Friends of the Family (28 page)

Tommy Dades almost laughed out loud when Vecchione told him about the decision. He wasn’t surprised. “Didn’t I tell you right from the beginning that they were gonna fuck us? So they fucked us. What do you expect?” But he was a team player, even when he was no longer officially on the team. From the very beginning of the case he had been keeping Betty Hydell informed of the progress, step by step. After all those years she had finally begun to feel hopeful that somebody was going to pay for her son’s murder. And now Tommy had to tell her that no one was going to be charged with the murder of her son. “Look at it this way, Betty. This is best suited for the federal system. They’re gonna charge them with every
thing, so chances that they’re gonna get convicted are much better. And it isn’t just the twenty-five-to-life we can give them, it’s mandatory life. And we’re gonna tell the whole story; believe me, nobody’s gonna forget about Jimmy.”

Betty Hydell and Tommy had become close friends over the past few years. He’d given his word and then made it stick. When he told her this was the best thing for the case, like just about everyone else with a stake in it, she reluctantly accepted it.

Meanwhile, Dades’s replacement on the task force, Pat Lanigan, was making some real progress toward finding the garage where Hydell had been handed over. Patty Lanigan was another one of the seasoned old pros. Like Ponzi, he had come from a cop family: His grandfather had joined the force in 1920 and had been one of the founding members of New York’s Emergency Service Squad. Lanigan had put in his twenty with the NYPD, spending some of that time working with the legendary Jack Maple creating the computerized response team concept, then becoming one of the original members of the newly formed Cold Case Squad. In fact, he was the first member of that squad to use DNA to break a case, using it to amplify nearly invisible traces of the victim’s blood soaked into the feathers of a down jacket owned by the accused killer.

Like a lot of other cops, he’d retired after having a real tough time working at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and in the weeks that followed. After spending more than a year sitting home watching a contractor rebuild part of his home, he’d gotten a job in Ponzi’s office in December 2005, pretty much filling Tommy Dades’s spot.

Lanigan and Dades had met only once, while digging for a body on a golf course. That was a Bobby I case. Supposedly the strung-out son of a wiseguy drug dealer had been killed and buried behind the seventh hole on the Dyker Beach Golf Course in Brooklyn. Lanigan and Dades’s partner Mike Galletta had been at the police academy together, so while the backhoe was ripping up turf, introductions were made. It was a nice day in the sun, although it turned out that there was nothing in the holes but dirt.

By the time Lanigan joined the task force it was meeting every day. Henoch partnered him with an FBI agent and gave them various assignments: Serve this subpoena. Get an address for that guy. See if you can find these files. It was typical grunt work, laying the groundwork for the big
battle.

Meanwhile, Kaplan’s stories about his relationship with Eppolito’s cousin, Frank Santora, had aroused a lot of new interest in the long-dead wiseguy. All the old files on him had been pulled. With the addition of Kaplan’s explanations, a lot of things no one previously had paid much attention to suddenly became important. It turned out Santora had been in the middle of a lot of the action. Very early in Kaplan’s debriefing he’d explained how his relationship with Eppolito and Caracappa had blossomed: When Casso had decided that Jeweler #1—the Orthodox Jew whose name Kaplan never knew—couldn’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut and had to be whacked, Kaplan asked Santora if the cops could do the job. This was their litmus test, to see how far they would go. Santora reported back to Kaplan that his cousin and his partner had found the guy, pulled him over on the New York State Thruway, and delivered him to Santora at a garage, where Santora had executed him and buried him.

That garage again. Santora had also been at a garage where Jimmy Hydell had been transferred from the backseat of the gray Plymouth, which resembled an unmarked police car, into the trunk. That’s why Dades had been trying to locate it.

And then one morning, while talking about something else, Kaplan mentioned casually that Santora had “a relationship” with some guy who owned either a tow truck company, a garage, or both; he wasn’t positive about those particular details and he didn’t know the guy’s name. Santora had told him that “Louie kept a car in that garage” or “someplace right nearby.” He didn’t know where the garage was though; he’d never been there. He thought it was somewhere in the vicinity of Bedford Avenue, but he wasn’t really sure.

