PART 1 OF 2
CHAPTER TWELVE: THE CADRE
In November 2001, Oldham retired from the NYPD. One of the leading detectives on the force, he took a job as an investigator with the Violent Criminal Enterprise and Terrorism Section of the Federal Eastern District -- a position specifically created for him in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Oldham had worked out of the Eastern District for years, while still attached to and paid by the NYPD, but now the relationship was official. "It was the perfect scenario for me. Most retired cops end up doing security work. It was a real job, with real investigative responsibility, a continuation of my work at Major Case. If anything the scope and sweep of my job was greater. I had autonomy and I had access to the resources to pursue cases I thought were important.
"Things were great. Andrea and I had our first child, a beautiful girl named Olivia Grace. But drinking was really becoming a problem. Alcohol numbed me. A lot of cops self-medicated. Over the years the bad memories agglomerate. The loss of two brothers never left me. Pretending not to care about what you were doing -- the victims, the violence, your own health and sanity -- is one of the many ways many cops act tough. I was no exception to that rule. Heroic drinking was part of the culture. When cops retire, when we lose the demands and bonds of our brotherhood, we lose the basic structure of our lives."
Working for the Eastern District provided Oldham with the opportunity to begin in a new direction. He arrived at his new job with a dozen cardboard boxes. They were his files from half a dozen cases. The array of investigations Oldham had on his mind reflected the range of his interests -- they were the cases he was "looking at," the cases he couldn't let go. One investigation involved a series of suspicious deaths in the Guyanese immigrant community in New York that had drawn the attention of life insurance companies, who had turned to law enforcement. Oldham had taken it upon himself to discover if there was an insurance broker selling policies and then murdering the beneficiaries to collect the hefty proceeds. In another ongoing case, an Egyptian national named Mohammed Khalil was posing as an FBI agent in order to kidnap Arab immigrants. Oldham was also looking for Vere "Joker" Padmore, a twenty-eight-year-old armed robber working with two corrupt cops in the 77th Precinct in Brooklyn who dressed in gawdy women's clothing as a disguise. The Joker was wanted for three homicides and a string of jewelry store heists and home invasions.
Upon his arrival at the Eastern District, Oldham was also tasked with the Arab interview program in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers. "I was given a list with hundreds of names from so-called 'target countries' by the Department of Justice in D.C.," Oldham recalled. "The information came from the worst database imaginable. Many of the people on the list hadn't lived in America for years. Others were dead. The government had no clue how to investigate supposed 'terrorists.' Most of the people I interviewed on the list were Coptic Christians who had been driven out of their homelands because of their Christian beliefs."
Now assigned an office with a window on the eighteenth floor, Oldham moved the "back burner" boxes from the closet he had maintained one floor up. One box relating to Caracappa and Eppolito was on top of his filing cabinet. Another was under his desk. Free from the strictures of the NYPD, but swamped with terrorism-related assignments, Oldham promised himself that as soon as he could spare the time he would conduct a comprehensive investigation of former detectives Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito. Above all others, it was the case he was determined to make. For Oldham the case itself had become a "crystal ball" -- a mysterious and mesmerizing prism-like object to be contemplated from all angles.
"I know this sounds crazy, but the thing that I discovered when I became a detective is that I had an ability to see how cases were going to turn out," Oldham recalled. "I'm not a fortune-teller, and I'm not deluded. In every other aspect in my life I am as clueless as the next guy. But when I looked at a case -- when I looked at the evidence, the witnesses, the suspects -- I could usually see how things were going to play out. It was like that with Caracappa and Eppolito. I didn't know when or how I was going to get the chance to start up on them again, but I knew it was going to happen. Stevie Aces and Rouie Epporito weren't going to go to their graves having played the entire world for suckers. Every time I collected another set of cassette tapes of Kaplan and Galpine in prison, or scavenged a Bureau of Prisons record, or ran into Kenny McCabe in the Brooklyn federal courthouse, I wasn't letting the thing die. From time to time, I tossed in a crime scene photograph, or a DD-5 I had come across, or an interesting memo. It was how I worked."
