CHAPTER TEN: EAGLE ON THE LAM
The tourist destination of Ensenada, Mexico, a coastal city on the Baja Peninsula, describes itself as La Bella Cenicienta del Pacifico, or the Cinderella of the Pacific. Every day the city was visited by cruise ships with thousands of American passengers wandering the seaside promenade and markets. Here was the perfect hideout for an aging New York gangster on the run. For Kaplan, the sunburned senior citizens in floppy hats and shorts provided an excellent backdrop. Located only an hour and a half south of San Diego, Ensenada was ideal: remote and close, anonymous and populated, the kind of place that was so obvious law enforcement might never find him if they came looking.
Four months passed. By the summer of 1994, there was no more word from New York about indictments. Tommy Galpine, Kaplan's assistant in New York, took care of the thriving marijuana business. Stuck in the seaport city, Kaplan began to long for a life in America. A contact in Oregon told Kaplan he would rent him a furnished apartment there. Arrangements would take a little time, Kaplan's friend said. Over the July 4th weekend of 1994, Kaplan reentered the United States. Going back to live in the United States meant constructing a new identity, which required new identification. Kaplan obtained a library card and reinvented himself as "Barry Mayers." After that, one "Barry Mayers" also obtained a Costco card. Next, an American Automobile Association card was obtained. Kaplan then went to the department of motor vehicles and applied for a non-driving identification card. He didn't want or need a driver's license. There was no reason to risk going through the added burden of submitting to the process of getting a license, especially the vision test.
"Presto, from next to nothing, 'Barry Mayers' was summoned into existence. Kaplan had the ID. With an address and three photo identifications, no matter how tenuous or dubious, he was able to parlay nothing into a new life. He could get on airplanes, open a bank account, get back into business. Kaplan's Oregon photo identification as Barry Mayers was a piece of plastic with a photograph of an average-looking man in his sixties wearing oversized glasses. For decades Kaplan had sold counterfeit items -- clothes, financial securities, whatever and whenever. For Kaplan, identity was just another fungible item. Kaplan could fence anything, and so he fenced himself back into society. As far as the FBI knew, Kaplan was hiding someplace in central China. If he wanted to, he had disappeared forever."
Nearly a year passed and there was still no word from New York about an indictment of Caracappa and Eppolito. Kaplan lived quietly in Oregon. Once a month he traveled to Las Vegas to gamble. He had stopped gambling for many years but with the vast sums rolling in from his pot business and the pressures of the fugitive life he had sought release in betting again. During this time he met and became involved with an attractive younger woman named Diane Pippa. On one of his trips, Kaplan asked Pippa to do him a favor. He wanted to look a name up in the phone book. Kaplan's eyesight was so poor that he needed her to get out the white pages and find the entry for him. "Louis Eppolito," he told her, spelling out the name. It was a long shot. Kaplan knew that Eppolito had moved to Nevada after he retired from the NYPD. Just before Eppolito left New York, in 1991, Eppolito had come by Kaplan's house in a big white van to say goodbye. Eppolito had said he was going to drive cross-country with his collection of snakes and his wife, Fran. Kaplan had felt extremely awkward at the time, as well as alarmed at Eppolito's foolhardy lack of caution -- a gangster like Kaplan and a high-profile cop like Eppolito could easily be seen by prying eyes.
To Kaplan's surprise, Pippa found Eppolito's number in the book. He asked her to call Eppolito. Kaplan thought there was a possibility the federal government would be monitoring Eppolito's line and he didn't want his voice to be recorded on a wire. Eppolito's mother-in-law answered. She said Eppolito would be back at six-thirty that evening. Pippa called again and reached him. An arrangement was made to meet the next day at one o'clock at Smith's Food and Drug, just off the strip and around the corner from Tropicana Avenue. Kaplan waited for Eppolito near the row of slot machines inside the entrance to the supermarket. Eppolito pulled up in the parking lot and the two men made eye contact. Each got a shopping cart and went to the fruit section. They hadn't seen each other in years, and it was the first time they had talked since Casso had flipped and the story of their conspiracy leaked to the press.
"How are things going?" Kaplan asked. "You getting any heat? You getting any pressure?"
"In the beginning the press was awful," Eppolito said. "It's much better now. I hired an attorney."
"Who?"
"Bruce Cutler," Eppolito said.
"You made a good choice," Kaplan said.
