This is EXACTLY How Mafia Infiltrated the NYPD for Nearly 2 Decades

Two rogue cops, Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, were paid by the Mafia to leak sensitive police information and identify informants. They even helped in the murder of these informants. This shocking scandal was revealed in a book called “Blood and the Badge” by Michael Connell. Despite evidence of their crimes surfacing in 1994, they were only sentenced to life in prison in 2009.
The text discusses the complex relationships between mafia families and law enforcement in areas like Brooklyn and Queens. It highlights how some individuals, despite their connections to the mafia, chose to join law enforcement, maintaining relationships with their mafia-connected families and friends. The text also warns homeowners about the risk of home title theft in today’s digital world, urging them to protect their property with services like hometitlelock.com. Lastly, it delves into the story of Louis Eppolito, a decorated detective born into a mafia family, who along with his partner, Stephen Caracappa, became involved in serious crimes, raising questions about their motivations and identities.
The text discusses a case involving Rosario Gambino and Louis Eppolito, a police officer whose fingerprints were found on Gambino’s police file. Despite this evidence, Eppolito’s case was dismissed and he was promoted, which he claimed was due to the police framing him because of his Italian American heritage and connections to the mob. The text also mentions Gaspipe, who was willing to testify against Eppolito and another officer, Caracappa, but was not used as a witness due to conflicts with another case. The text ends with the author’s interactions with Eppolito’s son and Caracappa’s widow.
A Hollywood writer believed that a man named Eppolito was wrongly imprisoned and tried to help him. However, the most tragic event in this story is the murder of a young man named Nikki Guido, who was killed due to mistaken identity. Eppolito, who was working in the Major Case Squad, provided the wrong Nikki Guido’s address to a man named Gaspipe, who then ordered the murder. This event led to a drug dealer named Bert Kaplan flipping and testifying against Eppolito and another man named Caracappa.
Otto Heidell, a member of the Bypass Gang, worked as an informant for the FBI and NYPD. However, when he broke some rules, he was exposed as an informant and was killed. Another member of the gang also became an informant but was kicked out of the Witness Protection Program after committing a crime. A third member, DiNapoli, tried to escape but was tracked down and killed. All this information was passed on by NYPD detectives Epolito and Caracappa, who were suspected of misconduct by some colleagues but continued their duties.
A man named Michael conducted a detailed investigation into a story involving two corrupt cops, which was leaked to the Daily News. The story is so intriguing that it might be turned into a movie or series. Despite this incident, Michael emphasizes that not all police departments are corrupt and that every institution could use some reform. He also warns young people about the dangers of criminal activity, stating that it’s only a matter of time before they get caught.
Join our growing community for mentorship and learning about negotiation, especially relevant in today’s political climate. Drawing from my personal experience, I can guide you. Stay safe, healthy, and blessed. See you next time.

He and his closest friend and partner, Stephen caracappa, were paid $4,000 a month by gas pipe casa the under Boston Lucchese family. They were passing sensitive police information, FBI information, DEA information to Gas Pipe. I mean, most importantly, what they were doing was identifying who the informants were, right? And then they were paid a bon to facilitate the murder of those informants. And they did various degrees of help. I mean, anything from just providing the home address to at least in one case, pulling the trigger themselves. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another sit down with Michael Francis.

Hope everybody is doing well. All is very good, very blessed on this end, my friends. And as always, I give all the praise, honor, glory, and thanksgiving to our God for that. I have a special guest today. He’s a gentleman by the name of Michael Connell. He wrote a very interesting book. It’s a crazy book, actually. It’s called Blood and the Badge. And the subtitle is the Mafia Two Killer Cops and a Scandal that Shocked the Nation. And it certainly did. And this was during my time. It was about two cops that were two rogue cops that operated within the confines of the Genovese family, you know, one of the five New York Mafia Cosa Nostra families.

Many of my guests are familiar with that. For all you people that are coming on new, this is what we talk about, one of the many subjects that we talk about. But it’s a fascinating book. I do remember, I’m pretty familiar with it. I can tell you my own perspective on it. But this is the expert. He took a lot of time writing this book. He did a lot of research, a lot of investigation, spoken, interviewed to so many people. And it’s a fascinating book. I went through it. I didn’t read it in its entirety, but I read a lot of it.

And I’m familiar with just about everybody in the book, almost everybody. All the names that he mentioned, people that I knew either I knew intimately well, or I knew them, you know, just from the life. But I want to read something first to give you some insight into this. This was a scandal that really did certainly rock New York, and it did rock the nation. Because when you see corrupt to this level, it’s like, wow, do they really do this? I mean, we see corruption all the time. And I want to say this again. You know, people, the nypd, the FBI, the government, the Catholic Church, you name it.

There isn’t an organization or an industry on the face of the earth that isn’t in some way faced with corruption. It happens. That’s life. It’s just the way it is. So you don’t look down on the NYPD for this. You don’t look down. You, you know, what do you do? You try to fix it. You reform it. And you have to have constant reform and oversight into every agency on the face of the earth. It’s just how it is. I told you, the most corrupt agencies in the world are all governments. We know that. We’ve seen that lately.

That’s the story. But let me read you the inside cover of this book so you understand what it’s all about. It’s fascinating. For the first time in 40 years, former New York Times editor Michael Connell unearths the full story behind two ruthless New York City cops who acted as double agents for the Mafia. No doubt no episode in NYPD history surpasses the depravities of Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa, two decorated detectives who covertly acted as Mafia informants and paid assassins in the Scorsese popularized world of 1980s Brooklyn. Now, that was my time, the 1980s. Obviously you know that.

