messages between the men during inmate visits. “My wife convinced him that this will work. I told Kaplan if we bring this case to the government we’ll both get our freedom.”

  “Anthony, this is Lou Eppolito, thank you very much.” At least Lou Eppolito had learned enough over the years not to call Gaspipe “Godfather.”