"Steve hired a lawyer too. Eddie Hayes."
"I don't know him," Kaplan said.
"He's well known by the NYPD," Eppolito said.
When Eppolito moved to Las Vegas three years earlier, he had high hopes of finding fame and fortune. He told Kaplan he was going to live in a rented house while he built a house for himself. The price of houses in Los Angeles was prohibitively high, Eppolito explained, so he would settle in the relative proximity of Las Vegas and commute to Hollywood for auditions. Years earlier Eppolito had played a nonspeaking part in Goodfellas. Since then he had scraped by getting tiny roles in a series of films playing cops, mobsters, assassins, drug dealers. In Robert De Niro and Sean Penn's State of Grace he was credited as "Borielli's Man." In Predator 2 Eppolito was described only as a "patrolman." In Blake Edwards's Switch he was "AI the Guard." With Ruby, Mad Dog and Glory, and Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway, Eppolito's film career put him on the sets of some of the most successful filmmakers in the country. But Eppolito never rose above the tiniest parts, little more than an extra. Now Eppolito told Kaplan what small success he had enjoyed in movies had petered out. Eppolito told Kaplan he was writing another book. Eppolito didn't say if it was fact or fiction.
Kaplan returned to Oregon. A few weeks later he came back to Las Vegas to see his girlfriend, Diane Pippa. Again, Kaplan and Eppolito set the rendezvous at Smith's Food and Drug. On this occasion, Eppolito told Kaplan that Stephen Caracappa was moving to Las Vegas. Weeks later, in November 1994, Kaplan met with the two former NYPD detectives at Smith's market. This time they went to a nearby diner for lunch. The three had sandwiches and coffee together. Kaplan was curious how Caracappa, now shopping for a house in Vegas, had coped with the pressures in New York in the time after Casso became a cooperator. The press coverage had been extensive, though the media had moved on from Caracappa and Eppolito after no action was taken by the authorities.
"Did you have a lot of problems over the publicity?" Kaplan asked.
"It was bad at first," Caracappa said. "It was hard on my mother. The only real problem I had was that my mother had to go through that."
Kaplan commiserated with Caracappa. His wife, Eleanor, had suffered for years as a result of his criminal activities.
"The worst of it is pretty much over," Caracappa said. "I've got Eddie Hayes as my lawyer."
"What about your friends in the force? How did they take the publicity?"
"Whoever was my friend stayed my friend," said Caracappa.
Caracappa told Kaplan that he had an alibi witness for the night Eddie Lino was shot and killed in November 1991. Caracappa said his wife, Monica, was friendly with a woman named Kathy Levine, who worked with Joan Rivers as an on air-personality selling goods on the QVC channel. Levine, a former high school Spanish teacher turned television shopping personality hawking everything from chintz jewelry to computer software, was the author of the books It's Better to Laugh: Life, Good Luck, Bad Hair Days, and QVC, and We Should Be So Lucky: Love, Sex, Food, and Fun After Forty From the Diva of QVC. Levine's on-air catchphrase was "Do it, try it, buy it, riot!" Caracappa told Kaplan that Levine was convinced she'd eaten dinner in Manhattan with the Caracappas on the night Lino was killed. Levine had mixed up the dates, Caracappa told Kaplan, but provided him with a "celebrity" out, if the allegations Casso made against them ever came to trial.
As always, Eppolito had money woes. He had by then purchased a new house in Las Vegas, and construction was under way, but he had found another deal in another suburb that would provide him with grand living circumstances for a lesser sum. The second house on Silver Bear Way was Eppolito's dream house, with romanesque columns in front, a pool in back, and a spacious layout befitting a man of his accomplishments. The problem was that Eppolito had committed to the first house and all his money was tied up in the down payment.
"Listen, 1need a big favor," Eppolito said. "I want to get into another house but the builder isn't going to give me my down payment back until he sells the house. Can you get a shylock for me and borrow seventy-five thousand?" he asked Kaplan.
"Louie, you got to be crazy," Kaplan said.
"I'll pay a point," Eppolito said.
"How can you afford to pay seven hundred and fifty dollars a week?" Kaplan asked.
