Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Overheard: Lance Armstrong, The Sopranos and Hillary's race.
Courtesy of my buddy Argus
Lance Armstrong will bicycle ride with President Bush Sunday. He just ripped the Iraq war and now he's going into the woods with the president. He wouldn't normally make a mistake like this but he never sees The Sopranos because he trains in Europe.
New York prosecutor Jeanine Pirro stated last week that she will run against Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate seat next year. Her husband, Albert Pirro, served time for cheating on his taxes. Under New York state law, wives of cheating husbands get a Senate seat.
New York Republican Jeanine Pirro got off to a bad start in her race against Hillary. It seems her husband was charged with Mafia ties. Rudy Giuliani just endorsed her for starting her life over in Scottsdale with a completely new identity.
New York Senate candidate Jeanine Pirro accused Democrats of whispering that she's being financed by mob money. Her husband is an accused mobster. It's not a very convincing denial when all she can say is that this is the life we have chosen.
Some quick notes on Albert Pirro:
Gangster Greg DePalma was heard on FBI tapes claiming that one of his associates told him Albert Pirro blabbed about one of his wife's pending cases with him. DePalma claimed the associate, a contractor named Robert Persico, said Albert Pirro told him his wife's investigators were probing a local cop connected to DePalma. Pirro denied making the statement and filed suit against Persico. He later withdrew the suit.
Persico admitted he discussed Albert Pirro with DePalma, but only about the fact that Persico had hired him as a lobbyist to resolve a "payment dispute" with the state. Pirro confirmed that "for a few months" in 2002, he was a paid lobbyist for Persico, whom law enforcement has publicly labeled a mob associate since 1998.
Monday, August 15, 2005
Did Cops Double as Mob Hit Men? #MafiaCops
In Las Vegas, the players on the Strip know that a safe bet for celebrity sightings and traditional Italian food — a Caesar’s and Osso Bucco— is Piero’s.
It was supposed to be a quiet night at the restaurant one Wednesday in March, but it turned out to be anything but. As manager Linda Kajor started greeting two regulars strolling in for an early dinner, out of nowhere, guns were drawn all around. "Out of nowhere, the people at the end of the bar came running forward with guns drawn," recalls Kajor. "The front doors open up, and cops come running in. There are cops everywhere running after these two men that were standing there. We were very scared.”
The two patrons were suddenly thrown up against the wall and cuffed by federal agents. The pair were former New York City detectives about to be charged, astonishingly, as hit men for the mob. Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa weren’t just accused of being crooked, violent, or on the take — they were accused of being “mafia cops” and taking part in nine murders on behalf of an organized crime family, starting as far back as the 1980s.
U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf called it a “stunning betrayal of their shields, their colleagues and the citizens they were sworn to protect.”
A plotline worthy of a grade-D mob movie
It was supposed to be a quiet night at the restaurant one Wednesday in March, but it turned out to be anything but. As manager Linda Kajor started greeting two regulars strolling in for an early dinner, out of nowhere, guns were drawn all around. "Out of nowhere, the people at the end of the bar came running forward with guns drawn," recalls Kajor. "The front doors open up, and cops come running in. There are cops everywhere running after these two men that were standing there. We were very scared.”
The two patrons were suddenly thrown up against the wall and cuffed by federal agents. The pair were former New York City detectives about to be charged, astonishingly, as hit men for the mob. Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa weren’t just accused of being crooked, violent, or on the take — they were accused of being “mafia cops” and taking part in nine murders on behalf of an organized crime family, starting as far back as the 1980s.
U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf called it a “stunning betrayal of their shields, their colleagues and the citizens they were sworn to protect.”
A plotline worthy of a grade-D mob movie
It sounds like the stale script from a hack screenwriter with its storyline of bent cops, played by the usual over-the-top suspects. “This is a story of an organized crime person who joins the police department and then participates in organized hits and compromises investigations,” describes veteran police reporter Murray Weiss, who now works for New York’s Daily News. “People go ‘Ah, piece of junky pulp fiction.’ But it’s reality.”
