PART 2 OF 2
BROOKLYN ROBBERY
Finally promoted to detective and assigned to the Brooklyn Robbery Squad in the late seventies, Eppolito was teamed up with his former police academy classmate, Detective Steven Caracappa. It was with Caracappa, Eppolito wrote, that "I really made my bones" -- the mob term for becoming a made man. Detective Caracappa had come to Brooklyn Robbery from Narcotics, where he worked undercover for a number of years.
"What fascinated me about Mafia Cop were the stories involving Caracappa. I was surprised Caracappa allowed himself to be a character in a book like Mafia Cop. Caracappa's job in OCHU in the Major Case Squad was to monitor the Luchese family and the mafia. Caracappa was supposed to be the ace detective. Mafia Cop put Caracappa in bed with a cop proud of his mob connections. Eppolito seemed to exhibit remorse at not having taken up 'the life' of a gangster. For Caracappa to be close to a figure like that didn't jibe with the sly Caracappa I knew in the Major Case squad room."
The first case Caracappa and Eppolito worked together was the investigation of a crew of stickup artists hitting black dance clubs. Known as the "Disco Gang," according to Mafia Cop, they were noted for using shotguns and employing extreme violence. Five of the seven members of the gang were arrested after people in their neighborhood identified them to the police. Eppolito wrote that the two members of the gang still at large were David "Big T" McCleary and a hood named "Bugs." Caracappa and Eppolito soon received a tip that Bugs had a girlfriend who lived in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. They staked out the apartment and grabbed Bugs on the sidewalk outside. Caracappa disarmed Bugs, taking away his sawed-off shotgun as they wrestled him to the ground. Eppolito then stuck his service revolver in Bugs's mouth.
The two officers transported their prisoner to the precinct for questioning. Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito demanded to know the whereabouts of Big T. Bugs refused to talk, despite the threats of impending physical harm uttered by the two detectives. "Do what you gotta do, pig," Bugs said. Eppolito rained down dozens of blows on Bugs's head. Eppolito wrote that he considered himself a tough man, an able and experienced fighter, but his blows had no effect on Bugs -- he only sneered at Eppolito. This enraged Eppolito further. Detective Eppolito took Bugs to a room in the back of the precinct. There he filled a bucket with scalding hot water. He added half a jug of ammonia, a chemical that induces respiratory distress and can lead to blindness and heart failure when directly in contact with skin. Eppolito dunked Bugs's head into the water. He pulled him out. Bugs was screaming and his face was blotched and purple from the chemical exposure. "Fuck off," Bugs said. In Mafia Cop, Eppolito said that Bugs's refusal to give up Big T raised a grudging respect -- but not enough to stop him from forcing his head into the bucket again, and again, and again.
Big T called the precinct the next day, Eppolito wrote, and asked for him by name. The sequence of events that followed was portrayed by Eppolito in detail. Big T threatened to rape Eppolito's wife and young children. Eppolito told Big T he was going to hunt him down and murder him. Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito worked around the clock for the next six days looking for Big T. The two Robbery Squad police officers questioned every informant and chased down every possible lead. Finally, a prostitute who provided tips to the police on occasion told Caracappa and Eppolito that Big T was going to meet a girlfriend in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. Eight detectives were dispatched in four cars. As always, Caracappa and Eppolito were together. ''I'm going to eat his heart," Eppolito swore to Caracappa.
Crown Heights was an area that mixed Hasidic Jews with a large black population living in fading grand houses abandoned decades earlier during the white flight to the suburbs of New York. Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito were the first to arrive at the building where Big T was hiding out. As they pulled up they saw Big T standing in the window of a building above laughing at them.
"You're a dead motherfucker," Eppolito screamed up.
Caracappa and Eppolito ran into the building before backup arrived, and went upstairs. The raging Eppolito kicked in the front door of Big T's apartment and then another interior door. When he reached the bedroom he found Big T lying on a bed, naked, grinning. Big T had no weapons. He said he would come peacefully. Detective Eppolito ignored the offer of surrender. He jumped Big T and started to beat him, he wrote, breaking his hand on Big T's head. Within seconds Eppolito was trying to strangle Big T. Detective Caracappa struggled to pull his partner and best friend off the man. Eppolito concluded the story of Big T this way: "The public will never understand the mentality of a cop -- a good cop, anyway. In a way, it's very similar to the mentality of Organized Crime. You do what you have to do and don't think twice about the consequences, because when you gotta go, you gotta go. A lot of guys couldn't hack it. Just like a lot of guys can't hack the mob."
