PART 1 OF 2
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: CORROBORATION
The next two weeks would put the prosecution's case to the test. The amount of evidence compiled by the government was enormous. Thirty-four witnesses, dozens of exhibits, including murder scene photographs, old NYPD documentation, and audiotapes of Caracappa and Eppolito conniving to deal drugs and launder money in Las Vegas. The evidence was direct and concrete. Some witnesses testified to specific matters to buttress the testimony of Kaplan in ways that underscored his credibility on small questions, like the number of cats kept by the Caracappas on East 22nd Street. Others were aimed at the broad sweep of cop and mob culture.
Instead of adopting a strictly chronological and linear narrative form, Henoch employed a style that contained order but not the kind found in a conventional book or film. Even though subjective evidence as to character was banned, all of the evidence the government entered was designed to construct a portrait of two NYPD detectives that would lead a jury to believe beyond reasonable doubt they committed the heinous crimes they were charged with.
The first witness after Burton Kaplan stood down was Detective Gary Ward, a retired NYPD officer. Ward had responded to the scene where the body of murder victim Bruno Facciola had been discovered in August 1990 with a bird shoved in his mouth, signifying his status as a rat who had "sung." A photograph was entered into evidence. Next came Detective Felix Sciannamen, a thirty-nine-year veteran of the force and a partner of Eppolito's in the Six-Three in the eighties. Detective Sciannamen recalled the cramped quarters in the detective squad room, with officers having easy access to each other's files, and Eppolito's flamboyant tastes in gold jewelry. After Anthony Casso was shot in September 1986, Sciannamen testified, he had accompanied Detective Eppolito to the NYPD pound to search Casso's car. Traces of drugs were found in the car. Eppolito discovered a key ring with a safe deposit key from a bank in Canada, which was vouchered. In his testimony, Kaplan had said that Casso was eager to retrieve the key from his impounded car, explaining Eppolito's interest in searching for it despite having no legitimate connection to the case.
A man named Tom Knierim, who worked for the 14th Street Business Improvement District in the nineties when Caracappa was in charge of security, testified that the phone number Burton Kaplan had in his book under the name "Marco" was in fact the same as the beeper number Caracappa had been given by the BID. Paul Smith, a retired investigator with the New Jersey Attorney General's Office, testified that he had been involved in surveillance of the suspected mob-related company called Tiger Management in 1989. The operation was shared with the NYPD -- particularly with Detective Kenny McCabe, whom Smith trusted implicitly. McCabe had died before the trial and thus could not testify but had told Oldham that he was certain Caracappa pumped him for information on matters like the Tiger Management surveillance.
Victoria Vreeland, an investigator with the New Jersey Attorney General's Office on her very first assignment as a law enforcement official during the surveillance of Tiger Management, took the stand next. On April 19, 1989, she testified, she watched from a motel window across the road as a man driving in a recreational vehicle entered the property of Tiger Management. Vreeland had observed in amazement as the man searched in the same places where law enforcement technicians had placed listening devices only days earlier. The prosecution entered into evidence videotape from that day. The silent black-and-white footage showed a fat, hairy, middle-aged man dressed in an undershirt and wearing a fedora -- a cartoon version of a gangster, circa 1989 -- climbing telephone poles and scuttling in and out of the mobile home as he found the government's listening devices. Ironically, as he uncovered the audio surveillance, the man was oblivious to the fact that he was being recorded by video cameras, lending an air of farce to the man's brazen behavior.
With every witness, Hayes and Cutler probed for inconsistencies, hoping to cast doubt on some corner of the case in the hope of convincing the jury that if one piece was dubious none of the evidence could be relied upon. Eddie Hayes was an expert on the NYPD, and close to many Major Case Squad detectives, but his questions yielded few, if any, concessions from the witnesses, or comfort for the accused. As the prosecutors constructed the case, well-known criminal defense attorneys frequently stopped by to watch. Jerry Shargel, once Kaplan's attorney and employer of Kaplan's daughter as a law clerk, was an eminence in the defense bar with a beard and designer tortoiseshell glasses. Bald with a full silver-tinged beard, Shargel had been Bruce Cutler's co-counsel when he won acquittals for John Gotti in the 1980s. Shargel responded to press inquiries about the problems the government might face in prosecuting crimes that were fifteen and twenty years old saying, "It's a big risk. RICO doesn't cover sporadic and disconnected criminal behavior." During Kaplan's testimony Shargel told the Guardian that if the charges were true, "it has to be the rawest breach of a police officer's duty perhaps in history."
Each morning, Judge Weinstein set aside time to hear motions from the prosecution and defense. One week into the trial, Henoch rose to call Burton Kaplan's former defense attorney Judd Burstein to the stand. The testimony Burstein would provide would detail conversations he had had with Kaplan in 1994 and again in 1996 regarding the cooperation of Anthony Casso and Kaplan's relationship with Casso and former detectives Caracappa and Eppolito. Henoch said the evidence would rebut the suggestion by the defense that Kaplan had made up his story of the cops while in prison in a desperate bid to get out early and alive.
Ordinarily, such evidence would be inadmissable as hearsay -- Burstein would be testifying about what Kaplan had said about Caracappa and Eppolito, not about a conversation he was directly involved in. Federal rules of evidence provided for limited exceptions. Always in command of his courtroom, Weinstein handled the legal arguments with dispatch. Burstein had come forward and approached the government with his evidence, not the other way around, Weinstein noted. His client, Burt Kaplan, had waived attorney-client privilege. By suggesting that Kaplan had a motive to lie when he flipped in 2004, he ruled, the defense had "opened the door" for the prosecution to lead evidence showing Kaplan had made earlier statements consistent with his current testimony. In this case that meant Kaplan's conversations with Burstein about being the "go-between" for Casso and Caracappa and Eppolito, which occurred in 1994 and 1996, might be taken by the jury to show that Kaplan's evidence was credible. Any ambiguity in the law must be decided in favor of the defense, Weinstein added, so anything that Kaplan had said to Burstein subsequent to his arrest in 1996 would not be admitted, a distinction that severely restricted the government -- but allowed Burstein to re-create for the jury the sequence of events that sent Kaplan on the run when Casso flipped in 1994.