For more than 10 years, Epolito and Caracapa moonlighted as the mob’s early warning alert system, leaking names of mobsters secretly cooperating with the government and crippling investigations by sharing details of surveillance, phone taps and impending arrests. The Lucchese boss called the two detectives his crystal ball. Whatever the NYPD knew, the Mafia soon learned. Most grievously, Epolito and Caracappa earned bonuses by staging eight mob hits, pulling the trigger themselves at least once. They’re alleged to have murdered, okay, a number of people. They set up eight hits, and allegedly they pulled the trigger on a couple. These are cops.

Incredibly, when evidence of their wrongdoing arose in 1994, FBI officials failed to muster an indictment. The allegations laid dormant for a decade and were only revisited due to relentless follow ups by Tommy Dades. He was a cop. A cop determined to break the cold case before his retirement. Epolito and Caracapa were finally tried and then sentenced to life in prison in 2009, nearly 30 years after their crimes took place. This said, this whole thing happened in the 80s. And they finally went to prison for it in 2009, 30 years later. Canal’s blood and the badge is based on entirely new research, never before released interviews with mobsters themselves, including Sammy the Bull Gravano.

Somebody you’re familiar with, a friend of mine. Epolito and Caracappa story is more relevant than ever, as police conduct comes under ever increasing scrutiny. Now, once again, I Don’t want you to indict the entire NYPD or the entire police department throughout the country. We need the police, but we also need police reform. It happens again like in any other organization. We’re not singling them out. Now, look, Gaspipe, you know who he is, all right? He’s the guy that claimed he created the whole gas scam, which wasn’t true. He became a government informant. He was a big guy on the street with the Lucchesis.

He was the guy that they were answering to. I’m not going to get into it. I’m going to let Michael tell it, and I’ll give you my perspective, ask him my questions, and we’ll get into it. But this was, you know, a terrible blemish on the NYPD back then. And, yeah, listen, people, I got to tell you this. You know, during my time, you got to understand, there was five families in New York. We had 750 approximately made guys, guys that, you know, took the oath. We had a number of associates. We grew up in Brooklyn.

There’s guys that we grew up with, okay, that became cops, guys that became, you know, government officials, that became prosecutors. We had neighbors, so, you know, that were law enforcement. So, yeah, we had our connections and we got things done. There was a police precinct in Brooklyn, not going to mention it, where, you know, at 2:00 in the morning, on any given day during the week, I was able to go in there and look at the files because I had a relationship with some of the people in that precinct. Not going to mention it. Many, many years later.

There’s no sense to it. But again, this wasn’t abnormal. We had relationships, we had relatives that were law enforcement. So those things did happen. But to this level, no, not to this degree, where cops were actually fingering informants, cops were actually setting up, you know, hits and pulling the trigger themselves. You see that in the movies. You don’t really see that. I didn’t experience that during my time. I had relationships, but we didn’t experience that. So it’s a fascinating story. Michael Connell is the expert on it. He did his research, and I think you’re going to be fascinated with the interview.

So without any further delay, here is my very special guest, Michael Cannell. I was Rosario Gambino’s cellmate in Terminal island for two years. No kidding. Really? Yeah. Yeah, we got pretty friendly and he filled me in on a lot of stuff that obviously when he went through. So I was familiar with some of the things that are written in the book and we talked about it and so on and so forth. Yeah, I truly appreciate your taking the trouble to read it and I appreciate that. Well, listen, it’s the most in depth book made on that subject.

I know there have been other, other things written about these, these two men, but you’ve really delved into it and it, it seems very credible to me from what I know, my experience, the people I know. So I think it did a great job. Thank you, thank you for that. I worked hard on it. It was a fun book to write, as you can imagine, complicated. And I wasn’t sure that readers would stay with me for that complicated ride. But the feedback has been, has been good and the book has gotten some lift off and people have called it a page turner.

So I think maybe I was wrong about it being too complicated for people. No, I think you were. I mean, even myself, who was familiar with it, very easy to follow. And I think people will receive it the same way. I’m certainly going to promote it because I believe in it. It’s good work. And you know, Michael, to start this off, you know, some people look at this and they say, wow, you know, how could two police officers do what they did and what’s described in the book? And I tried to explain to people that back during that time we had, between all five families, we had about 750 made men, guys that actually took the oath.

And obviously we had a lot of associates and in all those areas of Brooklyn, Queens, even Long Island, Staten island, you know, we had relatives, we had neighbors, we had friends, we had kids we grew up with. Some of them went the way I went and some of them went, you know, the way of law enforcement and other things, but we still maintained those relationships. So it wasn’t far fetched that somebody in the mob like myself could have a relationship that I went to school with or that was my neighbor, or that a relative of mine that happened to join the NYPD or police department, even the FBI.

So we had those relationships. Now that doesn’t excuse, you know, some of the activities obviously that these two men did. I mean, Epolito, you know, it was in his family. I mean, he had relatives that were involved with the family. So it wasn’t too out of, it wasn’t too far fetched to see that these relationships were formed. Now the fact that they took it to an extreme level, which was really by no way justified or warranted, was certainly something that was not out of the realm of possibility. So maybe you can go into that a little bit Yeah.