INTERNAL AFFAIRS
More than a decade later, Oldham was sitting in an unmarked car in front of Stromboli Pizza reading about Big T in Mafia Cop when Fat Larry Barnao pulled up in a brown Cadillac Brougham. Fat Larry was in his late fifties, enormously obese, dressed in a suit that was two sizes too tight. Detectives Oldham and Butt crossed the traffic on Bensonhurst's 86th Street to make their arrest. Fat Larry saw the two NYPD detectives closing in on him. He tried to run. "He made it two, three steps and his knee gave out. He fell on the sidewalk. We couldn't cuff him because he was too fat and his wrists wouldn't meet. He was sprawled on the pavement cursing. He easily weighed four hundred pounds -- the result of a lifetime of baked ziti and half-baked crime. It took four of us to get him up from the pavement."
During the stakeout, Detectives Oldham and Butt had started to joke about Mafia Cop and Eppolito's adventures. "Frankly, I doubted a lot about the book," Oldham said. "The Big T story stunk. Telling a defendant you're going to hunt him down and kill him? I have never had my face stuck in ammonia but I assume it hurts and burns. Back in those days, prisoners took unmerciful beatings in precinct houses all over the city. But you still had to take your perp to the desk sergeant before you took him downtown. You didn't want to appear with a prisoner who had just lost his eyesight. I wouldn't want to take a prisoner in that condition through the system. When you got downtown you went to Central Booking -- where the guys didn't know you and had no allegiance to you. They would report a detective turning up with a prisoner in the shape Bugs was supposed to be in. After that, you have to take him to the city jailers. Prisons belonged to an agency outside the NYPD and they had actual enmity for the police. If a perp had a couple of broken ribs there would be no problem. It was common to see prisoners with their heads wrapped in gauze to stanch the bleeding from blows to the head. But dipping a perp's face in ammonia? Bugs's face was supposedly morphing into a giant purple blotch. It didn't ring true to me."
Missing from Mafia Cop was Eppolito's struggle to make ends meet. For most police officers, financial difficulties were par for the course. It was hard to make enough money to raise a family as a cop. Second and third jobs were common. Overtime was an obsession inside the force. There was also little in the book about the actual cases Eppolito worked, despite the fact he was supposed to be the eleventh most decorated detective in the 150 years of the NYPD. "If you were going to write a book, it seemed you would at least include the story of your best case. Eppolito didn't seem to have a best case. Clearly he was not a great detective. Smacking people around and closing a couple of robberies made thin support for a cop with more than thirty medals to his name. If the capture and beating of Big T was the summit of your career as a policeman, you should probably have turned in your detective shield."
Also missing from the book was an account of Eppolito's disciplinary record -- which was substantial. As partners, Detectives Eppolito and Caracappa quickly accumulated a large number of Internal Affairs complaints. The first was from a man who alleged he was riding in a taxi at the corner of Nostrand and Foster avenues in Brooklyn when two plainclothes detectives arrested him. The man was placed in handcuffs and $300 was taken from him by the detectives -- and never returned. Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito were investigated but the claim could not be proven. A short while later, jewelry went missing from the scene of a homicide. Eppolito was suspected. The charge could not be substantiated. At the same time, a confidential informant working for the DEA told the federal government Caracappa was involved in dealing drugs. The report was received by the department and inquiries were made but no action was taken. A man arrested by Caracappa in his office on Court Street alleged money and property were taken -- a claim found "unsubstantiated." Yet another confidential informant for the DEA said that Caracappa and another unnamed detective showed her a copy of a homicide report in return for $10,000. This, too, resulted in no disciplinary actions or censure.