KUBECKA AND BARSTOW
One artifact Oldham tossed into his boxes was a newspaper article that ran in Newsday in late December 2001. The report by journalist Steve Wick was headlined, "Used and Left Unprotected: 2 LI Garbage Haulers Betrayed by Detectives, FBI Mole." The story was nine thousand words long and represented an entire year of investigative journalism by Wick. "They met by the Surfside Three Motel in Howard Beach, three gangsters with something to talk over," Wick began. "Salvatore Avellino had driven into Queens from his mansion in quiet, exclusive Nissequogue. A captain and rainmaker in the multimillion-dollar enterprise called the Luchese crime family, Avellino had a proposal to talk over with his bosses, Anthony Casso and Vic Amuso. He wanted a man murdered."
Two men, as it turned out. Wick's feature story detailed the conspiracy to kill two Long Island businessmen who ran a small garbage hauling company. For most of the 1980s, Robert Kubecka and Donald Barstow had resisted pressures from the mob and cooperated with law enforcement. The men had been harassed, threatened, and intimidated by an organization called Private Sanitation Industry Inc. of Nassau and Suffolk Counties, a Luchese- and Gambino-controlled cartel running trash collection on Long Island. Kubecka, forty, and Barstow, thirty-five, both had families, and both of their wives had been threatened and their children followed home from school. The intelligence they had provided law enforcement proved invaluable. The pair had suggested to organized crime investigators that they place a bug in Avellino's black Jaguar. Sal Avellino often drove Luchese boss Tony Ducks Corallo on his errands. During the car rides, Corallo had given Avellino a sophisticated account of the operations of the "commission," which oversaw the five New York crime families. The information obtained through the bug was put before the jury in the Commission Case in 1985, leading to Corallo and other mob leaders receiving one-hundred-year sentences and subsequently dying behind bars.
"I knew the Kubecka and Barstow murders," Oldham recalled. "It stood as a black mark against law enforcement. There was no way the state task force should have put two businessmen in a position where they were acting as informants in an ongoing investigation of known killers. In the Born to Kill case I put a kid named Tinh on the street as an active cooperator. But Tinh was a member of the gang. He was a criminal. He knew when to ask questions and when to shut up. The task force told Kubecka and Barstow they had a network of informants feeding them intelligence on the mob in the garbage business -- parallel informants who would know if their lives were in danger. But there were no other informants. They said they would protect their identities, but they didn't. They promised protection, but they couldn't provide it."
Barstow and Kubecka had no way of knowing how much peril they were in. The men were trying to balance outward defiance of the mob and secret cooperation with the government. At the time law enforcement was gaining experience in setting up dummy companies to operate in corrupt industries. Operations were established in the garment and carting industries using undercover detectives and federal agents posing as businessmen. The ruses were expensive and time-consuming but it was a necessary precaution to employ trained undercovers. Oldham said, "Kubecka and Barstow were amateurs. They must have known they were taking a risk but they couldn't give informed consent because they didn't know the way information circulated in the organized crime universe -- cops and robbers. The result was inevitable, with Amuso and Casso in charge of the Luchese family and able to access sensitive law enforcement information."
In the summer of 1989 Barstow and Kubecka testified before a grand jury about the methods the mafia used to control the garbage industry: rate-rigging, dividing territory, destroying competition. On September 9, 1989, Kubecka received a threatening call. Kubecka contacted the head of the New York State Organized Crime Task Force. The official told him to call 911. Kubecka called 911. A patrolman came to speak to the two men and took Kubecka's complaint but no other steps were taken to protect the men. At dawn the next day, two gunmen appeared on Kubecka and Barstow's lot in East Northport. Frankie "Pearl" Federico and another Luchese hit man had been given the contract to kill Kubecka and his father. The hit man entered the office shooting and struck Barstow. Barstow dropped dead. The hit man fired again. Kubecka was shot but still alive.
