PART 1 OF 2
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: TRIAL FOR THE AGES
Monday, March 13, 2006, was a cold and windy late winter day. Dozens of reporters and television crews from New York and around the country and the world gathered in the chill outside the federal courthouse in downtown Brooklyn as the protagonists in United States v. Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito arrived for the first day of trial. For years the building had been covered in scaffolding as a new office tower was constructed. The scaffolding came down and the structure was opened as the trial of the detectives began. Set apart from the foot traffic in downtown Brooklyn, the courthouse finally had a grand facade to match the dramas that unfolded within it. Other high-profile organized crime cases were being tried or pending -- the erstwhile Teflon Don's son John Gotti Jr., Bonanno wiseguy and beauty salon owner Vinny "Gorgeous" Basciano. But those cases were a sideshow compared to the trial of the "mafia cops."
The gallery in Judge Jack Weinstein's fourth-floor court was packed shoulder to shoulder. The rear rows were set aside for law enforcement, and some of the men in the cadre from the Brooklyn DA's office were in attendance, including Joe Ponzi and Bobby Intartaglio. Two rows of press were shoved tightly into the front rows. Staying clear of the courthouse because he was a potential witness, and following his longstanding practice of avoiding days in court as much as possible, Oldham was a notable absence.
In keeping with the scarcely believable accusations, the number of book projects attached to the case seemed to grow with each passing week. In the New York Times, reporter Alan Feuer's coverage wryly emphasized the bizarre book bonanza. Tommy Dades had entered into a deal, with rumored Hollywood movie rights attached, collaborating with Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Mike Vecchione. Jimmy Breslin, the noted New York City columnist and author of the classic mob novel The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, was said to be working on a book about the case. Sitting next to Breslin was Jane McCormick, the former Vegas girl-around-town who had paid Eppolito her life savings to write the screenplay of her life. She had flown from Minnesota to witness the trial for the autobiography she was now writing. Beside McCormick was Louie Eppolito Jr., Eppolito's son from his first marriage. Louie junior, with a shaved head and a quiet manner, worked in a vitamin warehouse in New Jersey. His life partner Rob Gortner ran a dog-grooming salon in a quaint rural village in New Jersey. The younger Eppolito was said to be seeking a deal to write a book with a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer that would focus on his relationship with his father. Greg B. Smith of the Daily News was contracted to write a book on the case. Finally, sitting quietly in a corner of the court, professor Jefferey Morris from Touro College Law Center in Huntington, New York, was in the midst of a decade-long scholarly study of Judge Weinstein's life on the bench. In addition to this, the judge, both defense attorneys, and one of the defendants were all authors of books.
As Judge Weinstein called the court to order, the room bristled with anticipation. Opening statements were to be given first by the prosecution and then the counsel for each defendant. Mitra Hormozi spoke for the government. The usual pecking order in a RICO prosecution with three attorneys on the case was for the junior-most lawyer to give the opening statement, the second-most senior to handle the closing statement, and the lead, in this case Henoch, to make the final argument and have the last say to the jury -- the rebuttal summation. The last was considered the most difficult, with no real time for preparation, and therefore the most desirable.
But Henoch had asked his second in command, Hormozi, to present the opening statement. Setting the tone of the trial was critical to success. Hormozi's appearance was in stark contrast to the onslaught of blood and betrayal she described. Disarmingly attractive, with large eyes and dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, Hormozi looked like an intelligent, pretty, and diligent young attorney -- hardly the vicious government lawyer conspiring to frame two NYPD cops that defense counsel Bruce Cutler and Eddie Hayes hoped to convince the jury she was. Her voice was sweet and innocent, but her address was strong and unblinking and direct as she described the crimes of Caracappa and Eppolito. Hormozi began with the morning that Israel Greenwald disappeared forever. He was late for work, Hormozi told the jury, but before he left his young daughter at the bus stop for the last time, Israel Greenwald put his briefcase down, walked back to Michal, and gave her a final kiss -- the last time she would ever see her father.
Next came Bruce Cutler. In and out of court, his approach was a unique combination of bombastic Brooklyn grandiloquence spiced with an exceedingly courtly manner. If Cutler appeared to be playing a role it was because he was, in fact, acting -- even as he represented a failed actor in Louis Eppolito. In Closing Argument Cutler described his experience acting the part of a crooked attorney in the Robert De Niro film 15 Minutes and acting as defense counsel. "My style is to adopt the role of my client before the jury," Cutler wrote. "Most lawyers don't need to do this. I do. In order to get motivated, to enter the zone of indignation, sorrow, or elation I seek, I need to feel that I am portraying someone other than who I really am. Call me a method lawyer. My courtroom style is a performance, acting."