Eppolito's CPI -- Central Personnel Index -- betrayed even more troubles for the detective and his partner. While they were paired, a woman complained that two males robbed her. The two were "M.O.F." -- members of the force -- and Eppolito and an unnamed detective were investigated but the charge deemed "unsubstantiated." When Eppolito was required to testify at a complainant's pistol permit hearing, the man said Eppolito demanded money in return for changing his evidence. In a civil action relating to a car accident it was alleged that Eppolito had perjured himself. "It was difficult to make a case against a cop, unless there were witnesses or photographs or tape recordings," Oldham said. "It was the complainant's word against the cop's word. But when it came to officers constantly in trouble, the feeling inside the force was simple. Where there's smoke, there's fire. If a cop got a lot of complaints it meant he was an active cop, out on the street taking risks and making collars. The busier you were, the more arrests you made, the more complaints you got. It was the nature of the business. The easiest way to fuck with a cop was to make complaints against him. But if the cop wasn't making many arrests and the complaints kept on coming then there was something wrong. The arrest records of Caracappa and Eppolito did not look like the pair were going gangbusters. The nature of the complaints sounded authentic. Why would a man make up a story about extortion for a pistol permit? Why would a DEA CI make up a tale about a specific NYPD detective dealing dope? Why would a guy lie about two cops stealing three hundred bucks? There was specificity to the complaints and complainants. There were stories about drugs, violence, and money."
Oldham had been taught in the police academy that Mutt and Jeff teams were not unusual. The characters Mutt and Jeff were the stars of the first daily cartoon strip in America, two seeming opposites who were the precursors of Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello. "Mutt and Jeff referred to a certain kind of male relationship -- the fat guy teamed up with the skinny guy. One was a bodybuilder gone to pot, the other thin as a rake. The two were inseparable. It was a pairing that often occurred in organized crime. Carmine 'the Snake' Persico and his older brother 'Ally Boy' were the Mutt and Jeff of the Colombos. It happened with police partners frequently as well. Caracappa and Eppolito traded on each other's strengths and weaknesses. They complemented each other. They fed off each other. If they had never met, the characteristics they provoked in the other probably would have remained latent. Together, they brought out the worst in each other."
FRANKIE JUNIOR
After just over a year as partners, Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito were separated and reassigned. Eppolito was sent to the Seven-Seven, a precinct in Bedford-Stuyvesant known to be a dumping ground for suspect cops and malcontents. Eppolito was furious and demanded a different assignment. In the Seven-Seven Eppolito would be operating without Caracappa. He would be alone. He would be out of his element. He pleaded with the commanders to send him to the Six-Two, where his cousin Detective Al Guarneri was assigned.
Eppolito's request required the approval of a chief. Eppolito wrote that he barged into the chief of detectives' office and demanded to know why he was being sent to the Seven-Seven. "Deep down I knew what was on their minds. Uncle Jimmy. Uncle Freddy. Ralph. But I wanted to hear them admit it." To Eppolito's delight, and astonishment, the brass gave in to Eppolito's persistence and he was sent to the mobbed-up streets of the Six-Two. It was at the heart of mafia territory in Brooklyn. Near the precinct house where Gambino boss "Big Paul" Castellano, who was still alive at the time, owned a butcher shop. The streets were filled with wiseguys Eppolito had grown up with and knew well. "I felt like I was home," he wrote.
Once again Eppolito found himself tempted by the kindness of mobsters. The death of his grandfather, Diamond Louie, at the age of ninety-one, affected Eppolito deeply, putting him in close contact with his family as well as the Gambino family. At Diamond Louie's funeral, Jimmy the Clam Eppolito, Eppolito's uncle and a Gambino associate, gave his nephew Louie an envelope containing $3,000 cash to take his family on a vacation to Disney World. Taking money from a known organized criminal was against NYPD regulations, Eppolito knew, but he didn't care. The money would give his family a well-deserved holiday, he felt. The pay of an NYPD detective was too modest to partake of such luxuries. He felt entitled to the extra cash; the rules did not apply to him. When he returned to New York and his duties in the Six-Two, Eppolito began to routinely drink sambuca with Uncle Jimmy and his son Jim-Jim. "I didn't give a shit about the surveillance," Eppolito wrote. ''I'd played by the Department's rules long enough."
A month after Eppolito's Disney World holiday, Jimmy the Clam and Jim-Jim Eppolito were murdered. Lured to the Gemini Club in Brooklyn, headquarters of the lethal crew known as Murder Inc., the two were driven to a service road off the Belt Parkway and shot to death in cold blood. The reason for the double murder was political. Jim-Jim had been involved in an elaborate con run under the guise of a charitable organization called the International Children's Appeal. The fund was supposed to raise money for city schools during the International Year of the Child. It was in fact a money-laundering front for drug and weapons merchants. When the scam was exposed on the ABC News show 20/20, Gambino boss Big Paul Castellano grew concerned the story would bring unwanted attention to the Gambinos. President Jimmy Carter's wife, Rosalynn, had posed with Jim-Jim for a photograph taken at a gala reception in Washington. Senator Edward Kennedy had also been taken in by the con. Powerful people made to appear foolish would, in the mind of a mafioso, use their power to exact revenge. Castellano feared that President Carter would sic a thousand more FBI agents on the Gambinos in retribution. He ordered the double hit.
