Turncoat Lucchese Soldier surfaces in new YouTube show
Showing posts with label Anthony Casso. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anthony Casso. Show all posts
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Former Lucchese family underboss dies in prison after getting COVID-19
Former Lucchese mobster Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso — a bloodthirsty underboss who was behind dozens of gangland killings and even employed two NYPD detectives as mafia hitmen — has died behind bars after contracting the coronavirus, officials said.
The 78-year-old mafioso — who sought and was denied compassionate release last month — died Tuesday, according to the Bureau of Prisons website and a law enforcement source.
On Nov. 25, Casso’s lawyers wrote to a judge explaining that their client had contracted COVID-19 while serving a life sentence in United States Penitentiary, Tuscon.
The lawyers also said that the wheelchair-bound Casso had a slew of health issues before he caught the virus — including prostate cancer, coronary artery disease, kidney disease, hypertension, bladder disease and lung issues from years of smoking, the court papers said.
But Brooklyn federal Judge Frederic Block rejected the bid for early release, finding that “in light of the nature and extent of defendant’s criminal history, that he remains a danger to the community.”
Casso — who pleaded guilty to 14 mob murders — infamously struck a deal with crooked NYPD detective partners Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa to pass information about mob rats to the crime family in exchange for a monthly $4,000 salary.
The cops also moonlighted as hitmen for the Lucchese family, and were sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for being involved in a total of eight mob rubouts.
An investigator who covered Casso’s cases described him as “a ruthless homicidal maniac who enjoyed killing.”
Even among fellow mobsters, Casso was known as a “homicidal maniac,” according to the testimony of stoolie Burton Kaplan, who served as intermediary between Casso and the mob cops.
Born in South Brooklyn in 1942, Casso appeared bred for a life of crime. His godfather was reportedly Salvatore Callinbrano, a capo in the Genovese crime family.
In the mid-1970s and 80s, Casso rose through the ranks of the Lucchese family, serving as captain and consigliere — and eventually as underboss.
Considered one of the most violent bosses of the city’s five crime families, Casso is believed to have slain at least 36 people.
He was charged by the feds in 1990 and went on the lam, using information from the crooked cops to help him evade arrest until 1993 — when he was nabbed at a mistress’ home in Mount Olive, New Jersey.
Facing trial, Casso tried to turn informant, and as a 1994 Post front-page story revealed, named the two retired cops as contract-killers for the mob.
As part of the plea deal, Casso copped to 72 counts on a slew of mob-related charges, including racketeering, extortion and murder.
His debriefing sessions were said to have been “extremely colorful, with the former mob boss providing detailed accounts of mayhem and murder,” The Post reported at the time.
“Each tale typically has the feds asking Casso ‘So what happened then?’ — to which Casso matter-of-factly replies, ‘We killed him of course.'”
However, Casso was thrown out of the witness protection program in 1998, after prosecutors accused him of a litany of infractions, such as bribing prison guards, assaulting rival mobster inmates and providing false information.
He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In a 2006 letter to The Post, he railed against the feds, griping that he wanted to be a witness in the mob cops’ trial.
“Like always, the feds have downplayed my cooperation,” he whined.
https://nypost.com/2020/12/16/ex-lucchese-underboss-anthony-gaspipe-casso-dies-from-covid-19/
Monday, November 30, 2020
Notorious turncoat Lucchese underboss on a ventilator due to COVID-19 is denied compassionate release
A notorious former underboss for the Lucchese crime family will remain behind bars for the rest of his life because he’s still a “danger to the community,” a federal judge ruled — despite the murderous mobster being hooked up to a ventilator due to COVID-19.
Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso — whom the feds say is responsible for taking part in dozens of rub-outs, including the brutal murders of numerous mob turncoats — caught the virus earlier this month inside FSP Tucson, a maximum-security Arizona prison, and was sent to a local hospital.
The 78-year-old mafia executioner turned rat himself after pleading guilty in a wide-ranging racketeering case in 1994, but the feds dropped him from the witness protection program after he broke their cooperation agreement several times, and Casso was sentenced to more than 400 years in prison.
His innumerable crimes as one of the mob’s most feared killers were so heinous that even the imminent threat of death due to coronavirus does not make him eligible for compassionate release, Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederick Block determined Saturday in a brief ruling.
The feds say Casso is responsible for taking part in dozens of
rub-outs, including the brutal murders of numerous mob turncoats.
“The Court has carefully considered the gravity of defendant Antony Casso’s medical condition. But even assuming it presents an extraordinary and compelling circumstance, the Court finds, in light of the nature and extent of defendant’s criminal history, that he remains a danger to the community,” Block wrote.
Casso is confined to a wheelchair to get around, has prostate cancer, is awaiting a heart operation and already had lung issues because of his smoking history, his lawyers wrote in their motion to get Casso sprung.
At the Tucson prison, 148 inmates have COVID-19 and two have already died of the disease. More than 400 other inmates have recovered, but it’s not clear Casso will rejoin them.
“Just days ago, he tested positive for COVID-19. He is currently hospitalized due to severe respiratory problems,” wrote Casso’s lawyers last Wednesday in a filing that was initially under seal. “His COVID-19 infection and rapidly deteriorating health require better medical care than [Bureau of Prisons] can provide.”
Casso has been hospitalized and returned to the prison three times, but now remains in an emergency room hooked up to a ventilator, his lawyers said.
Police discovered the body of Nicholas Guido, an innocent victim of a
Mafia mistaken-identity killing, in 1986. Officials said Guido was
murdered on the orders of Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, who believed another
man with the same name had tried to kill him.
There was little sympathy for Casso at the courthouse, with the feds claiming that he tried to have a federal judge and a prosecutor handling his case murdered in the ’90s, though neither killing came to pass.
“All defendants sentenced to life in prison will, at some point, begin to succumb to one disease or another, or suffer from failing health due to old age,” wrote federal prosecutors in response to Casso’s application for release.
A lawyer for Casso declined to comment on his current condition.
https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/ny-anthony-gaspipe-casso-mafia-covid-release-20201130-mm5wnfbsa5b2jnkuck4maartve-story.html
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Jailed NYPD cop who committed murders for Lucchese family dead at 71
Mafia cop Louis Eppolito — who along with his partner Stephen Caracappa helped whack several men for the Lucchese crime family — died on Sunday while serving a life sentence in federal prison, law-enforcement sources told the Post. He was 71.
The ex-NYPD detective was serving a life sentence at the United States Penitentiary in Tucson for the eight contract killings that he and Caracappa helped carry out starting in the 1980s.
“Louis died in a hospital with dignity and caring people around him,” his wife, Frances Ann Eppolito, told The Post.