The prospect made Kaplan uneasy. That amount of "juice" -- 52 percent annual interest-was ruinous for an extended period. Eppolito was extravagant, in his tastes and ambitions. The last thing Kaplan wanted was Eppolito broke, desperate, and vulnerable. He needed the weak link in their chain to hold. Kaplan offered to do Eppolito a favor. In the marijuana business, it was common for Kaplan to need a ready source of financing for large transactions. The weight he dealt in ran to tons, and the sums of cash needed were millions. He had access to large sums of money on short notice from his partners in the pot trade. The money was provided to Kaplan interest-free, as a way of facilitating the marijuana transactions. Kaplan suggested that he would borrow $75,000 for Eppolito.
"Keeping Eppolito financially afloat had been a problem since Kaplan first met the lardy detective from the Six-Three. Kaplan had tried to talk to Eppolito about his profligate ways over the years. Eppolito's need for money was insatiable -- the guns and reptiles and dreams of Hollywood fame and fortune. Kaplan asked Caracappa if Louie had a drug abuse issue? Eppolito had been pulling in a detective's salary. It should have been plenty for a man who knew how to live within his means -- which Eppolito did not.
While Kaplan had been hiding out and awaiting the outcome of Casso's cooperation, his marijuana business continued to thrive. Tommy Galpine, Kaplan's former errand boy who had risen to be a partner, operated the enterprise. Galpine had provided Kaplan's wife with $100,000 drawn from the drug money. He had traveled to Ensenada, in Mexico, twice to see Kaplan. While Kaplan lived in Oregon and then set up in Vegas, large amounts of cash from the pot distribution network had been forwarded to him, or delivered in person by Galpine. Kaplan suggested to Eppolito that he might be able to use the money obtained from dealing drugs to help finance his new house.
"I got a guy in my marijuana business who trusts me with a lot of money. I'll ask him if I can juggle the seventy-five grand. That way it won't cost you nothing. You won't have to pay the juice. It'll take me a few days. I got to reach out to Tommy back in New York and see."
"It'll only be for a few months," Eppolito said. "Until the builder sells the house and I get my down payment back."
By the end of 1994, Kaplan had permanently relocated to Las Vegas. He rented a furnished house in Paradise Valley, or Paradise as it was known locally, in the southeast section of the city between the Strip and McCarran Airport. He and his lover, Diane Pippa, opened a retail store selling women's suits in partnership with a couple Kaplan knew from the garment business in New York. Nothing was in Kaplan's name in the business. His partners owned the entire operation on paper. Kaplan had connections in New York who could supply him decent-quality business attire for female executives working in the casinos looking for sharp prices. "A good suit for a good value," was Kaplan's motto.
In fact, while Kaplan was on the lam he maintained steady contact with many of his closest associates in New York. Among them was Sammy Kaplan, a man unrelated to him who had served time with Kaplan in Allenwood in the early eighties. When Burt Kaplan arrived in Las Vegas, Sammy Kaplan had recommended he contact a friend of his named William Schaefer, a native of Brighton Beach. Sammy said Schaefer might be able to help Kaplan with running errands and driving. Kaplan's eyesight had deteriorated over time. In Las Vegas, it was essential to have a car, and Kaplan needed someone to drive him to and from meetings and work, as well as assist him in running errands. William Schaefer was meek and compliant, a retired food supervisor at an Air Force base who had spare time. His wife also started to work for Kaplan in the burgeoning women's suit business.
That November Kaplan met with Eppolito to lend him the money for the bridge loan on the new house as promised. Kaplan's lover, Diane, called Eppolito and told him to meet Kaplan at Caesar's Palace. Kaplan had received $75,000 from Galpine. The money had been delivered in a box wrapped as if it were a Christmas present. It was packed in the usual manner: $100 notes, the bills secured with a rubber band and stuffed in white envelopes, $5,000 in each envelope. At the casino, Kaplan gave Eppolito $65,000 and kept $10,000 for himself, for a bet on Super Bowl XXIX.
Kaplan explained to Eppolito that it was less than expected, but all that he could spare at the moment. Eppolito was pleased to receive the money. "Please, Louie," Kaplan pleaded. "I could have gotten you the money and said it was seven hundred and fifty a week. But I'm trying to keep you out of trouble. Please pay it back as soon as you can."
"You saved my life with this," Eppolito told Kaplan. "I really appreciate it. The minute I get the money back I'm going to give it to you."
The San Francisco 4gers beat the San Diego Chargers 49-26. Kaplan had backed the winner.