After the murder of the Clam and Jim-Jim, both the NYPD and the mafia were worried that Eppolito would seek revenge, he wrote. His claim about police department concern was curious: gangland reprisals by sworn officers were neither permitted nor expected, regardless of circumstances. The Gambinos were another matter, according to Eppolito. Another wiseguy relative, cousin Frank "Junior" Santora, told Eppolito that Gambino boss Castellano wanted a sit-down-the traditional means of settling mobster disputes. A few days later, Detective Eppolito stood at the corner of 18th Avenue and 86th Street in Brooklyn as a Chrysler New Yorker pulled up to ta~e him to a secret meeting with Castellano. It was after midnight, in order to ensure the rendezvous would not be observed. "Some monster gets out of the car," Eppolito recalled. "He's right out of Francis Ford Coppola's imagination. Ugly, but dapper." As an NYPD officer, Eppolito wrote that he understood the consequence of having a clandestine sit-down with the man known as "the boss of bosses." "As soon as I agreed to that meeting I stopped being a cop," Eppolito wrote. Castellano lived in a white mansion on Staten Island on a rise named Death Hill by Dutch settlers. Afraid he might meet the same fate as the Clam and Jim-Jim, Eppolito relaxed at the sight of the house. Eppolito knew there was no chance he would be killed at the house of Castellano -- the Gambino leader always kept himself insulated from violence.
Mafia Cop dramatized the encounter in a style meant to mimic famous cinema graphic moments. When Eppolito met Castellano, he addressed him as "Godfather." Castellano waved him off. ''I'm not Don Corleone," he said. Castellano explained that it was Jim-Jim, the son, who had been the principal reason for the murders. "The kid did a lot of bad things wrong," Castellano said. The Clam had been killed by necessity: if he was left alive he would have to avenge the murder of his son.
Eppolito adopted a grave attitude, speaking slowly, weighing his words. ''I'm tremendously honored that you've chosen to respect me by bringing me here tonight," he said. He went on to say that he understood the rules of "the life" his uncle and cousin lived. As for the murders, Detective Eppolito continued, "It's not for me to say what is right or what is wrong in this matter. But I can say that I am not looking to hurt anyone. I'm not looking to come after anyone. I'm not looking for revenge. I just want the dead to rest in peace."
"The story read to me like a fantasy bordering on a delusion," Oldham recalled. "It only made sense if Eppolito was telling a story his cousin Frank Santora told him. It added up that way. Santora was a well-known guy in Brooklyn. He was connected to a few families -- Luchese, Gambino, Genovese. Santora did a stretch in the early eighties in Allenwood, a federal prison. More wiseguys networked there than at any trade conference or political convention. If Castellano ordered the murder of Jimmy the Clam and Jim-Jim Eppolito it made a certain amount of sense that he would reach out to Santora and make sure the reasons were understood. No one with any sense wanted the mafia to attract the kind of attention Jim-Jim was getting. But the idea that Paul Castellano, the boss of bosses and the most discreet gangster around, would summon an NYPD detective to his house for a sit-down? Castellano would as much as confess to murder to Detective Eppolito of the Six-Two? You didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to know Eppolito's tale lacked the ring of truth."
After the supposed sit-down with Castellano, Eppolito's wife, Fran, noticed differences in her husband's personality. Suddenly he acquired Italian mannerisms he had not displayed before, she said in Mafia Cop, describing his interactions with Caracappa. "The talking with the hands. The drinking of the double espressos. Salud-ing each other to death after every sip. And now Louie was starting to kiss everybody on the cheek." Eppolito said in Mafia Cop he no longer attached much importance to his job as a police officer. The glances and suspicions of other cops were too insulting. He was a different person, he said, no longer a cop, at least not in spirit. Eppolito wrote that he had come to inhabit a "moral twilight zone."