His daughter, Andrea Eppolito-Fisher, mourned her father’s death in a Facebook post Sunday.
“My father, Louis John Eppolito, died peacefully in his sleep at 9:03 pm,” she wrote in the message.
“He died like he lived, on his own terms, as a fighter. And I will miss him and love him forever,” she added.
His cause of death was not immediately known. A source said he’d been struggling with health issues for years.
Eppolito and Caracappa were arrested by Drug Enforcement Administration agents in 2005 and convicted for their involvement in the eight murders in 2006.
In a deal struck with Lucchese underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso, the two NYPD detectives agreed to pass intelligence reports about mob rats to the crime family in exchange for a monthly salary.
In two of the slayings they did for the mafia family, Eppolito and Caracappa used NYPD intelligence to track down Lucchese rivals and deliver them to mob executioners.
One of the victims, Israeli diamond dealer Israel Greenwald, was pulled over by the dirty detectives after they tracked his license plate using an NYPD database.
They drove him to a warehouse on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn, where Caracappa and another mafia hood killed him, while Eppolito acted as a lookout, it was revealed at their trial.
Greenwald’s remains were buried underneath the warehouse, until they were excavated in 2005.
In another one of the contract-hits, Caracappa and Eppolito shoved a canary into the mouth of a Lucchese associate suspected of informing on the mob outfit.
Caracappa died at a medical detention facility in Butner, North Carolina, in 2017. He was 75.
https://nypost.com/2019/11/04/mafia-cop-louis-eppolito-dies-in-prison-while-serving-life-for-mob-hits/
Friday, March 29, 2019
Turncoat Lucchese acting boss dies while in witness protection at the age of 86
Former Luchese family boss turned informant Alfonse 'Little Al' D'Arco has died at the age of 86.
D’Arco,
who became a federal Witness in 1991 and testified against powerful
figures from the city’s five Mafia families, died earlier this month due
to complications of kidney disease.
His evidence sent scores of mobsters to prison and helped unravel much of New York's Cosa Nostra.
He had testified against 'Mafia Cops' Stephen Caracappa Louie Eppolito and Genovese family boss and Vincent 'The Chin' Gigante.
Others included Colombo boss 'Little Vic' Orena, ex-Luchese bosses Vic Amuso, Anthony 'Gaspipe' Casso and Anthony Spero.
His
plea deal with federal agents also helped inspire other high-ranking
mobsters to give evidence in various trials including Salvatore 'Sammy
Bull' Gravano, a right-hand man to John Gotti.
D’Arco, who was from Brooklyn, grew up near the borough’s Navy Yard and spent time around various made men.
His
childhood was 'like being in the forest, and all the trees were the
dons and the organized crime guys,' the mobster once recalled.
The Korean War veteran came back to
Brooklyn and he subsequently teamed up with future Luchese family head
Vittorio Amuso in 1959.
He later
earned money in a variety of illegal fields which included drug-dealing,
hijacking, burglary, arson and armed robbery. He would later admit to
eight murders.
New York Daily News reported that D'Arco avoided getting involved in prostitution and pornography, which he believed were beneath him.
The 5 foot 7 inch gangster became a made man in August 1982 at a ceremony in kitchen in the Bronx.
He
became captain of his family after Luchese informant Henry Hill’s
testimony led to the conviction of D’Arco’s predecessor Paulie Vario in
1984, which was immortalized in the movie 'GoodFellas.'
But D’Arco became convinced that his mob associates were setting him up for murder.
In September, 1991, D'Arco attended a
meeting of Lucchese leaders and noticed that one of his soldiers had a
gun hidden under his shirt and was wearing a bulletproof vest.
He
believed that his life was threatened and D'Arco rushed out of the
hotel. His driver had vanished and he believed this was another
indication he was going to be killed.
FBI agents warned D'Arco that he was in danger the following day and he decided to leave the mafia.
He later offered to become a government witness and testified in a dozen trials along with various grand jury hearings.
At
that point, he was the highest-ranking member of a New York crime
family to break his blood oath and testify against the mafia.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6861471/Former-Luchese-family-boss-turned-informant-Little-Al-DArco-dies-86.html
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Cabbie looks to overturn conviction caused by Mafia Cop
Prosecutors have opposed a motion by a cabbie killer who wants his conviction vacated because "mob cop" Stephen Caracappa helped bust him, according to the Daily News.
Lawyers for Paul Clark, who was convicted of fatally shooting Oswen Fraser, 60, in Brooklyn in 1980, had filed court papers in Brooklyn saying Caracappa's notorious record was enough to overturn the conviction, the News reported.
Clark, 54, claims Caracappa, who was a killer for the Luchese crime family, did not investigate his alibi, the article said.
Caracappa, a former Great Kills resident, died in April.
Caracappa, along with Louis Eppolito, was sentenced to life in prison in 2009 for committing eight mob-ordered executions between 1986 and 1991.
Caracappa got an additional 80-year prison sentence and was issued $4.25 million in fines. He was allowed to keep his NYPD pension.
A Brooklyn federal court jury in April 2006 decided the pair was responsible for eight murders, kidnapping and other crimes. Eppolito was convicted on one count each of RICO conspiracy, money laundering, narcotics conspiracy and narcotics distribution. Caracappa's convictions included one count each of RICO conspiracy, narcotics conspiracy and narcotics distribution.
While working for the NYPD, they were allegedly also on the payroll of Luchese crime family underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.
The two detectives were paid $4,000 a month to provide Casso with law-enforcement information. They received extra cash for murder contracts, including $70,000 for a hit on Eddie Lino, a Gambino crime family capo suspected of being involved in a failed assassination attempt on Casso, the ruling said.
Eppolito, whose father was a member of the Gambino crime family, retired from the NYPD in 1990.
He played a bit part in Martin Scorsese's 1990 mob drama "Goodfellas," and launched an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter.
Caracappa retired in 1992 after establishing the Police Department's unit for mob murder investigations. In 2005, while awaiting trial to start and after posting bail, Caracappa had stayed with his mother in South Beach.
http://www.silive.com/news/2017/08/report_cabbie_killer_wants_con.html
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
NYPD cop who served as Lucchese family hitman dies in prison while serving life sentence
Stephen Caracappa, one of the notorious NYPD “Mafia Cops” who moonlighted as a hitman for the Lucchese crime family, has died in federal prison.
Caracappa, 75, who was serving out his sentence at a federal detention center in Butner, N.C., died on April 8, federal prison records show.
Caracappa and his partner, Louis Eppolito, 68, were sentenced to life behind bars in 2009 for committing eight mob-ordered executions between 1986 and 1990.
It’s not clear how he died, but in June 2016, Caracappa petitioned Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, who handed out his life sentence, for “compassionate release.”
