Ex-Mob Boss Points A Finger

Correspondent Ed Bradley reports on the story of two New York City police officers who stand accused of moonlighting as hit men for the Mafia.

Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two highly decorated former detectives, were indicted last month for the murders of eight people on the orders of a vicious mob boss, who is now in jail.

That mobster is Anthony (Gaspipe) Casso. He told 60 Minutes about his extraordinary relationship with the two cops in the only interview he has ever given.

Bradley spoke to Casso in 1998, in prison, where he began serving a life sentence after admitting to 36 murders. Casso said Eppolito and Caracappa helped him commit eight of those murders.

Casso's claims couldn't be substantiated at the time, so 60 Minutes couldn't air them until now - now that the detectives have been indicted. Prosecutors say for a hefty salary, Eppolito and Caracappa would walk right up to Casso's enemies, trick them into believing they were under arrest, and instead kidnap and deliver them to Casso to be executed.

That's exactly what Casso told 60 Minutes the detectives did to a young hood named Jimmy Hydell, whom he believed had tried to kill him.

"Louis and Steve went by a club where the kid was staying, make believe they were going to arrest him. They put him in the car. I used to have cars for them. I gave them a car. Like a police car. An unmarked car. I gave them a car. They put him in the car," says Casso.

"The kid thought they were taking him to the station house. But they took him to a garage. When they got to the garage, they laid him on the floor. They tied his feet, his hands cuffed, put him in the trunk of the car. The police car comes in, the guy's kicking in the trunk. He's making noise. I took him to a place that I have pre-arranged. You know, somebody's house that I could use. ... Sat him down. I wanted to know why I was shot, and who else was involved. And who, you know, gave the orders to shoot me."

After that, Casso says, he killed Hydell himself. "I didn't shoot him in the head. That was somebody's house. You make a mess," says Casso. "No, I shot him a couple of times. I didn't torture the kid. I didn't do anything like that."

"What's a couple?" asks Bradley.

"More than a couple. Really, I don't know the exact amount. Maybe I shot him 10 times, 12 times," says Casso. "At that time, I gave Louis and Steve, I think, $45,000 for delivering him to me."

"These are two cops," says Bradley. "You gave them a bonus for delivering someone to you, you killed?""Right," says Casso. "Well, they wanted to kill for me. I didn't even have to do it. They were gonna get him, kill him and do whatever I wanted to do with him."

What's more, prosecutors say, Casso used the two cops to commit a range of dirty deeds: They allegedly tapped into the NYPD database and funneled confidential police information to him (including wiretaps and police surveillance) containing addresses and other key details about Casso's enemies.

One by one, prosecutors say, Casso had them killed, with a little help from his two friends at the NYPD. Casso's allegations have stunned even the most hardened lawmen who worked on the case, like Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.

"I was shocked, 'cause for all of the experience I've had over the years with police corruption cases, I've never had anything like this," says Hynes. "I've seen organized corruption cases, but the allegation of two cops being hit men, in addition to giving up people for hits, is just absolutely shocking."

And it was all the more shocking given that the detectives have received hundreds of commendations for bravery and excellence in the line of duty. Eppolito is among the most decorated cops in NYPD history. This is amazing, considering that his father, known as "Fat the Gangster," was a mob enforcer, and his uncle, "Jimmy the Clam," was a Mafia captain.

In the end, the federal prosecutor who indicted Eppolito says, he couldn't resist the murderous life of the mob.

"It's an obscenity, that kind of allegation. It's scurrilous. It's not true. This is me speaking. I'm Lou's lawyer," says Bruce Cutler, who became famous representing mobster John Gotti. He's now defending Eppolito against charges that he worked for "Gaspipe" Casso.

"Why would somebody who went up the ladder in the police department, received award for bravery above and beyond the call of duty, why would you besmirch and tarnish everything you stand for, to do the bidding of a reprobate like Casso?" asks Cutler.

"If your client is innocent of all of the charges, why, out of all of the officers in the New York City police department, did Anthony Casso choose him to say this about?" says Bradley.

"I can't give you the motive," says Cutler. "I never could. I never will. I never could understand it and I've tried so many federal cases where witnesses like Casso, who want to get out from under blame others. And especially if it's sexy, if it's appealing, and when you shake the police department like that it becomes a front-page case."

Eppolito made front-page news for the first time back in 1984, in a case unrelated to Casso. He was charged with passing police files to another mobster under investigation.

Eppolito was eventually cleared, but felt betrayed by the police department for suspecting him in the first place -- and he said so publicly. "I worked my ass off... for the city of New York and all I got was, 'You're Italian and you have family members that were in organized crime.'"Eppolito appeared in a 1985 documentary about anger. He had answered a filmmaker's ad in a local newspaper seeking people who were having difficulty controlling their anger.