Outside the court, Cutler and Hayes were plainly outraged that a member of their fraternal order of defense attorneys was assisting the government -- worse, Burstein had volunteered to help the enemy. Attorneys would wind up in the Witness Protection Program, Hayes said. No one could recall such a legal oddity. Hayes said he wanted to be able to ask Burstein about large amounts of cash Kaplan had paid him over the years. There was a financial motive, Hayes told Judge Weinstein, for Burstein to come forward and support Kaplan's testimony. Weinstein was appalled by the accusation against Burstein.
"I'm not going to subject a distinguished member of this bar to that harassment," he told Hayes.
"I've never seen this before," Hayes sighed.
Burstein was in his early fifties, a prosperous attorney who had quit criminal practice to represent civil clients in the mid-nineties. From the mid-eighties he had represented Kaplan in matters ranging from an alleged heroin importation conspiracy to Kaplan's scheme to sell Peruvian passports to Hong Kong businessmen. When Casso flipped in the spring of 1994, Burstein testified that he had contacted Kaplan immediately. He knew the pair were close. "You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know Mr. Kaplan might have some legal difficulties," Burstein testified. When Casso's cooperation became public that year, revealing the role of Caracappa and Eppolito in the murder of Eddie Lino, there was no mention in the press of Burton Kaplan's role, or even his name. If Kaplan had concocted the story, there was no way he could have known what he knew when he contacted Burstein in the spring of 1994. "Mr. Kaplan told me it was a big problem for him. He said he was the go-between for Lino and for other matters. The sum and the substance was that there was more than one murder."
"Did Mr. Kaplan say he was the go-between for Anthony Casso and a federal agent?" the prosecution asked.
"Absolutely not," Burstein said. "It was cops."
Eddie Hayes winced. In the summer of 2005, Burstein testified, he saw a piece on the case on the television show Dateline NBC. From his knowledge of Kaplan, Burstein deduced that Kaplan must be cooperating with the government against Caracappa and Eppolito. He contacted the Eastern District and said that if Kaplan waived attorney-client privilege, he, Burstein, would be willing to tell them about Kaplan's prior statements regarding his conspiracy with Caracappa and Eppolito. For years, Burstein had suggested to Kaplan that it was in his interests to cooperate, but his client had refused.
"Burt Kaplan had this ethic about not cooperating against other people," Burstein testified.
In cross-examination, Eddie Hayes asked if Burstein had considered the possibility that Kaplan might use the information about Casso's cooperation to kill Casso's family, or warn others in the mafia. Burstein testified that he didn't consider Kaplan an organized crime figure -- perhaps naively. "It never crossed my mind that this guy had a propensity for violence." Hayes's anger at Burstein flared as he asked, with outrage, if Burstein had been aware of the murder of Israel Greenwald. Burstein blandly replied no.
Cutler had known Burstein since the early eighties, when they first worked together. "People liked you, Judd, and they trusted you," Cutler said. "Didn't you at one time open a big office with green furniture and a machine that served cappuccino coffee?"
"It almost bankrupted me," Burstein replied.
Cutler asked if Burstein was aware that Kaplan and Casso had met thirty-five to forty times when Casso was on the lam in the early nineties. It was during this time, Cutler suggested, that the pair had come up with the idea of framing Caracappa and Eppolito. Standing next to the jury box, Cutler bent deeply to the floor and scooped and gathered air into his hand to express the lack of substance to the plan that the villains had come up with against two innocent hero cops. "They concocted some scheme," Cutler said, voice rising. "Concocted some scheme," Cutler bellowed.
Burstein did not answer.
THE DELUGE
Before the arrest of Caracappa and Eppolito, Oldham and the cadre had gathered a significant amount of evidence. After the arrests, as Henoch took control of the investigation and turned it into a prosecution, an even larger cargo of corroborative evidence had been collected. In state cases, there was a legal requirement that evidence given by criminal accomplices be independently corroborated. RICO had no equivalent provision. Kaplan's evidence could convict, in and of itself. But while corroboration wasn't technically necessary, it was a practical imperative.
Detective Steven Rodriguez from the NYPD Criminal Records Division took the stand to testify. He was a twenty-three-year veteran who had been promoted to first grade, highly unusual honor for an officer who had an inside job pushing paper. Rodriguez was an expert on NYPD recording systems. He explained to the jury how the department kept track of all information requests run by members of the force at the time. Detectives had to provide their tax identification number. It was a kind of fingerprint inside the NYPD. The point was to ensure there was a paper trail. The only permitted use of the system was for official purposes.
Detective Rodriguez told the jury that searches in the Identification Section resulted in the production of a criminal history sheet for the name of the person in question that listed criminal pedigree, aliases, a description, and contact information. Officers could make a request by telephone or in person. A record of all checks were mailed monthly to commanders in the units throughout the force to verify that the checks were being used properly. The only permitted purpose for a check was in pursuit of an investigation or for an official reason. Members of the service were strictly forbidden from using the database of the NYPD for personal reasons, to do favors, or, of course, in return for money.
In the courtroom, the lights were dimmed and Exhibit 23A was put up on the projector. A Request for Information at 10:30 a.m. on November 4, 1986, by Detective George Terra was shown. The check was for a man named Nicholas Guido. The date of birth of the Nicky Guido in question was January 29, 1957. Terra, then an investigator with the Brooklyn DA, was assigned to the investigation of the string of murders and drug deals committed by Robert Bering and Jimmy Hydell in the summer and fall of 1986.