Prowling around the courtroom, Cutler offered disdain for the gangsters who had become informants and would be called as witnesses, thereby destroying the traditions of the mafia. "The so-called mafia had rules that were torn asunder years ago," Cutler declaimed. "It has no cachet now. It's desultory and decadent and filled with lowlives who run to mommy when they're in trouble. They wet their pants and run to mommy -- the federal government." Cutler said that Eppolito could have been a mobster, if he had so desired. But he did not follow the path of his father and his grandfather. "Louie did as Teddy Roosevelt did," Cutler said. "He joined a priesthood. He eschewed his father's life. Lou said no. Not for me. Not. For. Me. He had the courage to say no."
Eppolito joined "the blue gang," making a meager salary and dedicating himself to law and order, Cutler continued. "He received medals for honor, bravery, and valor, risking his life for you and me. His chest wouldn't hold all the medals, as big as his chest was." Eppolito had even written a book about his life, Cutler said. The title Eppolito gave the work was "Man in the Middle." Cutler said the publisher redubbed it with the more commercial, oxymoronic name Mafia Cop. "Louie Eppolito was out, proud, and unashamed," Cutler emoted. "But for the book, there would be no case."
Eddie Hayes was impeccably attired in a pinstriped Savile Row bespoke suit as he rose to make his opening statement. The essence of the case, he said, was a plot by gangsters to undermine law enforcement by concocting elaborate fantasies about detectives and federal agents collaborating toward nefarious ends. "Gangsters learned that the best way to get themselves out of trouble and keep their money was to turn on the people who were chasing them. Steve Caracappa was high on that list." The prosecution would try to portray Caracappa as a cold-blooded killer, Hayes said. It was a challenge Stephen Caracappa relished taking up, Hayes said. The defense was not afraid of the evidence the government would present.
"Bring it on," Hayes said.
RUNNING THE BULLS
The government's trial strategy was to begin with a quotidian Christmas Day twenty years earlier. Henoch aimed to put a human face on the case, to display to the jury that the case was not a mob melodrama, nor a book deal opportunity, nor the premise for a feature film. The prosecution was going to tell a true crime story with victims, blood, and suffering -- a reality that required the jury to look through the obvious sensationalism to see why the case mattered. The first witness was Sergeant Michael Cugno, who was a newly minted patrol cop assigned to the Seven-Two in 1986. That day Officer Cugno had responded to a radio run to 499 17th Street in the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn in the middle of Christmas celebrations. Cugno found a young man slumped in the front seat of a new red Nissan Maxima. The young man was covered in blood and he was not breathing. Cugno was shown a photograph of the crime scene, nearly twenty years old now. He recalled the scene well, he said. Nicky Guido was his first homicide. The lights were lowered and a murder scene photograph of Guido was displayed on a large screen using an overhead projector. The jury turned to see the dead young man with his new white winter coat crimson with blood.
The next witness was Pauline Pipitone, the mother of the dead man. An elderly Italian woman, stooped and walking slowly, she entered with her eyes downcast. She testified that her son had gone to Catholic school in Brooklyn, worked for the telephone company, and liked baseball and bowling. He had never gotten in trouble with the law. Christmas dinner in 1986 had started with the family gathering at noon. Her son had been given the white winter coat as a present. She had given her boy a golden crucifix necklace. Guido had wanted to show his uncle his new car. "I started washing the dishes while Nicholas went outside," she testified. "My brother-in-law came in screaming, 'They shot Nicholas.' I went over to the car and his heart was beating. I went to touch his hands and his fingertips were cold." Mrs. Pipitone said her husband had taken the death of their son very badly. Heartbroken, he died three years later, Pipitone testified. Silence fell upon the courtroom as she looked around with bewildered grief, casting her eyes on Caracappa and Eppolito, and then dropping her head.
Tone established, Henoch then threw the jury into the criminal culture of the case. Luchese wiseguy Little Al D'Arco emerged through the door behind Judge Weinstein's bench, the entrance reserved for criminals and witnesses under government protection. D'Arco was a small, wiry, angry man, in the mold of Jimmy Cagney playing the lippy bad guy in classic gangster films from the thirties like Little Caesar -- the movie that gave RICO its name.
"Al D'Arco was put on to give the jury the mafia background," Henoch recalled. "It was important that the jury get used to hearing from criminals, if Kaplan was going to be credible. Burt was a bad guy but he wasn't as bad as D'Arco. Little Al would absorb the body blows from Cutler and Hayes. He had testified in ten mob trials so he was experienced. It would give me the chance to see how the cross-examination would go. I wanted to know if the old bombastic Bruce Cutler was going to appear, shouting and carrying on, or if he was going to put on a more muted presentation. I wanted to see what the judge was going to allow. I didn't want to minimize D'Arco's crimes. I was going to make him out to be the murderer he was. Some federal prosecutors try to sugarcoat their witnesses. Not in an illegal or unethical way -- just to play it down. I do the opposite. I learned this when I was doing state cases for the Manhattan DA in the Homicide Investigation Unit. I would tell juries that the case was about the murder of a drug dealer. It will involve violent criminals and drug dealers because those are the kinds of people who know the most about violent crime and drug dealing. Wall Street brokers testify in an insider-dealing case, nurses in medical malpractice suits. The same thing applies to violent crime."