I mean, in the course of talking about this book after its publication, a lot of people have asked me why these two decorated detectives, not just decorated detectives, but really successful detectives, why they would do what they did. My friends, if you’re a homeowner, you need to pay very close attention to what I’m about to tell you. Let me ask you a question. When’s the last time you checked on your home title? You know what that is? That’s the legal proof that you own your house. Well, if you’re like me, the answer is never. Why would I check it? The problem is, in today’s AI and cyber world, there are scammers out there that are stealing home titles.

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And as I always tell you people, that’s an offer you shouldn’t refuse. Why they would go on to the payroll of the Lucchese crime family. And it’s hard to answer that question without psychoanalyzing them. And I don’t really want to psychoanalyze them. I don’t feel responsible doing that. But what I will say is that in Louis Eppolito’s case, as you know, he was born into a mafia family. His father was a capo known as Fat the Gangster. His uncle was a capo, Jimmy the Clam. When his father died of a heart attack just a matter of weeks later, Louis joined the police academy.

And it was an act of rebellion against, against his family. So I think it didn’t take very long for him to figure out that some of the, some of the mo. Some of the techniques of the underworld applied pretty well to being a beat cop. And I think what happened with Louis is that he, in that early period, he was trying to be a good cop. I think for all of us, it’s hard to escape the entanglements of our family. It’s a very common story, right? And so it wasn’t long before he was drawn back into his family and friends and doing favors.

What’s a little harder to figure is that he wasn’t content with these sort of mid level corruptions or associations. You know, he, he was, he and his closest friend and partner, Stephen caracappa, were paid $4,000 a month by Gas Pipe Casa the under Boston Lucchese family. So they were passing sensitive police information, FBI information, DEA information to Gas pipe. I mean, most importantly, what they were doing was, was, was identifying who the informants were, right? And then, and then they were paid a bonus to facilitate the murder of those informants. And they did various, various degrees of help.

I mean, anything from just providing the home address to at least in one case, pulling the trigger themselves. So just to kind of get back to your question, I mean, I think in Louis Eppolito’s mind there was always maybe some confusion about his identity. Was he a detective masquerading as a mafiosi? Was he a mafiosi masquerading as a detective? I don’t know that he was ever really clear about it. And for his friend and partner, Stephen Caracappa, I mean, that’s a harder question. I mean, I spoke to a detective once who worked with him in the Major Case Squad who said of course Caracappa was doing it for the money.

I just, I don’t know that that’s. That. I mean, that may have on some level been true, but I think there was more to it than that. There had to be. I think, I mean, they, they committed these crimes for more than a decade. The, you know, the most, the most serious crimes a policeman can commit. And I don’t think, I don’t think it was about the money. I think, I think that Caracappa on some level wanted to have this secret life. It was gratifying to him in some way and he liked getting it over on people.

So I think that the degree of their involvement in all of this shocked people when the story really came out. I mean, I know for a fact that at least a handful of the detectives who worked around them had a lot of suspicions about them. But when it all came out, I don’t think anybody. I don’t think anybody could. Could really at first believe what they had done. Yeah, the extent of their involvement was really shocking, I have to say. And, you know, I had heard about them, but I wasn’t deeply involved. I learned more about them after I went to prison and was with Rosario, at least about Eppolito, he wasn’t really sure about Stephen.

He didn’t know too much about him. But let me ask you, because you. Even though I was on the street at the time, and I understand this, you’ve really done the investigation. You’re more the expert of it. Do you think Eppolito was, anyway, resentful after his uncle the clam got killed? Why did he enter the police force to begin with, in your opinion? Why do you think he even got involved when his family was all mom guys? Yeah, I mean, I wish. I wish I had a real, like. I wish I could nail that, that the answer to that, but I can’t really nail it.

I mean, his father, no surprise, was an abusive character. And I think he grew up in an abusive household. And his. His father was. It was a big one for whacking Louis. Louis around and, and lots of talk about the Sicilian code of honor. And I think, you know, Louis was a sick kid. He was. I mean, physically sick. He was. He was ill as a kid. And so I think there was this sense maybe in his mind, that he wasn’t measuring up to his father’s idea of, you know, macho ideal. And the only thing I could say is I think he joined the police department as an act of rebellion.

It was maybe liberating for him to. Liberating for him to. To. To join the other team, at least for a while. I think he discovered pretty quickly that he couldn’t, you know, he couldn’t really escape his family. I mean, you know, there’s a story there in the book about how he was in the police academy. And one of the instructors was showing the. The recruits, you know, the family tree of the five families. And one of the other rookie cops said, oh, hey, Louis, look, there’s somebody with your last name. And Louis said, yeah, that’s my father.

So it didn’t take long, I think, for him to figure out that it was harder to get away than he thought. And do you think he had any resentment towards the NYPD for just law enforcement in general at some point, for going after his family? I do, yeah. I mean, the story about Rosario Gambino, just very briefly, for those who don’t know it, is that the FBI and New Jersey State Police raided Gambino’s home in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and they found their surprise that Gambino had his own police file in his possession. And then they found Louis Eppolito’s fingerprints on it.

So Epolito, of course, went before Internal Affairs. His case was dismissed. The reason for his case being dismissed has never really been addressed or resolved, but not only was it dismissed, but they promoted him to detective second grade and invited him to pick whatever precinct in the city he wanted to work in. So of course he picked the 6, 3. And so he would be back among his people. But what he said after that, I mean, the reason I’m saying all of this is that what he said after that was that the police had framed him.