“Please know I have been fighting the case in the courts ... I have stage 4 cancer and will not survive,” he pleaded in a handwritten letter to the judge.
Weinstein replied a month later, “There is nothing I can do in your case.”
Stephen Caracappa wrote a letter (left) to Judge Jack Weinstein to seek a "compassionate release" on June 27, 2016. (Right) Weinstein responds to Caracappa.
Caracappa and Eppolito earned $4,000 a month on the payroll of Lucchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso from 1986 to 1990 to orchestrate murders and pass along confidential police information.
The city shelled out $18.4 million to settle seven lawsuits with the families of their victims, who included a diamond dealer the pair kidnapped and murdered, two Gambino made men, two Lucchese mobsters and a mob-connected painters' union leader.
Mafia cop Louis Eppolito (pictured) is still in prison serving a life sentence.
At their sentencing, the son of one of the duo’s victims, Gambino capo Edward Lino, unloaded on the two dirty detectives.
“These two lowlifes shot and killed my father," Vincent Lino said in court, amid cheers. “May you have a long life in prison.”
Eppolito remains locked away in a high-security penitentiary in Tucson.
Caracappa, 75, who was serving out his sentence at a federal detention center in Butner, N.C., died on April 8, federal prison records show.
Caracappa and his partner, Louis Eppolito, 68, were sentenced to life behind bars in 2009 for committing eight mob-ordered executions between 1986 and 1990.
It’s not clear how he died, but in June 2016, Caracappa petitioned Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, who handed out his life sentence, for “compassionate release.”
“Please know I have been fighting the case in the courts ... I have stage 4 cancer and will not survive,” he pleaded in a handwritten letter to the judge.
Weinstein replied a month later, “There is nothing I can do in your case.”
Stephen Caracappa wrote a letter (left) to Judge Jack Weinstein to seek a "compassionate release" on June 27, 2016. (Right) Weinstein responds to Caracappa.
Caracappa and Eppolito earned $4,000 a month on the payroll of Lucchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso from 1986 to 1990 to orchestrate murders and pass along confidential police information.
The city shelled out $18.4 million to settle seven lawsuits with the families of their victims, who included a diamond dealer the pair kidnapped and murdered, two Gambino made men, two Lucchese mobsters and a mob-connected painters' union leader.
Mafia cop Louis Eppolito (pictured) is still in prison serving a life sentence.
At their sentencing, the son of one of the duo’s victims, Gambino capo Edward Lino, unloaded on the two dirty detectives.
“These two lowlifes shot and killed my father," Vincent Lino said in court, amid cheers. “May you have a long life in prison.”
Eppolito remains locked away in a high-security penitentiary in Tucson.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/nypd-worked-mob-hitman-dies-prison-article-1.3045643
Saturday, August 29, 2015
NYC settles final lawsuits linked to Mafia Cops
The final tab is official — the murderous NYPD Mafia Cops have cost taxpayers a whopping $18.4 million to settle seven lawsuits with the families of their innocent and mobbed-up slay victims.
The remaining five civil cases were wrapped up this week with a total payout of $8.4 million to the survivors of two Gambino made men, two Lucchese mobsters and a mob-connected painters' union leader.
"These settlements bring to a close incidents that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s involving two rogue detectives acting at the behest of organized crime," said a city Law Department spokesman. "In light of court rulings during the litigation, it was in the city's best interest to settle these cases."
Federal Judge Raymond Dearie had ruled the case should go to trial because there was sufficient evidence that the victims would not have been whacked had then-NYPD Commissioner Benjamin Ward booted Louis Eppolito off the force in 1984 when the corrupt detective was caught red-handed leaking confidential information to a mobster.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs deposed former police officials involved in Eppolito's disciplinary case including a retired Supreme Court justice, a former deputy commissioner, NYPD lawyers and investigators — and could not solve the mystery of Eppolito beating the charges despite an mountain of evidence against him.
Stephen Caracappa (l.) and Eppolito were on the payroll of the Lucchese crime family for years and personally carried out some hits.
"I think the people we questioned, other than those who couldn't remember, were so afraid that this could come back to haunt them in a bad way," said lawyer Mark Longo who represented the mother of mistaken identity murder victim Nicholas Guido whose lawsuit settled for $5 million.
The city agreed to pay $1.85 million to the estate of Lucchese soldier Anthony DiLapi; $1.8 million to Lucchese associate John "Otto" Heidel; $1.75 million to painter's union head and informant James Bishop; $1.5 million each to Gambino capo Edward Lino and soldier Bartholomew "Bobby" Borriello. The wife of diamond dealer Israel Greenwald received $5 million.
Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa were on the payroll of the Lucchese crime family for years, providing information on the victims to underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, and they personally carried out some of the hits.
They are both convicted of eight murders and are serving life sentences — while still collecting their NYPD pensions.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/nypd-mafia-cops-lawsuits-finally-settled-article-1.2341014
Friday, July 31, 2015
Family of man killed by Mafia Cops settles for $5 million
The last that Israel Greenwald’s daughters saw of him was in February 1986. Yael, then 7, had the flu, and her father stayed up all night with her; the next morning, he hugged Michal, 9, when he left her at her bus stop. They never saw him again. The married father of two girls, a diamond dealer and a religious man with no criminal record, simply seemed to disappear.
It was not until two decades later, when a government witness led investigators to Mr. Greenwald’s makeshift grave in a Brooklyn garage, that his family began to find out what had happened. Mr. Greenwald had been killed by two New York Police Department detectives who were secretly working with the Mafia.
On Thursday, Mr. Greenwald’s family settled a civil suit against the City of New York for $5 million. Several more lawsuits against the city brought by families of those killed by the two detectives, Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, known as the Mafia Cops, are scheduled to go to trial this fall in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Another family settled with the city in January for $5 million.Photo
Louis Eppolito in 2006. He and Stephen Caracappa, former New York police detectives, were known as the Mafia Cops.
The detectives were convicted in 2006 of eight murders, two attempted murders and one murder conspiracy, among other crimes. They are serving multiple life sentences.
Several years after joining the police force in 1969, the detectives agreed to a partnership with Anthony Casso, known as Gaspipe, the No. 2 man in the Lucchese crime family, the jury found at the detectives’ trial. Over six years, they killed at the direction of Mr. Casso and provided him with confidential information. They were paid a total of the $375,000.
Mr. Greenwald’s tangential involvement with the Mafia started in 1985, when he went to Britain to help a business associate buy Treasury bills there. When he returned, the Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned him about the source of the bills. Mr. Greenwald said the source was legitimate, as he believed it was. However, the bills had apparently originated with someone linked to Mr. Casso.