MOB JUSTICE
Increasingly in the thrall of the mafia, Eppolito started to use mob methods in his police work in the Six-Two. When a wiseguy named Frankie Carbone, wanted for breaking his wife's jaw, insulted and threatened Eppolito, the detective reacted instinctively, Mafia Cop related. Eppolito wrote that he fetched his sawed-off shotgun from his locker -- the possession of which was itself a federal offense -- and hunted Carbone down. Eppolito found him in a mafia social club on 18th Avenue. He walked over to Carbone's table and stuck the barrels of the sawed-off shotgun in his mouth and ordered him to his feet. "Suddenly I knew what it felt like to be my father," Eppolito wrote. "I was walking like a wiseguy. I was talking like a wiseguy. The power surge was comparable to what I had felt, at times, as a cop, yet somehow different. As if the police worked on the AC current, and the Mafia on the DC."
Eppolito described with relish how he'd convincingly played the role of a professional hit man.
He wrote that he instructed Carbone to report to the precinct house the next day. He explained the consequences if Carbone failed to comply: "First I'm going to throw you in the trunk of a fucking car. And then I'm going to blow your fucking brains out." As brazen as ever, Eppolito described how he would leave the body in the car near the precinct, giving it enough time to "get ripe." He would come back two days later and anonymously report a foul odor emanating from the car, and assured Carbone, "When I get to work, guess whose job it's going to be to find out who killed you?"
Over the years Eppolito worked forty organized crime homicides, by his own estimate. He allowed -- "and this is a terrible knock on me" -- that he didn't work particularly hard when a mobster turned up dead. One example of this cavalier attitude that Eppolito did not include in Mafia Cop involved the murder of a drug dealer named Frank Fiala. At approximately 2 a.m. on Sunday, June 27, 1982, Fiala was shot on the street in front of the Plaza Suite, a popular discotheque in the Gravesend section of Brooklyn. The Plaza Suite was owned by a corporation called Enjoy Yourself Inc., controlled by Sammy the Bull Gravano. The Plaza club was a large and thriving establishment, with five thousand square feet and a long bar lined with neighborhood wiseguys and party girls. On Saturday nights, Gravano featured live acts like Chubby Checker and the Four Tops. In the spring of that year, Gravano was approached by Fiala, a Czech who flaunted his wealth. Fiala said he wanted to throw himself a birthday party for three hundred guests. Fiala didn't know who Gravano "was." Fiala said he wanted no expense spared for his thirty-seventh birthday.
"Fiala thought he was a big shot, with mob connections. He was a coke dealer and a killer. He had murdered a couple of rival dealers -- not just them but their entire families. He wrote a check to Gravano for thirty grand. The day of the party his check bounced. The party was a fiasco. Only eighty people turned up. Fiala had two blondes shave his head on the dance floor. Everyone was snorting cocaine. Thousands of dollars' worth of Chinese food was delivered and the crowd made a mess of Gravano's place -- his pride and joy. When Fiala started dancing Gravano saw that he was packing a piece in his belt, another stupid move around a wiseguy. Gravano demanded Fiala leave. Words were exchanged and Fiala left. It seemed over."
In Underboss, Gravano's biography, Sammy the Bull told what happened next. First, Fiala offered Gravano $1 million to buy the Plaza Suite, $100,000 cash as a down payment, with $650,000 in gold bullion under the table, tax-free for Gravano. The price was preposterously high, and irresistible for Gravano. The deal was struck. As part of Fiala's pattern of conspicuous consumption -- Rolls- Royces, yachts, two private airplanes -- he owned a helicopter. Fiala started to fly over other nightclubs in Brooklyn at night hanging out the side with a bullhorn yelling at the people below to come to the Plaza Suite. The owners of the other clubs, also wiseguys, were not amused. Before the transaction was finalized, Fiala set up his headquarters in Gravano's office. Sammy the Bull stormed into the office to confront Fiala, who sat at Gravano's desk, flanked by snarling Doberman pinschers, Uzi in hand. "You fucking greaseballs, you do things my way," Fiala said to Gravano. "You think you're so tough. The Colombians are really tough. The Colombians fucked with me and I took them out. You greaseballs are nothing." Gravano was certain he was about to be killed -- but Fiala didn't fire. Gravano thought, "If somebody's going to shoot you, he don't talk about it."