They had framed him because he was Italian American. They had framed him because of his association with a mobbed up family. He, he went on to a documentary about anger management and discussed his anger towards the police department in, in great detail. So how much of that anger was real and how much of it was just kind of an act in which he was kind of pretending to be indignant about being framed when in fact he wasn’t framed? And I don’t, I don’t even know that he was really angry. I think it may have been just a, a kind of a posture, you know, Michael, was, was the case dismissed? Because I know originally he denied giving Gambino those papers and, and then they, you know, they presented him with the fact that his fingerprints were on them, and that was at that point undeniable.

Was it dismissed even after they presented him with the fingerprint proof? It was. It was dismissed. So I don’t know if we want to kind of get into the weeds on this, but the trial, for reasons that are to this day remain unclear, and believe me, I tried to find out, the trial was conducted on what they call on stipulation, which means that there wouldn’t be, there wouldn’t be any new evidence introduced, there wouldn’t be witnesses, there would just be, there would just be the information available to the judge that both sides agreed on. So that really limited the information that the judge, that the judge could see.

And the judge dismissed it and the case had to go to the police commissioner in those days, that was Benjamin Ward. And so he signed it. And that. That was. That was that. I mean, people have asked me, why did this happen? I mean, I. I don’t know. I mean, I tried really hard to find out, but I. The best answer I can give is just that Benjamin Ward did not have the appetite for another. Another police scandal, another corruption scandal. He didn’t have the. The appetite for any more embarrassing headlines. I think that could be the only explanation.

They didn’t want this to hit the media. They wanted to keep it quiet. But to give him a promotion and send him to any precinct that he wanted, that’s a little bit overkill, I would say, in trying to bury this. Yeah, I think they were. I mean, I think what they were trying to do is to get him. To make him happy and get him to not, you know, not. Not. Not honk about it, you know, not talk about it very much. So it was. They were sort of, in a sense, maybe kind of buying them off.

Yeah, exactly. And let me ask you this because, you know, I myself have a little bit of issue with some of gas pipes testimony on other things, you know, because he. He had talked about, you know, something that involved me. He had said that he was the one that created the gas business. The. The. The gas tax scam, I would say, which was totally untrue. Yeah. But he claimed credit for some things that I knew he wasn’t intimately involved with. Do you think he was on the level with everything he talked about with respect to both Epolito and Caracappa? My instinct, Michael, is that he.

Is that he was on the level. And the re. The reason that I say that is, is that when gas pipe flipped and they took him to Latuna, the prison down by the Mexican border, and the FBI debriefed him. I can’t remember how long it was. It was weeks of debriefing. And then. Then the federal prosecutors and their investigators set out to corroborate what he had said. And what those investigators had said to me in the course of reporting this book was that everything checked out. So he was credible when it came to them? I think so.

But, I mean, part. As, you know, part of this story is about the ways in which Gaspipe may have been telling the truth about some things, but he was hard. Hard for the prosecutors to use, and. And ultimately they didn’t. They didn’t use him. So he was the guy. He was one of the few people who really knew what Epolito and Caracappa had done, but he didn’t end up. He didn’t end up being a plausible. A workable. A workable witness. And so Gas Pipe went to. They plugged, ripped up his plea agreement. He went to supermax, as you know, died.

Died of COVID in supermax, I think. Four years ago. Yeah, four or five years ago. It was recent. Fairly recent. Yeah. And I don’t know. I don’t know if you ever heard this, Michael, but I heard one of the main reasons they didn’t continue with Gas Pipe was because of the things that he had said about Sammy Gravano. And, you know, Sammy was doing what he was doing at the time, and. And they didn’t want. There was a conflict in the stories, from what I understood. That’s exactly. That’s exactly right. That’s what the federal prosecutors who worked on the case told me exactly.

That they were in a dilemma because on the one hand, they had Gaspipe, who knew everything that Epolito and Karakapp had done and was willing to testify against them. He was willing to play the role of the insider who could testify against them. But on the other hand, he was badmouthing Sammy the Bull. And so, you know, they had spent all of that time trying to prosecute Gotti and finally succeeded. And they did not want. They did not want that to be undone. And so they chose. I mean, it must have been a hard, hard choice, but they chose to send Gas Pipe away knowing that what it meant, at least for the foreseeable future, was that Epolito and Caracappa would, you know, would walk.

Did you ever. And that’s what I heard. Did you ever have the opportunity to speak to either one of the detectives? No. No, I didn’t. They. They passed away before. Before I started working. Oh, before I started working on this. And I did speak to Epolito’s son, who was very gracious and willing to talk to me. He had been estranged from his father for many years and had come. When Appolito finally did go to trial, his. His son Lou Jr. Went to the courtroom every day, every day of the trial. And what he said to me was that he came.

He came to the courthouse with an open mind, and he really wanted to know, honestly, if his father was. Was guilty or not. He wanted to know what his father had done or had not done. Did he come away after watching? Because I know they maintained their innocence. Did he come away after the trial believing his father was guilty? He did. He did. And there was, of Course, I mean, part of what is so interesting to me about writing about these cases that end in the courtroom is that it’s like all of the players come together and it’s the truth comes out or a lot of the truth comes out.

And so Lou Jr sat in awkward proximity to his stepmother and half sisters that he did not have a good relationship with. And in fact, they had a confrontation, a kind of semi violent confrontation in the parking garage. Unfortunate. So Lou Jr. Came with an open mind. His half sisters and stepmother, of course, did not. They, they, they main, they vocally maintained Lou’s innocence. And his, his, his daughter Andrea, I think, was a very effective spokesperson for him standing out in Cadman Plaza outside the courthouse every afternoon. She would speak to the press. So, but to answer your question, I never spoke to, I never spoke to Eppolito and Caracappa, but they were gone.