In 1985 or 1986, a longtime criminal named Burton Kaplan, who worked for Mr. Casso, hired Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa to kill Mr. Greenwald to prevent him from cooperating with the F.B.I.’s inquiry. Mr. Kaplan had heard about the detectives through a cousin of Mr. Eppolito’s whom he had met in prison.
Mr. Casso welcomed the inside help, Mr. Kaplan said in trial testimony.
In February 1986, the rogue detectives used a confidential police database to find Mr. Greenwald’s home address, the type of car he drove and its license plate number. They pulled over the car, told him they were detectives and asked him to come to the precinct because he was a suspect in a hit and run. Instead, they took him to a warehouse on Nostrand Avenue, where Mr. Caracappa and another man killed him, while Mr. Eppolito acted as a lookout.
They buried the body in the garage, where it stayed for almost two decades, until a person cooperating with the government in 2005 told investigators where it was. That led to the arrests of Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito, who had both retired. (Mr. Eppolito had retired in 1990, and Mr. Caracappa in 1992.)
Until Mr. Greenwald’s body was found, his wife and two daughters had no idea what had happened. Without it, the family had not been able to get life insurance or social services, their lawyers said in a statement, and “the family lost their home and their car.”
After killing Mr. Greenwald, Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito committed several other murders for Mr. Casso, including the killings of a Staten Island man whom they stuffed into a trunk, another man gunned down while changing a tire on his car and another who was left dead with a canary stuffed into his mouth after the detectives identified him as an informer.
The lawsuit on behalf of the Greenwald family says that city officials knew about the detectives’ Mafia connections. In 1984, for instance, Mr. Eppolito was suspended after the F.B.I. alerted the Police Department that he had given intelligence files to a member of the Gambino crime family.
The city had opposed the lawsuits from the victims’ families, but last year, Judge Raymond Dearie of Federal District Court in Brooklyn said they could go forward. Judge Dearie wrote that there was a “systemic failure” in the Police Department to handle corruption during the detectives’ tenure, and that had Mr. Eppolito been effectively disciplined or dismissed when he was caught handing over the confidential records, these murders might not have occurred.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said that “settling this case was in the best interest of the city.”
It was not until two decades later, when a government witness led investigators to Mr. Greenwald’s makeshift grave in a Brooklyn garage, that his family began to find out what had happened. Mr. Greenwald had been killed by two New York Police Department detectives who were secretly working with the Mafia.
On Thursday, Mr. Greenwald’s family settled a civil suit against the City of New York for $5 million. Several more lawsuits against the city brought by families of those killed by the two detectives, Stephen Caracappa and Louis Eppolito, known as the Mafia Cops, are scheduled to go to trial this fall in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Another family settled with the city in January for $5 million.Photo
Louis Eppolito in 2006. He and Stephen Caracappa, former New York police detectives, were known as the Mafia Cops.
The detectives were convicted in 2006 of eight murders, two attempted murders and one murder conspiracy, among other crimes. They are serving multiple life sentences.
Several years after joining the police force in 1969, the detectives agreed to a partnership with Anthony Casso, known as Gaspipe, the No. 2 man in the Lucchese crime family, the jury found at the detectives’ trial. Over six years, they killed at the direction of Mr. Casso and provided him with confidential information. They were paid a total of the $375,000.
Mr. Greenwald’s tangential involvement with the Mafia started in 1985, when he went to Britain to help a business associate buy Treasury bills there. When he returned, the Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned him about the source of the bills. Mr. Greenwald said the source was legitimate, as he believed it was. However, the bills had apparently originated with someone linked to Mr. Casso.
In 1985 or 1986, a longtime criminal named Burton Kaplan, who worked for Mr. Casso, hired Mr. Eppolito and Mr. Caracappa to kill Mr. Greenwald to prevent him from cooperating with the F.B.I.’s inquiry. Mr. Kaplan had heard about the detectives through a cousin of Mr. Eppolito’s whom he had met in prison.
Mr. Casso welcomed the inside help, Mr. Kaplan said in trial testimony.
In February 1986, the rogue detectives used a confidential police database to find Mr. Greenwald’s home address, the type of car he drove and its license plate number. They pulled over the car, told him they were detectives and asked him to come to the precinct because he was a suspect in a hit and run. Instead, they took him to a warehouse on Nostrand Avenue, where Mr. Caracappa and another man killed him, while Mr. Eppolito acted as a lookout.
They buried the body in the garage, where it stayed for almost two decades, until a person cooperating with the government in 2005 told investigators where it was. That led to the arrests of Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito, who had both retired. (Mr. Eppolito had retired in 1990, and Mr. Caracappa in 1992.)
Until Mr. Greenwald’s body was found, his wife and two daughters had no idea what had happened. Without it, the family had not been able to get life insurance or social services, their lawyers said in a statement, and “the family lost their home and their car.”
After killing Mr. Greenwald, Mr. Caracappa and Mr. Eppolito committed several other murders for Mr. Casso, including the killings of a Staten Island man whom they stuffed into a trunk, another man gunned down while changing a tire on his car and another who was left dead with a canary stuffed into his mouth after the detectives identified him as an informer.
The lawsuit on behalf of the Greenwald family says that city officials knew about the detectives’ Mafia connections. In 1984, for instance, Mr. Eppolito was suspended after the F.B.I. alerted the Police Department that he had given intelligence files to a member of the Gambino crime family.
The city had opposed the lawsuits from the victims’ families, but last year, Judge Raymond Dearie of Federal District Court in Brooklyn said they could go forward. Judge Dearie wrote that there was a “systemic failure” in the Police Department to handle corruption during the detectives’ tenure, and that had Mr. Eppolito been effectively disciplined or dismissed when he was caught handing over the confidential records, these murders might not have occurred.
The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nicholas Paolucci, a spokesman for the city’s Law Department, said that “settling this case was in the best interest of the city.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/nyregion/family-of-man-killed-by-rogue-detectives-settles-suit-for-5-million.html?ref=nyregion
Sunday, February 1, 2015
NYC to pay mother of Mafia Cops victim $5 million in settlement
Nicholas Guido (pictured) is an innocent victim slain on Christmas Day 1986 by hit men acting on bogus information from Mafia Cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa.
At last, justice for Nicky.
The city will pay $5 million to the elderly mother of Nicholas Guido, an innocent victim slain on Christmas Day 1986 by hit men acting on bogus information from Mafia Cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, the Daily News has learned.
The payout exceeds the monetary compensation usually dispensed to victims of wrongful death at the hands of cops, but is justified by the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the mistaken identity rubout, said lawyer Mark Longo.
“The settlement can’t bring Nicky back,” said Longo, who represented 87-year-old Pauline Pipitone in the legal action. “His murder was not a cop’s error in judgment, it was premediated.”