D'Arco explained the structure of the mafia to the jury, familiarizing them with the organization and basic terminology. But it was D'Arco's description of the intimate and corrupting relationship between the mob and law enforcement that provided the substance and surprise of his evidence. The entire world of organized crime was awash in rumors, treachery, and double dealing. Access to a source inside the government was not unusual for senior and successful gangsters. During the eighties, Colombo wiseguy Wild Bill Cutolo had uniformed NYPD officers on his payroll, D'Arco testified. Luchese Steve Crea had a DEA special agent working for him. Sal Avellino, the Long Island garbage carting Luchese, paid a government agent in the Gambino task force squad, D'Arco said. But no one was as connected as Vic Amuso and Gaspipe Casso. The Luchese boss and underboss had informants with unrivalled access to the most sensitive law enforcement intelligence. Amuso and Casso had been very careful about keeping the identities of their source inside law enforcement from their colleagues in the Luchese family. It was the same story D'Arco had told the FBI more than fifteen years earlier when he flipped and went into the Witness Protection Program. Amuso and Casso called their source "the bulls," D'Arco said, the mob term for NYPD detectives. The "bulls" were paid $4,000 a month, D'Arco said, but he didn't know the names or any identifying details about them.
In October 1991, D'Arco's revelations had been documented in FBI 302s, which had then been provided to the defense as part of pretrial discovery. On cross-examination, Bruce Cutler demanded to know why D'Arco was using the term "bulls" during his testimony when the word appeared nowhere in the 302s. Tempers quickly rose as D'Arco and Cutler argued about the ability of gangsters to tell the truth. The obvious explanation for the discrepancy between D'Arco's testimony about "the bulls" and the term "law enforcement sources" in the 302s was that D'Arco did not write the 302s himself. FBI agents, with little sense of the streets of New York and idioms, took the proffered particulars and turned mob lingo into prose that could be understood by lawyers in distant offices who had no clue how gangsters actually spoke.
"Did you have any moral compunction?" Cutler asked D'Arco, describing his years as a killer on behalf of Gaspipe Casso. The question was bellowed with indignation.
"Keep your voice down, pal," D'Arco said.
"Wouldn't you agree with me --"
"I wouldn't agree with you on anything," D'Arco interrupted.
"You okayed the induction of your son Joseph into the mafia," Cutler said.
"You're twisting my words around," D'Arco snapped. "I remember you at [a restaurant called] Taormina with all the crew there and you drank with them and ate with them and never picked up the tab."
Taking the bait, Cutler was red with fury as he prowled around the courtroom loudly calling out questions and trying to turn D'Arco's defiance into advantage for the defense. D'Arco matched Cutler's anger, threatening to turn the proceedings into chaos. The questions were leading nowhere, it seemed, other than toward further screaming.
"I can yell louder than you!" D'Arco shrieked at Cutler.
"Enough," Judge Weinstein yelled at Cutler. "Your cross-examination is finished."
"The defense was on the defense from the start," Henoch recalled. "They expected a conventional mob prosecution, with a procession of convicted criminals like Fat Pete Chiodo and Georgie Neck Zappola appearing on the stand to the tell the jury about their life of crime and Casso's 'cops.' That wasn't the way it was going to go. The judge wanted me to pare my case back. It was a blessing in disguise. I wanted the jury to focus on what happened. I wanted the jury to focus on the defendants, not the character of government witnesses. I wasn't going to put on a mob case -- I was going to put on a corrupt cop case."
Henoch used the analogy of judo to describe his approach. The word judo translates from the Japanese as "the way of giving way." Instead of meeting force with force, in judo a combatant invites and allows the strengths of his opponent to work to his advantage. Instead of fighting the characterization of his witnesses as despicable killers and mobsters, bribed with the promise of leniency to lie for the government, Henoch readily admitted D'Arco's pedigree as a villain -- as he did for all of the cooperators he put on the stand. Using the egos of defense attorneys in a productive way was also one of Henoch's aims. There was no point in fighting Cutler and Hayes as they clashed with cooperators. Calling upon the jury to hear his gangster witnesses with a degree of skepticism matched to their criminal pasts, Henoch believed, worked to his advantage. All the more reason to listen carefully to what they had to say to determine if it was credible.