Later that night, Fiala exited the Plaza Suite surrounded by his entourage. He walked along 86th Street, kitty-corner to the place where Oldham would wait to apprehend Fat Larry Barnao a decade later. That night, the sidewalks were filled with people out clubbing. Gravano appeared out of the darkness. "Hey, Frank, how you doing?" he asked. One of Gravano's button men shot Fiala once in the head. Pandemonium erupted as hundreds of night-lifers ran for cover. Gravano's man stood over Fiala, bent down, placed his gun to his left eye, and fired. Then he placed the gun to his right eye and pulled the trigger. Gravano walked up to Fiala's body and spat on him. In Underboss, Gravano wrote that there was no doubt the entire neighborhood knew he was behind the murder.
Detective Eppolito was assigned to investigate the homicide. Press reports quoted him. "It was a methodic execution," Eppolito said. "Admitting that they had no definitive leads," Gravano said in Underboss, "detectives were reduced to saying that Fiala's murder was carried out very professionally." But Gravano omitted the true reason he was never charged for Fiala's murder. As he told the FBI when he flipped in 1991, Gravano paid the NYPD detective investigating Fiala's murder five thousand dollars to make the case "go away."
Oldham said, "The name of that detective was Louie Eppolito. Eppolito had solicited the payment in return for burying the case. It would not have been particularly difficult to let a murder file like Fiala's slip. Fiala was a coke-dealing moron on a suicide mission. Dead criminals littered the streets of the Six-Two at the time. Eppolito and detectives of the Six-Two never made a collar in the murder of Frankie Fiala. In the early eighties, there were dozens of OC homicides slowly cooling, turning from open cases to cold cases."
LEAVING FINGERPRINTS
Mafia Cop concluded with Eppolito's version of an event that had brought the contradictions inherent in Eppolito's worldviews to a head. According to his self-portrait, after he had become a police officer his loyalties had shifted back and forth between the two brotherhoods to which he belonged: the police and the mafia. But in the fall of 1984, while Eppolito was working in the Six-Two, an NYPD administrative trial decided the matter for good.
The trial stemmed from a discovery made during an FBI raid on a mobster's house in New Jersey in 1984. Rosario Gambino, nephew of boss Carlo Gambino, had been conspiring to sell forty kilograms of heroin. Unknown to Gambino, his customer was an FBI undercover agent. As agents searched the house, an NYPD Intelligence Division file was discovered -- a serious breach in security. The file had been created by the NYPD's Organized Crime Monitoring Unit. It related to the investigation of Rosario Gambino, intelligence that the mobster should never have possessed. The FBI took the file and processed the pages for fingerprints. "Fingerprints are the product of sweat on fingertips. They can't be lifted from paper -- they can only be revealed. At the time, the procedure was to place the document in a glass bell jar. It was then fumed with a chemical called ninhydrin. In this manner it became possible to observe or photograph the prints as they appeared on the paper. The upside of the process was you got to see the fingerprints. The downside was that it destroyed the original document."
When the FBI ran the latent prints from the documents, they matched Detective Eppolito's police department prints. FBI supervisors then met with NYPD Internal Affairs commanders to inform them of the identification of Eppolito's prints on the documents discovered in Rosario Gambino's house. No criminal charges were filed but Eppolito was brought up on departmental charges and suspended without pay. A trial date was set.
Within days, word of the case leaked from headquarters and then appeared in the news. Detective Caracappa was working in the Major Case Squad at the time. An early riser, always the first to work, Caracappa called Eppolito at seven o'clock on the morning the newspaper article ran. Eppolito had no idea that the story of his fingerprints on Gambino's police files had gotten out. "It's going to be a tough day, Louie, a tough weekend," Caracappa warned. "Just get the Daily News."
Eppolito fetched the paper. "Mob Big Got Data from Cop," the headline in the Daily News said. The article reported that a veteran NYPD detective had passed intelligence reports to Rosario Gambino. The detective in question was not named but Eppolito was convinced the rumor mill in the NYPD -- a "huge hen party," in Eppolito's words -- meant every cop in the city would soon know he was the suspect in question.
"I knew my life as I had known it was over," Eppolito wrote.
In Mafia Cop Eppolito wrote that a Greek proverb came to his mind as he read the story: "It is the sins we don't commit that we regret." Eppolito thought to himself that perhaps he should have joined the mafia, instead of the NYPD, as a young man.