The following March, Caracappa left his job at the 14th Street BID in Manhattan and relocated to Las Vegas with his wife, Monica. The couple bought a house on Silver Bear Way, directly across the street from Louis and Fran Eppolito. Casso's cooperation had not resulted in charges, but Caracappa put himself in a position to keep an eye on Eppolito.
Kaplan was prospering as Barry Mayers. Constantly scouting for moneymaking schemes, he came across a business idea to manufacture and market an exercise device to mimic the workout of hitting a punching bag. The gimmick consisted of a balloon with a heavy rubber band around it. Together they formed a punching target that bounced back no matter at which angle it was struck. The product had been designed by a famous Las Vegas boxing judge who was friends with the Schaefers, the older couple working as Kaplan's bookkeeper and driver. Negotiations had begun with George Foreman to have the former heavyweight boxing champion, and promoter of the extremely successful George Foreman Grill, endorse the boxing balloon. Kaplan knew that Caracappa's wife was connected to the shopping network QVC through a friend. Kaplan reasoned that Foreman could do on-air spots for the device. Kaplan and Caracappa still saw each other from time to time. Kaplan asked Caracappa if he might be able to arrange a meeting with the people in charge of QVC. If QVC decided to sell the product on-air, the minimum order would be 100,000 units. Caracappa and Kaplan went to two meetings but the idea failed to come to fruition.
The months rolled on. The clouds hovering over the heads of Kaplan, Caracappa, and Eppolito seemed to have parted. The three men were constructing new lives under the desert sun, ready to go into business together as the opportunity arose. Back in New York, despite the universal expectation that there would be a sophisticated and comprehensive investigation of Gaspipe Casso's revelations, nothing came of it. The gambit of attorneys Bruce Cutler and Eddie Hayes to confront Charles Rose and the federal government and demand charges be laid appeared to have worked. "To my amazement, Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito skated. Hanging tough worked. The two detectives had settled into their new lives in their cul-de-sac in their gated community. Kaplan was thriving. The only ones suffering were Gaspipe Casso and the families of the victims."
MISERY, HEROIN, LOBSTERS
By the spring of 1996, Anthony Casso was housed in a witness protection unit in the Otisville Federal Correctional Facility in upstate New York. The segregated section in the center of the prison was filled with more than one hundred inmates who had to be kept apart from the general population. "Cooperators, according to the code of prisoners, betrayed the most basic tenet of criminality. Talking to the government made them universal targets for criminals of every stripe. 'Snitch jail' was another name for the witness protection units that constituted prisons-within-prisons."
That spring, federal prosecutors were finally confronting Vincent Chin Gigante and attempting to prove that he was competent to stand trial. [1] With the "crystal ball" case stalled, testifying against Chin Gigante was going to be Casso's ticket out of prison. During his debriefing, Casso had told Charles Rose and Greg O'Connell about his dealings with the Chin. Gigante was running the Genovese family, Casso said. Christy Tick Furnari, John Gotti, Gaspipe Casso, dozens of senior mobsters were dumbfounded or angered by Gigante's behavior -- but there was no question it was an act. "Casso described meetings Gigante held in an Italian restaurant on East 4th Street on the Lower East Side. That was where Gigante settled disputes about chopping up the proceeds from the windows scams, demanded repayment of stolen money, and enforced mafia punishment, including putting out the hits of John Gotti and Frank DeCicco -- which were given to Casso and his partner Vic Amuso. According to Casso, Gigante wasn't just sane, he was a cagey con man who insulated himself from his family solely to frustrate prosecutors. The act had worked for years. During his proffer, Casso gave Charles Rose a long list of people who knew Gigante was faking it. Casso was expecting to be used by the government as a witness against Gigante in the hearings about mental competency that spring."
Colombo captain Big Sal Miciotta had also been shipped to the witness protection unit inside Otisville. For two years, Miciotta had been preparing and giving testimony against his former fellow mobsters. The trials had not gone well. Miciotta was an expert on the inner workings of the mafia, able to explain arcane practices and describe the true underlying culture of the mob. Money, Miciotta knew, was always at the root of all mafia matters. But on the stand, Miciotta downplayed his own role in the murders in which he had participated. In the hope of receiving a lesser sentence, Miciotta misguidedly portrayed himself as less of a criminal than he truly was.