THE EAGLE TAKES THE STAND
The first government witnesses had proved valuable to the prosecution but Burton Kaplan, all knew, was the case. Setting up his testimony was critical. NYPD Detective Thomas Limberg was called. For sixteen years, Limberg had been assigned to a joint task force investigating organized crime in New York City. Limberg's specific assignment was the Luchese family -- the family Caracappa also worked on. Pretrial, Hayes had suggested that Kaplan was a secret cooperator before he flipped against Caracappa and Eppolito. To rebut the argument up front, Limberg testified that Kaplan had refused to cooperate when he was arrested in 1996 and had never cooperated to his knowledge. Detective Limberg told the court that Kaplan's telephone book had been seized twice during arrests over a period of more than a decade. The contents of the phone book were vital to the case. Limberg read out the names Kaplan had listed: Bonanno member Jerry Chilli, former Luchese boss Vic Amuso, with his inmate number in Terre Haute, Indiana, as well as someone named "Marco."
Henoch had spent months preparing Kaplan, and as the vicissitudes of the case continued to unfold during the year before trial, Kaplan had remained very reluctant to testify. Kaplan felt genuinely unhappy cooperating, unlike many who take pleasure in finally coming clean. Henoch had continued to reassure Kaplan -- and perhaps himself, as well -- as Kaplan vented about feeling terrible as a rat. Flipping Burt was not a done deal, Henoch believed, until the moment Kaplan stood before the court, raised his right hand, and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
On the third day of the trial, Kaplan appeared from the wooden door behind Judge Weinstein's bench to a hushed gallery. Eppolito twitched his head and neck and swallowed hard, a tic that would be repeated for the remainder of the proceedings. Caracappa's face remained impassive but alert. Kaplan was wearing a blue suit. He was small, trim, bald, and wore thick eyeglasses. His voice was steady, his words clipped and spoken in a Brooklyn accent. Seventy-two years old, he testified that his health was not good. Among his ailments had been two minor strokes, three detached retinas, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, and Reynaud's disease.
On the stand Kaplan appeared calm, collected, despite the fact that his entire adult life had been dedicated to avoiding precisely this moment. Ratting represented the lowest form of human endeavor to Kaplan. Monotone, matter-of-fact, able to describe the murder of a mob informant in the same tone of voice as he used when he talked about distributing Disco brand jeans, it was easy for an observer to misapprehend Kaplan's state of mind. "Kaplan didn't seem especially troubled that he had become, in his old age, exactly the sort of turncoat that he and his associates aimed to kill," Ben McGrath reported for the New Yorker.
In a typical case, Henoch believed, the jury gave their undivided attention to each witness for three to five minutes before they started to tune out. With Kaplan, Henoch figured he had ten minutes to get the essence of the case across to the jury. At that moment, at the onset of the main part of the prosecution's case, the key was to establish that there was no doubt whatsoever that Kaplan had an intimate relationship with the two defendants.
Henoch asked Kaplan to identify anyone in the court he recognized. Kaplan pointed across the courtroom: Louie Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa.
"Did you have a business relationship with Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa?" Henoch asked.
"Yes."
"Can you please tell the jury what the nature of that business relationship was?"
"They brought me information about wiretaps, phone taps, informants, ongoing investigations, and imminent arrests."
"What did you do for them in exchange for that information?"
"I paid them."
"Can you tell the jury, sir, at the time you had the relationship with Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa, where were they employed?"
"New York Police Department."
Henoch's first thematic strand, long planned, came next.
"Sir," Henoch asked Kaplan, "have you ever been to Mr. Caracappa's residence ?"
"Yes," Kaplan replied.
"Where is it?"
"In Manhattan, on 22nd Street," Kaplan said.
The exchange seemed innocuous, especially for a jury trying to get their bearings in a complex RICO case, but it contained the kernel inside the seed of truth that Henoch would nurture during the weeks to come.
"Did Mr. Caracappa have pets inside that apartment?" Henoch asked Kaplan. The question derived from the fact that Oldham had remembered that Caracappa complained about cat hair on his suit when they worked for Major Case at the same time. It was a small but telling fact. Details contained their own drama.
"He had two cats," Kaplan said.
"Did you ever meet any of Mr. Caracappa's family members?" Henoch asked.
"I met his wife."
"What's her name?"
"Monica."