Rosier, Linda Nicholas Guido was a 26-year-old telephone installer when he was gunned down outside his Park Slope home while showing off his brand new car to his uncle. “We’re glad this happened while Pauline is still here to see it,” he added.
Guido was a 26-year-old telephone installer when he was gunned down outside his Park Slope home while showing off his brand new car to his uncle.
The traitorous Eppolito and Caracappa had passed the name “Nicholas Guido” to then-Lucchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso who was seeking retribution against the shooters who tried and failed to whack him.
Mafia cops Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa were found to have been responsible for providing information leading to hit men killing Nicholas Guido.
The detectives were on Casso’s payroll acting as his “crystal ball” for confidential police information, but the gangster refused to pay extra for Guido’s home address. Instead, Casso reached out to a source at the Brooklyn Union Gas company and obtained the address for the wrong Nicholas Guido, according to testimony from the Mafia Cops trial.
Guido threw himself on his uncle saving his life — but his own father died of a broken heart and Pipitone never got over the senseless killing of her beloved son.
“There is no word in the English language to describe the murder of a child,” Longo said.
After Eppolito and Caracappa were convicted of participating in eight gangland murders, including Guido’s, city lawyers under the Bloomberg administration fought tooth-and-nail to dismiss the lawsuits filed by six of their victims.
The detectives were on Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso’s payroll acting as his 'crystal ball' for confidential police information, but the gangster refused to pay extra for Guido’s home address.
But the gridlock was broken after Brooklyn Federal Judge Raymond Dearie ruled last fall that the wrongful death case could go to trial, citing sufficient evidence that the victims would not have been killed had Eppolito been fired in the mid-1980s for leaking confidential documents to a gangster.
A spokesman for the city Law Department said, “After evaluating all the facts, it was determined that settling the case was in the City’s best interest.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/city-pay-5m-elderly-mother-nicholas-guido-article-1.2098449
Saturday, October 11, 2014
Judge rules families of Mafia Cops victims can sue New York City
A federal judge has green-lighted the multimillion-dollar wrongful-death lawsuits filed against the city by the families of seven men slain in mob hits executed or aided by former two detectives Louis Eppolito and ex-Great Kills resident Stephen Caracappa.
In allowing the cases to proceed, District Judge Raymond J. Dearie said there was evidence to suggest the rubouts would not have occurred had Eppolito been kicked off the force or disciplined after he was "caught red-handed" passing confidential police records to a mobster in 1984.
The slayings took place between 1986 and 1991.
Dearie said evidence also indicated there was a "systemic failure" to address corruption under then-Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward.
"The failure to discipline a detective who colludes with organized crime plainly courts the risk that that detective will do so again," wrote Dearie. "And it is likewise obvious that collusion between a police detective and organized crime might well lead, as it did in these cases, to unconstitutional harm to members of the public."
The judge further ruled the plaintiffs' families, who filed the suits in 2006 and 2007, had done so within statutory time limits.
Caracappa, 72, and Eppolito, 66, the so-called "Mafia Cops," are serving life sentences for their roles in the slayings, carried out at the behest of Lucchese crime family underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso, who later cooperated with authorities.
The two detectives were paid $4,000 a month to provide Casso with law-enforcement information. They received extra cash for murder contracts, including $70,000 for a hit on Eddie Lino, a Gambino crime family capo suspected of being involved in a failed assassination attempt on Casso, the ruling said.
Eppolito, whose father was a member of the Gambino crime family, retired from the NYPD in 1990. He played a bit part in Martin Scorsese's 1990 mob drama "GoodFellas" and launched an unsuccessful career as a screenwriter.
Caracappa retired in 1992 after establishing the Police Department's unit for mob murder investigations. In 2005, while awaiting trial to start and after posting bail, Caracappa had stayed with his mother in South Beach.
Eppolito, then working in the 62nd Precinct in Brooklyn's Bath Beach neighborhood, came under scrutiny in 1984. FBI agents found confidential NYPD Intelligence Reports in the home of mobster Rosario Gambino, who was under indictment for heroin trafficking, said the judge's ruling.
A probe determined the reports had been photocopied at the 62nd Precinct and Eppolito's fingerprints were on the photocopies, the judge said.
Eppolito subsequently underwent a departmental trial which cleared him, despite "compelling" evidence against him, said the judge.
The trial was prosecuted by a junior NYPD lawyer and was based on stipulations between the parties, not live testimony, which was unusual, Dearie said.
Commissioner Ward declined to overturn the findings, although a follow-up Internal Affairs probe after the hearing again concluded that Eppolito had leaked the reports, said the judge.
Dearie said a report by the Mollen Commission provides "powerful evidence" that the Police Department at that time "tolerat(ed) corruption to avoid bad publicity."
He said the NYPD's "inexplicable failure" to discipline Eppolito may have emboldened Caracappa.
Eppolito started his relationship with the Luccheses after being cleared of the charges, the ruling started.
His cohort Caracappa, who worked for the NYPD's Major Case Squad, was specifically assigned to the Lucchese unit. He often worked on joint NYPD and federal task forces and had access to confidential information about ongoing investigations, said the judge.
Besides whacking Lino, the pair slayed an innocent victim, Israel Greenwald, a Diamond District jeweler, according to the ruling and Advance filings.
They also provided information which factored into the slayings of five others, including another innocent victim, Nicholas Guido of Brooklyn, said the judge.
And they were convicted of kidnapping Jimmy Hydell in 1986 and delivering him to Casso to be executed in retaliation for a botched attempted on Casso's life, said Advance reports. Hydell's mother, Betty Hydell, testified she saw the two detectives casing her Grasmere home in an unmarked police car the day her son vanished.
The city maintained the cases should be tossed because the plaintiffs did not file them until decades after their loved ones' deaths.
The plaintiffs contended they were not required to commence the lawsuits until they had some reason to link police to the killings. Eppolito and Caracappa were indicted in 2005.
Dearie sided with the plaintiffs and declined to throw out the suits.
A spokesman said the city Law Department is reviewing the decision.
http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2014/10/victims_of_mafia_cops_louis_ep.html
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Lucchese mob boss turned informant details his first murder
Al D'Arco
For all his brash talk over the years about wanting to kill people who angered him, Al D’Arco, then a 56-year-old capo in Canarsie, had never actually done it. He was the messenger, relaying orders to others to carry out executions.
He’d never had blood directly on his hands. In the spring of 1989, however, the blood got not only on his hands. It got all over his body.
The blood was that of a veteran Luchese crime-family member named Michael Pappadio.
Pappadio, 66, was a holdover from the days of the old Luchese regimes. Along with his brothers, Pappadio had been helping manage the crime family’s vast interests in the city’s garment business since the 1950s.