"The hit man's gun jammed," Oldham said. "The third bullet wouldn't feed from the clip. He tried to jack the slide back to eject the cartridge. Hearing the commotion and voices inside the trailer Frankie Pearl came in. Kubecka lunged and butted heads with him. They wrestled on the floor leaving hair strands, blood, a gun. Finally Frankie Pearl and the other man ran for it. Kubecka crawled to the phone and called 911 again -- and gasped that he didn't know who shot him."
Wick had started reporting the story as a little-known tragedy from the war on organized crime. Two Long Island businessmen had tried to do the right thing and paid the ultimate price. But Wick discovered basic questions couldn't be answered. Why was there no security sent to Kubecka and Barstow? How did the hit men know there were no cameras or surveillance set up by law enforcement on the tiny office? Wick became obsessed with the story. The families of the two men had sued the state of New York and won a $10.8 million judgment for negligence in the late nineties. But Wick came to believe it wasn't indifference or incompetence that got Barstow and Kubecka killed. What if there was a mole who betrayed them?
After months and months of trying, Wick was finally granted an interview by Gaspipe Casso. Wick traveled to Florence, Colorado, to the super-max prison where Casso was housed. Casso told Wick about the meeting with Avellino at the Surfside Three Motel in Howard Beach. Casso told Wick that he had a high-ranking FBI mole, but that he'd never met him. Casso said he paid and communicated with the mole through Kaplan, Caracappa, and Eppolito. Casso claimed that he had told the FBI about his mole when he was debriefed in 1994, but the FBI had refused to believe him or even record the allegation in Casso's 302s.
Oldham read the Wick articles at the time, adding them to the boxes he kept on Caracappa and Eppolito. He wasn't convinced by Casso's claim about the FBI agent; even if it was plausible, someone in the NYPD was more likely. Eppolito had lived on Long Island during the eighties, so he had physical proximity, and there was no question in Oldham's mind that Eppolito was capable of committing more crimes than Casso knew about. "There was a large likelihood that Caracappa and Eppolito had more going on than just their deal with Casso and Kaplan," Oldham said. "Virtually every criminal who flipped and became an informer surprised us by revealing crimes we didn't know had been committed -- murders, assaults, extortions. It was one of the uses of RICO. Instead of attacking specific crimes, the law went after criminality. So I was open to the possibility. But by the time Wick was reporting on Barstow and Kubecka, Casso had been locked up for years. A prisoner like Casso is usually desperate for any kind of chance at improving his circumstances. While Kaplan stayed silent and did his time, Casso was like a demented canary in a cage. He sang and he sang and he sang. He would sing any song you cared to hear, if he thought it might get him a new deal with the government, or a trip to New York City to testify in court. Any relief from the tedium of twenty-three-hour- a-day lockdown. I figured Casso was yanking Wick's chain about the FBI agent."
The Newsday article circulated around law enforcement circles. Bob Creighton of the Suffolk County DA's office and a homicide detective named Eddie Sandry traveled to the various penitentiaries scattered over the country housing convicted Lucheses, as well as contacting Lucheses who were hiding in the witness security program. Following Wick's lead, they went to Florence and spoke with Casso but decided to pull the plug on Casso when he told them he'd never dealt with the FBI agent in person but always through Kaplan, Eppolito, and Caracappa.
The matter seemed to go away, but another seed had been planted in the mind of Oldham. Newsday reporter Wick recalled his intentions in writing the article and reviving attention to a crime that was drifting into the forgotten past. "I was convinced that these families were owed more than just the settlement for the negligence suit," Wick said. "I thought they should know that Barstow and Kubecka had been betrayed and by whom. I thought they deserved to know the truth. When the article came out I think it touched off a lot of dominoes."