Eppolito and Caracappa have both declared their innocence all along. Is this cops-gone-wild story mainly outrageous accusations made by convicted gangsters looking out for their own skin?
Caracappa’s defense attorney, Ed Hayes, thinks so. “Nobody gave these guys a fair shot,” says Hayes.
According to the prosecutor’s version however, the charges against the two former detectives are indefensible — and the most extreme acts took place on New York City’s busy Belt Parkway.
The former cops are accused of pulling over a small time hood in an unmarked police car in 1990 and killing him on behalf of another mobster who allegedly paid them $65,000 for the hit. “It’s still shocking to think that two cops would actually pull the trigger and kill someone,” says Newsday reporter Rocco Parascandola.
Even New Yorkers who thought they’d heard it all were flabbergasted. “Never has there been allegations like this. Never has there been policemen going out with their badges and killing people systematically and working with organized crime,” says Weiss.
A 'Dirty Harry' type and his low-key partner
Eppolito and Caracappa have both declared their innocence all along. Is this cops-gone-wild story mainly outrageous accusations made by convicted gangsters looking out for their own skin?
Caracappa’s defense attorney, Ed Hayes, thinks so. “Nobody gave these guys a fair shot,” says Hayes.
According to the prosecutor’s version however, the charges against the two former detectives are indefensible — and the most extreme acts took place on New York City’s busy Belt Parkway.
The former cops are accused of pulling over a small time hood in an unmarked police car in 1990 and killing him on behalf of another mobster who allegedly paid them $65,000 for the hit. “It’s still shocking to think that two cops would actually pull the trigger and kill someone,” says Newsday reporter Rocco Parascandola.
Even New Yorkers who thought they’d heard it all were flabbergasted. “Never has there been allegations like this. Never has there been policemen going out with their badges and killing people systematically and working with organized crime,” says Weiss.
A 'Dirty Harry' type and his low-key partner
Stephen Caracappa worked in a major case squad tracking homicides inside organized crime circles. He had access to confidential information on mob informants. Slight and intense, Caracappa was as low-key as his friend was swaggering.
Louis Eppolito, a gold chain-wearing, pinky-ringed, decorated street detective from Brooklyn made his name taking down the toughest of thugs.
Eppolito
, a former body builder, liked reading about his exploits the day after a big arrest. He seemed to relish the notoriety and the deference that came his way as the son of a mobbed-up family. “He just loved being the ‘Dirty Harry’ guy,” says Weiss. “His uncle’s name was ‘Jimmy the Clam’ and these were tough gangsters at seriously important levels of organized crime.”
After he retired from the NYPD, Eppolito wrote a self-congratulatory autobiography, “Mafia Cop.” The book was about walking the straight line as a detective from a family background steeped in organized crime. But was he a straight cop? In 1984, he’d been the target of an internal police investigation, suspected of leaking confidential documents to a known mob figure. He was cleared of the charges, but the rumors about Eppolito followed him all the way to his retirement in 1990.
After he turned in his badge, he even toyed with his reputation and got a few bit parts playing Mafiosos in movies like “Goodfellas.”
The case against the detectives
According to charges filed by the U.S. attorney, Eppolito was not only playing a movie mobster, he was one. And so was his quiet friend Stephen Caracappa. Authorities believe that starting in the mid-1980s, when both were New York detectives, they were also on the payroll of a crime family underboss who supposedly paid the cops $4,000 a month to be his “crystal balls.”
The two cops each brought something to the table, as Weiss sees it: “One guy is in bed with the mob and comes from a mob family, and the other guy is quiet and subdued, and winds up in a unit where he has access to all this confidential information involving organized crime.”
The files Caracappa had access would have been vital: “It’s priceless. You know who your enemies are and to find out who might be the witness against you… [You know] who’s starting to cooperate against the police and you can eliminate them. That by definition eliminates the case against you,” says Weiss.
Prosecutors believe that mobster Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso of the Luchese crime family paid the two to feed him confidential police information.