Despite the irrefutable fingerprint evidence, Eppolito protested his innocence to department investigators. Detective Caracappa was no longer partnered with Eppolito but he visited him frequently. The way to beat the rap, Caracappa counseled his old partner, was to lie low and play it cool and see how things played out. Getting a guilty verdict was more difficult than many people understood. Predictably, the story of Eppolito's connivance with Rosario Gambino quickly spread through the force. Eppolito was isolated from his former comrades. With his pay suspended, he was running out of money -- a financial crisis that deepened his resentment of the force. Before long, Eppolito wrote, opportunities in organized crime began to present themselves. Eppolito's cousin Frank Santora ran a crew in Brooklyn. A wiseguy named Red Calder belonged to Santora's outfit. Calder offered Eppolito five hundred dollars a week, tax-free, to drive a dump truck for him in Long Island where Lucheses controlled a cartel of garbage companies. A former NYPD detective named Bart Rivieccio offered to help Eppolito make unimaginable sums of money, Eppolito claimed. Like Eppolito, Rivieccio was suspected by many fellow officers of being connected to the mafia -- suspicions borne out when Rivieccio was convicted of bank fraud months later.
Mafia Cop recited Eppolito's mounting indignities, from the insulting prospect of working at Toys 'R' Us to taking handouts from friends. On one occasion his son, Tony, found the former bodybuilder once nicknamed "Atlas" in his bathrobe sobbing uncontrollably. "Ten-thirteen" was the radio code for "officer down." It was also the term used inside the force for fund-raisers held to assist cops who found themselves in dire straits. Divorce and illness were often the cause, but occasionally 10-13s were held for a police officer who was the subject of an internal investigation and needed to pay for legal representation. Eppolito's 10-13 was held at Bay Ridge Manor, a Brooklyn catering hall in the Six-Two. Admission was ten dollars, with a cash bar and music from a doo-wop cop band called the Capris. Shunned by many in the force because of his deep roots in organized crime and the revelation of the Gambino connection, Eppolito expected a poor turnout. More than five hundred people attended, including lieutenants, captains, and fellow detectives. In one night, the "Louie Eppolito Defense Fund" netted nearly nine thousand dollars.
"Camaraderie among cops was strong, particularly when Internal Affairs got involved. The presumption of innocence had a different slant for police officers facing an investigation by other cops. Everyone hated cops who went after other cops. Every cop knew they could find themselves in trouble someday. We called it 'white socks-ing.' It meant that once Internal Affairs came after you, guilty or innocent, they were going to find something to charge you with -- even if it was wearing white socks with your uniform. In Eppolito's case, no one trusted the FBI, for good reason. Being a member of the force was about mutual support, financial and moral, and the sense that it was us against them."
The last chapters of Mafia Cop offered a detailed account of Eppolito's administrative trial before Deputy Commissioner for Trials Hugh Mo. In Eppolito's telling, he was exonerated of all charges. He admitted handling the file found in Gambino's house. With the fingerprint match there was no way to deny that fact. The reason he was found not guilty, Eppolito wrote, was that the document with his fingerprints on it was a photocopy, not the original. "Bingo," Eppolito wrote.
Oldham begged to differ. "The point was that the fingerprint was authentic and original, not the document. The only way to capture Eppolito's fingerprint on that document was for him to handle the document. Eppolito's argument didn't hold water to me. It was tricky to think about, the kind of thing detectives like rolling around in their head. How do you get latent fingerprints from a document? Does a photocopier capture fingerprints on the original and transfer them to the copy? Does it matter if the document was the original or not? Eppolito had a long, contorted explanation for how his fingerprints had magically appeared on a police department intelligence document found in a Gambino's house. I wasn't buying it."
Departmental trials were not sophisticated affairs, Oldham knew. A hearing in front of a deputy commissioner like Hugh Mo wasn't like the supreme court. In Eppolito's case all of the evidence had been stipulated to. In legal terms, it meant that both sides agreed to the facts in the case. There was no way to enter evidence -- or even question evidence. The only matter at issue was the interpretation of the facts. The difference between a photocopy and original had introduced confusion and doubt into the proceedings, it seemed to Oldham. The FBI was not present for the hearing to describe the effect of ninhydrin -- how the chemical had destroyed the original document found in the raid, so it was impossible to enter the original in evidence. There was no fingerprint expert called to testify about lifting latent prints. Once the facts were stipulated, nothing could be expanded upon or contradicted. "The charges against Eppolito were found to be unsubstantiated. Eppolito was 'not guilty,' which was not the same thing as innocent. The waters were muddied enough for Mo to refuse to dismiss Eppolito. Reading Mafia Cop I couldn't figure how Eppolito was not fired on the spot. He was either lucky or smart or connected -- or all three."