"Committing the indiscretions on the stand meant tearing up my plea agreement," Miciotta recalled. "And rightfully so. I knew I had it coming, but that only made it worse. After a lifetime of lying I could not believe that investigators and prosecutors actually wanted the truth. No one told the truth, as far as I knew. Everything was a con -- everything on every level. The same had to be true as a cooperator. I didn't tell the whole truth about the money I had stashed away. I hedged on the shylock money I had on the street. I held back another guy's involvement in a marijuana deal. I was involved in a phony car accident I didn't tell the prosecutors about. When I started to cooperate I was hoping for a suspended sentence. No jail time. I was in the best possible situation. I started cooperating before I was charged with anything. But once things went wrong it snowballed. One lie leads to ten lies. Instead of starting a new life on the outside, I got fourteen years. I was at rock bottom when I got to Otisville that spring."
Anthony Casso had yet to testify in any trials. For cooperators, sentencing occurred after cooperation was complete. The Gigante trial was slated to start that spring. Casso and Miciotta were two of the few made men in the Otisville witness security unit. The unit was set up like a dormitory, with a large common area and two levels of cells. There were no windows, to avoid any contact with the general population. There were a number of fringe players, wannabes from Brooklyn and Staten Island who had become cooperators, but for the most part the section was now filled with cooperators from Latino and black gangs. Before he was allowed to enter the unit, Miciotta was put through a battery of tests by the FBI to ensure he would not hurt another prisoner or resort to violence. After a month, he was sent to Otisville. There he saw Casso, whom he knew from the 19th Hole. Casso greeted Miciotta warmly.
"In the beginning, Anthony was nice to me," Miciotta recalled. "He was able to get food in and he hooked me up with some pasta. I was thankful for it. The truth was that I never really liked him, and I don't think he liked me. But we were respectful of one another. Anthony was the same inside as he was on the street -- off the wall. He said he was going to testify against the Chin. He thought he had a 'get out of jail free' card."
Miciotta settled in well. Intelligent and literate, compared with other inhabitants, Big Sal was assigned to work in the unit's law library. One of his jobs was to get the local newspapers each day and disperse them throughout the unit. Each man got half an hour with the paper. Miciotta quickly discovered that Casso had turned the witness security unit into his miniature empire. Still wealthy and able to bend others to his will, Casso had struck an arrangement with the woman who worked as secretary for the unit. She was pretty, curvy, a single mother, and a native of Puerto Rico. Casso took excellent care of her. She provided him with vodka, steaks, lobsters. When Casso received packages from the outside she would bring them into the unit. Cigars were in the packages, but the tobacco had been hollowed out and replaced by heroin and cocaine.
"Anthony had anything he wanted," Big Sal remembered. "He was ordering guys around like he was still in the street and he was still the boss. There was one Luchese guy from the New Jersey faction in the unit. Joe Marino was his name. Anthony was nasty to him. Anthony had no concept that he was in jail. There is no boss in jail. There is no more cosa nostra. No one cares who is consigliere. They don't know from that stuff. Inside, the boss is the guy who can hit the hardest. John Gotti went to jail and a black guy broke his ass. Joe Marino was a guy that worked out every day. He was in fucking super shape. Casso was a little guy. Joe would have took him apart. It would have been like throwing a fucking pork chop into a lion's den. I told Joe it wasn't worth it to take on Casso. It would only fuck up the amount of time Joe had to do, and keep him away from his family."
Miciotta was providing information on an ongoing basis to the federal prosecutors and FBI agents concentrating on cases against the Colombo family. During a debriefing session, an agent asked Miciotta about Casso. "The agent asked me, 'How's Casso doing in there?' I said that Anthony was always crazy but we weren't at odds with one another. The agent said, 'I don't think he's going to be too happy. They're not going to use him for the upcoming Chin Gigante trial.' I said, 'That's terrible.' They said, 'The psychological testing came back from the government doctors, and they marked him as a lunatic. He lied on a couple of occasions. He misled us. We aren't going to put him on the stand against Chin and weaken the case by having him cross-examined.' The government had Al D' Arco, Pete Savino, Phil Leonetti from Philly, Sammy Gravano. They had a good case.
"I left the meeting feeling I really should tell Anthony. I pondered it for a day or two. I didn't have any ulterior motive. I wasn't going to get nothing out of this. But I figured the guy should know what was going on. His hopes were high. He thought he was going get Sammy the Bull's deal. I didn't think it was right for me to not tell him. I felt guilty. It burns you not to tell somebody something like that. I went to his room. I told him what they said to me. I said they probably aren't going to use you in the Gigante case. 1 didn't tell him the reasons. 1 didn't say you're a lying lunatic. He went off like a nut job, yelling and screaming."