It was an unlikely approach to a mob murder trial, Henoch recalled, but the evidence was aimed at attacking the defense that Caracappa and Eppolito were being framed by mobsters. "One of the purposes of spending so much time with Kaplan was to mine his knowledge of the lives of Steve and Louie and organized crime, and to find out as many details as possible about his relationship with them," Henoch said. "Kaplan knew where Steve lived in Manhattan, and the precise address on East 22nd Street. He knew what floor he lived on. Kaplan knew where Steve's mother lived on Staten Island. How would a seasoned career criminal know where a hero cop's mother lived, and be able to describe in detail a cemetery near that hero cop's house? How would he know the hero cop's sister-in-law took care of his mother on occasion? Caracappa was quiet, unassuming, and cautious. He wasn't a public figure, with information about his life readily available. The jury could see that Kaplan was confident in his facts. The jury could see that he had to have had a relationship with Caracappa and Eppolito. He knew too much. Kaplan's tiny bits of information were daggers in the heart of a defense that Caracappa and Eppolito didn't know Kaplan. We wanted to make it preposterous for either defense attorney to claim his client had no relationship with Burton Kaplan."
Henoch had Kaplan review for the jury his brushes with the law, including two trials, five convictions, and civil proceedings involving his business vending knockoff designer wear. Kaplan said he had pled guilty to paying a group of Mexican inmates $1,000 in Allenwood Federal Prison Complex to assault another inmate. Kaplan explained the transaction to the jury. "That's part of what prison life is all about," he said. As a result of his guilty plea for the assault, and despite his cooperation with the government in this case, Kaplan had been sentenced to thirty days in "the hole" in Allenwood.
"Do you know Tommy Dades?" Henoch asked.
"No," Kaplan replied.
Before trial there had been speculation in the press that Kaplan had been a secret informant for the FBI for many years. Kaplan flatly denied the accusation. He had been approached more than ten times over the years by authorities seeking his cooperation, but had always refused.
"Was the standard practice, in your experience, that every time you were arrested some law enforcement official would try to get you to cooperate?" Henoch asked.
"Every time."
"In 2004 you actually began to cooperate. Is that correct?"
"Correct."
"Can you please tell the jury what changed your mind?"
"Definitely," Kaplan said. "I was in jail nine straight years. I was on the lam two and a half years before. In that period of time I seen an awful lot of guys that I thought were stand-up guys go bad, turn, and become informants. As I told Steve the night I left to go on the lam, I asked him if he could guarantee that Louie would stand up. Steve said he could do that. But after nine years I felt they were going to be indicted by the state in this case, and I didn't think they would stand up. I was tired of going to jail by myself. I would be at the defense table right now, and Steve and Louie be would sitting up here on the stand."
"Did your family have any sway over you in your decision to cooperate?" Henoch asked.
"Yes and no," Kaplan testified. "My wife and daughter have been asking me to cooperate from the first day, and I didn't do it. My daughter adopted a boy from Russia, and he's two and a half years old now. I wanted to be able to spend some time with him. But I can't honestly say I did this for my family. I did it, in all honesty, because I felt I was going to be made the scapegoat in this case."
From an objective point of view, Kaplan's explanation made little sense. The targets of the investigation were Caracappa and Eppolito, not Kaplan, who was already in prison and would remain there until he died. "But it was the truth that Kaplan told himself," Oldham recalled. "Even after he flipped, Kaplan didn't want to admit to the court, or to himself, that he had caved. Criminals frequently come up with contorted reasons for their cooperation that allow them to maintain a fig leaf of dignity. Kaplan didn't want to allow that Joe Ponzi or I had anything to do with his decision. Between the lines, though, you can hear what really motivated Kaplan. His wife, his daughter, and finally the realization that he was standing up for two dirty cops who would never do the same thing for him -- especially Eppolito."
For the next two days, Kaplan told the jury his life story, from the first trips he took with his father to the racetrack and his early gambling addiction to his collaboration with the Lucheses and Gaspipe Casso. Kaplan said he had not been in contact with Casso since Casso's arrest in 1993. Casso's son still lived in a house that Kaplan owned but Kaplan had served an eviction notice on the son and the matter was still the subject of dispute.
Despite the passage of years, Kaplan's version of events matched Casso's in virtually every aspect. One exception was the murder of the wrong Nicky Guido. Casso claimed he had paid "the cops" for the address of the wrong Nicky Guido. According to Kaplan, Caracappa and Eppolito didn't give Casso the address. Kaplan said that they wanted to be paid to run the license plate, and Casso turned them down, believing "the cops" were being greedy. "The inconsistency with Casso might seem problematic but factual discrepancies can be the best thing for the credibility of an informant or witness," Oldham noted. "For the jury, if the accounts of every witness match perfectly, if every fact fits seamlessly, it can seem like the witnesses are lying, or colluding to create a story. Memory is not perfect. Synapses don't fire. All of us remember events in fragments. Like the color of the Plymouth Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito were driving at the time of the Hydell kidnapping. Was it gray, or blue, or green? All three versions existed in people's memories but there was no definitive proof which it was. Did that mean that Caracappa and Eppolito were not searching Staten Island and Brooklyn in an American-made automobile picked to look like a nondescript unmarked police car? Did it mean they didn't kidnap Hydell and serve him up for Casso to brutally murder? No. The same was true for Nicky Guido. Whether or not Casso paid for the address, Caracappa did the search and Nicky Guido was killed. The jury heard the evidence."