The next exhibit was a Request for Information from the Major Case Squad from November 11, 1986. The tax identification number of the detective making the request was 862810 -- Detective Stephen Caracappa. There were two names in the search: Felix Andrugar and Nicky Guido, both done under "Case Number 341." The date of birth for the Nick Guido requested was different from the one Terra had sought. This Nick Guido was born on February 2, 1960 -- the date of birth of the young man shot and killed on Christmas Day 1986. It was the search that Tommy Dades had found in the files Oldham had given him. "Caracappa had run Nicky Guido -- the wrong Nicky Guido," Oldham said. "There were simply no circumstances under which Caracappa would have run a search on the Nicky Guido who worked for the telephone company and lived a quiet, innocent life. The person processing the request had no way to check on the case number provided by the detective. It was taken on faith that the detective was giving a valid case number. The weakness in the system was that it trusted but had no way of verifying.
"Caracappa could be confident that the Guido search was lost in the maze of names and taxpayer identification numbers of all the different detectives from all of the squads and precincts in the city. He bet that the NYPD's filing system was a sinkhole. He didn't expect me to carry his personnel file around for nearly a decade. He didn't expect Tommy Dades to find the search. He thought the past was past and in this case it wasn't."
The jury learned that Caracappa had misused the system on numerous occasions. Later in November 1986 he had run the name Nick Guido again. This time the search was disguised within a list of four other names to make the name Guido appear to be attached to a larger investigation. The field of names included in the report would include the right Nicky Guido (born in 1957), who was then on the run from Casso and living in Florida. Caracappa had also run the record of Peter Savino, the Genovese associate secretly informing for the government in the Windows Case. Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito, it may be remembered, had told Casso that Savino was an informant but the Lucheses had been unable to convince Vincent Chin Gigante and the Genoveses to murder him.
Detective Rodriguez testified that it was even discovered that Caracappa had searched the criminal record of "Monica Singleton." She was born on July 5, 1950, and no case number was attached to the request. Why had he searched her name? This was the woman Caracappa was about to marry.
On cross-examination Hayes pointed out that Caracappa had followed proper NYPD procedures on the searches, filling in the requests according to protocol. Detective Rodriguez agreed. Hayes said that Caracappa would have to be "a falling-down moron" not to know that there would be a permanent record of his search for Nicky Guido. Rodriguez had no reply. Hayes suggested it would be easy for a detective to get the permission of his boss to run the name of his wife to find out if she had a criminal record. The question seemed to astonish Detective Rodriguez. "There were no circumstances that would allow the NYPD Criminal Records Division, or any officer in the force, to misuse criminal history sheets," Oldham said. "The suggestion was absurd."
SECRET LIVES
The pace of the prosecution case quickened as a series of witnesses were called, each with a particular purpose, each adding another brick to the wall Henoch and his team were building. Investigators followed up on Kaplan's tip that Detective Eppolito had kept a lover for half a dozen years in the eighties. Cabrini Cama appeared in court wearing a tight-fitting brown pantsuit, her hair teased up and caught in a black bow. Eppolito's wife, Fran, stared silently ahead as Cama said she had lived with her teenage son and dog in an apartment on 84th Street in Bensonhurst, within the confines of the Six-Three, Eppolito's precinct at the time. She said she had met Detective Caracappa approximately ten times over the years in which she carried on the illicit affair with Eppolito. Cama pointed across the court and identified Caracappa and Eppolito. She said Eppolito had met with Burton Kaplan at her apartment -- the men went to another room to speak. A photo array with six late-middle-aged, balding white men was introduced. Cama picked out number four, Burton Kaplan. On cross-examination, Cutler got Cama to testify that Eppolito was "a nice guy" who had left "old feelings" behind when he moved to Las Vegas. Hayes tried to elicit testimony that she often went out with Eppolito and other cops. But she replied, ''It was always Louie and Steve." Caracappa was polite and a gentleman, she said.
Eppolito's nervous twitch, which had become pronounced during Kaplan's testimony, was now accompanied by repeated gulping.
The next witness, Betty Hydell, was dressed in black, wearing glasses, her hair white. She sat on the witness stand and caught sight of Eppolito and gave a sharp intake of breath through her teeth. Three women who accompanied her sat in the gallery on the verge of tears. A picture of Jimmy Hydell was displayed on the overhead projector. She told the court about the day of October 18, 1986. She said Jimmy was going to Brooklyn; he didn't tell her why. She described going outside to confront the two men circling the block. There was a big one, with black hair and gold necklaces, and a little one, dressed in a dark suit. When the big one, the driver, pulled out his badge, she said she grew angry. "You should let people know who you are and what you're doing," she testified that she had said. "If you're a cop why are you hiding?" She said Jimmy called her that afternoon to say he would be home for dinner. He never came home. His body has never been recovered. Betty Hydell did not testify about the Sally Jessy Raphael Show, or identify Caracappa and Eppolito. The "golden nugget" was not introduced as evidence. The defense had no questions for Betty Hydell.
Onward the prosecution marched, relentlessly accumulating territory. Rodolfo Wazlawik, an elderly man long the superintendent at 12 East 20th Street, testified that Steve and his wife, Monica, lived in apartment 10A, one floor down from the penthouse. The phone number was 420-0150, the same number entered in Kaplan's phone book.
Before trial Hayes had suggested to the authors of an article in Vanity Fair magazine and in press conferences that the defense would reveal evidence that Kaplan had secretly been an informant for the FBI for many years. The FBI Special Agent who had run Otto Heidel as an informant for more than a decade now took the stand. Patrick Colgan, retired and white-haired, testified that he had chased Kaplan for decades -- for his entire twenty-eight-year career. Once a month, he estimated, he knocked on Kaplan's door and tried to convince him of the merits of working for the FBI. The two exchanged social pleasantries, and Kaplan was unfailingly polite. But he refused to cooperate. Kaplan showed no sign of weakness, and he never appeared to so much as consider Colgan's offers.