I spoke to Eppolito’s son. I had an email correspondence with Caracappa’s wife, widow. We had a nice correspondence, but she never agreed to be formally interviewed. You know, it’s amazing. There is a very well known writer in the industry in Hollywood. He writes scripts. Nice guy, friend of mine, but he had met with Epolito quite a few times and he had gotten in touch with me because he said, this man is innocent and I’m writing about it and I’m going to do whatever I can to try to help him get out of prison. And he actually wanted me to get, you know, engage in that.

And I said, you know, that’s not for me at this moment. I’ve got different things I’m doing in my life. But he was convinced that Eppolito was innocent. And he said, michael, there’s so much that never came out. And I said, look, I don’t want to get into it with you, but I don’t know what, on what basis he was convinced. Whether Epolito was just, you know, good at revealing his side of the story, I don’t know. But it was pretty fascinating to me that that fellow had come out so strongly in their behalf. And he’s just a Hollywood writer.

He had no relation whatsoever. I mean, it would be fascinating to know what, what, you know, the details of what he had in mind. Of course, Kara Kappa’s wife said the same thing to me. That, that they, that they were framed and that they were, they were innocent. But I don’t, you know, it’s hard to, it’s hard to accept that when you don’t know what the details might be right. Let me ask you, Michael, for my viewers, what do you think during this whole 10 year period or so, what do you think is the worst of the worst that these two men pulled off? And I think my viewers, because they’re, they’re really intrigued by this, I think they’d like to know from your perspective and your investigation.

Well, I think the, certainly the most tragic episode in this, in this story is the, is the murder of a young man named Nikki Guido. I believe he was 26 years old. It was a case of mistaken identity. There was a. There was a man named Nikki Guido who had been part of the crew that tried to assassinate Gas Pipe outside of a strip mall. Gas Pipe was sitting in his car eating an ice cream cone. They pulled up, they opened fire. I guess, you know, if you’re going to try to kill Gas Pipe, you’d better kill them.

They didn’t. And he ran into the restaurant and hid in a kind of a big walk in refrigerator used for catering in the basement. And Gaspipe, not surprisingly, spent the following years trying to figure out who was involved in this botched hit. And there was a man named Nikki Guido. I think my memory is that he was driving the car. So because Stephen Caracappa was working in the Major Case Squad. And what’s more, he was the, he was the detective in the Major Case Squad responsible for collecting information and organizing the, the records and the information.

He had access to everything, of course. So he passed along Nikki Guido’s address to Gaspipe and Gaspipe sent some guys over. They killed Nikki Guido on Christmas Day outside his family home. It was just the wrong Nikki Guido. It was just a case of mistaken identity. But this young man was by all accounts a good, a good kid. He’d applied to join the fire department. He was taking his uncle outside to show him his new, his new car. His father essentially died of a broken heart. He just stopped taking his medications and died. I think it was three, three years later.

So, you know, as you would expect, it kind of destroyed the family. And I mean, we could talk about any number of murders in this case, a lot of murders. But that’s, that’s the one that I think really sticks out. And in fact, it’s worth noting that years later, when Bert Kaplan the. I don’t, I don’t know how to describe him. He was a, he was a drug dealer, but that’s not really the sufficient way to describe him. He was, he was sort of a drug magnate and he was the intermediary between Epolito and Caracappa and Gas Pipe.

He was the go between. Right. So years later, when Bert is in detention, an investigator mentions Nikki Guido to him, and apparently that was. That was part of what brought Bert Kaplan around. Yeah. To flip and eventually testify against Epolito and Caracappa was that he had never really gotten over the. This episode with Nikki, the tragic death of Nick, of Nikki Guido. Now, Eppolito didn’t actually pull the trigger on that, but he. He just provided the information. Correct? Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Well, bad enough. But, you know, another fascinating thing I didn’t know was that they were out to get Sammy Gravano.

They actually tailed him and. And thought they might have had him at one some point. I don’t know if Sammy knew that until later on. Obviously he didn’t. But what was the reason behind that? What was the. Did you ever get to the bottom of that with Gas Pipe? Did he ever talk about it? Gosh, you know, I’m. I’m embarrassed to say I can’t. I’d have to go back and look at my notes. One thing as. As you know about writing a book is that sometimes it’s a long. It’s a long time between when you write it and when you’re, you know, when it comes out.

So was it. Am I. Am I correct in thinking that there was long standing bad blood there between Gas Pipe and. Yeah, I think that was it. I’m wondering how Gas Pipe had the authority to do that. You know, where it came from. I think it came from Castellano. It had to at that time. But I didn’t think there was any problem between Paul and Sammy to trigger something like that. And I think I didn’t. I was kind of amazed because I said, how did Gas Pipe had the authority to do that? And got it from Paul.

I thought Sammy was in good graces there, at least initially. Well, I’m not sure I can really give you a good answer on that. But. But the details, as you know, the details of the situation were that they were. That they were following Sammy and, you know, by Tally’s Bar in his office. And they might. They might very well have gotten him if not for just this purely chance encounter with another. Another detective, another cop who came up and said, hey, what are you guys doing here? And then once they’ve kind of been made in the location, they figured they couldn’t.