"At some later point, did you have a conversation with Mr. Eppolito about the wrong Nicky Guido being killed?" Henoch asked.
"Yes."
"What did Mr. Eppolito say to you?"
"He told me Gas should have paid the money and he would have got the right guy."
"I HOPE MY DAD IS INNOCENT"
During lunch breaks, a procession of the principal players in the case made their way across Cadman Plaza to the Plaza Diner. Caracappa remained in the courthouse, eating his lunch in the cafeteria with Jack Ryan, the former Major Case Squad detective working for the defense. Eppolito, by contrast, strolled with an entourage of his family, usually stopping to grant walk-and-talk interviews to the reporters camped outside. One member of Eppolito's family did not form part of his inner circle. Louis Eppolito Jr., a thoughtful and gentle thirty-six-year-old, was the only child of his father's first marriage.
"Kaplan appears to be believable," Eppolito junior said over lunch.
"He seems very, very smart," said Rob Gortner, Eppolito's partner.
"I hope my dad is innocent," the younger Eppolito told a listener. "I want to believe it. I'm here to find the truth. I need to hear the evidence. I need to make my own decision."
That morning, before proceedings began, he had gotten to speak with his father alone for the first time since the arrest. They had embraced, Louis junior said. "I told him I love him. He said he loves me and appreciates me coming here. Of course he denies it to me. He says he's innocent. He says it's lies, lies, lies. I'm not the kind of person to say, 'Okay, Daddy.' He's extremely defensive. I told him I will be there for him throughout. He said, 'I ain't going anywhere.'''
After lunch, Kaplan's testimony continued. He described the aftermath of the murders of Jimmy Hydell and the wrong Nicky Guido. Kaplan said that Casso had decided he wanted to kill Sammy the Bull Gravano, the prominent member of the Gambinos, the family that had tried to kill Casso in 1986. Frankie Santora Jr. and Detectives Caracappa and Eppolito agreed to take up the contract, Kaplan testified. Payment would only be forthcoming upon completion of the job. The trio tailed Gravano to and from work. Weeks passed and they were still looking for a clear shot at Gravano.
"Did there come a time that you found out what happened with respect to that contract?" Henoch asked.
"Yes. Frankie junior told me," Kaplan testified.
"What did Frankie junior tell you?"
"That the three of them followed Gravano to his house. They surveilled his construction company on Stillwell Avenue, and they also staked out Tali's Bar and Grill on 18th Avenue, where Gravano hung out. Frankie junior told me that they stopped surveilling Gravano because a detective who knew Louie or Steve came up to them in a car and started a conversation with them, asking how you doing, what are you doing here. They said they are just there to meet somebody. They didn't think they should go to that spot anymore. They followed Gravano to his house and from his house on a lot of occasions, but they could never catch him alone. They told me he was always dropped off by people or picked up by people in other cars. They didn't have a chance to fulfill the contract."
"Did you tell Casso anything about that?"
"I gave him a word-by-word explanation of what Frankie told me."
"What did Casso say to you about that?"
"'Okay,' he said. 'If they want to keep it, they can keep it. If they want to give it up, they can give it up and we will try ourselves.'"
Soon after that Frankie Santora Jr. was shot and killed during the murder of Carmine Variale. The connection with the NYPD was now lost, it seemed. If the matter had been dropped by Caracappa and Eppolito the conspiracy would have ended. But the money was too attractive, and easy. Weeks after the murder of Santora, Kaplan testified, he got a phone call from Frankie Santora Jr.'s wife.
"After the conversation with Ms. Santora, did there come a time that you had a meeting with Mr. Eppolito?"
"Yes."
"Where did you meet with Mr. Eppolito?"
"In Mrs. Santora's house."
"Can you tell the jury about how long after the murder of Frank Santora the meeting was that you had with Mr. Eppolito?"
"I would say within a month. I went to Frankie's house and I sat down in his dining room with Louie at the table. Frankie's wife went into another room. Louie says, 'I'm pretty sure you know who I am.' I said, 'Yes, I know who you are. I have seen you on a few occasions. You're Frankie's cousin.' He said yes. He asked me if I had a desire to continue the business that we were doing together."
"What did you take that to mean?"
"Continue what I was doing with Frankie, but directly with Louie. Continue getting information."
"Was there any discussion about paying for that information?"