In cross-examination Hayes suggested that if Kaplan was such an attractive target for the FBI, why was there never any evidence of him interacting with Caracappa and Eppolito? Colgan responded that Kaplan made frequent appearances in surveillance footage. He came and went from known organized crime locations -- the 19th Hole, El Caribe, Allenwood penitentiary. But Kaplan had never been the "target" of an FBI operation.
In point of fact, the notion that Kaplan had been Colgan's snitch was preposterous. He was not asked on the stand, but after he testified he told why. In 1997, after Kaplan and Galpine had been convicted in the pot case, Kaplan had contacted Special Agent Colgan. Kaplan was in the Metropolitan Correctional Center awaiting sentencing, and facing twenty years, or more, if he didn't get a sentence reduction. Colgan, who had retired from the FBI a few months earlier, agreed to see Kaplan at the MCC. They shared small talk, as they had countless times before. "We had a good conversation," Colgan recalled. "We always did. We asked after each other, the family, the usual. Burt wanted to know how to mitigate or get out of his sentence. I laid it out for him. First, you have to get a new attorney. Then, I told Burt, he needed to cough everything up. I said, 'You're not going to get a pass. I will get you a United States attorney and a private attorney and you will have to tell them everything you know.' Burt said, 'Pat, you know I can't do that.' He didn't have to say what he meant. It was understood. If he talked, Burt would be dead in jail, and his family would be dead on the outside. I told him there was no way he was going to sway a judge if he didn't do what I said. I knew Burt had a great deal of knowledge. I didn't know how much. I had no idea about Caracappa and Eppolito. I did know that Burt was never an informant before he started to talk in 2004. He didn't know where to turn to get a lesser sentence, and if he was a cooperator he would have known where to go and what to say. He would have had proof of prior cooperation. I was shocked when he flipped. I was sure he would take his secrets to the grave."
TOMMY SINGS
Tommy Galpine was big, simple, and slow, a forty-nine-year-old high school dropout and career criminal, Brooklyn born and raised. He sported a large mustache. Appearing in court in a brown sports coat, he testified that he had met Kaplan when he was sixteen years old. Since that time, he had been in Kaplan's thrall, as errand boy, apprentice, and finally partner in crime. Galpine had assisted Kaplan in legitimate business, trucking leisure suits and designer jeans and velour sweat suits around the city. He had also aided Kaplan in illegitimate commerce, bootlegging clothes, fencing stolen goods, dealing drugs. Galpine had been convicted with Kaplan in the marijuana case and sentenced to sixteen years -- 192 months, he specified. He had served nine years. Galpine cited his precise release date, with time reduced according to the guidelines, as April 26, 2011.
From the witness stand, Galpine identified Eppolito sitting at the defense table. Galpine had not seen Eppolito since the early nineties, the last time he had given him cash on Kaplan's behalf. He said Kaplan had introduced him to Eppolito in approximately 1988. Before then, Kaplan had told Galpine about his dealings with NYPD officers. Kaplan called them "the bulls," Galpine said, a common street expression referring to detectives.
Galpine testified that he had known Anthony Casso since the midseventies, when they had been introduced by Kaplan. Over the years he had often taken "things" to Casso for Kaplan: money, paperwork, messages. "I run around," Galpine said. "I do things. I'm a doer, I'm not a talker." Galpine lived near Casso and they had prearranged meeting places: a car wash on Utica Avenue, a parking lot in a shopping mall, the Golden Ox Chinese restaurant in Mill Basin -- the same place Casso had been shot by Jimmy Hydell in 1986. Galpine testified that the evening Casso was shot he had been driving a gold Lincoln Town Car that Kaplan had given him and registered under Progressive Distributors, one of his clothing companies. After Casso was nearly killed, Kaplan gave Galpine a manila envelope and told him to take it to Casso. The envelope contained the NYPD DD-Ss for the investigation of the shooting of Gaspipe Casso. The men named therein were the men about to face the wrath of Casso: Jimmy Hydell, Bob Bering, Nicky Guido. The next instruction Galpine received from Kaplan was to retrieve a Ford Fury from Patty Testa's used car lot. The car was meant to appear to be a police car. "The cops" were going to use the car to hunt down Jimmy Hydell. "The car was very cop-looking," Galpine testified. So convincing was its appearance that as Galpine drove to deliver the car he was hailed by a young man on the sidewalk who wanted help and thought Galpine must be NYPD.
There were minor discrepancies in the testimony of Kaplan and Galpine. Kaplan said he had given the manila NYPD folder with the DD-5s to Casso himself; Galpine said he delivered it to Casso for Kaplan. The inconsistency was significant, perhaps, but it could be seen by the jury to only buttress the case against Caracappa and Eppolito. Galpine corroborated Kaplan in small and large matters. Galpine said he remembered Otto Heidel from the Bulova watch job pulled by the Bypass gang. Kaplan had fenced a large number of the watches through Gaspipe Casso. Heidel came to Kaplan's warehouse on Staten Island, Galpine said, with a Luchese named Georgie Zappola. Heidel was a smart aleck, Galpine said. Only a few days after the Bulova job, as members of the Bypass gang were getting arrested and suspicions were aroused that Heidel was a rat, Kaplan told Galpine to wipe their fingerprints from the watches. When Heidel was gunned down on Casso's orders after playing a game of paddleball, Galpine testified that he had come into possession of a cassette tape that "the cops" had given to Kaplan. Kaplan told Galpine to destroy the tape. Instead, Galpine said he had played part of the tape one day as he drove to Pennsylvania. The recording was of a debriefing session. Law enforcement officials were getting information from a criminal who was cooperating -- from a snitch. Galpine said he wasn't supposed to listen to the tape, and it made him nervous to defy Kaplan's instructions, but curiosity got the better of him. The names mentioned weren't familiar, but he did remember the name of the man being interviewed. It was Otto Heidel. The tape was corroboration of the information provided by Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito about Heidel's cooperation.