That location had always made sense to Tommy Dades; it was only a couple of blocks away from the Sixty-third Precinct—where Eppolito had been assigned.

It was Bobby I who figured it out. Among the items found on Frankie Santora’s body after his murder was his address book. A copy of that book had been sitting in his file since 1987. Page by page, A to Z, Bobby I was working his way through it. And way in the back he found Valiant Towing.

Valiant Towing was owned by someone whose name hadn’t popped up anywhere else: Peter Franzone. Franzone turned out to be a hardworking
guy, a sixth-grade dropout, a tow-truck driver who had eventually bought the business. Eventually he’d bought an auto-body shop on Nostrand Avenue between Avenues H and I. Strung out in a line in an alley directly behind that repair shop were several one-car garages that Franzone rented out. Garages. Henoch assigned Patty Lanigan and his partner to find Pete Franzone.

Meeting secretly, the grand jury had voted to indict former detectives Louis Eppolito and Steve Caracappa for violations of the RICO Act. The U.S. Attorney drew up the indictment. “The Enterprise,” it began. “1. La Cosa Nostra (LCN) was a nationwide criminal enterprise also known as
‘the mafia’
and
‘the mob’
that operated in the Eastern District of New York…through entities known as
‘families.’
”

Seven paragraphs down it got to “The Defendants.” “At all times relevant to this Indictment, the defendants STEPHEN CARACAPPA and LOUIS EPPOLITO were LCN associates. Specifically they were associated with the Lucchese organized crime family of LCN and, at times, they provided sensitive law enforcement information to the Lucchese Family that was utilized by various New York City–based LCN families…”

The core of this indictment was sixteen criminal acts committed for the benefit of the Lucchese crime family. To be found guilty of the RICO charge it had to be proven that Eppolito and Caracappa “would commit at least two acts of racketeering in the conduct of the affairs of the enterprise.” It was act two that caught Tommy Dades’s attention: Clause D read, “On or about and between September 14, 1986 and October 31, 1986, both dates being approximate and inclusive, within the Eastern District of New York and elsewhere, the defendants STEPHEN CARACAPPA and LOUIS EPPOLITO, together with others, with intent to cause the death of James Hydell, caused his death, in violation of New York Penal Law Sections 125.25 (1) and 21.00.”

There it was, right in front, the murder of Jimmy Hydell. The rest of the indictment included a litany of crimes that Feldman and Henoch felt certain they could prove, including eight murders, two attempted murders, murder conspiracy, and several acts of providing confidential information to the Lucchese crime family.

The inclusion of Hydell’s murder satisfied Dades, but the clauses that most interested Vecchione were numbers fifteen and sixteen. These were
the charges that held the RICO together. Number fifteen concerned “Unlawful Monetary Transactions,” the proceeds of “narcotics trafficking” that took place “between December 1, 1994 and December 31, 1995,” and sixteen, which occurred “between December 2, 2004 and the date of this filing,” also concerned laundering the proceeds from Eppolito’s drug deals in Las Vegas. Without those charges, on those dates, the statute of limitations would have prevented the U.S. Attorney from successfully charging the cops under RICO.

Now it was up to the Feds to prove their case. As Vecchione had predicted, that turned out to be a lot more difficult than they’d believed.

The indictments were written but remained sealed
as Roz Mauskopf’s office began making plans to arrest Eppolito and Caracappa in Las Vegas. Vecchione wondered if the two cops had even the slightest idea that their history was about to become their future. Even as the case slipped away from him, he felt great satisfaction, and some pride, knowing these two skells weren’t going to get away with their crimes. He wished he could be there for the arrest just to see the look on their smug faces.