Casso particularly wanted to find out who’d tried to whack him in 1986. According to the indictment, the two detectives not only gave “Gaspipe” details about who was behind the botched hit, but were actually hands-on in helping execute his revenge. “They literally went and got that person and drove him, took him off the streets, threw him in a trunk and brought him to Casso,” describes Weiss of the allegations. But in the early ‘90s, after more than 20 years on the force, Eppolito and Caracappa retired to homes in a gated community in Las Vegas. They became across-the-street neighbors.
Back east, meanwhile, authorities had caught up with “Gaspipe” Casso who admitted involvement in 36 murders. The mobster began offering lurid stories about the two cops.
Still, the case against them didn’t gain traction until a team of investigators started going through old computer records and made links that, they believed, showed Caracappa had been pulling up files on mobsters who shortly thereafter ended up dead. The computer searches Caracappa made supposedly left virtual fingerprints.
In addition to computer file evidence, it’s believed that prosecutors also have a retired businessman, currently serving a 27-year prison sentence on mafia drug charges, prepared to testify that he was the middleman between “Gaspipe” Casso and the two detectives.
In a case built on decades-old stories told by accusations from convicted mobsters, the defense team is expected to attack the credibility of the government’s key witnesses.
“Anthony ‘Gaspipe’ Casso was the underboss of a crime family,” says Hayes, Caracappa’s defense attorney. “He is a raving lunatic. Nobody believed Casso. He, in fact, was so unbelievable the other gangsters didn’t believe him.”
In July, a federal judge said the evidence was stale and “not strong” — even questioning whether a statute of limitations may apply to the some of the charges. The prosecution did not contest the judge’s decision to release Caracappa and Eppolito on $5 million bonds.
The pair have been placed under house arrest with electronic ankle bracelets until their trial scheduled for September. They have both pleaded not guilty.
Thanks to Dennis Murphy
Louis Eppolito, a gold chain-wearing, pinky-ringed, decorated street detective from Brooklyn made his name taking down the toughest of thugs.
Eppolito
, a former body builder, liked reading about his exploits the day after a big arrest. He seemed to relish the notoriety and the deference that came his way as the son of a mobbed-up family. “He just loved being the ‘Dirty Harry’ guy,” says Weiss. “His uncle’s name was ‘Jimmy the Clam’ and these were tough gangsters at seriously important levels of organized crime.”After he retired from the NYPD, Eppolito wrote a self-congratulatory autobiography, “Mafia Cop.” The book was about walking the straight line as a detective from a family background steeped in organized crime. But was he a straight cop? In 1984, he’d been the target of an internal police investigation, suspected of leaking confidential documents to a known mob figure. He was cleared of the charges, but the rumors about Eppolito followed him all the way to his retirement in 1990.
After he turned in his badge, he even toyed with his reputation and got a few bit parts playing Mafiosos in movies like “Goodfellas.”
The case against the detectives
According to charges filed by the U.S. attorney, Eppolito was not only playing a movie mobster, he was one. And so was his quiet friend Stephen Caracappa. Authorities believe that starting in the mid-1980s, when both were New York detectives, they were also on the payroll of a crime family underboss who supposedly paid the cops $4,000 a month to be his “crystal balls.”
The two cops each brought something to the table, as Weiss sees it: “One guy is in bed with the mob and comes from a mob family, and the other guy is quiet and subdued, and winds up in a unit where he has access to all this confidential information involving organized crime.”
The files Caracappa had access would have been vital: “It’s priceless. You know who your enemies are and to find out who might be the witness against you… [You know] who’s starting to cooperate against the police and you can eliminate them. That by definition eliminates the case against you,” says Weiss.
Prosecutors believe that mobster Anthony “Gaspipe” Casso of the Luchese crime family paid the two to feed him confidential police information.
Casso particularly wanted to find out who’d tried to whack him in 1986. According to the indictment, the two detectives not only gave “Gaspipe” details about who was behind the botched hit, but were actually hands-on in helping execute his revenge. “They literally went and got that person and drove him, took him off the streets, threw him in a trunk and brought him to Casso,” describes Weiss of the allegations. But in the early ‘90s, after more than 20 years on the force, Eppolito and Caracappa retired to homes in a gated community in Las Vegas. They became across-the-street neighbors.