"They wouldn't tell you something like that," Casso shouted.
''I'm only telling you to be a nice guy," Miciotta told Casso.
"You're crazy," Casso said to Miciotta. "You don't know what you're talking about. You're full of shit. 1know more about this than you do."
''I'm just trying to help you," Big Sal said.
"1 don't need your fucking help," Casso screamed. "We're not friends no more. 1don't want to talk to you no more."
"You better check it out," Miciotta said. "You better call your sponsor -- call Charlie Rose -- and see what he says. Don't tell Rose 1 told you because 1wasn't supposed to say nothing."
Miciotta walked out. Big Sal was a mountain of a man -- six-one, three hundred and fifty pounds. Casso was five-nine, two hundred pounds, fattened by all the food he was eating. Miciotta was used to physically intimidating everyone he came in contact with, in prison and on the street. Casso represented no threat to Big Sal, he thought, as long as Casso didn't have a weapon smuggled in to the unit. The next day, Casso came to the law clerk's office, where Miciotta worked. Casso said he wanted to read the New York Times. The paper contained an article about the impending competency trial of Chin Gigante. It was the hearing Casso hoped to testify in. "Anthony was mad with me because 1 gave him the news he wasn't going to be used. He was going ballistic. He was shooting the messenger -- and that was me."
"Where's the fucking Times?" Casso demanded from Miciotta.
"Dude, take it easy," Miciotta said. "The black guy from Florida, James, has it. As soon as he's done and he brings it down to me I'll give it to you."
"Get it for me," Casso said to Miciotta. "1 don't want to have to wait for a fucking nigger."
"Anthony, we're not in Canarsie now," Miciotta said. "We're in jail. This guy has got the paper. I'm not going to go up and tell him 1want the paper to give to you. You want the paper, you tell the guy."
James was serving four life sentences for murder. He was not a second-class citizen to anyone in the unit, including Casso. There was no chance he would give up the newspaper until he was finished with it. Casso was too frightened to confront James. That night Miciotta showered. He pulled on a pair of shorts, a T-shirt, and slippers, and took a seat in the common area of the unit. Friends of his were playing cards at a table nearby. One of his pals, a member of the other faction in the Colombo wars, had warned him that Casso was mouthing off about getting even with Miciotta. Sal opened the newspaper and started to read when he felt a blow to the head. "Casso had something wrapped up in a magazine. He was hitting me on the head with it. I got up and went towards him. I said, 'What are you doing, cocksucker?' He started to back away. He had the face of fear. I nailed him with a left hook. I caught him good. He hit the floor. I kept kicking him and slapping him. I was yelling at him, 'You piece of shit. You're a coward, you sneak.' He was bleeding from the side of his head. He had a gang inside -- eight guys answered to him. They got in the middle and stopped me. They took him to the library."
"Casso was semiconscious. He sent a guy to my room to say he wanted to talk to me in the library. I said, 'Get the fuck out of here.' I just kicked his ass. Now he wants to talk like a tough guy again? On the street, if you raise your hands on another made guy, it's an unwritten rule that it's your life on the line. Inside there was no punitive structure. We were both rats. All the fight meant was he had to look out for me, and I had to look out for him. I put a metal cabinet in front of the door to my room. I figured him and his friends would come after me, rush the door all at once. Maybe he had a knife, because he wasn't really willing to fight. This way, at least they can only come one at a time. I could defend myself.
"Half an hour later, the prison cops knock on the door. They handcuff me and take me to the hole. I couldn't believe it. Casso starts the fight and I get arrested. Casso snitched on me. I saw the written report, signed by him. What a tough guy. His guys upstairs blocked the heat to my cell. It was winter and it was freezing in Otisville. I had one blanket. They were trying to get me sick. Three days later, they put Casso in the hole. That's when I decided to get even with him. I was scared he would poison my food. He had connections with the correctional officers and he had that secretary. I reached out for my U.S. attorney. I told him the whole story. I told him about all the contraband being brought in to the unit. I laid it all out."