While the actual arrest would be routine, the moment the cops were taken into custody search warrants had to be executed and witnesses had to be approached. That required considerable coordination. The original arrest date was postponed because the investigation out in Las Vegas was still in progress, and a second date was scheduled. That second date was also postponed. Supposedly a third date was picked, mid-March 2005. At seven
A.M
. on a Friday morning several weeks before the arrests were scheduled, Tommy Dades’s daughter woke him up. The kids were getting ready to go to school. “The TV people are outside,” she said. “They want to talk to you.”

Dades opened the door in his underwear, his hair sticking straight up. A camera team was standing on his front step. A producer introduced herself,
then explained, “We’re from
60 Minutes
. Do you think we could ask you a few questions?”

Tommy was surprised to see them. He’d had a phone call from a
60 Minutes
producer a couple of nights earlier. Maybe it was the same person; he didn’t remember. She hadn’t gone into any detail about the case so Dades assumed they were simply checking out rumors. He’d told the producer that night that he wasn’t talking to anybody about anything at any time. But here they were, standing on his porch. It was a cold morning so he let the two women into his house. He told them politely that he wasn’t talking to anybody, he just wanted to be left alone. Then he called Feldman, who was furious when he heard about it. If the media knew about the case, there was a real chance Eppolito and Caracappa would also know about it. Just get them out of there, he told Dades. Don’t talk to them.

Tommy explained the situation to them. One of them asked, “How about after the indictment?”

“Call me after that and we can talk about it. But I’m not even telling you there is an indictment.” In fact, these producers knew a lot more about the progress of the case at that moment than Dades did. They knew all about Burt Kaplan, and they knew about other witnesses, much more than they should have known. Eventually they left Tommy’s house without ever turning on their cameras. But once again the arrest date was postponed.

There were a lot of people who wanted to know who had leaked that information to the media. Feldman was irate; now that he really had a case he was seriously concerned that
60 Minutes
was going to tip off the cops in Vegas, ruining the ongoing investigation. In the U.S. Attorney’s office it was widely believed that someone in Joe Hynes’s office had leaked the story out of anger. Feldman called Vecchione and asked him some pointed questions, making it clear he believed the leak had come from Brooklyn. “Mark,” Vecchione told him, “I don’t have the slightest idea how
60 Minutes
found out, but I can tell you it didn’t come from here.”

Feldman obviously didn’t believe him, pointing out that
48 Hours
had recently done a piece about Vecchione’s investigation into a corrupt divorce judge.

Vecchione tried to maintain his composure. “Are you saying that I was somehow involved in leaking this to
60 Minutes
? Mark, you couldn’t be more wrong. Tell me how that makes sense. We’re already going to get the
credit after the arrest is made; what else do we need? You think I want to screw up the prosecution? Is that what you think?”

That conversation ended badly. The source of the leak was never firmly identified, but Vecchione later learned that a DEA agent very loosely connected to the case was talking regularly with a reporter at the
New York Post
. He found it out when that reporter told him one day, “Boy, did I make a big mistake; I meant to call [the DEA agent] and I called the wrong number. I called Mark Feldman and left a message for him, thinking it was the other guy. Feldman called me back and we really got into it.”

Eventually Feldman told Ponzi that he knew this DEA agent was talking to the newspapers. And months later Vecchione read a story in a national magazine that extensively quoted this same DEA agent, further convincing him that this agent was the source of all their headaches. And that did surprise him, because throughout the entire investigation he never met this agent or saw him at any of the many task force meetings.

But at that moment it didn’t matter where the information came from; the damage was done. Whatever little trust remained between the U.S. Attorney and the Brooklyn DA’s office was just about gone.

A few days later Pat Lanigan and his partner finally got a look at the garage on Nostrand Avenue. They drove past it several times, as always just trying to get the feel of the place. It was a pretty run-of-the-mill repair shop, although it was impossible to see what was going on around back, where the row of garages was located. Peter Franzone had sold the whole operation years earlier. Lanigan had identified the new owner and through him had tracked down Franzone. It was time to go talk to him.