The rag trade, as it was known both on and off Seventh Avenue, was always crucial to the family’s leadership. It supplied both huge profits and acceptable entrée into New York’s political and business establishments.
Thanks to their positions as owners of legitimate garment shops, family leaders could count on influential friends in places both high and low.
When family boss Thomas Luchese was summoned before a state crime commission in 1951, he could honestly say he was just the moderately prosperous co-proprietor of a ladies’ coat manufacturer called Braunell Ltd. with showrooms on West 38th Street.
Most of the garment rackets had been run by Jewish gangsters, led by Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, whose thugs worked both sides of the industry’s many labor battles. But Luchese worked out an accommodation, cutting Lepke into the family’s small but growing narcotics trade in exchange for room at the table on Seventh Avenue.
After Lepke was convicted of his Murder Inc. slayings and died in the electric chair in 1944, Luchese’s men had things mostly to themselves. The crime family’s principal role in the garment district was officially confirmed by a Mafia Commission ruling in the 1950s. The other families were allowed to have pieces of the trade, but the Luchese crew ruled.
In a bid to avoid notoriety, Thomas Luchese juggled the spelling of the family name. Police and newspapers spelled it as “Luchese.” Joe Valachi gave him an extra “C” when he began singing to prosecutors. His own preference was “Luckese.” Jokesters had teased him with rhymes of “cheese,” he explained. That’s how the name was carved on his tombstone when he died in 1967.
Over the years, garment manufacturing steadily slipped out of the city, headed to cheaper labor ports in the South and overseas. The mob’s tax on every piece of clothing, estimated at $3 per garment at one point, didn’t help make clothing jobbers want to stick around. But even as the industry declined, the Luchese crew retained its dominant position and zealously defended its turf. By the late 1980s, when Al got his first good look at the family’s operation, he was impressed.
“It was bigger than anything we had, the biggest moneymaker of all.”
Michael Pappadio, who spent more than 40 years in the business, had mastered all the threads of the garment industry.
But his fall from grace began when the power center shifted in the Luchese family. Gone was the old East Harlem-Bronx axis represented by the family’s founding fathers. The new family chieftains in Brooklyn, Vic Amuso and Gaspipe Casso, had cut their criminal teeth on drug dealing. They knew little about the often byzantine world of the garment center.
What they did know was that it spun off immense amounts of cash. And when one of the family’s crime associates started telling them that Mike Pappadio was holding back shops and earnings, they listened closely.
Pappadio was edged toward the exits, but refused to go. He kept pleading his case to the bosses, to D’Arco, to whoever would listen. He later confided that he couldn’t get out of his garment businesses because he needed the money. Luchese heads started to worry Pappadio would become an informant rather than go quietly.
The garment kingpin’s fate was decided a few weeks later at a tavern in Canarsie. By the time Al got there, the decision had already been made. He sat down at a table alongside Amuso and Casso. “Mike is going,” Amuso told Al when he arrived.
Casso already had the murder all planned. The Avellino brothers, Carmine and Sal, were old and trusted friends of Pappadio. They’d tell him they needed to meet with him. They’d pick him up and bring him to a bagel bakery on Rockaway Boulevard in the Queens neighborhood of South Ozone Park.
Carmine Avellino was a part owner in the bakery and would arrange for the place to be deserted. Al was to meet them there.
Waiting with him would be George Zappola, one of the family’s younger recruits and a fiercely devoted Casso aide.
“After you kill him, go through his pockets,” Casso instructed. “I want to see whatever he’s got. Any piece of paper. I want to know if this guy’s cooperating.” Al nodded.
They’d have a body bag ready for the corpse, Casso said. He nodded his head toward a man at a corner table. Al looked over. He recognized Vic Orena Jr., son of the Colombo crime-family acting boss. Al recalled that the Colombo family had a major funeral-home operator in their borgata. Gaspipe came prepared, Al thought to himself.
On Saturday morning, May 13, 1989, Michael Pappadio and his wife, Frances, rose early. They were planning a small party for the afternoon, a barbecue on their lawn overlooking Little Neck Bay in Bayside, Queens. The weather looked like it was going to cooperate. It was clear, the temperature in the mid-60s.
The party was to be a dual celebration. Michael’s birthday was on Sunday. He’d be 67 years old. Sunday was also Mother’s Day. It was to be a family get-together. He told his wife he had an errand to run but would be home soon.
As they waited at the bakery, Al and Zappola went over their plan of attack. Al was to slug Pappadio with a heavy homemade sap, an 18-inch length of thick copper cable wrapped in blue rubber insulation. Then Zappola would shoot him with a .22. They put the body bag in an open file-cabinet drawer in the office and put the gun on top within easy reach.
Al had lost track of time when he heard Zappola speak. “Here they come!” he hissed. Zappola was standing directly behind Al, both of them shielded from view by the blinds. Al saw Carmine Avellino coming through the bakery’s outer door with Mike Pappadio behind him.
Carmine Avellino opened the office door. Pappadio stepped into the office, blinking at the sight of the two men. Avellino let out a shout. “Surprise!” he yelled. “Look who’s here!”
As he shouted, Al smashed the sap on Mike Pappadio’s head, swinging the heavy cable down as hard as he could. The businessman was solidly built, 5-foot-8, weighing about 200 pounds. He didn’t fall.
Mike Pappadio
Al hit him again. He still didn’t go down.
“I don’t know how the hell I didn’t knock him down. I banged him hard, about four times. I guess the fear was holding him up.”
Zappola reached for the .22. He pointed the gun at Pappadio and pulled the trigger. The bullet ricocheted wildly off the victim’s head, lodging in the office door.
“The guy had a head like a rock. Then Georgie pulls out a big snub-nosed gun, a .357. I didn’t even know he had it. He puts it up to Mike’s head and shoots. The guy was still standing. I couldn’t believe it.”
Mike Pappadio was stubborn to the end. But he was now finished.
The three killers watched as he slumped against the wall, then slowly slipped to the floor.
He lay there, a gurgling noise coming from his throat. “We waited, and then he stopped making the noise, and we knew he was dead.”
Blood from the savage attack was everywhere, splattered on the floor, the walls, and the ceiling. “It was on my clothes, my jacket, my hands.”
Avellino was the first to recover. As per Casso’s instructions, he bent over the body, rifling the pockets. Al watched as he pulled a thick wad of cash from one pocket. Another held a brown leather item. At first, Al thought it was a wallet, but it was an address book. Avellino passed them to Zappola for delivery to Casso.
They packed up the body in a trunk. D’Arco washed off the bloodstains in the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. A partially balding man looked back at him. A man who had just finished participating in a ferocious murder. He saw something else as well.
“I’m looking in the mirror, and I see I still have blood on my jacket.”