They couldn’t stick around and pursue it. And apparently Gas. Gas. Gas Pipe was pretty pissed off about it and put his own men on. On the case and of course, you know, that was it. You know, I could tell you this, Michael. You, you wouldn’t imagine how many times, you know, a hit like that was foiled just out of circumstance, you know, something that they didn’t know, and things had to be planned over again. And, you know, unfortunately, fortunately, I should say it happens in that life or would have been a different outcome with Sammy. But, you know, and from what I understand to these, one of the things they did was they were going after informants and they were giving most information on people that were going to flip or whatever.

And, you know, it’s funny, I’m not going to mention the name of the precinct, but I had a connection with a law enforcement person. And at 2:00 in the morning, I’d be able to go into the precinct and look through the files, you know, and when that happened, I would have gloves on because I didn’t want my. And it wouldn’t allow us to photocopy anything. We had him remember it or write it on notepad. But so something like this on that level wasn’t too out of the ordinary. We had relations with the nypd, but never again.

Never to this extraordinary extent. I wasn’t aware of anything like that, certainly with our family, with the Columbos. But, you know, some other informants that, you know, were murdered as a result of their activities. You could talk about that. Yeah, I mean, there was a, there was a. There was a member of the, of the Burglary, the Bypass Gang, the Burglary group. I, I thought the Bypass Gang was fascinating. And they were right out of, right out of Ocean’s Eleven, these guys who would go into banks or luxury goods stores on holiday weekends and spend three days in the, in the bank.

They’d bring food in and kind of make almost like a, a weekend out of it. And they were very sophisticated about the way in which they deflected the alarms or turned off the alarms. One of the members of that crew was a man named Otto Heidel, and he was, he was arrested for an unrelated crime. I believe he was caught loading stolen goods into a rented truck. And the FBI got him. And he flipped pretty much immediately on the spot. And what he told the agent that was talking to him was that his wife looked like Marilyn Monroe.

He had a beautiful wife, and he didn’t think that she would be faithful if he went to prison. And it was, it kind of, kind of tortured him. And so he flipped immediately and worked with an FBI handler for many years as a paid informant. While he continued to work with the Bypass Gang. Then he was. He was. He was. You know, if you’re. If you’re a informant, as Otto Heidell was, there are certain things you can do and can’t do. And he broke those rules. The FBI kind of kicked him out. Out. And they broke their agreement.

And then he started to work as an informant for the nypd. And then Stephen Caracappa was able to see his paperwork. So now Caracappa knows that Otto Heidel is an informant, and he passes that information along to Gaspipe. And one day, Otto Hydell was playing handball or racquetball in Marine park, and he goes back to his car, this flat tire lies down on the ground. He’s shot. He gets up. He’s able to get up, and he runs. He runs up the street and they come after him. And that’s. That’s it for. For Otto Heidell. So, you know, that’s a case of.

I think that’s a case of. Otto Heidel was not really. He was not really a mob guy. I mean, he was not a hardened criminal. He was a. He was a member of this. This. He was a member of this. This burglary crew. And so, you know, Amertad kind of didn’t really apply to him, I guess. And. And was that. I don’t recall if that group of that, you know, Berkeley group was in any way affiliated with us at that time. Were they? I don’t think so. I mean, by. I mean, gas pipe had some association with them, but he wasn’t really operating it.

So I don’t know. I don’t know exactly. Maybe they kicked money up to him. I don’t. I don’t really know. But that was. I mean, that was. I mentioned that. So there was a. There was another. There was another guy who worked for the Bypass Gang who was. Who became an informant and then went into the. Went into the Witness Protection Program, kind of very similar circumstances. And they sent him to a town in northern Minnesota where he really stuck out because he had the thick Brooklyn accent. And he’s there in Minnesota, and he. He was living in an apartment across the street from a bank, and he’s in the Witness Protection Program, and it just is.

It’s driving him crazy to look out the window and see this bank every day. And it would be so easy. Yeah. So one day he goes over and he and one other guy go over and. And break into the bank, but they get caught, and of course he’s thrown out of The Witness Witness Protection Program. There was a guy named, I’ll mention one other very quickly. There was a guy named DiNapoli. So he, he was, I guess, not on the level with his loan, loan sharking and was not showing his books to gas pipe. And then he decided he was going to disappear.

He went out to Los Angeles. So Stephen Caracappa was able to track him down. I mean, DiNapoli had a probation officer. So Caracappa, in his capacity as a detective, just called up the probation officer. Probation officer said he’s in Los Angeles. So then Caracappa called a police detective in the LAPD and, and said, what do you know about DiNapoli? And he said, well, he’s living with his girlfriend in West Hollywood. And so that was it for dinapoli. So it was one. It was one. It was one story after another in which Epolito and Caracappa, partially because of their access to the paperwork, were able to pass the critical information along the gas pipe.

It’s amazing. And, you know, during this 10 year period, I mean, were these officers actually doing their job also? I mean, their normal job is as NYPD detectives. Were they making arrests? Were they doing everything they should do? I mean, I know they, they, There was a lot of suspicion about them within the department, but they had to be conducting their duties. Otherwise, what are they doing now? Yeah, I mean, interesting question. I mean, it’s, it’s. I mean, I, you know, Appleto was. The thing is that Caracappa was in the Major Case Squad, and so he really didn’t go out on the street hardly at all.