It was the practice of Kaplan and Galpine to talk every night to review the events of the day, he said. Once, Galpine testified, he went to Kaplan's house and was told he couldn't come inside. "The cops" were in the house, Kaplan told Galpine, and he didn't want them to meet. Another time, Galpine came into Kaplan's house to discover he was in the kitchen with a large man wearing gold chains around his neck and an NYPD pinkie ring. Kaplan introduced the man as "Louie."
"Tommy is like a son to me," Kaplan told Eppolito.
The next time Galpine saw Detective Eppolito was in the Caribbean resort of Martinique or St. Martin -- he couldn't remember which island he flew to. Kaplan had given Galpine $10,000 with the instruction to give it to Eppolito. The year was 1988. Galpine testified he flew Continental out of Newark Airport. The round trip was completed in a single day, there and back. Before he left on vacation, Eppolito had approached Kaplan and asked if he would be willing to send him money if he ran short while he was away. He was taking his three children and mother-in-law on a vacation, and his American Express was maxed out. During his testimony, Kaplan had said he offered to give Eppolito the money before he left, but Eppolito insisted he would only take the money if he needed it.
Galpine testified that Eppolito was waiting for him at the airport. Eppolito wanted the money to purchase a time-share. Eppolito and Galpine sat together for an hour during Galpine's layover. Eppolito suggested Galpine stay for dinner, or perhaps overnight. Galpine told him he had to return to New York; he had no interest in befriending the corrupt detective. The danger of the association was evident to Galpine, even if Eppolito appeared to believe such business could be conducted cordially.
During the lunch break in Galpine's testimony, a rumor circulated through the courthouse that Gaspipe Casso had contacted the prosecutors. Casso, people whispered, wanted to testify in the case. He was said to have recanted the version of events he told the FBI in 1994 and 60 Minutes in 1998. The attempted intervention threatened to upend the trial; there was no way to know what Casso might say if he testified for the defense. "Prisoners like Casso are constantly trying to find a way to get back in the game," Oldham said. "They are locked away for the rest of their lives. In our society people don't think what that really means -- the tedium and despair. At the least, Casso would get a change of scenery if he came to testify. He would get a ride on an airplane. He would get to see New York City."
As Eppolito walked across Cadman Plaza toward the Plaza Diner, where he regularly ate lunch, he stopped to give an interview to a news radio reporter.
"Do you want to see Mr. Casso on the stand?" the reporter asked.
"Absolutely," Eppolito said.
"You have no fear of him up there on the stand?"
"I've never been afraid of anything in my life," Eppolito said. "He's not going to bother me."
"You're not worried he could incriminate you further and change his story again?"
"If he does, he does. That's the way it goes."
"What do you think of Bruce Cutler's defense?"
"I have faith in Bruce," Eppolito said. "I always have. I always will."
"What do you want people to know today?" the reporter asked. "That you were set up?"
"To me it's an obvious frame," Eppolito said, referring to Galpine's inability to recall which island he went to. "It's blatant to me. Have you ever got on a plane and not known where you went? Has anyone ever got on a plane and not known where they went?"
Yet the trip to the islands was a provable, concrete fact, and testimony after lunch showed why. Even though nearly twenty years had passed, records could be checked to see if Eppolito or Galpine were in the Caribbean at the time in question, or if Eppolito had purchased a timeshare. Joel Campanella had investigated Tommy Galpine's alleged day trip. Campanella had put a "travel query" out for Tommy Galpine for that time period. The search was to see if a Certified Travel Record had been generated by Customs for Galpine. The records were created if a passenger paid for his ticket with cash, or traveled back and forth from a destination alone on the same day. And, indeed, Galpine had been flagged by immigration and Customs officials on April 13, 1989. He had flown to and from St. Martin, the exquisite tiny island located in the Caribbean just where the Antilles curve to the south. Henoch introduced into evidence an application for a time-share membership purchase in the Royal Islands Club in St. Martin on April 11, 1989, by Louis and Fran Eppolito. And on April 13, 1989, as Henoch displayed to the jury, Galpine had flown to St. Martin -- two days after the Eppolitos had treated themselves to the Royal Islands time-share.
Cutler's cross-examination of Galpine began by focusing on Galpine's extensive criminal history.
"It's something I did with my life," Galpine responded. "I had a choice." Asked about his decision to talk, Galpine said he never expected to cooperate. "I thought I would never be here, but I am." Cutler countered that his testimony was aimed at obtaining a "Rule 35 letter," recommending his early release from prison. Galpine said he had confessed to committing many crimes, including a large number he had never been charged with and that the government had no idea about, including murder. "I told them everything. And along with that came Louis Eppolito."
Cutler pounded his elbow on the lectern, startling those in attendance with the ferocity of the blow. He bellowed, "That is the ticket! Implicating Lou Eppolito!"
"I try to be a fair guy, to tell the truth," Galpine said. "All those lies in my life got me nowhere."
Next, Eddie Hayes took his turn at Galpine.
Heroin dealing was despicable, a destructive force in minority neighborhoods throughout the city, Hayes said.
"I didn't think about it," Galpine said. ''I'm not looking to play it down. I did a lot of stupid things in my life."
"Why would anyone believe that anyone capable of dealing heroin was not capable of lying so they can go home?" Hayes asked. Hayes was imploring the jurors with his eyes. The contention Hayes was making was that each successive witness was lying to try to gain a personal benefit. By the middle of the second week, with half a dozen names still on the government witness list, the effort was increasingly forlorn. Galpine didn't reply; the question was rhetorical. "No further questions," Hayes said.
The redirect by Henoch was brief but effective. "Are you lying for Burt Kaplan?" Henoch asked in the redirect.
"No," said Galpine.