The prosecutor contacted the inspector general's office and an investigation of the witness security unit was launched. The Bureau of Prisons corrections officers in the unit got wind of the inquiries being made. They told Casso that Miciotta had informed on the activities inside the unit. "Now I was in really big trouble. I was a snitch inside snitch jail. The cops hated me because I was giving up cops. The prisoners who were getting in trouble wanted to get me. It was bad -- fucking bad. They were freezing me in my cell. His crew would come by my cell and threaten to kill me. They said Anthony knew where my family was. Then one day I went to take a shower. As I come out of the shower, with my hands cuffed behind my back, the cop on duty unlocked the gym and let Casso into the hallway with me. He was carrying a weapon -- a heavy brush. He corked me from behind. My feet were wet and I fell. I started kicking at him. He ran away. I was bleeding from my head. They took me to the medical department and asked me what happened. I told them a cop let Casso get at me."
A lightning raid was launched at four 0'clock in the morning. All the cells were emptied. The unit secretary was locked in her office. The guards were locked in another room. The rooms were searched one by one. Contraband was rife. Cocaine, marijuana, heroin, alcohol, cigars, imported olive oil, cell phones were piled in the middle of the main room. The corruption was disclosed precisely as Miciotta described it. Casso made threats against Miciotta. Casso swore he would get Big Sal no matter what.
"Pretty soon it was clear Casso was unusable as a witness," Oldham recalled. "The agreement with him was now 'breached,' because he'd been caught committing crimes. Miciotta didn't do Casso in. Casso did himself in. It wasn't just smuggling contraband into prison. He plotted to kill Charles Rose. He plotted to kill Judge Eugene Nickerson, the longtime Eastern District judge assigned to try Casso's case. Casso was running the witness security unit like he was in the 19th Hole. His criminal life had continued in prison. Casso was a deviant wherever he was placed. Putting him on the stand meant associating the federal government with him -- and that wasn't going to be pretty. Charles Rose wanted to continue to use Casso, even though Casso had wanted to kill him, but Greg O'Connell disagreed. You can't have the federal government saying this guy is our star witness when the star witness has threatened to kill a federal prosecutor and judge. You don't want to be associated with him and you don't want him associated with your case, even if he is telling the truth. The bigger problem, of course, was that now Casso could not be used to testify against Caracappa and Eppolito."
THE EAGLE LANDS
In the same way that word of Casso's cooperation had traveled through the world of mob lawyers in 1994, so did word spread that Casso had been breached in the spring of 1996. Once again, Judd Burstein contacted Kaplan, now living in Las Vegas, and conveyed the information that the government was not going to use Casso as a witness in any trial, including any potential prosecution of Kaplan and retired detectives Caracappa and Eppolito. In the time since Kaplan had gone on the lam, first to Mexico and then Oregon and Las Vegas, Burstein had remained in touch with his client. Kaplan had even started to travel under his assumed identity to New York, where he had seen Galpine and checked in on his marijuana and clothing import businesses. Kaplan had an established business and girlfriend in Las Vegas but he was eager to resume his New York life, legitimate and illegitimate. The danger appeared to have passed.
Kaplan contacted Eppolito and told him he needed to be repaid the money he had lent him as a bridge loan for Eppolito's house. Eppolito and Kaplan met. The retired NYPD detective only had $35,000 in cash. Eppolito told Kaplan that he couldn't get any more cash from the bank. He had a further $20,000 in checks. It was clear to Kaplan that Eppolito had not taken control of his finances. Kaplan wanted to help Eppolito. "Let's do it this way," Kaplan said. "Give me the total of fifty-five thousand, and forget the other ten."
Kaplan quietly returned to Brooklyn in June 1996. Moving back into his house on 85th Street in Bensonhurst, he didn't seek out attention, or tell his friends and business contacts he had returned. Maintaining a low profile did not work.
In early September, while laid up in bed feeling ill, Kaplan watched on his home surveillance system as DEA Special Agent Eileen Dinnan and two colleagues knocked on his front door. The agents weren't expecting to find Kaplan, but with a warrant for his arrest outstanding it was routine to stop at the residence of a fugitive at regular intervals. This time they got lucky. Kaplan didn't know there was a warrant out for him in a case unrelated to "the cops" and Gaspipe Casso. Kaplan's wife, Eleanor, allowed Special Agent Dinnan and the two others into the house. Shown to Kaplan's bedroom, where he was watching the surveillance camera, Downtown Burt's years of running from the law came to an end.
"We've got some bad news for you, Burt," one of the agents said to Kaplan.
Kaplan's longtime associate Tommy Galpine was also arrested. The pair was charged with marijuana trafficking.