FRANKIE THE PEARL
On January 27, 2003, Frankie the Pearl Federico walked into a donut store in the Bronx. Federico was seventy-five years old. He had been on the run for more than a decade, mostly living in Italy, running from certain conviction for the murders of Kubecka and Barstow. The presence of his hair and blood at the scene of the murder of Kubecka and Barstow gave the government an ironclad case and a continuing interest in the aging gangster. But after so many years successfully eluding arrest, Federico had grown sloppy. His guard was down that day. Federico was expecting to borrow money from a mob contact. Federal agents were waiting for him inside the donut shop. Federico had been lured there with the promise of a few thousand dollars from agents posing as OC associates of Federico's -- the law enforcement equivalent of "copping a sneak."
"Frankie the Pearl was an embarrassment to us when he was on the run," Oldham said. "He evaded justice for a long time but we got him in the end. In court Federico made an awful spectacle of himself. Rather than clinging to a sliver of dignity, he made himself look not just like a killer -- but a deluded self-pitying killer. Federico's blood was all over the crime scene, but he claimed he had been framed. Federico said the FBI had tortured him when drawing blood for a DNA test by using extra-long needles and threatening to suck all the blood out of his body. Federico claimed to have great evidence that would destroy the government's case." During the trial, he compelled the government to fly Gaspipe Casso, Vie Amuso, Georgie Neck Zappola, and a bunch of other Lucheses to New York to testify. Before they took the stand, at the last moment, Federico agreed to plead guilty and take a fifteen-year sentence -- effectively life for a man his age. When the judge refused to accept the deal Frankie the Pearl collapsed and had to be carried from court. "The mob had become a cabaret, a pathetic and pale imitation of itself, with a hit man in his mid-seventies swooning for sympathy. Judge Block relented a few days later. 'You'll surely die in jail,' Block said."
The arrest and trial of Federico had, in fact, revived interest in Barstow and Kubecka once again. Like the Newsday article by Steve Wick, the case kept questions about past leaks and murdered cooperators alive in New York. Soon after Federico's capture, sometime in the spring of 2003, Oldham received a call from Bill Mueller, a senior attorney in the Eastern District. Mueller said that Federico's arrest had provoked inquiries about Barstow and Kubecka. Mueller wanted to know whether the failure of the NYPD to catch and fire Caracappa and Eppolito was possibly to blame for the deaths of Barstow and Kubecka. The intelligence Wick had gathered about Casso's connection to the double homicide and Casso's connection to Caracappa and Eppolito led to a rumor running around town that a civil lawsuit against the NYPD might be launched. The next day, an analyst in the Organized Crime Section named Joel Campanella stopped by Oldham's office. Campanella asked if he could look at Oldham's boxes on "the cops."
"They're not my guys," Oldham said. "There's another dirty cop out there on Long Island."
Oldham gave Campanella the "case file," a rudimentary summary of the case and its progress, or lack thereof. "I had read Casso's 302s," Oldham said. "I knew that the Lucheses had more than Caracappa and Eppolito inside law enforcement. Sal Avellino had 'cops' too, and Casso was paying two grand a month to those 'cops.' But I was pretty sure Avellino's 'cops' weren't my 'cops.' Likewise with the supposed FBI agent Casso had on his payroll. Casso lied about his law enforcement contacts when he talked to other wiseguys to protect his real source -- Caracappa and Eppolito. Casso said so himself in the 302s. In 1991 Casso said he'd once told Sammy the Bull Gravano he had an FBI agent to throw him off the scent."
