By TOM HAYS
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK- Two ex-police detectives betrayed their badges by becoming hired guns for the Mafia and helping unleash a wave of violence that left eight people dead, a prosecutor said Monday during closing arguments at their federal racketeering trial.
Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa “led double lives,” prosecutor Daniel Wenner told the jury.
“They gathered and sold information to the mob. They kidnapped for the mob. They murdered for the mob,” Wenner said.
The prosecutor described the case as “the bloodiest, most violent betrayal of the badge this city has ever seen.”
Authorities allege Eppolito, 57, and Caracappa, 64, were involved in eight slayings between 1986 and 1990 while on the payroll both of the New York Police Department and Luchese crime family underboss Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso. The detectives allegedly were paid up to $65,000 a hit.
The partners retired to Las Vegas in the early 1990s, but were arrested a year ago based on new evidence. It included the eyewitness account of a tow truck driver who managed a parking garage where a jeweler was executed in 1986 after running afoul of the Luchese family.
The tow truck driver took the witness stand last week and testified that he was forced to dig the jeweler’s grave while Eppolito stood guard.
The detective “was there that day as a lookout,” Wenner said Monday. “He was there because he was a cop,” he said. “If anyone came along, he could say, ‘Don’t worry, I’m a cop. There’s nothing going on.’”
The tow truck driver said he kept quiet for 19 years because he was convinced no one would believe that police were mixed up with the mob, and because he feared Eppolito might put him in his own grave.
“I was afraid of Louis Eppolito,” he said.
Closing arguments for the defense were expected later Monday.