The night Kaplan was arrested he was taken to the DEA headquarters at 99 10th Avenue on the west side of Manhattan. Kaplan was led into a room filled with law enforcement officials. Senior officers from the NYPD were present, along with DEA and FBI agents. Twenty men were in the room. Kaplan knew what they were after. Kaplan was told he could do himself a favor. The assembled brass said they wanted to talk to him about two "dirty cops." Kaplan had not been allowed to confer with his lawyers. He told the officials that he wasn't being facetious, or difficult, but he was not interested in making a deal. Kaplan said he wanted to talk to his lawyer. A ten-year-old grudge was rearing its head.
"At that moment, Kaplan could have walked on the marijuana charges without doing a day in prison. But Kaplan wouldn't cooperate with the FBI. Kaplan hated the Bureau with a passion. Why? In the mid-eighties, when he was out of Allenwood, the FBI had nearly destroyed his legitimate business. At the time, Kaplan was importing clothes on a large scale. To succeed in the business he needed large-scale financing. Kaplan was particularly close to one Fashion District factor who was willing to extend Kaplan credit for hundreds of thousands of dollars on short notice. Flexibility was necessary for a wheeler-dealer like Kaplan. He was trying to go straight at the time -- or what qualified as straight for him. But the FBI was still after him. I don't know the specific reason. It was the mid-eighties, just at the beginning of RICO prosecutions and the war against the mafia. Maybe they wanted him to cooperate against Christy Tick Furnari in the Commission Case. There were many, many possible reasons for the FBI to be interested in a character like Downtown Burt. The Bureau went to the businessman and told him that Kaplan was involved with organized crime. The FBI told the man Kaplan had been in federal prison. The guy was legit. He was shocked and appalled. Kaplan presented as an honest man. Kaplan dealt with name brands, like Calvin Klein. But the mafia was ingrained in so many aspects of life in New York that the allegation was believable. People weren't used to having a face to put to the mob.
"The businessman called Kaplan and asked if it was true that he was a mobbed-up ex-con. Kaplan lied. The guy told Kaplan that if it was true he would have to stop doing business with Kaplan because the bonding company that guaranteed his financing wouldn't allow him to offer credit to a criminal. Kaplan went home that night and thought about the guy. Honor mattered a lot to Kaplan. The man was willing to take Kaplan's word against the FBI's. The man was taking on a huge risk. The situation didn't fit Kaplan's sense of right and wrong. Kaplan believed it was wrong for him to put the other guy in jeopardy. He also knew that it would be impossible to sustain the lie that he wasn't an ex-con. One phone call would result in the other man knowing Kaplan was lying.
"Five o'clock the next morning, Kaplan was parked in front of the man's office. When the guy got to work they had coffee together. Kaplan told him the truth. Kaplan said he had done time. He had friends in organized crime, he said, but he wasn't controlled by the mafia. Kaplan had a note from the guy guaranteeing eight hundred thousand dollars as security on a designer jeans deal. Kaplan took it from his pocket and offered to return it. The loss of financing would be ruinous to Kaplan, but he was going to keep his word. The guy was touched. He told Kaplan he could keep the note for ninety days. Kaplan had the time to make other arrangements and his business wasn't destroyed.
"The federal government had displayed in a vivid way its power over Kaplan. From that day forward, Kaplan hated the FBI. The FBI represented everything dishonorable and despicable to him. Now that he had been arrested in New York City, Kaplan was willing to stand trial and go to prison as a matter of principle. Snitching was not an option, not with the FBI involved. But Kaplan didn't know how steep a price he was going to pay for his silence. I didn't know how much time I would spend trying to get him to break that silence. Years of his life, years of mine."
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Notes:
1. Gigante was one of the last remaining symbols of mob defiance. For years he had been a fixture in lower Manhattan, a mumbling, unshaven, mentally unbalanced mobster wearing a bathrobe and pausing to urinate on the sidewalk. Prosecutors were determined to show it was an act. Throughout the late eighties and early nineties, federal prosecutor Charles Rose had targeted Gigante. In the 1990 Windows Case Gigante had managed to have the charges against him severed from the main case. Free on $1 million bond, Gigante had tricked law enforcement into thinking he lived with his mother on Sullivan Street, in Greenwich Village, when in fact he had a wife and five children living in comfort in suburban New Jersey and a mistress set up in a posh Upper East Side townhouse with the three children the couple had together.