Campanella returned the next day. Oldham was right, Campanella said. It appeared the Barstow and Kubecka case had nothing to do with Caracappa and Eppolito. But Oldham's curiosity was piqued. Walking down the hallway in the Eastern District soon after, Oldham ran into prosecutor Mark Feldman. Feldman was now the head of the Organized Crime Section. He was an institution in the OC industry. Before he started working for the federal government, for many years he was an assistant district attorney -- ADA -- in Brooklyn. Feldman had been prosecuting mob cases in New York City for decades. He was large and bespectacled and generally personable. He had married a police officer and committed his life to fighting the war against the mafia. Cops and wiseguys, reporters, judges, stenographers, court security guards, all knew Feldman. Including former Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito. In Mafia Cop, in his Author's Note, Eppolito's co-author journalist Bob Drury had thanked Feldman for his assistance with the book. In the book, Eppolito described Feldman as "one tough Jew."
"From virtually every angle, over two decades and including dozens of characters in the mafia and law enforcement, Feldman was woven into the fabric of this case. As a young assistant district attorney, he had been assigned to the Brooklyn Rackets Bureau as the 'riding' attorney for mob murders. The job required him to go to the scenes of crimes and begin to build a case for trial alongside detectives working the investigation. The assignment was bloody and boring, a task given to junior lawyers. As a riding attorney, Feldman had been sent to the scene of the homicide of Eppolito's uncle Jimmy the Clam and cousin Jim-Jim. In the late eighties Feldman had been the prosecutor assigned to try the attempted murder case against a thug named Nicky Guido, when Casso had taken the stand and taken the Fifth Amendment to every question. Everyone of our generation in law enforcement in New York knew about Caracappa and Eppolito, but I knew about Feldman's deep personal connections and I figured he might be interested in taking up the seemingly lost cause.
"Feldman told me that another detective had been talking to him about Caracappa and Eppolito," Oldham said. "I was surprised but not shocked. Caracappa and Eppolito were infamous -- the greatest cold case of our time. It made sense that another detective was thinking about Caracappa and Eppolito, or had stumbled into a lead. I was the keeper of the boxes -- and the flame -- but I knew there were veteran cops out there who would love to take a shot at Caracappa and Eppolito. Feldman said the detective's name was Tommy Dades. I had heard of him. Dades was well known in the NYPD. He was said to be a great street detective and an expert on Brooklyn Oc. I called him that day and invited him to stop by and say hello."
TOMMY DADES
The next day, Detective Tommy Dades turned up at Oldham's office with another NYPD detective named Jimmy Harkins -- one of Oldham's favorite cops on the force. Harkins introduced Dades to Oldham -- Harkins calling Oldham the "wild man" of Major Case. Tommy Dades was nearly a decade younger than Oldham, a former prize fighter with his nose flattened from years in the boxing ring, and his accent and attitude the pure "dems," "des," and "dos" of Sunset Park, Brooklyn. A twentyyear veteran, Dades had served in the Six-Eight in Brooklyn before being assigned to the Investigative Squad of the Intelligence Division. Dades specialized in the mafia and had developed a deep understanding of its culture, along with a string of great stories. Over the years, Dades's tales had been frequently chronicled by Daily News reporter Michelle McPhee and then turned into her book Mob Over Miami. "Tommy had chased a wanted gangster through St. Ann's Church on Staten Island," Oldham recalled. "A dopey wiseguy named Ronald Moran had sent Tommy a letter threatening to machine-gun his house, killing him and his family -- but the half-wit licked the envelope, leaving his DNA behind. Being energetic in the law enforcement business is half the battle, and Tommy was clearly filled with energy. He was about to retire from the NYPD but looking for a way to stay in the game. Tommy was my kind of cop. Both of us were dying to start up an investigation on Caracappa and Eppolito."
Oldham told Dades he had accumulated boxes filled with evidence on Caracappa and Eppolito over the years. He told Dades the story about Monica Galpine, the Chinese restaurant, and "Rouie Epporito." Oldham was certain that Caracappa and Eppolito were guilty; the problem was figuring out how to prove it. Dades, in turn, shared his story about "the cops." Dades had no in-depth knowledge of the underlying facts. He had not read Casso's 302s, or reviewed the scores of DD-Ss from the murder files, as Oldham had. But Dades had a lead he called the "golden nugget." Like Oldham, he was convinced the case against Caracappa and Eppolito needed to be reopened and properly investigated. Not by the FBI, who had proven themselves incapable of closing the case. This time, the case needed to be taken up by detectives who knew the NYPD precinct houses, computer systems, and culture. Caracappa and Eppolito needed to be investigated by their fellow detectives -- the men they had betrayed in the first place.