He had foolishly worn a new suede, bomber-style coat that his children had given him a few months earlier for a Christmas present.
Home in his apartment, he pulled off his shirt, pants and shoes. He cut them all into pieces. Then he took them to the garbage chute in the building and tossed them inside. He hesitated at the jacket. He put it aside, thinking that his kids would want to know what had happened to their gift.
An hour or so later, he went to a dry cleaner on the East Side. It was one he’d never been in before, and he left the jacket under a made-up name. On his walk back to the neighborhood, he thought better of it.
They have all these sophisticated methods for detecting blood on items, he thought. “I figured I’d just have to tell them I lost it or something. It wasn’t worth the chance.” He never went back to get the coat.
Pappadio’s little brother Fred came looking for him later. “I said, ‘What are you asking me for? What the f–k do I know? Maybe he ran away with a girl.’ That was the old thing you always said when someone was made to disappear. ‘He probably ran away with some girl.’ ”
There was never any evidence that Pappadio was talking to the feds. None of the agents working the Luchese family ever wired him up. D’Arco would eventually plead guilty to 12 murders and murder conspiracies.
D’Arco justified the grisly killing as simply part of the business he had chosen. “It’s like the Army. You’ve got a job to do? You do it.”
Contrary to popular wisdom, murder wasn’t a required initiation rite for admission to the secret society. But when ordered, a member had to participate. “The press pushes all that stuff. They write how you’ve got to make your bones before you get made. Nah. It doesn’t hurt to have done it, but guys also get made because they earn, or because they’re smart.”
But the order might come at any time. “You could be in the Life for 20 years, and you don’t do anything. But you gotta remember that there will come a day, the guy will say, ‘Al, you gotta do this.’ And you can’t say, ‘No, I quit.’
“You do or die. It’s blood in, blood out.”
Excerpted with permission from “Mob Boss: The Life of Little Al D’Arco, the Man Who Brought Down the Mafia” by Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins. Out Oct. 1 by St. Martin’s Press.
http://nypost.com/2013/09/29/ex-mob-boss-details-gruesome-hit/
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Turncoat mobster says government should spring Big Joey from prison for his cooperation
Joseph Massino, ex-Bonanno crime boss, is seeking reduction in his life sentence.
Rats have to watch out for each other.
Joseph Massino, the first American Mafia boss to sing to the feds, has found an ally in his bid to get sprung from prison before he dies — another mob rat.
“I hate to play judge, but I think he should get time served,” said Alphonse "Little Al" D’Arco, the former acting boss of the Lucchese crime family — and the second-highest-ranking defecting gangster after Massino.
“The government took his cooperation, he did what they asked,” D’Arco, 80, said in a statement provided to the Daily News. “They owe him. You can’t let him rot in prison for the rest of his life.”
Massino, 70, the once-feared boss of the Bonanno crime family, was convicted of racketeering and eight murders and sentenced to life in prison in 2005.
He’ll get a chance at early release Wednesday, when Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis resentences him. That hearing came about because prosecutors promised Massino they would write a letter to the judge seeking a reduction in his sentence as a reward for providing info that resulted in numerous indictments.
The wily wiseguy made no secret why he joined with the feds, once testifying, “I’m hoping someday I see light at the end of the tunnel.”
But he may soon see light emanating from a different source than the sun.
“He’s on his way out of the picture,” said a source briefed on Massino’s deteriorating health.
Alphonse "Little Al" D'Arco had eight murders on his résumé, testified in more than a dozen trials.
D’Arco, who also had eight murders on his résumé, testified in more than a dozen trials, including against the lethal “Mafia Cops” Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, who killed for Lucchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso.
Massino appeared on the witness stand only twice, testifying against his successor, Vincent "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano and Genovese capo Anthony Antico. No matter, D’Arco points out, the consequences of cooperating are the same.
“The mob don’t forget,” he said. “There are still some capable guys out there who might want to go out there and whack the guy (Massino).”
D’Arco, soon to be immortalized in the upcoming book, “Mob Boss, the Life of Little Al D’Arco, the Man Who Brought Down the Mafia,” by Jerry Capeci and Tom Robbins, said he is still looking over his shoulder a decade after a judge gave him time-served as a reward.“Maybe they’ll get me yet,” D’Arco, who had eight murders on his resume, told the authors of the forthcoming tome from St. Martin’s Press.
Massino has served 101/2 years since he was arrested at Queens, faux mansionhome. He subsequently handed over his fortune: $7.6 million in cash, 257 gold bars stashed in his attic and the CasaBlanca restaurant he controlled.
His wife and elderly mother were allowed to keep their houses.
Massino’s brother-in-law Salvatore Vitale, who flipped soon after he was arrested and testified against Massino, ended up with the sweetest deal of all — the former underboss served only seven years despite participating in 11 murders.
Massino and D’Arco wreaked havoc on their crime families, but law enforcement sources said the Bonanno and Lucchese clans are showing signs of rising from the ashes.
The families have been inducting new soldiers to beef up their decimated ranks over the past 18 months, sources said.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/alphonse-al-arco-fellow-crime-boss-joseph-massino-article-1.1393354#ixzz2YYRi2gvg
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Colombo underboss begs for mercy from judge because he lives in a trailer park and is on food stamps
Where poor-mouthing mobster Benjamin Castellazzo lives, in West Creek, N.J., with wife who
gets food stamps, the Colombo underboss said in court papers.
gets food stamps, the Colombo underboss said in court papers.
IF A Mafia crime boss’ home is his castle, this Colombo crime family poorfella lives on the wrong side of the train tracks.
Reputed underboss Benjamin "The Claw" Castellazzo made a shocking disclosure in court papers that he lives in a New Jersey trailer park and his wife receives food stamps.
Castellazzo, 75, is making a pitiful pitch to avoid a lengthy jail term when he’s sentenced later this month for extorting Brooklyn’s La Quila construction company and The Square, a Staten Island pizzeria.
Beset by physical ailments and subsisting on Social Security, Castellazzo is hoping to ride off into the sunset with his wife, children and grandchildren and is pleading for Judge Kiyo Matsumoto to give him far less than the eight years he faces.
Benjamin Castellazzo
The high-ranking mobster earned his nickname because he was notorious for finding out what illicit rackets his fellow mobsters were doing and “getting his claws” into a piece of the action, a source said.
But Castellazzo apparently doesn’t have much to show for all of the extortion and loansharking over the years.
Defense lawyer James DiPietro showed photos of Castellazzo’s mobile home, tidy garden and the eat-in kitchen that show it looks cozy, but a far cry from some of the luxurious residences where his mob peers hung their fedoras.