Franzone was working as a maintenance man for the Housing Authority in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. Lanigan and his partner went to his apartment on Avenue I first. When his wife answered the door, Lanigan identified himself and his partner, “Special Agent [name withheld] of the FBI,” and explained that they wanted to speak with her husband. Just like on TV. “Don’t worry, he’s not in any kind of trouble,” Lanigan said reassuringly.

“Just wait right here,” she told them. They were standing in the hallway. “Right here. Don’t move. Don’t go anywhere.” She started to walk away but turned. “Don’t move, okay?” They didn’t move. And Peter Franzone wasn’t home. So they drove to Sheepshead Bay.

Pete Franzone was short, about five feet four inches tall, and some
what swarthy. But mostly he was nervous. As Lanigan recalled, “There’s good nervous and bad nervous. He was bad nervous.” Franzone agreed to return with the investigators to their office to answer some questions. At first the questions were very general:
Did you own the garage? What was the time frame in which you owned it? Did you rent the garages out?
Gradually they got a little more specific:
Did you know any police officers? Did you have any police cars on the lot? Did any police officers leave cars in a garage?

Franzone said he didn’t know any police officers. He didn’t rent to any police officers. No police officers left cars there. Lanigan nodded and smiled and didn’t believe one word. He knew Franzone was lying, he just didn’t know why.

When Lanigan asked to see the bill of sale of the garage Franzone agreed to provide a copy. He said it would take him a day to find it though. “That’s fine,” Lanigan told him, “I’ll come by tomorrow and pick it up.”

While Lanigan was in the field, U.S. Attorney Roz Mauskopf was on the phone with Joe Hynes. Apparently writer Jerry Capeci, the respected organized crime expert, and
Daily News
reporter John Marzulli had called her office asking questions about the case. It was clear they had an inside source. It was just as clear that like Feldman, Mauskopf believed the source was someone inside the Brooklyn DA’s office. “Now that the media knows about this we’re going to have to push this ahead,” she said. The arrests were going to be a week early. She told Hynes precisely when Eppolito and Caracappa were going to be arrested, and then added, “And of course you’ll come over here for the press conference.”

“Wait a second,” Hynes said. “Vecchione and Feldman have a deal. I thought we’d agreed that you’re supposed to come over here for the press conference.”

“No, no,” she said firmly. “We’re going to do it here.”

Vecchione exploded in anger when Hynes told him about the phone call. Minutes later Ponzi was in Vecchione’s office and they were talking to Feldman on the speakerphone. “We had a deal, Mark,” Vecchione said. “We agreed you guys would try the case and we would do the press conference, and that the DA would announce it along with Mauskopf in our office, then turn it over to you guys.”

Feldman’s voice was clear and firm. “I never said that to you.”

Vecchione took a calming breath, then said quietly, “Mark, you’re a liar. Ponzi heard every word of it.”

Ponzi agreed. “That was the deal, Mark. We were going to do this here, you guys would try it.”

Feldman persisted, “Well, I don’t remember it that way and I don’t have the authority to commit the U.S. Attorney to come to your building for a press conference.”

Vecchione said evenly, “You really fucked me. You’ve made me look like a fool.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

Vecchione ignored him. “I went to my boss, I told him what the deal was. And now you’re giving me this bullshit. You don’t have the authority to do what you did? I have nothing to talk to you about.” And then he slammed down the phone.

He just looked at Ponzi and shook his head.

Slightly after six
P.M
. on Wednesday night, March 9, 2005, Louis Eppolito and Steve Caracappa walked into the upscale restaurant Piero’s Italian Cuisine and New England Fish Market. The restaurant is on Convention Center Drive in Las Vegas, just off the famed Strip, the place where dreams live. It’s the perfect kind of Vegas place; Jerry Lewis often celebrates his birthday there and the owner was once married to actress Diahann Carroll for several weeks. As the two retired detectives entered they probably didn’t even notice the four men walking only a few feet behind them. As Eppolito and Caracappa approached the maître d’, the world collapsed on them. Five men, including FBI agents, DEA agents, and Bobby Intartaglia from Joe Ponzi’s investigative bureau, rushed out of the bar and pushed them against the oak-paneled wall, shouting that they were under arrest. As they had been taught, the agents took absolute control of the room with overwhelming force. According to witnesses, the agents drew submachine guns. When they frisked Eppolito they discovered a loaded, chambered .45-caliber semiautomatic handgun in his waistband. Within four minutes Eppolito and Caracappa were whisked out of the restaurant and taken to a Vegas jail to be held without bail.