"At that point he said, 'I think we could make this simple. We could make this a business arrangement.' He said, 'You could put me and my partner on a four-thousand-a-month pad and we'll give you everything that we get on every family, any bit of information we get about informants, about ongoing investigations, wiretaps, and imminent arrests.'''
Kaplan wanted to think it over. Eppolito gave Kaplan his home phone number and Caracappa's beeper number. Kaplan gave Eppolito his beeper number and the number for a phone line he had installed in his daughter's bedroom. The number was given to only a few of his most trusted associates -- Casso, Tommy Galpine, and now Detective Louis Eppolito.
Kaplan lived six blocks away from the Santora residence. He walked out of the house from the meeting and along the driveway. There was a man sitting in a car with his chin resting pensively on his palm. Kaplan didn't know his name but he recognized him as Eppolito's partner. In court, he looked across the room in the direction of the defendants' table and indicated Caracappa.
"After that conversation with Mr. Eppolito, did you contact anyone?" Henoch asked.
"Yes," Kaplan said.
"Who did you contact?"
"Anthony Casso."
"Did you have a conversation with Casso about what you and Eppolito had discussed?"
"Yes. I told him that I had a meeting with Louie Eppolito, at Frankie's house, and that he suggested that if we wanted to continue we could do it on a more businesslike basis. He would want -- he would like, he didn't want-four thousand a month. He would do everything he could to give me information at all times, whenever it became available. Louie said that his partner worked in a task force and that there's a lot of information that he came across. He was in meetings with the FBI and that that would all become part of the four thousand a month. The only exception would be murder contracts. They would be above that."
"So the four thousand a month was supposed to cover what?"
"Information."
"What type of information?"
"Imminent arrests, wiretaps, bugs, ongoing investigations."
"As of the time of this meeting, had Nicky Guido already been killed?"
"Yes."
"What about Jimmy Hydell, had he already been kidnapped?"
"Yes."
"What about jeweler number two, had he already been killed?" Henoch asked, referring to Israel Greenwald.
"Yes."
Henoch asked what Casso's reply had been to the proposal made by Caracappa and Eppolito. The new arrangement carried risks, with Kaplan in a direct relationship with the cops and Casso therefore one step closer to the perils they represented. But the partnership had already proved invaluable.
Kaplan recalled his conversation with Casso. "I said, 'Well, so far they've been real good to you.' He says, 'Yes, I agree with that. Let's do it.'"
"What conditions did Casso place on the agreement?"
"He said, 'Tell them if they want to do this, and we go forward on it, that they have to work exclusively for us. We don't want them giving information to other guys in other families, and possibly have a problem back from it which will eventually come back to us.'''
"Do you know, or did you know at that time, whether it was against mafia protocol to use policemen in this manner?"
"No, I didn't know it then."
"Did you discuss methods of contacting with one another?"
"Yes."
"Can you tell the jury were there any codes or numbers that you decided to use?"
"When I would call his house, I would always use the name 'Marco,' and if I beeped, he had given me a beeper number for Steve, and I agreed to use my prefix in my home phone number, 259, and put that behind the beeper so he would know it was me."
An arrangement was established for meetings. Kaplan lived on 85th Street in Brooklyn. Kaplan would know when Eppolito was coming to see him. If there was no reason to cancel the meeting Kaplan left the porch light on in front of his house. Eppolito would arrive at ten at night. He would tap on Kaplan's front window. Kaplan would let him in the front door. If Kaplan's wife was asleep, they would stay in the living room for their conversations. If she was awake, they would go back to the rear of the house where his daughter had once lived.
As Kaplan testified, the names of victims and heists long since forgotten and seemingly unconnected were brought back to life. Otto Heidel, the Bulova watch job, Tiger Management. Kaplan's command of the facts was impressive. Jurors began to steal looks at Eppolito as Kaplan continued to describe power struggles inside the Luchese family and Casso's violent solutions to dysfunction. Caracappa and Eppolito had been central players, as Casso's hired informants. Over the years, remembered Kaplan, they met in a number of other places as well. Rest areas on the Southern State Parkway and the Long Island Expressway were often used. Eppolito was married, and he had three children by his second marriage, but he also had a lover. Kaplan said she had lived on 84th Street in Bensonhurst, and they met at her place as well. Kaplan couldn't recall her name but said she had a dog and a teenage son. Eppolito came alone, for the most part. Kaplan dealt nearly always with Eppolito. Until he got greedy.
"Louie and I had a big argument. Louie said he wanted to meet Gaspipe. I said, 'Louie, that don't make no sense. Why do you want to do that?' He said, 'We've been so good with our information, I think we deserve more money.' I said, 'That isn't going to happen. You are not going to meet him.' He says, 'I'm willing to stand on one side of the door. He could be on the other side of the door. We don't have to see each other.' I said, 'Louie, that isn't going to happen.' He got a little indignant with me. We had an argument. If you look at Mr. Eppolito, he's three times my size. I pushed him out the door to my house and we had an argument. I said, 'Don't ever come back to my house anymore.'''