Castellazzo was convicted of trying to get a slice of the action from
The Square pizzeria on Hylan Blvd. in Staten Island.
The late Gambino boss Paul Castellano lived in a $3 million neoclassical mansion called the White House, in Staten Island. Former Bonanno boss Joseph Massino made a deal with the government so his wife could keep their faux mansion in Howard Beach, Queens.
Colombo top boss Carmine "The Snake" Persico’s wife lives in a brick mansion fit for a king in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, although her husband has resided in a federal prison for the past 25 years. Former Lucchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso’s waterfront home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, must be jinxed because State Sen. Carl Kruger ended up in prison, like Casso, after buying and renovating the garish-looking palace.
Real estate websites state the two-bedroom trailer homes in Castellazzo’s retirement community sell for $40,000 or can be rented for about $1,000 a month.
Where high-living TV mobsters live on The Sopranos.
Castellazzo has been jailed since an historic roundup of more than 100 gangsters by the feds in January 2010. FBI agents hit the mobile home on Robin Court in West Creek, N.J., early in the morning but didn’t find Castellazzo, only his wife of more than 50 years.
The agents finally reached Castellazzo on his cell phone and he was in Brooklyn, apparently staying with a friend, sources said.
Facing eight years in the big house, Castellazzo is cutting a contrite pose.
“I have reflected on my life during the past two years. . . . I am not proud of the life I have led,” he wrote, adding that he wants to end his days in the company of his wife, children and grandchildren.
“These loved ones are the only family I deem important,” he added.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Feds say Colombo mobster was inducted into the crime family while in jail
Court papers reveal that Colombo boss Andrew Russo (r) personally inducted Fat Larry Sessa into the crime family inside a Brooklyn federal lockup in 2001.
He became a made man in the big house.
Federal prosecutors say mobsters didn’t let prison bars be an obstacle to Omerta when they carried out the secret Sicilian ceremony inducting a Colombo gangster into the family inside a Brooklyn federal lockup on Jan. 12, 2011.
That was the day more than 100 gangsters were rounded up in the metropolitan area in what the feds called a historic takedown.
It turned out to be a big day for Ilario "Fat Larry" Sessa, 45, who got arrested — and got his button.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Geddes disclosed in papers filed Wednesday in Brooklyn Federal Court that then acting Colombo boss Andrew "Mush" Russo personally inducted Sessa in the prison ceremony.
Sources told the Daily News the secret ceremony took place in the intake room, or bullpen, of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park on the night of Jan. 12, after the mobsters had been arraigned in court.
“It was his [Sessa’s] lifelong dream to become a wiseguy,” a law enforcement source told The News.
He was supposed to have become a soldier Dec. 7, 2010, at the home of Colombo soldier Emanuele Favuzza, but the ceremony was scrapped after FBI surveillance was detected.
The feds learned of Sessa's new status in gangland from capo Reynold Maragni, who was also nabbed in the roundup and began cooperating after he made bail.
It is not clear whether he witnessed the ceremony.
Sessa’s lawyer, Vincent Romano, called the induction scenario far-fetched. He noted that the intake room at the MDC is under video surveillance and staffed by guards.
“I don’t think that the props that are typically used in an induction would be present in the intake room of the prison,” Romano said.
Over the years, mob turncoats have revealed the secrets of the ceremony: the inductee’s finger is pricked with a needle and his blood is dripped or smeared on a picture of a saint; the paper is lit with a candle and placed in his hand, and he holds the burning paper while reciting an oath of eternal fealty. A gun must also be present, to symbolize crime.
The prison bullpen is a holding area with benches seating about 20 new arrivals at a time. With everything but the clothes on their backs taken away — no saint picture, candle or weapons — the gangsters would have had to do a lot of improvising.
It’s happened before. In 1993, Luchese underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso inducted mobster Michael "Baldy Mike" Spinelli in the bathroom at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. The gangsters set toilet paper on fire in Spinelli’s hands to substitute for the saint picture.
Sessa, charged with racketeering and extortion, is still being held at the MDC.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Vic Amuso steps down and Lucchese family names Steven Crea the new boss
Underworld sources are abuzz with news that the Lucchese crime family has named Steven "Stevie Wonder" Crea the new official boss. Crea, who had been serving as the family's underboss since 1993 was officially given the spot after jailed for life boss Vittorio "Vic" Amuso was prodded to step down by the family. The Bronx based boss is heavily involved in labor racketeering and construction.
Crea was inducted into the Lucchese family sometime in the 1980s, probably under the reign of boss Anthony Corallo. By 1990, family boss Vic Amuso appointed Crea capo, taking over "Sammy Bones" Castaldi crew in the Bronx.Crea specialized in labor rackets, such as gaining power over Carpenter's Local 608 and using it to extort New York City contractors. Crea held a no-show job at Inner City Drywall, one of the city's largest drywall contractors and was on the Cement and Concrete Workers Union involved with Local 282.
In 1993, with Amuso and Anthony Casso's support, Crea became underboss of the Lucchese Family. Using his new clout, Crea shifted the family's power center away from the Brooklyn crews and back to the Manhattan and Bronx crews who had historically controlled the family for decades. In the early 1990s, several Amuso/Casso loyalists, including George Zappola and Frank "Spaghetti Man" Gioia, Jr. hatched a plot to kill Crea, and take over the family.They planned to lure Crea to a sitdown and then murder him. However, the plot fell through after Zapolla, Gioia, and the rest of Amuso/Casso regime were indicted and imprisoned.
From 1997 through 1999, Crea served as the head of the "Lucchese Construction Group", which also included Lucchese capos Dominic Truscello, head of the Prince Street Crew, and Joseph Tangorra, head of a Brooklyn crew. The Construction Group brokered the bribe payments and the "mob tax" payments to be received from contractors, and settled disputes over who would dominate a particular construction site. Also, the mobsters were placed on the company payroll so they could report legitimate taxable income to the IRS. During its existence, the Construction Group controlled over $40 million dollars in construction contracts, increasing overall construction costs by 5%.
In 1998, after acting Lucchese boss Joseph DeFede was indicted on labor racketeering and extortion charges, Crea became the family's new acting boss.On September 6, 2000, Crea and other members of the Lucchese Construction Group were indicted in New York on state enterprise corruption, labor racketeering, extortion, and bid-rigging charges.The District Attorney charged that these schemes had systematically siphoned off millions of dollars from both public and private construction projects. Specifically, Crea used mob associates to extort building contractors who wished to receive rights to no-bid jobs or who wanted to reduce the number of union members on their payrolls.Truscello, Tangorra, and other family members went to prison. Tangorra suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually took a 16-year prison sentence deal. In 2006, Crea pleaded guilty to lesser state charges and was sentenced to prison for two to six years.
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