In the documentary, he recalls what he said to his bosses when, while under investigation, they called him in and made him surrender his badge: "I said, 'If you keep insisting on f---ing with me,' I said, 'I'm gonna give you a beating. And your mother's gonna throw up when I show her your picture.' I said, 'I'm not b---s----ing you. Don't try to goad me any more than you're doing, because the four guys with you, you gotta realize, by the time they get up – I'm gonna break your nose and take your teeth out with one shot.' And the anger started to come."

A year after he gave this interview, prosecutors say Eppolito committed his first murder for Casso, and kept on killing well after he retired in 1990. He later wrote his autobiography called, "Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was The Mob."

He also built a new career for himself as an actor. In "Goodfellas," he played, of all things, a mobster. He appeared in more than a dozen films, including one he wrote himself, in which he portrayed a corrupt union boss who crossed the Mafia.

But in real life, prosecutors say it was Eppolito and his former partner, Stephen Caracappa, who were doing the killing. They say that for some extra cash, the detectives actually went so far as to pull the trigger themselves.

Casso told Bradley the two cops brazenly murdered a crime family associate named Eddie Lino after forcing him off a New York City highway.

"I gave them $75,000. They killed him, like cowboy style. They pulled alongside of him. They shot him. They made him crash into the fence alongside the belt parkway on the service road. Right," says Casso. "Then Steve got out of the car, ran across the street and finished shooting him. Finished killing him in the car. Then they got back and they went away."

"Nobody in their right mind would go into any kind of activity with Casso, because he was a raving, screaming lunatic," says Ed Hayes, who insists his client, Stephen Caracappa, never committed a single crime for Casso – much less a murder along a crowded highway.

"I can't imagine a riskier thing to do. It's the Belt Parkway. At a time when it's very busy. It's not as if -- there's not gonna be people going by. And very likely police cars," says Hayes. "So it seems like almost a movie version of a crime. It's something that you kind of you can see Casso making up."

"But someone did it," says Bradley. "And they're saying that your guy did it."

"That's right," says Hayes. They're saying that he did it. My guy says he didn't. Nobody would take Casso's word for anything."

Prosecutors say Casso has in fact lied as a federal witness in past cases. But in this case, they believe the stories he told 60 Minutes about Eppolito and Caracappa.

For years though, prosecutors couldn't corroborate his allegations, until an ex–cop named Tommy Dades helped break the case wide open.

After receiving a tip, Det. Dades came out of retirement as a boxing coach, and went to work in the offices of the Brooklyn district attorney, digging through old Mafia case files.

"I would go over as much information, to try and come up with a mistake that they made here, a mistake that they made there," says Dades. "There was a moment that got me very excited, that I knew I was on the right track."

Dades discovered that Caracappa, who worked in the organized crime unit, had run a search on the police department computer and got an address for a man named Nicky Guido. Guido was one of the people Casso thought was part of the team sent to assassinate him. A month later, at that very same address, Guido was gunned down.

"I remember my mom calling me screaming on the phone, 'Louise! They killed Nicky!' She said, 'They shot Nicky. They put nine bullets in him and he's dead,'" says Guido's cousin, Louise Carbonaro. "We couldn't believe it, knowing Nicky. But then there were the questions. Did he lead [a] double life, you know?"

The truth is, he did not lead a double life. Prosecutors say Caracappa mistakenly gave Casso the address for the wrong Nicky Guido, and led Casso to kill an innocent man.

"You know, they glorify organized crime in these movies and all. And they always say, 'Well, they just kill each other. Innocent people don't die.' I'm sorry, innocent people do die. They made a mistake and they hit my cousin by mistake," says Carbonaro. "A senseless killing."

Bradley talked to Hayes about the incident: "The appearance here is that your client runs the name Nicky Guido through the police department computer. And then within a month, Nicky Guido gets nine bullets to his body."

"Yes," says Hayes. "But Caracappa would have been in the perfect position to find out if he was the right Nicky Guido or the wrong Nicky Guido. That's not a mistake that Caracappa could have made."

"There's an argument that maybe they were just sloppy," says Bradley.

"Yes, I agree with that," says Hayes. "But in this country, you don't convict on an argument. You have to have proof beyond a reasonable doubt."

Federal prosecutors say they can meet that burden, and now claim to have several witnesses with direct knowledge that Caracappa and Eppolito were hit men.

Tommy Dades, like many other law enforcement officials, is still trying to comprehend the allegation that two highly decorated police officers crossed so far over the thin blue line.

"You raise your right hand when you swear into the police academy. And, you know, you're there to uphold the law, and to do the right thing," says Dades.

"And to actually go out and murder somebody, and then go back to work. You know, it takes a certain type of individual to go to sleep at night after that, and they were probably never cops. They were just criminals that slipped through the system and obtained shields, you know?"

Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa are in jail awaiting trial. If convicted, they each face life in prison.