You know, in this later part of this story, he’s just in Police Plaza. He’s in police headquarters on the 10th floor. I can’t remember what floor it is. That’s, that’s, you know, and he never, he didn’t, he didn’t go out and make arrests. So he was just kind of at the nerve center. But I think Eppolito did. I mean, Epolito, Epolito had, you know, he had good arrest records. And did he earn those good arrest records or did he. Was he helped out by Gaspipe and others who might have pointed him in the right direction, or was he framing people? We know of at least one case in which he framed somebody for the murder of a prostitute whose body was found by the Belt Parkway.

So hard. Hard to know if he really was earning his arrest record or if he was relying, relying on Gaspipe and others to help, to help him. You know, just from reading the book I think you come away with the conclusion that this was just a bad guy at Bolito. He wasn’t. You know, I always look for some redeeming qualities. And we could talk about his upbringing and, you know, he had a love, a rough time. His mom died when he was young, and his father was who he was. But when you look at his activities as written in the book, he was just not a good guy, period.

Yeah, I mean, he was not a good guy. I mean, these two guys, you know, they were sort of like Laurel and Hardy in a way. They were opposites of each other. It’s like sometimes partners are opposites. And Appolito was like a big, loud, boastful guy, kind of, you know, kind of a bullshitter. You know, a loud bullshitter. And his partner and best friend, Caracappa, was absolutely the opposite. He was always meticulously dressed in a dark suit and very quiet. Always watching, quietly watching and listening. What was. What was going on? I mean, I think there was.

You know, I spoke to a DEA agent who, at the end of this story, Epolito and Caracappa are living in Las Vegas, and a DEA agent is following them around, following Caracappa around. And he said there were two occasions when he and Caracappa locked eyes, and one of them was in a gas station. And he said it just. It gave him the chills. It was just something so, in his mind, disturbing and creepy about Caracappa. And, you know, this is coming from a DEA agent who had seen some things. Yeah, that’s pretty amazing. Did you have an opportunity to speak to some of their, you know, fellow NYPD people that knew them? Oh, yeah, a lot of it.

A lot of them and a lot of them. What was their reaction to all of this? Were they surprised? Well, I suspected something. What was their reaction? I mean, some of the. I mean, part of what is so interesting to me anyway is that part this was. That was that some of the detectives had independently decided like, that their suspicions about Caracappa in particular were such that they were not going to share anything with him anymore. They were just going to. Not. They were going to. In one case, a detective took his. He took an investigation he was working on to the Manhattan DA’s office because he was just not going to do it through the Major Case Squad because he didn’t trust Caracappa.

There were just. There was an accumulation of little things that were. That were suspicious. There was a detective named Frank Pergola who worked in the Major Case Squad but had been loaned out to the Manhattan DA’s office. And he came by the old office, the DA, the major case Office, and he put his briefcase down on a desk and he talked to Karakappa for a while and then he went to the bathroom and then he came back and then he had to drive up to a precinct in midtown. And while he was in the precinct in midtown, his car was broken into and his briefcase was stolen.

And he doesn’t know, but he thinks that while he was in the bathroom, Caracappa looked in his briefcase and figured out what was in his briefcase. And he knew where. He knew where Frank Pergola was going because Frank Pergola told him that he was going up to the precinct in Midtown. So there was an accumulation of episodes like that. So there were some detectives that were suspicious, suspicious enough that they were a little careful about what information they shared. But I, I mean, as I said at the beginning, as we discussed, I think when all of this information came out about what Epolito and Caracappa had done, I mean, people just kind of couldn’t, couldn’t believe it.

Detective Tommy Bates, who’s one of the great figures in this, in this book, told me that he went to a Dunkin Donuts to get coffee one morning on his way to work. And there was a Daily News. Somebody had leaked information about what Gaspipe had been saying about these two cops. It was on the COVID of the Daily News. And Tommy told me that he just didn’t. You know, it just was beyond belief, but it was true. Well, I tell you, Michael, it really is fascinating. And like I said, I don’t think anybody has done such an in depth investigation and the research that you’ve done and meticulously reported, I would say so.

It’s fascinating. And I even learned something, and that was my life. So, you know, things in there I’m not even going to get into, but, you know, some of the people that I knew and, and you really did a good job on it, I can tell you that. Thank you, Michael. I appreciate, I appreciate that. I truly appreciate that. Yeah. And I, I’m going to recommend that the book be read. I think people would be fascinated. Did anybody talk to you about, from Hollywood about doing a series or a movie on this? You know, there have been some, there have been some inquiries.

We’ll, we’ll see what happens. I do think it’s a really cinematic story. And of course, you know, south, you as you know better than anybody, South Brooklyn in those days. It’s. Yeah, it’s Scorsese country. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, I would think at the very least there would have been a documentary style, you know, series on this already, because it’s fascinating. I mean, the extension, extent that these, these two detectives have gone to is. It even blows my mind. You know, you never expect that. Well, we’ll see, we’ll see what happens. Like, I do, I do think it has, you know, it’s a sin.

It’s a movie like story. Yeah. You know, Michael, I’ve said this. I want to see if you agree. You know, a lot of people, wow, the police department, oh, wow. And I’ve said to them, you know, and this was during the time when they were trying to defund the police, and I’ve maintained this. I said, listen, every agency, every institution in the country, in the world could use some kind of reform. No institution is perfect. No agency is perfect. You can talk about government, you can talk about the Catholic Church, you can talk about nonprofit foundations.