"What happened after that?"
"About a month later, Steve Caracappa came to my house with a box of cookies. He says, 'Is it okay if we talk?' And I says, 'Sure.' I like Steve. I liked him then. I like him now. I know I am not doing him any good by being a rat, but I always liked him."
In court, Caracappa threw down his pen and looked around the court with indignation, as if to ask how a man could be permitted to tell such outrageous lies. Eppolito's eyes were bloodshot and his jaw clenched. He continually swallowed and twitched his head. From that time forward, Kaplan said, he met with Caracappa. The pair convened at the cemetery at the end of Kramer Street on Staten Island near Caracappa's mother's house. It was during these meetings that Kaplan asked Caracappa to help locate Anthony DiLapi by contacting DiLapi's parole officer. Kaplan testified that he was concerned that a written letter would create a record that might later be uncovered. Caracappa told him not to worry; he would put DiLapi's name in a list of half a dozen others involved in a real investigation, obscuring his intention. Caracappa provided one address for DiLapi. After DiLapi escaped the first attempt by Casso's hit squad, Caracappa furnished another address in L.A.
DiLapi was then killed, Kaplan stated flatly.
Two jurors turned and stared directly at Caracappa.
On and on Kaplan continued, relentlessly detailing the attacks on Fat Pete Chiodo, Bruno Facciola, and Eddie Lino. "Marco" was the code name in Kaplan's phone book employed to disguise the contact numbers for Caracappa and Eppolito. Henoch entered the phone book into evidence. The exhibit was displayed to the jury. Henoch had Kaplan identify and explain how he had scratched out 212-616-0631 and 917-420-0150 -- the first number for Caracappa in Staten Island, the second his beeper number -- to camouflage them.
During the weeks leading up to the Lino homicide, Kaplan said, Caracappa and Eppolito had asked Kaplan to ask Casso for untraceable guns. "Jesus," Casso had complained to Kaplan, "don't those guys do anything for themselves?" A revolver and an automatic were supplied as murder weapons. Kaplan testified that he had been in the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary at the time of Lino's death recovering from eye surgery. Eppolito came to see Kaplan there.
"I've got good news," Eppolito said to Kaplan. "We got him."
"What do you mean?" Kaplan asked.
"We killed him," Eppolito said, taking out two newspaper photographs of the scene of the crime. Eppolito told Kaplan that Caracappa had done the shooting. A former soldier, Caracappa was the better shot, Kaplan testified. Kaplan passed along payment, received in a box from Casso. The amount was $70,000 in cash, five thousand more than had been agreed. Kaplan thought Casso was testing him to see if he was honest. Kaplan returned the excess and conveyed the balance to his two "cops."
In the early nineties, Kaplan testified, Eppolito came to see Kaplan at his home on 85th Street. "Just before he moved to Las Vegas, he pulled up in front of my house. He had his wife with him. Louie rang the bell and I came to the door. I believe it was a Saturday, and my wife and I came to the door, both of us, and Louie said, 'Come outside. Come outside. I want you to see the van I bought.' And I came outside and very honestly I was shocked. It was white, pure white, and I felt very conspicuous standing out on the sidewalk with Louie, him being a retired detective and me being a criminal, with this big white van and on a Saturday afternoon with a lot of people driving by. I didn't say that to him, but I was nervous. I said, 'Louie, it's a beautiful van' and I did what most people did at that time. I went in my pocket -- I used pay phones a lot -- where I had two, three dollars' worth of quarters. I threw it on the floor of the car, which meant good luck."
"Was Mr. Eppolito with anyone that day?"
"Yes, he was with Fran."
The departure of the Eppolitos for Las Vegas did not cease Kaplan's contact with his" cops." Kaplan continued to deal with Caracappa after he retired from the NYPD and took a job with the 14th Street Business Improvement District. Kaplan testified that after the arrest of Casso in 1993, he was not concerned that the conspiracy between Caracappa and Eppolito and Casso would be revealed. "If anyone in the world was a stand-up guy, I thought it was Mr. Casso," he said. The phone call from his attorney Judd Burstein a year later, saying that Casso had snitched, took Kaplan completely by surprise. That evening, before going on the lam, Kaplan said he went to see Caracappa at his apartment on East 22nd Street.
"I felt that the only way the government would take someone like Casso as a cooperator who had so much baggage -- I knew he had many, many bodies, I knew about twenty-five at the time -- unless he could give them something sensational back," Kaplan said.
"What was the sensational thing that you were referring to?"
"The relationship between Steve, Louie, I, Frankie junior, and Casso," Kaplan said.