Galpine testified that when he saw the report on television that Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito had been arrested, he knew Kaplan must have decided to cooperate. Like Kaplan, Galpine had refused to cooperate when he was arrested on the marijuana trafficking charges in 1996. Law enforcement had tried to convince him to testify against Kaplan. Galpine rejected any deal. But with Kaplan's cooperation Galpine knew he was next. Galpine said he considered his options carefully. He had six years left in his sentence. He was still young enough to construct a new life. If he were indicted and convicted of further charges, on the basis of Kaplan's testimony, he would never get out of prison. Galpine was taken by the authorities to New York City. He met with his attorney, and he met with the FBI, DEA, and prosecutors. Galpine refused to cooperate. He had no idea that Kaplan had specifically included him in the deal he struck with the Eastern District. Kaplan's wife, Eleanor, came to see him and asked what he was going to do. Galpine said he was going to rely on the Fifth Amendment and refuse to answer questions on the grounds that it would tend to incriminate himself.
Once again, Galpine was backed into a corner. "It seemed like I was going to get more time for this," he testified. "There was no way I wasn't going to be charged with obstruction of justice or pulled into the conspiracy."
Henoch called Joel Campanella, the only member of the cadre to take the stand. Campanella described the protocol Henoch used for debriefing sessions with Kaplan and Galpine. The point was to get the story from the witness, Campanella testified, not to feed it to him. Incidents would not be suggested, or locations named, or identities disclosed. No reports or documents or notes were shown to cooperators. Specific questions were asked, without naming the individuals involved, so the cooperator couldn't confirm the version he thought the government wanted to hear. Campanella testified that he had been involved in the many debriefing sessions with Kaplan and Galpine. Campanella had sought medical records showing that Kaplan had been a patient at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary on 14th Street on the day after Eddie Lino was murdered. The fact confirmed Kaplan's testimony, as to his whereabouts. It was where Eppolito had gone to see Kaplan to tell him the Lino job was complete.
THE UNMARKED GRAVE
The murder of Israel Greenwald had hung over the trial from the first words of the prosecution's opening statement. Henoch and his team now turned to the final pieces of evidence, and the path that had led them to a parking shed on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. The first witness called was Tammy Ahmed, the daughter of Frank Santora Jr.; she was a quiet and shy woman in her mid-thirties who had the appearance of being a suburban mother. Her father was a co-conspirator with Caracappa and Eppolito in the deal with Kaplan and Casso. Santora had been shot and killed on Bay 8th Street in 1987. She said she had been very close to him and often went with him as he drove around Brooklyn doing business. After the murder, she testified, her father's cousin, Detective Eppolito, came to their house two or three times a month, sometimes with his girlfriend, Cabrini Cama, sometimes with Caracappa. Photographs from her Sweet Sixteen birthday party were produced. The event included entire tables filled with wiseguys, many of them later murder victims. Ahmed testified that there were only two members of the NYPD present at the event at Pisa Caterers on 86th Street in Bensonhurst-Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito.
"My father didn't like the police very much," she testified. "The police weren't his favorite subject."
Sitting at the defense table, Eppolito smiled. On the stand, Ahmed carefully and insistently refused to make eye contact with Eppolito. Ahmed said that as best she could recall, she was present only once when Detective Caracappa talked with her father. Burton Kaplan had been a friend of her father's, she said, and she recalled buying jeans from his Brooklyn warehouse after her father was released from prison in the mid-eighties.
Investigators for the Eastern District had come to Tammy Ahmed a few months earlier and she had gone through the remnants of her father's possessions. One relic she had kept was his phone book. The pages were projected on the screen for the jury. Kaplan's number was in the book, along with Eppolito's Long Island, work, and "private" number. "Steve (Lou friend)" was listed. There was also an entry for "Pete's tow truck." The number referred to a man who had appeared in a photograph at her Sweet Sixteen and that she only knew as "Pete from the gas station."
Tammy Ahmed's testimony finished, the next witness, Peter Franzone, appeared from behind Judge Weinstein's bench looking terrified. Franzone was a man who had kept a secret a very long time. It was Franzone who had led investigators to the decomposed body of Israel Greenwald the previous April. Franzone was so petrified of testifying against Caracappa and Eppolito he had given up his identity and gone into the Witness Protection Program. At Franzone's request, Judge Weinstein asked the court artists making sketches of witnesses not to draw Franzone's likeness. A small nondescript man, with a mustache and salt and pepper hair parted on the side, he would have little trouble blending into a crowd. Face cast downward to avoid eye contact, Franzone swore to tell the truth, even as he shook with fear. He said he had quit school in the sixth grade, at the age of sixteen. He could not read. He said he got in trouble with the law as a young man. When he was nine years old he broke into a recycling plant with a group of his friends. The heist netted Franzone $65. He took the proceeds to Coney Island where he blew his wad on roller-coaster rides and a cowboy hat. At fourteen he was caught stealing a car. The second offense led to him being sent to a reformatory school in upstate New York. There Franzone learned to weld. When he came out of reform school and returned to Brooklyn he took a job in a wrecking yard salvaging car parts. As a young man he drove a Chinese laundry truck and fixed flat tires at a gas station. A stint as a tow truck driver on Flatlands Avenue gave Franzone a start. Mustering the money and courage to strike out on his own, Franzone then started his own company, Valiant Towing.
In 1979, Franzone rented property at 2232 Nostrand Avenue. The location was in the far reaches of Brooklyn. In the mid-eighties a customer came to him with an Oldsmobile damaged in a rear-end accident. Frank Santora Jr. wanted the car repaired. Franzone had met Santora briefly years earlier when he was working for a local gas station. Franzone was a neighborhood guy with an interest in cars. Santora told Franzone he was a "salesman" but avoided questions involving details about his work. Whatever he did for a living, Santora had the spare time to spend a couple of afternoons every week loafing around Franzone's lot while his Oldsmobile was worked on. The inference was obvious, though, especially given the white Cadillac that Santora drove. The two men became friendly. Santora had the time to go on tow jobs with Franzone. Santora invited Franzone to his home for Christmas dinner. Franzone met Santora's wife and young daughter, Tammy.