Dades told Oldham the tale of the "golden nugget." Dades said he had gone to see a Staten Island woman named Betty Hydell a few months earlier. She'd been devastated by the loss of her son Jimmy in 1986, only to lose her other son, Frankie, a young hood who had also been an informant working for the FBI and Dades twelve years later in 1998. Dades told Oldham how when Frankie Hydell was found dead, in front of a Staten Island strip club with three slugs in his head and chest, his entire back was covered with a huge tattoo saying, "Casso is a Rat." Years had passed, but Frankie Hydell had stayed on Dades's mind and nagged his conscience. Dades felt that Frankie Hydell had been killed because he was a cooperator and that somehow word had leaked to the mob. From time to time, Dades went to see Betty Hydell to talk about Frankie. Dades had developed the habit of dropping in on his sources, victims, and families, for a cup of coffee and a chat. The visits were useful for gathering intelligence. Betty Hydell, a sixty-five-year-old lifelong nurse with the appearance of a woman who had known the great grief of losing two sons to murder, was one of Dades's regular stops.
"This time, Tommy said Betty Hydell was more interested in talking about her other son -- Jimmy Hydell. She started out slowly, Tommy said. The day Jimmy Hydell disappeared she said she had seen two 'cops' circling the block outside their house. She said they were driving an unmarked vehicle, of the kind NYPD detectives routinely use. One cop was thin, she said, and the other was fat with a thick mustache. That was in 1986. Six years later, Betty Hydell told Dades she was watching the Sally Jessy Raphael Show and on came a retired NYPD detective talking about his new book, Mafia Cop. Betty Hydell bolted up from her chair. It was the cop she had seen the day Jimmy vanished. She went out and bought the book that day, she told Tommy. She opened the book to the photographs in the middle and was instantly convinced that the author was the same man.
"Dades thought it was a 'gotcha' moment, but in my view, it was pretty thin evidence," Oldham recalled. "She saw him on television and didn't report it for more than a decade? She had seen two cops acting suspiciously outside her house the day her son vanished forever and she didn't report it? From what distance? What was her sight line? Defense attorneys would have a field day with the testimony if that was all we had against Caracappa and Eppolito. But I loved Tommy. I loved the stories he told about the mob. I loved his enthusiasm. It was important to harness the ripples that were out there and turn them into a wave. It was like the butterfly effect. A small thing like Betty Hydell's accusation, of marginal use in a trial, could start a chain of events and have a big effect in the future. The sine qua non was flipping Kaplan or Galpine, but this could be the break I had been waiting for.
"Re-creating the timeline to be accurate and sure about what kickstarted the investigation of Caracappa and Eppolito is impossible. I was always looking at the case. Tommy Dades had the wits to act on what he had from Betty Hydell and go to Mark Feldman. The stars had aligned. Call it kismet. To me, it was the kind of confluence of events that make for the best cases. I had the boxes that would give us a huge head start in gathering materials. Tommy had the 'golden nugget.' The bosses in the Eastern District and the Brooklyn DA's office were getting serious about Caracappa and Eppolito. Resources would be applied to undertake a real investigation. I could get the manpower to build a real prosecution. If I didn't jump at the opportunity, I knew it was never coming around again. I would do whatever I could to be accommodating, come what may. I could hardly believe what was happening. Finally, at long, long last, we were going to make the case."