Neither of the cops said a word as they were hustled out of the restaurant. An agent called Tommy Dades the next morning to give him the details and mentioned casually that Eppolito had fallen asleep in his cell.
Tommy smiled when he heard that. That’s another piece of cop knowledge. It meant that Eppolito had no fight left in him. Dades knew from a lot of experience that when you accuse an innocent guy of an atrocious crime and put him in a cell, he doesn’t stop screaming. The only thing that slows him down is a straitjacket. But guilty men don’t react that way. When the guy is guilty, he’s relaxed; he’s busy thinking about how he’s going to get out of this jam, and he goes to sleep.

Almost simultaneously, police arrested Eppolito’s twenty-four-year-old son Anthony Eppolito at his father’s home on charges of distributing methamphetamine. When he was arrested Anthony Eppolito was in possession of about an ounce of the crystal meth, which law enforcement believed he was intending to sell.

Once Eppolito had collected rare snakes, but in his Vegas home detectives discovered an arsenal large enough to equip a rebellion. Among the 131 guns they found were five assault rifles, fifty semiautomatic pistols and submachine guns, and a gold Luger pistol. They also found supposedly incriminating e-mails between Eppolito and Caracappa as well as several NYPD files.

Joe Ponzi was surprised when he heard about one of those files in particular. It contained all the original paperwork from a murder case that he had worked, a 1986 murder that Eppolito had solved. What was Eppolito doing with that particular file, he wondered. That wasn’t a cold case; the convicted killer, Barry Gibbs, was still serving his twenty-years-to-life sentence. Ponzi remembered the case well; Gibbs had been convicted of killing a purported prostitute named Virginia Robertson. Her body had been discovered by the Belt Parkway. There had been one witness, an exmarine with a drug problem who claimed he had seen Gibbs dispose of the body from three hundred feet away, and while Gibbs didn’t fit the witness’s description, Eppolito had arrested him because he lived near the victim and had been known to have sex and do drugs with her. That witness had picked Gibbs out of the lineup, and according to Detective Eppolito he’d said, “That’s him; I’m a hundred percent sure. I’ll never forget his face as long as I live.” And while the eyewitness was the key to the conviction, a jailhouse snitch in prison with Gibbs on Rikers Island had told Ponzi that Gibbs had admitted the crime to him. Apparently that confession included some details that hadn’t been reported in the newspaper. At the time Ponzi
had believed the snitch’s story had the ring of truth to it. This witness had also testified at Gibbs’s trial, although the jury claimed it had dismissed his story. So while Gibbs had screamed pretty loudly that he was innocent, eventually he was sentenced to nineteen years in prison.

So why was Louie holding that file? Ponzi was curious, but he’d spent enough time trying to figure out the motives for the crimes of Louis Eppolito.

The day after the arrests were made the U.S. Attorney issued a press release announcing the indictment. “The indictment alleges that beginning in the early 1980s, the defendants, while serving as New York City Police Department detectives also secretly worked as associates for organized crime…” Roz Mauskopf acknowledged the assistance of the NYPD and investigators from Hynes’s office at the bottom of a long list. Hynes was then quoted as crediting “Mike Vecchione, Chief of the Rackets Division, [who] led an outstanding team, and I want to especially praise retired NYPD Detective Thomas Dades and Investigator William Oldham of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for their tireless efforts in reopening this dormant investigation, along with Detective Robert Intartaglia and retired NYPD detective Doug Le Vien for their work in bringing this case to where we are today…”