Franzone's towing and parking business was modest. The operation included nineteen enclosed parking garages running in a row in the rear of his office shed and repair workshop. There were an additional seventy-five open-air parking spaces on the lot. The garages and outdoor spaces were rented by the month. Located near a railroad track and facing the busy commercial strip of Nostrand Avenue, the shed housing the office was only large enough to accommodate a tow truck dispatcher and parking lot attendant. Over the years Franzone testified he encountered problems with local kids climbing the fence and stealing hubcaps. He installed 150- watt fluorescent lights near the collision shop, spotlights over the garages, and placed a large mercury light at the end of the lot to illuminate the premises. He allowed a homeless man to live in a van in the back in order to scare away local kids. The shed was equipped with multiple windows to allow attendants to clearly see people coming and going. His business was open twenty-four hours a day, year round.
Valiant Towing was located less than a mile from the Six-Three precinct house. Soon after Franzone took on the job of repairing Santora's Oldsmobile, his "salesman" client introduced Franzone to a detective in the Six-Three. That day Detective Louis Eppolito pulled up, beeped his horn, and double-parked on Nostrand Avenue in front of Franzone's property. Santora called Franzone over to introduce him. "This is my cousin," Santora said. Eppolito was heavyset, wearing gold chains around his neck, and sporting a thick mustache. In the weeks that followed, Franzone met Eppolito a few more times with Santora. The cousins were close, although one was a cop and the other was a "salesman" who didn't appear to have to work for a living. Eppolito rented one of Franzone's parking sheds. Business arrangements were informal for Franzone, a simple man unable to cope with the routines of written contracts, record keeping, legal documentation. His wife kept the books. Eppolito took space number ten. He told Franzone not to enter his name in any records. Eppolito paid $50 a month in rent, a lower price than paid by the general public. The detective parked a maroon Chrysler four-door in the garage; it looked like an old highway patrol car that had been repainted. Whenever he encountered Eppolito, Franzone testified, he only spoke in monosyllabic "yes" and "no" despite Eppolito's compulsion to be familiar and talkative.
Franzone had been summoned to court to testify about a particular day in the mid-eighties. He told the court he couldn't recall the date precisely. It was winter, he testified, toward the end of 1985, or perhaps early in 1986. In the late afternoon, when it was still light outside, Franzone saw Detective Eppolito pull into the lot in the maroon Dodge or Chrysler and drive to the rear of the lot. Eppolito backed up so that his car was aimed toward the parking shed he rented. A few moments later, Franzone caught sight of a shadow moving out of the corner of his eye. The windows in the shed allowed him to keep track of movements everywhere in his domain -- from Nostrand Avenue, or the back by the railroad tracks. Franzone turned and saw Santora approaching with two men. One of the men was thin and wearing a trench coat with his collar up. Franzone got a good look at the man. He was white with dark hair, a mustache, and his face was pocked with small pits. Between Santora and the other man there was a third man. The man in the middle was wearing a skullcap, or yarmulke. He was dressed in a blue pinstripe suit. The threesome walked in lockstep, shoulder to shoulder, giving the man in the middle no chance of escape.
Before the judge and jury, Henoch now measured the distance Franzone had stood from the men using a tape measure. He was about fifteen feet away, with a clear view of the men for approximately twenty seconds. Franzone testified that Santora undid the lock on Eppolito's parking shed and opened the door and the three men stepped inside. Santora closed the door behind them. Twenty minutes or half an hour passed, Franzone said. When the door opened only two men emerged. Santora closed the door and he and the thin man in the trench coat walked by Franzone again -- and again he got a direct look at his face, despite his raised collar and bent head. The man in the yarmulke didn't emerge. Five seconds later Eppolito, who had been parked opposite his parking shed throughout this time, drove past Franzone and pulled onto Nostrand Avenue.
After a few minutes, Frank Santora Jr. returned in his white Cadillac. Santora told Franzone he wanted to show him something. Franzone followed Santora to Eppolito's parking garage. It was still daylight outside. Santora opened the door. Franzone's eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. He made out the shape of a man lying on the floor. Santora turned on the light. Franzone was staring at the body of the man wearing the yarmulke.
"You got to help me bury the body," Santora said. "You're an accessory."
Franzone stared at the dead man. He knew nothing about him: no name, background, why he had been murdered. Franzone did know that Louie Eppolito was a detective in the Six-Three. Eppolito had stood lookout during the murder. Franzone had no idea who the third man was, but he knew Santora and had just seen what he was capable of doing. Santora was a murderer with an NYPD detective as accomplice and protection. Franzone knew he was in deep trouble, and believed he had nowhere to turn.
"If you tell anybody," Santora said, "I'll kill you and your fucking family."
Franzone testified that Santora told Franzone to wait. Santora opened and then closed the garage door, leaving Franzone with the body. Santora returned with two shovels, two bags of cement, and jugs of white lime powder. Franzone started digging. There was a thin layer of cement but it had been broken by the weight of cars resting on it. The earth underneath was loose and sandy. Franzone dug and dug. Santora was talking to him but Franzone didn't listen. All Franzone could think about was the trouble he was in. He was convinced no one would believe him if he said a police officer had been involved in the murder. As he reached a depth of five feet, Franzone stopped. He thought Santora was going to shoot him and leave him in the hole along with the other man.
"I was too scared to go to the police," Franzone told the jury. "Who would believe me? They would probably call Louis Eppolito and say you've got a guy here saying you killed someone. They would get me and kill me, or lock me up and get someone in jail to kill me. I was scared for my wife and children. I didn't tell anyone -- not my wife, not no one."
Oldham said, "Once he had been compromised by Santora, Caracappa, and Eppolito, Franzone was at their mercy. For years Louie Eppolito hid his police-style sedan in the shed he rented from Franzone. There is no way to know for sure but there's good reason to ask whether he was parking on top of Israel Greenwald's remains."