"READ THE BOOK"
Within days, Oldham stopped by the office of a young prosecutor named Robert Henoch. Oldham often dropped in on Henoch, ostensibly just to talk but in truth to see what he was working on and keep alive the chance of using Henoch on one of his cases. It was Oldham's manner to come at the actual subject of conversation obliquely. He would talk for a time about nothing in particular. Cutting to the chase was not Oldham's style. He liked to take the temperature of his interlocutor and measure mood. This day Oldham was carrying a hardback copy of a book. He dropped Mafia Cop on Henoch's desk. "I have a great case for you," Oldham said. "You're not going to believe this case. It's about cops and I know you love cops. I'm doing this one. I've been waiting to do this one for fucking years."
Henoch picked up the book and glanced at the cover. Oldham's copy of Mafia Cop was tattered, the jacket torn at the edges, the pages dogeared with scrawls in the margins.
"Read the book," Oldham. "You're not going to believe it."
As the lead investigator inside the Eastern District working the Caracappa and Eppolito case, Oldham had some influence in choosing an attorney to prosecute his cases. There were dozens of bright young lawyers in the office, many of whom would leap at the chance to embark on a case as difficult and ambitious as Caracappa and Eppolito promised to be. Over the years, Oldham kept a close eye on prosecutors as they arrived in the Eastern District. He was watching for new talent and keeping track of the stable of potential collaborators. Oldham knew he had to be particularly careful with his selection in this case. The demands placed upon the attorney would be prodigious. There were major political and jurisdictional issues to be considered. The Brooklyn DA's office was going to be involved in the case. Oldham needed an attorney tough enough to stand up to the DA's office, but smart enough to know how to avoid conflict.
As with virtually all of Oldham's partners over the years, Henoch's best qualities were diametrically opposed to Oldham's. Henoch was in his early forties, thin, fit, disciplined, focused. Henoch had been born in Los Angeles and raised in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. He studied Soviet history at the University of Michigan and belonged to the ROTC. His father had been a World War II infantryman who became a nuclear physicist working on arms control. After graduation, Henoch was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Army. As an artillery officer, Henoch was taught to rain down shells on distant targets, a skill set that would prove useful as a prosecutor planning long-term RICO cases. "I knew Bob had been an assistant district attorney in Manhattan before he took a job with the Eastern District," Oldham said. "It was the prosecutor's equivalent of having been a cop. Henoch had tried dozens of cases. He knew the state system -- not just the halls of justice, but the dark alleys where detectives and street cops operate. He had been forced to make big decisions involving real lives in real time. Henoch was a colonel in the Army Reserve. Logistics were his speciality. He was crisp, precise, disciplined, all the things I decidedly am not. With the case going to the Brooklyn DA, I figured the guys in the Brooklyn DA's office would trust him. I trusted him."
Reading Mafia Cop repulsed Henoch. Over the years, Henoch had worked with many cops but he had never come across a cop who matched Eppolito's perverted portrait of life in law enforcement. Henoch still wasn't certain he wanted to throw himself at such a problematic case. Henoch had good reason to hesitate. Oldham was known as a loose cannon around the office. He was beyond control -- beyond the control of the bosses, the rules and regulations. Working with him was known to be taking a trip into the old-school ways of NYPD detectives, for good and for bad. As delicate negotiations between the Eastern District and the Brooklyn DA began, Oldham continued to talk to Henoch about Caracappa and Eppolito and Mafia Cop.
"You can do it," Oldham said to Henoch. "This case can be made."
The look in Oldham's eye was childlike, it seemed to Henoch. He was sold. Oldham had his attorney. The choice was superb -- but Henoch wasn't going to play second fiddle to Oldham. He was a decade younger, and vastly less experienced, but Henoch had an ego to match Oldham's. Henoch was a control freak. He was detail-oriented. As soon as Henoch touched a case he wanted power over all aspects of it. Over the years Oldham had been able to set the agenda and maintain control in his investigations. As much as the men needed each other, they were fated to clash -- but not yet.