Back east, meanwhile, authorities had caught up with “Gaspipe” Casso who admitted involvement in 36 murders. The mobster began offering lurid stories about the two cops.
Still, the case against them didn’t gain traction until a team of investigators started going through old computer records and made links that, they believed, showed Caracappa had been pulling up files on mobsters who shortly thereafter ended up dead. The computer searches Caracappa made supposedly left virtual fingerprints.
In addition to computer file evidence, it’s believed that prosecutors also have a retired businessman, currently serving a 27-year prison sentence on mafia drug charges, prepared to testify that he was the middleman between “Gaspipe” Casso and the two detectives.
In a case built on decades-old stories told by accusations from convicted mobsters, the defense team is expected to attack the credibility of the government’s key witnesses.
“Anthony ‘Gaspipe’ Casso was the underboss of a crime family,” says Hayes, Caracappa’s defense attorney. “He is a raving lunatic. Nobody believed Casso. He, in fact, was so unbelievable the other gangsters didn’t believe him.”
In July, a federal judge said the evidence was stale and “not strong” — even questioning whether a statute of limitations may apply to the some of the charges. The prosecution did not contest the judge’s decision to release Caracappa and Eppolito on $5 million bonds.
The pair have been placed under house arrest with electronic ankle bracelets until their trial scheduled for September. They have both pleaded not guilty.
Thanks to Dennis Murphy
Friday, August 12, 2005
Top ten mafia money savings tips
10. When taking a body out to Jersey, use mass transit.
9. Tap into nearly endless supply of cheap Mexican hit-men.
8. Make threatening phone calls after 11pm, when rates are lowest.
7. When you whack two or three guys, stuff them in same trunk and carpool it.
6. Inexpensive pinkie ring substitute: Plastic tab-pull from half gallon of orange juice.
5. Pasta is very inexpensive and very filling.
4. Forget expensive car bombs--just sneak up behind the guy and yell, "Ker-pow!"
3. Every time you kill a guy, put a nickel in a jar.
2. Fire pricey nickname consultants -- everyone is either "Fat Tony" or "Knuckles."
1. Limit yourself to ten "fugeddaboudits" a day.
9. Tap into nearly endless supply of cheap Mexican hit-men.
8. Make threatening phone calls after 11pm, when rates are lowest.
7. When you whack two or three guys, stuff them in same trunk and carpool it.
6. Inexpensive pinkie ring substitute: Plastic tab-pull from half gallon of orange juice.
5. Pasta is very inexpensive and very filling.
4. Forget expensive car bombs--just sneak up behind the guy and yell, "Ker-pow!"
3. Every time you kill a guy, put a nickel in a jar.
2. Fire pricey nickname consultants -- everyone is either "Fat Tony" or "Knuckles."
1. Limit yourself to ten "fugeddaboudits" a day.
Monday, August 08, 2005
Lawyer says 'Junior' Gotti has reformed
John A. "Junior" Gotti went on trial on kidnapping, extortion and fraud charges Monday, with a prosecutor saying he ordered the 1992 kidnapping of a radio host to silence him for his verbal attacks on the Gotti family.
As a bespectacled Gotti, 40, sat passively in a dark suit, federal prosecutor Victor Hou accused him of taking over the street leadership of the Gambino crime family during the 1990s after his father, John Gotti, was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2002. "The Gambino crime family is not a family like yours or mine," Hou told the jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
As a bespectacled Gotti, 40, sat passively in a dark suit, federal prosecutor Victor Hou accused him of taking over the street leadership of the Gambino crime family during the 1990s after his father, John Gotti, was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2002. "The Gambino crime family is not a family like yours or mine," Hou told the jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan.
Unbridled Rage: A True Story of Organized Crime, Corruption, and Murder in Chicago
`Unbridled Rage: A True Story of Organized Crime, Corruption, and Murder in Chicago " (Berkley/Penguin) is a book written by Gene O'Shea.