Franzone next saw the thin man who had been with Santora that day at a Sweet Sixteen party for Santora's daughter Tammy. Detective Eppolito came to Franzone's table and said hello. Franzone introduced his wife. The mousy garage owner was terrified of the outsized cop. The entire scene terrified him -- Santora, Eppolito, the thin man in the trench coat from "that day" who was standing behind Eppolito at the party. They had killed and gotten away with it. Franzone reasoned they could easily do the same to him. He had not wanted to attend the Sweet Sixteen party, he testified, but he was afraid failure to come would offend Santora. Franzone thought it might signal he was not reliable -- they might think Franzone was talking to the cops.
On the night of February 13, 1987, one year after Israel Greenwald had been killed, Franzone was working in the dispatch shed when the telephone rang. It was Frank Santora Jr. calling. Franzone knew that Santora was in the collision shop only a few yards away. Franzone had let Eppolito and Santora into the shop. Another car, a brown Cadillac with two passengers, had backed into the shop. Franzone saw two more people arrive. He stayed in the shed, as far from Eppolito and Santora as possible. The week before, Franzone's wife had given birth to a son. As a gesture of celebration, Santora had presented the couple with a garbage bag filled with baby clothes. Franzone threw the infant outfits away. He didn't want his son wearing anything that had come from Santora. On the phone, Santora wanted to know how to turn the heat down in the shop. The area was extremely hot. Franzone told him to turn the toggle on the pipes but Santora couldn't find the right switch. Franzone made the short walk to the collision shop.
Walking in, Franzone saw two men wrapping a dead man in a brown canvas tarp. The tarp was tied with rope, trussed like a slab of roast beef. "Oh, my God," Franzone said, terrified again. Franzone was told to help the two men lift the body into the trunk of the brown Cadillac.
Franzone had no idea who the men were, and he never saw them again. The dead man was a wiseguy named Pasquale Varialle. His body was found at five in the morning on St. Valentine's Day in front of a church by patrol officer Sylvia Cantwell. Varialle's hands were tied behind his back, as Greenwald's had been. The body was on the sidewalk, with snow drifting over the tarp in front of a Catholic church located in the heart of the Six-Three -- the stomping grounds of Detective Eppolito.
Franzone said that Santora and Eppolito continued to frequent the garage until Santora was gunned down. Santora's wife called Franzone's wife to tell her that Frankie had been killed. Peter Franzone remembered being happy and relieved. But he was still worried about Eppolito. Franzone testified that he went to Santora's wake. "I wanted to let them know I wasn't going to tell nobody," he said.
There was a hush in the court as Judge Weinstein took a break in the proceedings. During the trial there had been many moments when the case against Caracappa and Eppolito appeared devastating. Franzone's testimony was yet another. But it had a different sense, qualitatively and quantitatively. There was no conceivable way Franzone had concocted the story to frame the two cops. The body of Israel Greenwald, compounded by the testimony of Burton Kaplan regarding the murder of the jeweler, was powerful corroboration. Franzone was simple-minded, nearly childish in his guilelessness. A year after Santora had died, Franzone sold the business and took a job as a maintenance man for a city-owned building. He had lived quietly until March 2005, when he saw the newspaper reports detailing the arrests of Caracappa and Eppolito. After agreeing to talk with prosecutors, he and his wife had quit their jobs and gone into hiding. He had forfeited his benefits and pension with the city, the main reason he had taken the job seventeen years earlier. He was still out of work.
The cross-examination by Eddie Hayes concentrated on the cut of the trench coat worn by the third man -- his client, Caracappa. Was it single-breasted or double-breasted, with large or small lapels? Hayes questioned Franzone about the skin blemishes the third man had -- inviting the jury to look at Caracappa and see that he had no pockmarks. He questioned the distances from which Franzone had seen the third man, implying his testimony was dubious.
Hayes, an avid gardener, attempted to show that Franzone could not have dug the hole with the spade because of the length of the handle but the demonstration was unconvincing. In the hallway on the fourth floor during a recess, Hayes insisted to reporters that there was no way Franzone could have pierced the hard cold earth with a small handheld spade in the dead of winter. The cold froze the ground, Hayes said, making it extremely difficult to dig a few inches let alone the five feet Franzone claimed to have reached that night.
But when Dr. Bradley Adams was called to testify about the uncovering of Greenwald's body, he flatly contradicted Hayes's theory. The earth is only frozen for the first few inches, Adams averred. On the stand, Franzone confirmed that the earth was loose and he had not found it particularly difficult work to dig the hole -- not with Santora supervising.
Cutler followed Hayes in his cross-examination. He started his questioning at full force, standing at the lectern and shouting at Franzone. "Maybe you were more involved in the murder than just digging the grave?"
"No," Franzone said quietly.
"We rely upon you," Cutler said, with evident distaste. "Did it bother you?"
"Of course it bothered me," Franzone said. "I was too scared to do anything about it."
Cutler displayed the photograph of Franzone at Tammy Ahmed's Sweet Sixteen party on the overhead projector. A slight smile creased Franzone's face as he sat with the other guests.
"You don't look afraid to me," Cutler said, pacing back and forth across the courtroom, his outrage gathering. He asked, "Did you call your wife and say, 'Dear, I'm going to be late for dinner, I'm burying a body'?" Cutler slammed his hand on the lectern and shouted, at the top of his lungs, "Burying a body is the most despicable, most loathsome thing a man can do."
The next witness rolled into court in a wheelchair. Joseph Pagnatta was elderly, frail, fraught as he looked around the packed court. Pagnatta worked as a parking lot attendant. He testified that he had been employed by Triple P Parking at 2232 Nostrand Avenue since the mid-eighties. He had worked for Franzone as a tow truck dispatcher as well. Pagnatta had not seen or spoken to Franzone since 1991. Pagnatta now told the jury he had been introduced to Eppolito by Franzone in the late eighties. "Louie" was how Franzone referred to Eppolito. Pagnatta said he had once washed Eppolito's car and the detective gave him a $20 tip, at the time a memorably large amount of money, the kind of money palmed out by mob high-rollers. The car Eppolito parked at the lot looked like an unmarked police car.