Everything needs reform. But on the whole, these police departments operate, I believe, the way they’re supposed to in service to the people that they’re defending and protecting. And this is, you know, certainly an incident to this degree, I think is an isolated incident. So you shouldn’t judge departments or judge the police by something as dramatic as this. But, you know, it’s just the way of life. Everything can use some kind of reform. So it shouldn’t come as that shocking when you, when you hear some of these things that happen. But, you know, some people say, come on, Michael, you know, you hated the police all your life.

I said, well, that was back then. That was when I was on the, you know, the other side of the street. And I had a different, you know, thought process, but I’ve been able to straighten that out. You know, they were the good guys and we were the bad guys for the most part. And all we ever said to them is, listen, if you get us the right way, fine. Just don’t frame us. You know, we did say that, but I just want people to know as we wrap this up that, you know, every police department is not, you know, fraudulent, they’re not corrupt, but you have bad apples in it in every bunch, everywhere in America.

So just don’t be too shocked when you hear something. I don’t know if you agree with that. Yeah, I mean, I, I agree with that 100%. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve tried to make the same point in some interviews for this book. You, you said it better than I could have. This was this story is a freakish aberration. But if you read the book, you’ll see that the majority of, the vast majority of the cops in, in this story are dedicated, hard working public servants. And I think that’s generally true. Yeah, well, I agree with you. And Michael, I’m going to be honest with you.

When I first sat down, I said, wow, there are so many things in this book that I can spend a lot of. We could talk for about six hours if we had the time, because so many things in there that I would ask you about, just even on a personal level with people that I knew, but we’re not going to do that. I think we’ve given people a pretty good idea of what went on here. And like I said, I’ll recommend the book. I think it’s a page turner. I agree with that and I, I thank you for doing the hard work that you did.

Thank you, Michael. I really appreciate it. I really, truly appreciate your interest and I may be on top as I get through and I get a little more thought, I may call you back and say, all right, Mike, we didn’t cover this, but this is something that I want to talk about, so we may do it again. Please do. I’m always, I’m always here for that. All right, thank you very much. Okay. All right, so there you have it, you know, and I’ll give you a little bit more insight. Like I mentioned during the, in the interview, you.

I was cellmates with Rosario Gambino and he was one of the guys that were dealing with Epolito and we were cellmates in Terminal island for two years. So I had a lot of insight into what these cops were doing with, with Rosario, who was a good friend of mine. And we got along very well. So he told me a lot more. I’m not going to get into it all now, obviously. Caiso gasp pipe I knew him fairly well. You know, it’s a fascinating story, people. What could I tell you? It’s a, it was a. Something that we’ve never seen before to this degree.

We’ve seen it in the movies, but we’ve never seen it in real life. But it happens. And I think, you know, he told what he knew very convincingly. You know, it’s amazing sometimes how we find out more about went on in the street from guys like Michael Canelo and sometimes from FBI agents or cops because they’re dealing with, you know, guys who are informants and they’re investigating this and they’re hearing wiretaps and they’re they’re looking at surveillance reports and they’re hearing guys talk in their own words, you know, their own voice. So we get more information from these people than we did with our own people at times.

But look, it’s fascinating, very sad, you know, excuse me, I’m going to do that again. People, editors, outro again, because I had. Keep it on cam. Don’t change it. All right, there you have it. You know, and I mentioned throughout the interview that, you know, I was cellmates with Rosario Gambino, who was one of the people dealing with Epolito. He was getting some information from him. We were cellmates for two years in Terminal Island. Good guy. So I knew a lot more, you know, about what was going on. He kind of filled me in. And Queso, you know, I knew Queso pretty well.

But, you know, I didn’t get into this with him. He didn’t share anything with me, you know, and he’s dead now. You know, all the problems that he had, he was an informant. They started fingering a lot of people and then they threw him out of the program. Was a whole mess with him. But I think a lot of what Canel reported, pretty accurate. And listen, you know, I don’t know the inside story about, you know, how many guys they killed that I don’t know. I mean, the investigation is what it is, you know, in that life, eventually you’re going to get caught.

You’re going to get caught. People talk, they get in trouble, they talk. People don’t want to go to jail. This is what happens. So, you know, if you’re to that level of corruption, the level that they got into, it’s only a matter of time. And with them was 30 years later. But it’s only a matter of time. You’re going to go down. That’s what I tell our young people all the time. You stay in criminal activity, you got other people around you, and it’s only a matter of time before you’re going down. You’re not going to get away with it forever.

That’s it, you know, it’s a dead end street. So fascinating story, you know, sad story of corruption. Again, don’t indict the entire NYPD or all the police. Don’t start jumping up and down. We need to defund them. No, we don’t need to do that. We just need to make sure that there’s adequate oversight and reform when needed. So, my friends, that’s it for today. How do I always leave you? Same way before I leave you remember. Michaelfrancis.com family join the family. Join the community. It’s growing in leaps and bounds, and people are benefiting by it and loving it.

You want more of me, that’s the place to go. You need mentorship. You need to learn about negotiation. And, you know, negotiation. We’re undergoing one right now. America is, you know what I’m talking about. Trump tariffs, all this stuff. Let me tell you how to negotiate. You know, it was, it was something that I was intimately involved in throughout my entire life and fairly successful. So. Michaelfrancis.com family how do I always leave you again? Same way. Be safe, my friends. Be healthy. And yes, God bless each, each and every one of you, your families, friends, neighborhoods.

God bless America. I’ll see you next time. Sa.
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