The day after the hearing, Eppolito wrote, he went to see Chief of Detectives Richard NiCastro. Eppolito was carrying his scrapbook, with newspaper clips of his exploits glued to the pages. He was determined to be restored to his previous assignment in the Six-Two, to clear his name and resume his work in the neighborhood he knew so well. Chief NiCastro was just as determined to keep Eppolito away from the Six-Two. Unimpressed by Eppolito's scrapbook and his claim to be the eleventh most decorated cop in the history of the NYPD, Chief NiCastro declared that Eppolito would never be sent back to the Six-Two. "I know all about you," NiCastro said to Eppolito, pushing his finger into his chest. "Your kind, and your family. I knew your father real well from Grand Avenue."
Filled with righteous indignation, Eppolito threatened to smash the chief's face flat. "I told him he didn't know my father. The only cops who knew my old man from Grand Avenue were the cops he was paying off." In sum, Eppolito offered the reason he had been persecuted by the police. "The main purpose of the entire affair was to shitcan me," Eppolito wrote. "Why? I guess the name Eppolito was enough."
Eppolito served nearly five more years in the NYPD. He never returned to the Six-Two but a compromise was struck. He was assigned to the Six-Three, the next precinct over and another mafia neighborhood. Eppolito described himself as a "bitter man." He filed a $5 million defamation suit against the NYPD, an action that went nowhere in court. Eppolito's remaining time in the NYPD was seemingly uneventful. He appeared to be waiting for the day he could retire, like many disgruntled cops have in the past. The only surprise occurred in 1988, when Eppolito was promoted to detective, second grade. "Eppolito averaged barely one arrest a year in the Six-Three -- a total that put him in the extreme low end of arrest rates in the city. It was a pitiful record. By his own admission, Eppolito wasn't a cop anymore. He had sworn to get revenge. The force had treated him badly. He wrote that he had taken out a blood vendetta against the NYPD. It was curious that he was promoted to second grade. Eppolito had to have a powerful hook somewhere in headquarters."
In 1989, while on a stakeout in Manhattan, Eppolito wrote, a Hollywood casting director spotted him and was struck by how precisely the cop looked like a stereotypical New York mobster. The casting director introduced Eppolito to Martin Scorsese, the movie director. "On the spot, Scorsese hired the son of Fat the Gangster to portray, ironically, the Gambino family capo Angelo Ruggiero in the movie Goodfellas," Mafia Cop reported. The part had no lines but Detective Eppolito played a mobster, dressed in an expensive suit, grinning as the camera panned the mob bosses assembled in a New York nightclub; Eppolito's wife, Fran, also appeared as an extra dressed as a mobster's wife. During the shoot, Eppolito wrote, he became friendly with the movie's star, Robert De Niro. On the set the actor invited Detective Eppolito to his trailer for meals in exchange for tips on how to act like a mobster. Eppolito said pretending to be a wiseguy was simple. Live your life according to a code: honor and loyalty. "As frightening as it may sound," Eppolito wrote, "I found more loyalty, more honor, in the wiseguy neighborhoods and hangouts than I did in police headquarters. The bad guys respected Louie Eppolito. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the good guys."
"Eppolito retired in 1990 and pursued a career in acting," said Oldham. "It made sense. He had been acting the entire time he was a cop. Soon after Mafia Cop was published, Caracappa retired from the police department. It had to be because of the book. His best friend had publicly cast his lot with the mafia. At that point Eppolito had retired and Internal Affairs only investigates active members of the service, so they wouldn't be setting up on Louie. Caracappa was a different story and he had to know it. Internal Affairs would almost certainly want to know more about a first-grade detective in the OCHU who'd had his picture featured prominently in a book celebrating organized crime. Caracappa had become a lightning rod. Once Internal Affairs launched an investigation, Caracappa would not be permitted to retire until the investigation was concluded and closed. This practice stopped cops caught under the microscope from taking their pensions and running before they got caught. Caracappa managed to get out before an investigation began. I watched his hasty exit with interest. There was a retirement party attended by most of the big-name guys in Major Case. I did not go. Soon after I took a pair of scissors and clipped the picture of Caracappa and Eppolito from Mafia Cop and slipped it into my desk drawer."