Before the investigation could begin in earnest, a decision had to be made about which jurisdiction would lead the investigation and ultimately try the two men -- the Brooklyn DA or the Eastern District? Would the case be federal or state? There were a multitude of reasons to prefer a federal case to a straight state homicide case. Associative evidence and prior bad acts were admissible in a federal case. Testimony by an accomplice had to be corroborated by independent evidence under state law. There was no such requirement under federal law. RICO allows the government to put an accomplice on the stand regardless of corroboration. Thus, if Kaplan or Galpine were convinced to become a cooperator, he could testify to the entirety of the conspiracy in federal court, but only to a very limited extent in state court. In state court, there would only be fragments, which could confuse or fail to convince a jury. Under RICO, the story would be told in full.
But there was a major stumbling block. According to RICO, a federal prosecution had to be brought within five years of the cessation or fulfillment of the conspiracy. Under state law, there was no time limit on murder prosecutions. From their first conversation onward, Oldham and Henoch had discussed the time limit issue as an impediment. Oldham believed there were arguments to overcome the statute of limitations issue. Oldham was not a lawyer but that had never stopped him from making legal arguments. The truth, he believed, was that no jury would acquit Caracappa and Eppolito once it learned of the nature of their criminal enterprise. The statute of limitations might give the two retired officers technical grounds to avoid conviction, but that was not how the real world functioned.
"I knew Caracappa and Eppolito weren't going to get off because they moved to Las Vegas and too much time had passed. It wasn't going to fly. The court would find a way to do the right thing. It was a stupid law. There was no jury in the land that would let the murdering former NYPD detectives go free after getting the wrong Nicky Guido killed because they had holed up in a cul-de-sac in Vegas."
Additionally, according to RICO, it was possible for the two former NYPD detectives to offer the defense that they had "withdrawn" from their conspiracy. The difficulty, for Caracappa and Eppolito, was that the burden of proof fell on them. Oldham and Henoch didn't think Caracappa and Eppolito could prove that they had "withdrawn" from their criminal enterprise. Caracappa and Eppolito would almost certainly outright deny any involvement whatsoever with organized crime. "It was a catch-22," Oldham recalled. "To assert the defense that they had absented themselves from the Lucheses would require them to admit that they were members of a conspiracy in the first place. If that was going to be the defense offered by the two former NYPD detectives, the prosecution would be in excellent shape."
Feldman disagreed with Oldham on the issue of the statute of limitations. The crimes committed by Caracappa and Eppolito began in the mid-eighties. The last crime known to be committed was the murder of Eddie Lino in 1990. Both had left the NYPD by 1992. Saying the conspiracy lasted all the way to 2004 strained credulity. Such disputes were common in the competitive bristle of OC prosecutions. Feldman was a lawyer with a distinguished record. Oldham was a cop turned federal investigator. There should have been no room for dispute but Oldham was a determined infighter. Each man turned to the best legal minds in their section of the Eastern District for an expert opinion on the matter. Feldman had legal advisors in the Organized Crime Section. Oldham had access to legal eagles in the Violent Criminal Enterprise and Terrorism Section. The opinions came back with opposite answers. Feldman's lawyer said the time limitation on homicides meant it was too late for a federal RICO case; Oldham's lawyer said the time limit didn't rule out RICO charges. Oldham and Henoch wanted to do the case in the Eastern District. Feldman was more cautiously inclined. The risk was investing the man hours of an attorney and investigators, only to have the case fall apart or be dismissed by a federal judge because of the statute of limitations issue.
Feldman had the ultimate say. The case might still wind up under federal control, but for the time being it would be a collaboration with the Brooklyn DA's office. However the investigation played out, it was best to work the case as a team effort. In any cold case murder prosecution, access to the materials held by state and city officials is critical. The Eastern District could subpoena the documents, but it was easier and more efficient to cooperate. Keeping the Brooklyn DA on their side could only help. Oldham accepted the decision in an effort to steer any course that would finally get a prosecution mounted.