It is about the Chicago Outfit's favorite murderous horseman, Silas Jayne, and his associates, the obese hit man Curtis Hansen, and Hansen's brother Ken Hansen, a horseman accused of using horses to get close to boys.
It is also about a triple murder of three such boys
, the Schuessler-Peterson murders, in 1955. Bobby Peterson was 14. John Schuessler was 13, and his brother Anton was 11.
They waited almost 40 years for justice, until John Rotunno and Jim Grady, two agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, took up the cold case and followed it relentlessly. "John Rotunno and Jim Grady from ATF wouldn't let it go," O'Shea said. "Those investigators were motivated by their professionalism, and by the fact that they were fathers. And I just felt I had to write the story."
O'Shea spent years covering the crime and courts beats for the Daily Southtown. Currently, he's the official spokesman for the Illinois Gaming Board. "I could identify with the boys," O'Shea told me. "Can't you? We all wanted adventure, and thought it special to go downtown when we were kids. That's what they did. They roamed around and looked for adventure."
I remember being 11 and roaming a bit. Perhaps you do as well. But we were lucky. We came home.
The boys were going downtown to a movie, to see some picture called "The African Lion." They ran into Ken Hansen. Two days later, their naked bodies were found in a ditch on a bridle path. The murders terrified the city.
O'Shea's book comes out this fall, but since I heard he was writing about the Schuessler-Peterson murders, I've been pestering him for a chance to read it. He gave me an advance copy the other day.
I read it steadily, in two sittings at a neighborhood coffee shop late into the night. There was plenty of light inside and the casual conversation of strangers and waitresses, then, finally, there was only the sound of the busboy vacuuming the carpet and the owner muttering over the cash register receipts at closing time.
Both nights it was quiet and pitch dark on the way to my car, and each time, listening to the night, I kept thinking about one passage in "Unbridled Rage."
I'm still thinking about it. I'll think about it for a long time.
It was about Hetty Salerno and how she wasn't a stranger to screams.
She was no stranger to screams because she'd heard all kinds. Only 10 or so years earlier, she'd been an ambulance driver in London during the Nazi bombardment of that city during World War II. But the war screams were nothing like those she heard from a boy on the night of Oct. 16, 1955, near the Idle Hour Stable across the road from her home in unincorporated Park Ridge, a stable owned by Silas Jayne.
The screams were terrible, "like someone beating the hell out of a child," she said.
It was a solid lead and the crime was so sensational and sensationalized--a public murder, a heater--that City Hall made sure there were plenty of police. Perhaps too many. And one officer talked to Salerno. Yet for some reason, investigators didn't follow up. It may have been a horrible mistake. Another theory is that police were steered away from Salerno's story--and the Jayne stable--by the political clout of Jayne's associates in the Chicago Outfit.
Police concentrated on other leads that led nowhere, or to tragedy, like Anton Schuessler Sr., father of two of the victims.
He was questioned, and harshly. Whether it was grief or the questioning and resulting shame or a combination, the man lost his mind. He was put in a psychiatric institution and subjected to electroshock therapy. The poor man died of a heart attack a month after his sons were killed.
Jayne's connections with organized crime, called the mob by outsiders and the Outfit by Chicagoans, were lengthy. "He'd have Outfit guys out to his stables, people like Sam DeStefano would show up, and dress up in full cowboy regalia and jump on horses and start shooting their six-shooters."
I can imagine the torturer "mad" Sam DeStefano in cowboy clothes. The guns were real. The fat Curt Hansen worked for DeStefano.
Those who were in Silas Jayne's way found themselves dead, including his brother, and a champion rider, and perhaps missing candy heiress Helen Brach.
Ken Hansen was convicted of the Schuessler-Peterson killings in 1995 and again in 2002 in a retrial. By then, Curtis Hansen and Silas Jayne were dead.
"This tells people working cold cases to never give up," O'Shea said. "Somebody knows something, and for various reasons, they keep their mouths shut. Silas Jayne died, and those who lived in fear of him were no longer afraid of what they knew."
Thanks to John Kass
It is about the Chicago Outfit's favorite murderous horseman, Silas Jayne, and his associates, the obese hit man Curtis Hansen, and Hansen's brother Ken Hansen, a horseman accused of using horses to get close to boys.
It is also about a triple murder of three such boys
, the Schuessler-Peterson murders, in 1955. Bobby Peterson was 14. John Schuessler was 13, and his brother Anton was 11.They waited almost 40 years for justice, until John Rotunno and Jim Grady, two agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, took up the cold case and followed it relentlessly. "John Rotunno and Jim Grady from ATF wouldn't let it go," O'Shea said. "Those investigators were motivated by their professionalism, and by the fact that they were fathers. And I just felt I had to write the story."
O'Shea spent years covering the crime and courts beats for the Daily Southtown. Currently, he's the official spokesman for the Illinois Gaming Board. "I could identify with the boys," O'Shea told me. "Can't you? We all wanted adventure, and thought it special to go downtown when we were kids. That's what they did. They roamed around and looked for adventure."
I remember being 11 and roaming a bit. Perhaps you do as well. But we were lucky. We came home.
The boys were going downtown to a movie, to see some picture called "The African Lion." They ran into Ken Hansen. Two days later, their naked bodies were found in a ditch on a bridle path. The murders terrified the city.
O'Shea's book comes out this fall, but since I heard he was writing about the Schuessler-Peterson murders, I've been pestering him for a chance to read it. He gave me an advance copy the other day.
I read it steadily, in two sittings at a neighborhood coffee shop late into the night. There was plenty of light inside and the casual conversation of strangers and waitresses, then, finally, there was only the sound of the busboy vacuuming the carpet and the owner muttering over the cash register receipts at closing time.
Both nights it was quiet and pitch dark on the way to my car, and each time, listening to the night, I kept thinking about one passage in "Unbridled Rage."
I'm still thinking about it. I'll think about it for a long time.
It was about Hetty Salerno and how she wasn't a stranger to screams.
She was no stranger to screams because she'd heard all kinds. Only 10 or so years earlier, she'd been an ambulance driver in London during the Nazi bombardment of that city during World War II. But the war screams were nothing like those she heard from a boy on the night of Oct. 16, 1955, near the Idle Hour Stable across the road from her home in unincorporated Park Ridge, a stable owned by Silas Jayne.
The screams were terrible, "like someone beating the hell out of a child," she said.
It was a solid lead and the crime was so sensational and sensationalized--a public murder, a heater--that City Hall made sure there were plenty of police. Perhaps too many. And one officer talked to Salerno. Yet for some reason, investigators didn't follow up. It may have been a horrible mistake. Another theory is that police were steered away from Salerno's story--and the Jayne stable--by the political clout of Jayne's associates in the Chicago Outfit.
Police concentrated on other leads that led nowhere, or to tragedy, like Anton Schuessler Sr., father of two of the victims.
He was questioned, and harshly. Whether it was grief or the questioning and resulting shame or a combination, the man lost his mind. He was put in a psychiatric institution and subjected to electroshock therapy. The poor man died of a heart attack a month after his sons were killed.
Jayne's connections with organized crime, called the mob by outsiders and the Outfit by Chicagoans, were lengthy. "He'd have Outfit guys out to his stables, people like Sam DeStefano would show up, and dress up in full cowboy regalia and jump on horses and start shooting their six-shooters."
I can imagine the torturer "mad" Sam DeStefano in cowboy clothes. The guns were real. The fat Curt Hansen worked for DeStefano.
Those who were in Silas Jayne's way found themselves dead, including his brother, and a champion rider, and perhaps missing candy heiress Helen Brach.
Ken Hansen was convicted of the Schuessler-Peterson killings in 1995 and again in 2002 in a retrial. By then, Curtis Hansen and Silas Jayne were dead.
"This tells people working cold cases to never give up," O'Shea said. "Somebody knows something, and for various reasons, they keep their mouths shut. Silas Jayne died, and those who lived in fear of him were no longer afraid of what they knew."
Thanks to John Kass
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